the mystical theology of valentin weigel - DataSpace at Princeton ...

in a context where action is expected and privileged. 18 As Hans-Joachim Müller points
out, intentions and feelings are lost to historians, but texts do allow access to the
rhetorically constructed expression of those feelings. 19 To focus on intention and
character as August and Jones do is to miss the constructedness (and hence social
embeddedness) of these expressions. Should Weigel have expressed his sincerely held
convictions, even if it might have meant losing his post, imprisonment or exile? Or worse,
since he believed that mainstream Lutheran theology was the theology of the antichrist,
had he not failed to witness to the truth of Christ as the early martyrs did? 20 I have dwelt
on this episode because it crystalizes the key question that Weigel wrestles with
throughout his oeuvre in various guises: how should a Christian reach a decision about
how to act? Specifically, how can (and should) written texts function as a guide to right
action?
In reconstructing Weigel’s decision not to speak out, as well as the terms in which
he frames his decision, I found that Weigel drew support from an intellectual tradition
that is not considered influential on his early modern Protestant milieu, namely medieval
mystical writers, and in particular those belonging to the tradition of negative theology as
it was expressed by Meister Eckhart (late thirteenth century) and Dionysius the
18 Weeks, Religious Dissenter, 15. In a sense, Weeks does not get away from questions of character and
intention entirely either, because even as he chooses to withhold judgement he does not investigate further
the many things that Weigel himself had to say on the subject of taking action.
19 Müller here is speaking about those involved in an attempt to unify various Christian denominations in
the mid-seventeenth century (the Irenic movement), but his words might also well apply to Weigel: “Irenik
wird so...zu einer Frage der Bewertung der Intentionen derjenigen, die in den interkonfessionellen Diskurs
eintreten. Eine solche Auffassung birgt viele Probleme in sich: Nicht nur, daß man sich anmaßt, aus der
Retrospektive die Intentionen und Motivationen der handelnden Theologen, Gelehrten und Politiker
moralisch zu bewerten, es besteht in der Reduktion auf ihre Gesinnung auch die Gefahr, den
Regelhaftigkeiten, Verhaltensweisen und Stretegien in der interkonfessionellen Auseinandersetzung zu
wenig Bedeutung beizumessen.” Hans-Joachim Müller, Irenik als Kommunikationreform: Das Colloquium
Charitativum von Thorn 1645 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 30.
20 See for instance Valentin Weigel, Seligmachende Erkenntnis Gottes, in Schriften: Neue Edition, Vol. 9
(Stuttgart, Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2008), 78 and 81.
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