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

troubling. 132 However, I argue that Weigel’s defence of such a split between a Christian’s
inner convictions and his outer actions has less to do with a lack of authenticity or a
disowning of responsibility, but instead turns around his favourable attitude towards what
I am terming indifference. 133
Weigel’s library has not survived, so the modern scholar cannot know for certain
which books he read, but reconstructing his bookshelf from the texts he refers to
throughout his oeuvre shows that he was particularly interested in this positive view of
indifference. This seemingly ragtag collection of texts and schools of thought (mysticism,
negative theology, stoicism, skepticism and adiaphora) in fact assembles a variety of
discourses about indifference that Weigel draws upon throughout his works. With the
exception of the central texts of ancient Greek skepticism, 134 Weigel took extensive
reading notes on the classic texts from all these discourses, focusing particularly on the
issue of indifference. 135 More importantly, Weigel subsequently appropriated the ideas he
gleaned from those texts and gave them a central place in his theological work. These
132 See the comments of Jones, Israel, and Weeks above (p. 5-6). One reader of my dissertation responded
by exclaiming that “all evil requires is for good men to stand by and do nothing”.
133 I am setting aside, for now, the problem of having any kind of attitude towards indifference in the first
place (can one believe in indifference without abandoning one’s indifference?), and, moreover in writing
about indifference (surely if one is truly indifferent, one is not moved to write about it?). Weigel addresses
this difficulty in his own work, as do the sources on indifference that he draws on, so I will take this
problem up in subsequent chapters. Briefly, those who defend indifference view it as the end point of a
dynamic process, of an attitude to be cultivated via an engagement with one’s passions and desires, or as a
self-overcoming attitude that kicks the ladder away (so to speak) once it has reached the top of the cliff.
134 These were newly translated and had become a hot topic in 16 th century Europe. While it is possible that
Weigel had read—or at least, had read about—Greek skepticism, he did not take notes or excerpt those
texts, unlike his reading of Meister Eckhart, Boethius and Pseudo-Dionysius. It is beyond the scope of this
dissertation to investigate the evidence for what Weigel knew about Greek skeptics, though, in my opinion,
it is certainly a possibility that he was interested in them and had at least read about them.
135 Weigel’s reading notes are found in two works in particular, both dating from 1570. The first is entitled
Zwene nützliche Tractat, der erste von der Bekehrung des Menschen, der ander von Armut des Geistes oder
waarer Gelassenheit (1570), containing his reading notes on Eckhart and Tauler. This text will be
discussed in Chapter 2, as evidence for Weigel’s interest in the idea of Gelassenheit, as the title suggests.
The second is entitled De vita beata, non in Particularibus ab exra quaerenda sed in Summo Bono intra
nos ipsos possidenda (also from 1570), containing Weigel’s reading notes on Boethius and Dionysius, and
will be discussed in Chapter 4.
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