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end, Weigel returns to Eckhart’s ideal soul in a state of Gelassenheit; perfectly passive, entirely one with God, beyond ideas and words, beyond wilful selfhood and devoid of knowledge and concepts, such a soul does not simply add yet another interpretation into a disputatious discourse, but rather moves beyond interpretations and opinions altogether. Eckhart in Weigel II: Der güldene Griff (Or, the real Formula Concordiae) In order to understand how Weigel deploys Gelassenheit so as to diffuse confessional conflict and restore harmony within the Christian community, we must begin with a discussion of his epistemological theories, which he set down in a treatise from 1578 called Der güldene Griff, composed only one year after the signatures were collected for the Formula Concordiae. The work’s full title is actually Der guldene griff Alle dinge ohne Irthumb zuerkennen, allen hohen schulen unbekant, und doch allen menschhen notwendig zuwissen, which gives a clue as to what this “golden grasp” might be: it is a method for knowing all things correctly. Briefly, Weigel’s method is built on two assertions: that knowledge comes from the knower rather than the object known, and that knowledge is possible because God is fully present within each person in the ground of the soul. Knowledge, by this account, is only possible because of this divine indwelling, but allowing God’s superior knowledge to stand in for each person’s reading but not his opponent’s). This fantasy of the perfect reader who reads without interpreting is, to a certain extent, not a dissimilar impulse to Weigel’s, except that Weigel then goes on to argue that without interpretation there is no basis for action, and therefore fundamentalism cannot turn to persecution. James Simpson, Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents, (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007). 110
(necessarily inferior) knowledge provides an altogether more accurate epistemological foundation—albeit, as we will see, at the cost of the individual knower. Like the Bible, Weigel begins at the beginning, by retelling the story of creation. For Weigel, as for Eckhart, creation is both separation and emanation. 292 As created things came forth from God into being, their coming forth is simultaneously how created things are separated from God: “durch die scheidung all dinge seint herfur kommen an das Licht; gott besitzet alle Dinge in ihm selber.” 293 This coming forth is also a transition from what is hidden to what is apparent (“aus dem Verborgenen ins Wesen”), from the invisible to the visible (“aus dem unsichtbaren in das sichtbare”), from the spiritual to the physical (“aus dem geistlichen in das leibliche”). 294 Weigel situates the hidden, invisible and spiritual on one side of the dichotomy and the apparent, visible and physical on the other. In fact, it is less appropriate to speak of a dichotomy, since Weigel describes the emanations as remaining nestled within each other like Russian dolls (“bleibt eins in dem 292 Describing creation with metaphors of emanation/separation (such as rays of light, fountains, boiling pots), rather than metaphors of making (sculpting, building, or shaping), is a persistent feature of theologies with a neo-Platonist cast to their thinking. It is also one that has proven rather problematic for Christian neo-Platonists, because God is meant to have created ex nihilo, to have created each thing directly (as described in Genesis, God created light, land, water, fish, animals, and finally humans himself), and to have created because he so willed it (the original fiat). On the other hand, an emanationist creation myth has God creating ex se, through intermediaries (God creates only the first emanations, which then go on to create the emanation below it and so on) and out of necessity (God is so overabundant that he must overflow into creation). The classic formulation of this debate is Lovejoy’s Great Chain of Being, which ascribes apparent contradictions in the work of Christian theologians to their recurring attempts to Christianize an emananationist view of creation. Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1942). See also Endre v. Ivánka, Plato Christianus: Übernahme und Umgestaltung des Platonismus durch die Väter (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1964), 70ff. Both Eckhart and Dionysius seek to reconcile these two views. As discussed above, for Eckhart the emanations are not hierarchical, but all exist at one remove from God, so to speak, rather than mediated through higher emanations. Dionysius’ response to this issue is discussed in Chapter 4, but briefly Dionysius likewise denies that there are any creative intermediaries between God and creature. When Dionysius speaks of hierarchies he means the degree to which each creature is an expression of God; creatures that only have Being express God more generally than creatures that have Being and Mind, but each creature is a direct expression of God’s very self. See for instance Alexander Golitzin, "The Mysticism of Dionysius Areopagita: Platonist or Christian?," (Mystics Quarterly) 19, no. 3 (September 1993): 98-114. 293 Valentin Weigel, Der güldene Griff, in Valentin Weigel, Schriften: Neue Edition, Vol. 8 (Stuttgart, Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1997), 10. 294 Ibid, 10. 111
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MYSTICISM & CONFESSIONAL CONFLICT I
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ABSTRACT This dissertation investig
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INTRODUCTION • ES IST DIR NICHT B
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mostly undisturbed by his Lutheran
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yet have signalled his assent with
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in a context where action is expect
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Protestant Mysticism: Not a Contrad
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interest, 31 and praised the Theolo
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one can observe the texture of the
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discourse and reasoned debate, or t
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with fragments of Eckhart and Taule
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Dionysius and Eckhart (for differen
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movement, but also profound shifts
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schools, as well as universities wh
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allowed them to cooperate effective
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made clear, would result in dismiss
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and in these external dealings, the
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same laws of physics, but while the
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Tertullian’s De Fuga in Persecuti
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as a martyr. Moreover, Holy Scriptu
