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

understood that the mind cannot possibly acquire complete knowledge of God this way,
nor can it ever “comprehend” the infinite object (comprehend in the sense “surround
completely”).
And whereas natural cognition was active, supernatural cognition is passive
(leidtlich, as he calls it), and the subject does not reach out for any object at all. In the
union of infinite God with finite creature, it is not God who changes, but rather the
human, who becomes totally passive, as all cognitive activities cease completely. In this
“Sabbath,” all human intellectual effort ceases completely and the person waits in quiet
Gelassenheit (“in stiller Gelassenheit” 317 ), giving himself completely to God in obedient
faith. 318 As the soul achieves, through grace, a state of passive stillness, the multiplicity
and fragmentariness of all creation resolves into the harmony of God’s unity. In this
sense, it is imperative that the cognitive faculties, in particular, cease their work of Urteyl
(judgment)—where the emphasis is on teyl, of reasoning which can know only through
distinctions and differences.
This overcoming of distinctions is taken so far as to collapse the components
necessary for knowledge in supernatural cognition into each other. Eye and object are
identical—and they are both God. Like Eckhart, Weigel insists that God is always present
in the inner ground of the soul, which is how inner knowledge is only possible of God,
317 Weigel, Griff, 30.
318 The passive state the soul must come to is not necessarily a pleasant or joyous one, but rather is “nothing
less than dying,” as Weigel writes (“nit weniger als in den todt gehen und sterben”). It is as if one is cast
into Hell or even seized with unbelief (“gantz im unglauben begriffen sein.” Ibid, 55. Being faithful even to
the point of welcoming torment in Hell is a familiar trope. Biblical precedents include Paul, who declared
himself willing to suffer damnation if it would cause the Jews to be saved, Moses volunteered to be erased
from the Book of Life in exchange for God’s pardon for his idol-worshipping charges. Eckhart, likewise,
argues that a person should be so deeply embedded in God’s will that anything that happens, good or evil,
is a blessing, even Hellfire (see above, n. 9). Or, to attempt to bridge the gap between Eckhart’s vocabulary
and Weigel’s, the nature of a thing is determined by the state of being of the subject that perceives or
experiences it, or as Weigel would put it, knowledge stems from the knower and not the object.
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