supplemental reading

I’ve included a link to the book Meister Eckhart, from Whom God Hid Nothing. This work contains various writings and sermons by Eckhart.

reflection

Meister Eckhart was a truly brilliant, and often controversial, thinker who also had a talent of being able to communicate lofty ideas to people outside the academy. Famously, he once preached, “I pray therefore, God rid me of God”, which beautifully captures the type of dialectic between affirmation and negation that was so important to the mystics. 

In today’s reflection, you will get a sense for the type disorienting theopoetics that Eckhart often employed in his sermons and writings. Something that is captured in his claim that God is “transcendent Being” and “superessential Nothingness”. In the 20th century, Eckhart underwent a revival of interest, partly connected to a renewed interest in his work from continental philosophers.

Above all Understanding

Meister Eckhart (1260 – 1328), was a German theologian, philosopher and mystic, born near Gotha, in the Landgraviate of Thuringia.

Eckhart came into prominence during the Avignon Papacy, at a time of increased tensions between monastic orders, diocesan clergy, the Franciscan Order, and Eckhart's Dominican Order of Preachers. He was accused of heresy and brought up before the local Franciscan-led Inquisition.

He is widely held to be one of the greatest mystics in the Christian tradition and has garnered considerable interest in both popular and academic circles.

In the following excerpt we get a glimpse of his understanding of God as that which is beyond being.