Meister Eckhart, Vol .1: Teacher and Preacher

Meister Eckhart has become something of a spiritual celebrity these days; one often finds him discussed widely in many forums interested in spirituality, or discussed by members of Eastern religions who seem interested to draw parallells between Eckhart and Eastern philosophy, or in philosophers who find Eckhart's often bold, Zen-like pronouncements baffling and strange. Eckhart was certainly one of the most interesting thinkers of the medieval period. Associated with the Rhineland mystical movement in Germany, Eckhart appears to describe in many of his sermons powerful mystical experiences of various kinds, and at times his language seems to indicate he and God are united in essence. For this Eckhart was formally condemned for the heresy of pantheism, the only theologian to have been condemned this way in the medieval period. This volume of the Classics of Western Spirituality presents some of Eckhart's key sermons, some of his Biblical commentaries, and some of his written works aimed at fellow Dominicans or Christians in his pastoral care. It also includes essays on Eckhart's theology, philosophy and mysticism by Bernard McGinn, one of the world's leading scholars on Christian mysticism and on Eckhart's mysticism in particular. Eckhart's themes are complex, but appear to revolve around a very personal and intimate experience of the Absolute. Eckhart strongly emphasized the apophatic approach to experiencing God, negating all predicates and names and concepts which might apply to God, leaving behind only a naked, formless 'One' above Being and above concepts, even above the 'Trinity' itself. From this silent, unmoving, and unchanging entity, which is in Eckhart's view, neither 'nothing' nor 'being' but 'a nothing' and 'a something', both the Holy Trinity and all reality emerge, 'overflowing' like water flooding from a bursting spring in the ground. The human mind meets this reality, in its innermost 'ground', a place where the human soul or mind meets God devoid of all concepts, images and forms, but in doing so encounters God's prescence in so powerful a manner the soul fuses into God by a remarkable divinisation which makes the soul so like God all distinction between the soul or the person and God seems to completely vanish. Indeed, in his bolder sermons, God will often equate the 'ground' to the Godhead itself. Eckhart also develops a rich set of metaphors revolving around God's nothingness or darkness, both in terms of his unknowability and incomprehensibility, and his infinity and transcendant being. No other Catholic Christian mystic so strongly developed this theme, except perhaps for St John of the Cross. Eckhart also boldly describes the birth of the Christian believer into becoming God's son, when the ground becomes alive with its divinisation into God or the Absolute itself, to the point where God has as much joy over this 'birth' as he does in the Trinity itself. Eckhart also lies out a program where this myst

This book supplements the first volume on Eckhart from the Classics of Western Spirituality series with great reading. The sermons alone are worth the expense as they are chalk full of Eckhartian charm and challenge. In this work, you'll find solid translations of important medieval literature.