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impossible that God’s law be present in man without Christ also being there, since God cannot be split up into his various attributes. 347 Either one has God or one does not, full stop. As such, Weigel came to understand the Church as a purely spiritual community of true believers, rejecting entirely the idea that salvation is dependent on Church membership because the activities that are normally performed in the Christian religious community (listening to sermons, reading the Bible, performing the liturgy) cannot of themselves bring about salvation. Unbaptized children, Muslims, and heathens are all potentially saved, provided they accessed the salvation they carried around with them by their very nature, in the ground of their souls. They do not need to listen to sermons, to receive baptism or communion, or even to read the Bible. 348 If grace, for Luther, is extra nos, Weigel objects that Christ will remain external unless He is already inside, or, more precisely, unless Christ had never been absent from the soul at all. Weigel’s use of Gelassenheit and his concomitant ambivalence about the Church was seized upon by Weigel’s critics. 349 These more orthodox critics wrote as clergy charged with pastoral care and the running of day-to-day church life, for whom theology was certainly no abstract matter. When they imagined a Church built on the basis of God’s word indwelling in man, they feared chaos and anarchy. For instance, Andreas Merck’s Trewhertzige Warnung fürm Weigelianismo groups Weigel with the false prophets that have threatened the Church from its very beginning by substituting 347 This unity of God’s attributes plays a significant role in Weigel’s theology, and will be discussed more fully in Chapter 4. 348 Valentin Weigel, Zwene nützliche Tractate, 31. 349 Weeks, 180. 130
Gelassenheit for the Bible, which is the source and foundation of true religion. 350 In other words, Weigel not only causes the disease, but destroys the medicine that might cure it. 351 Not only does Weigel deviate from the literal sense with all manner of allegories and spiritual interpretations (‘qualescunq[ue] allegoriae und so etwa geistliche Deutungen der Sprüche’) but wants to transcend the physical-material world entirely, relying solely on Gelassenheit to communicate with God. 352 The process by which a person comes to know true religion is not reading Scripture, hearing it preached in church by an ordained minister, or studying it at a university, but is (scandalously) chiefly Gelassenheit. 353 Another anti-Weigelian polemic, this one by Nicolaus Hunnius, critiques Weigel’s dangerous use of Gelassenheit, ironically attempting to apply the very logic of confessionalization Weigel had used Gelassenheit to critique. 354 Hunnius concedes that 350 “Unter allen Trübsalen, damit die Christliche Kirch auff Erden, von anbeginn bißher geängstiget worden, ist die fürnembste, so ihr von Ketzern und falschen Propheten zustöst.” and “Was das Wesen der wahren Religion, oder die Lehr für sich betriff, so ist der Quell und Grund derselben die H. Schrifft oder das von GOTT dem HErrn...geredete..eusserliche Wort Gottes.” Andreas Merckius, Trewhertzige Warnung fürm Weigelianismo, Darinn angezeigt Grund und Ursach / Worbey und warumb man den Weigelianischen Schwarmgeist, für irrig und verdampt erkennen und halten (Halle: Peter Schmidt, 1620), 25. 351 Here, of course, Merck runs into trouble since he must resort to Scripture to prove that Scripture is reliable: “Von der Schrifft selbst lehret er [Weigel] Sie sey in beyde Feuste...man könn aus ihr kein gewiß Urtheil nehmen. Und das wieder die klare Schrifft 2. Pet. 1. wir haben ein festes Prophetisch Wort.” Merck, 28f. The passage he points to (2 Peter 1: 16-21) is from an epistle that compares true prophets to false ones. What distinguishes true prophets from false ones is that true prophets do not invent what they say, nor do they interpret anything (“keyn weyssagung ynn der schrifft geschicht aus eygener außlegung”). False prophets, on the other hand, speak empty words that have nothing behind them (“sie lautten von schwulstigen wortten, da nichts hynder ist,” 2 Peter 2: 18)—they are like a spring without water (“brunnen on wasser,” 2 Peter 2: 17). Nevertheless, Peter goes on to reassure his audience that the prophecies about Christ are trustworthy, even if they require some interpretation to be understood: even though the promised Second Coming has not happened, they must remember that this happens in God’s time, where a day does not mean 24 hours, and thus the imminent apocalypse might actually be centuries away. 352 Merck, 59. 353 “Das fürnembste [Proceß zur erkenntnis der wahren Religion] ist die Gelassenheit, der stille Sabbath etc....nemlich, daß einer, der die göttliche Warheit erlangen wolle, auff einen stillen Winckel kriechen, sich von allen dingen abwenden, an nichts gedencken, sich selbst hassen, in eine Vergessenheit sein selbst und aller dinge kommen, unnd so gleichsam wie in einem Traum unnd entzückung auff Gottes Einsprechen warten solle und müss.” Merck, 94-95. 354 Hunnius (1585-1643) was a theology professor at Wittenberg and then Superintendent of the city of Lübeck. During his time in that office, he had to deal with followers of Weigel and other suspected mystics and spiritualists—the group he calls, in the title of the work cited here, the “new Prophets.” It is in arguing against their beliefs that he deals with Weigel’s work, which he believes to be a source for these disruptive 131
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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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investigating his early modern read
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was a devilish heretic to others (
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his neglect of Eckhart. 158 For ins
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“unheilvolle Kompliziertheit”).
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and Jerome (wearing what looks like
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title page, as mentioned above, des
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of a respectable though not fanatic
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himself, but rather cultivated part
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church that Luther, Melanchthon and
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kan”), and specifically the role
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Page 87 and 88: more importantly, a theology that a
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 101 and 102: e “as it was when it was not.”
Page 103 and 104: Eckhart agree that spiritual povert
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Page 109 and 110: e as free of willing and desiring a
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Page 117 and 118: context is that he picks up on Eckh
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Page 129 and 130: ungewisser”) and finds that his f
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Page 143 and 144: Weigel gives the passage an unexpec
Page 145 and 146: Murren”)—and they do this “in
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Page 149 and 150: the strength of the intellectual re
Page 151 and 152: CHAPTER 3 • DIONYSIUS, WHOEVER HE
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Page 155 and 156: destroyer that Dionysius is most of
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Page 167 and 168: Outside the universities, Dionysius
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Page 171 and 172: other leaders of the Protestant Ref
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Page 179 and 180: The primary piece in the compilatio
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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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