Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T14:13:08.318Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Where Two are to Become One’: Mysticism and Monism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2010

Grace Jantzen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

(1) If you would know God, you must not merely be like the Son, you must be the Son yourself.

With these words Meister Eckhart encapsulates the aim of Christian mysticism as he understood it: to know God, and to know God in such a way that the knower is not merely like Christ but actually becomes Christ, taken into the Trinity itself. Eckhart speaks frequently of this in his sermons.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 25 , March 1989 , pp. 147 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, 3 vols, trans. Walshe, M. O'C. (London: Watkins, 1979–1987), Vol. I, 127.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 148.

3 Ibid., 66.

4 Ibid., 52.

5 From the papal bull which denounced him, In Agro Domino, to Evelyn Underhill.

6 Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs, 4 vols (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1977–1980), Serm. 71.Google Scholar

7 Ibid.

8 John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love in The Collected Works of John of the Cross, trans. Kavanaugh, Kieren (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1973), 580.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., 583.

10 Das Wesen des Christentums (Leipzig, 1900Google Scholar; English trans. London, 1901).

11 History of Dogma, 7 vols (English trans. London, 1894–1899), Vol. I, 359.Google Scholar

12 VI, 97.

13 VI, 105.

14 III, 109.

15 VI, 110.

16 VI, 105.

17 Eckhart, Vol. I, 52.

18 Harnack, Vol. V, 280.

19 V, 305; cf. 291; IV, 270–282.

20 IV, 271–272.

21 VI, 106.

22 Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics, 4 vols (English trans. T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1975–1977), Vol. I.2, 319.Google Scholar

23 II.l, 10; cf. 57; III.4, 190.

24 Pragmatism (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1907), 151–155.Google Scholar

25 The Varieties of Religious Experience (Glasgow: Fontana, Collins, 1977), 401.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., 407.

27 Mysticism and Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1960), 131.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., 111.

29 Ibid., 132.

30 Ibid., 219.

31 Ibid., 207.

32 Theologians of the stature of Tillich, Brunner, Nygren, and Underhill give voice to variations of this theme; joined by philosophers like O'Hear, Staal, and Smart.

33 Bernard, Serm. 71.8.

34 Op. cit., 71.9.

35 Showings, trans. Colledge, E. and Walsh, J., Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, and London: SPCK, 1978), Long Text 62.Google Scholar

36 Cf. my Julian of Norwich, Mystic and Theologian (London: SPCK, 1987), 128–149.Google Scholar

37 Bernard, Serm. 71.10.

38 Ibid.

39 Kavenaugh, 580.

40 Ibid., 581.

41 Ibid., 583.

42 Ibid., 584.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid., 585–586.

45 Commentary on Exodus 35, in Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, McGinn, Bernard (ed.), Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, and London: SPCK, 1986)Google Scholar; cf. Tobin, Frank, Meister Eckhart: Thought and Language (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), esp. 52–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 ‘Comm. on Ex. No. 112’.

47 Walshe, Vol. 2, 81.

48 Ibid.

49 II. Cor. III.18.

50 Cf. Woods, Richard, Eckhart's Way (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1987)Google Scholar; Davies, Oliver, God Within (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1988), Ch. 2.Google Scholar

51 Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I.I, 391–392; II.1, 10; III.4, 59.

52 On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (English trans. New York and London: Harper Torchbooks, 1958), esp. Speech 2.Google Scholar

53 Cf. History of Modern Philosophy, in Schelling, K. F. A. (ed.), Schellings Sämmtliche Werke (Stuttgart and Augsburg, 1860), Vol. X, 190–192.Google Scholar

54 Varieties, Lecture XVI; cf. my ‘Mysticism and Experience’, in Religious Studies (forthcoming).

55 Ibid., 306.

56 Cf. my ‘Conspicuous Sanctity and Religious Belief’, in Abraham, and Holtzer, (eds), The Rationality of Religious Belief (Oxford, 1987).Google Scholar