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Meister Eckhart and the Via Negativa: Epistemology and Mystical Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

John J. Murphy
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The mystical language of the 14th century Dominican, Meister Eckhart, can certainly be characterised as daring in its creativity. Indeed, Eckhart uses language like few others in his talk of the divine, employing bold paradoxes and unusual metaphors. But as Bernard McGinn has written, “while Eckhart’s creative handling of language is one of the major attractions of his style, it often does not make the task of understanding him any easier.” Part of the problem in failing to understand Eckhart’s words involves a failure to understand the context of his theological vision and his efforts to bring his listeners to a new appreciation of the divine. This has been especially true in the contemporary philosophy of religion. Philosophical analyses have failed to attend to the conditions in which the mystic’s words have their meaning and instead have generally been attempts to “penetrate” the phenomena. What is required instead is what the 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein has advised, namely, a grammatical investigation. When Eckhart writes, “The eye in which I see God is the same eye in which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye and one sight and one knowing and one loving”, it must be recognized that the meaning of such a statement can only be understood in seeing how Eckhart’s words are being used, for it is only in this context that these words have their significance. Rather than impose a philosophical explanation, therefore, it is important to note the grammar of Eckhart’s discourse and thus a description is offered.

Type
Original Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 77 , Issue 908 , October 1996 , pp. 458 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 McGinn, Bernard, Meister Eckhart:The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, trans, by Colledge, Edmund O.S.A. and McGinn, Bernard, (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), p. 24Google Scholar.

2 Eckhart's works cited are from the following texts: Eckhart, Meister, Meister Eckhart, Sermons and Treatises, Walshe, M. O'C., ed. and trans., Vols. I & II, (Rockport, MA: Element Books, Ltd., 1989)Google Scholar, Eckhart, Meister, Meister Eckhart. Teacher and Preacher, ed., McGinn, Bernard (New York: Paulist Press, 1986)Google Scholar, Eckhart, Meister, Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, trans, by Colledge, Edmund O.S.A. and McGinn, Bernard, (New York: Paulist Press, 1981Google Scholar).

3 Ayer, A. J., Language, Truth and Logic (London: Gollancz, 1936), p. 119.Google Scholar

4 For discussions on the concept of the “hiddenness” of God, see especially Moore, Gareth O.P., Believing in God: A Philosophical Essay (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988)Google Scholar and Phillips, D. Z., R. S. Thomas: Poet of the Hidden God. Meaning and Mediation in the Poetry ofR. S. Thomas (Allison Park, Pennsylvania: Pickwick Publications, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 I am indebted to Bernard McGinn's discussion of this complicated theme in Eckhart's work. See McGinn, Bernard, ‘The God beyond God: Theology and Mysticism in the Thought of Meister Eckhart’Journal of Religion: 61, (1981), pp.1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Stace, Walter Terence, Mysticism and Philosophy (Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1960), p. 305Google Scholar.

7 See Kertz, Karl G., “Meister Eckhart's Teaching on the Birth of the Divine Word in the Soul” in Traditio 15 (1959), pp. 327‐63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Some commentators have suggested that Eckhart is heretical with this theme but this interpretation is due to non‐apophatic analyses. As Bernard McGinn writes: “Eckhart was at least equally daring in insisting that the Father not only eternally begets the Son in the soul, but also that the soul itself, after it has become a virgin by stripping itself of all things through detachment, must go further and become a wife, that is, must in tum beget the Son with the Father and beget itself as the selfsame Son in the Father. While Eckhart's language here may seem pantheistic, we must note that the birth of the Son or Word in the soul has deep roots in Christian thought and that a number of interpreters have stressed the conformity of Eckhart's views with Christian teaching on the divinizing power of grace.” Bernard McGinn, “The God beyond God: Theology and Mysticism in the Thought of Meister Eckhart”, p. 9.

9 John D. Caputo writes:, “God's flowing forth is intended to become a flowing back, for only then is the meaning of creation fulfilled.” Caputo, John D., “Fundamental Themes in Meister Eckhart's Mysticism”, The Thomist 42, no. 2 (April, 1979), p. 216Google Scholar.

10 Richard Kieckhefer has written concerning this: “God is present within the human soul and within creation generally, and that the moral task incumbent upon human beings is to heighten their awareness of God's indwelling so that they may better manifest it in their lives” Kieckhefer, Richard, “Meister Eckhart's Conception of Union with God” in Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978), p. 208CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Katz, Steven T., ‘Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism’ in, Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, ed., Katz, Steven T. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 55Google Scholar.