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Alternatively, the so-called four-f
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tzeyger und unterrichter ist ynn di
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fellow Lutherans in studying books
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provoked into action unnecessarily,
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masses for the dead (for instance)
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traditional proof texts about the o
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positive understandings of indiffer
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insofar as their imperfection is ra
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Of these forms of indifference, I f
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to Dionysius’ authority. Two grou
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PART I • VALENTIN WEIGEL AND MEIS
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Page 89 and 90: Mit Recht der Meister genannt: Mode
Page 91 and 92: These role-reversal dialogues were
Page 93 and 94: As this chapter has shown, Eckhart
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Page 97 and 98: CHAPTER 2 • GELASSENE GELASSENHEI
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Page 109 and 110: e as free of willing and desiring a
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Page 129 and 130: ungewisser”) and finds that his f
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Page 135 and 136: Gelassenheit for the Bible, which i
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Page 151 and 152: CHAPTER 3 • DIONYSIUS, WHOEVER HE
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to make the interpretation of these
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Outside the universities, Dionysius
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defiled the “sacred things” by
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other leaders of the Protestant Ref
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valorization of hierarchy per se in
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as well as the with the arguments u
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freedom, but rather obedience. 468
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The primary piece in the compilatio
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It is hardly surprising that Cochla
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it does during the Council of Trent
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for a hierarchical church, seizing
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the ancient teaching”) that “be
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Dionysiacum. For Lefèvre d’Étap
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Aristotle would have been glad to h
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enlightens all great thinkers in ev
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offered Dionysius to the Gelehrtenr
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nine distinct editions of Dionysius
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editions of Greek and Latin classic
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(Turin), and is a reprint of Lefèv
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presses in Spain (his first publica
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growing body of evidence suggesting
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Weigel concludes that, precisely be
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apart, he suggested that true Chris
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and so did not dwell on the fact th
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Names, as the title suggests, is ba
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animals, through plants and non-liv
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of being.” 580 As we will see lat
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(“God is a rock”) or even a neg
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This is admittedly a nonsensical as
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compositions, most likely dating to
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Dionysius to show that, just as God
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efer to Greek and Hebrew, the bibli
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argues that there cannot be more th
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dicitur una.” 616 The stress that
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Weigel suggests will allow the soul
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saving sacraments by means of which
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Melanchthon’s Defence of the Augs
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alternative—namely prayer. 643 We
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Dionysius writes that the summit of
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leibet er illimitatus.” 658 Weige
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work, Weigel had written explicitly
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Luther did not ever use the exact p
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as opposed to an office-holder, an
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writing. By calling his Layman der
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Others are loyal to mere men (the P
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zuerzeigen einen rechtschaffen vnd
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and ceremonial ones at that. 694 Th
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himself returning gloriously from H
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all being. In relinquishing any cre
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improve appearances but, because it
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than resolve it, because the proble
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parcels God, who by rights is supre
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Appendix • The Works of Valentin
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Abad, J. M. (1999). Th
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Chenu O.P., M.-D. (1968). In M.-D.
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Eckhart, M. (1993). Werke I (Vol. 1
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Israel, A. (1888). M. Valentin Weig
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MacCulloch, D. (2010). Christianity
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Payne, R. J. (Ed.). (1981). Meister
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Schindling, A., & Ziegler, W. (1990
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Verkamp, B. J. (1975). The Limits u
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