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

ody, both eye and body are fungible; the self can be changed completely if the eye is
replaced by another eye.
Finally, natural cognition is characterized by the way the object and the eye
interact, where the knowing subject actively pursues knowledge, reaching out to the
object it wants to know: it operates “durch eigene kreffte undt schwindigkeit, do sich der
mensche wircklich helt, mitt speculiren, phantasiren, betrachten, erforschen etc.” 315
Perhaps not accidentally does Weigel refer to this active knowledge as wircklich
(meaning “active” rather than “actual” as it does in modern German), picking up the
Lutheran polemic against righteousness by works in favour of the creature as the passive
(leidtlich) recipient of God’s saving grace.
Ultimately, Weigel is less interested in developing a theory of natural cognition
than of what he calls supernatural cognition. Whereas the object of natural cognition was
finite, supernatural cognition only occurs in relation to an “infinite” or “incomprehensible”
object (the phrase “infinite object” should already alert us to the fact that Weigel’s
argument is about to take an unconventional turn). There is only one object in this class,
and that is God. Weigel specifies that even an infinite object can still be viewed as an
object (though the rest of the treatise is dedicated to ways of viewing God not as an
object, as Eckhart admonished). He compares the incomprehensible object “God” to the
ocean. The ocean is far bigger than the eye can take in at a single glance, but one part of
it can still be looked at, and it is thus seen as an object but not “comprehended.” 316
Likewise, it is possible for the human mind to consider God as an object, so long as it is
315 Weigel, Griff, 23.
316 Aquinas also distinguishes between two meanings of comprehend (“Comprehension is twofold.”), either
to “completely surround” or rather to “attain, touch”. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part 1,
Question 12, Article 7.
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