Brian Hamilton

Meister Eckhart: Dialectical Theology

Meister Eckhart is a master of problematizing distinctions. Even while maintaining orthodox formulations like the analogical distinction of God’s being from created being, or the difference between God’s immanent procession and God’s act of creation, or the ability of the human person to act with or against God, he blurs the lines between these distinctions on the basis of the grand tradition itself. So for example, even if we affirm the Thomistic analogical distinction of being, taking seriously the traditional doctrine of creatio ex nihilo compels us also (Eckhart sees) to recognize the radical dependency of all being on God himself, such that the being of creation itself has an uncreated ground.

Pushing the boundaries of these quite sensible orthodox distinctions has an iconoclastic air to it, but the Meister does not see his work as destructive. Rather, he wants to stretch our imaginations dialectically towards the true scope and implications of what Christians have already claimed to understand. Although in his sermons he regularly opposes himself to the church authorities and even to the Bible in order to expand the imaginations of his listeners, Eckhart also makes clear while defending against his possible condemnation that he thinks his counterpoints are also basic to the Christian faith: e.g., that man can be united to God, that God exists in an eternity without time, that God is true esse. He is not really contradicting the authorities, only playing the tradition off of the tradition in order to reverse and transcend every settled understanding of it.

9 December 2006 |
tags: Meister Eckhart