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

(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.
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