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

that salvation can be attained through the union of Entzückung, rather than through the
normal channels supervised by clerics.
Whereas Lauterwalt grappled with Tauler’s ideas and explicitly set out the
boundaries between an orthodox and heterodox reading of Tauler, the reading strategy of
the second Wittenberg Tauler reader, the theologian Michael Neander (1525-1595), was
to select the teachings from Tauler that conformed to orthodox Lutheran theology and
simply ignored what did not fit, using the sermons as a spur to devotional meditation.
This response to Tauler is documented in his Theologia Bernhardi ac Tauleri in illis
Tenebris Pontificiijs singulari ac magno spiritu Monachorum (1581). 219
I discuss
Neander’s work in this chapter because it was composed during Weigel’s lifetime (1581),
only shortly after the period when Weigel himself was reading Eckhart and writing about
Eckhart’s sermons—but written, however, by a theologian much more comfortable with
orthodox Wittenberg theology, if his assistance in composing the Formula Concordiae is
any indication of his inclinations. Although Weigel and Neander read the very same
edition of Tauler and Eckhart sermons, their readings of these preachers were very
different. That is, Neander’s work, by very selective quotation and some ingenious
glossing, attempts to reduce as much as possible the theological distance between Luther
and Tauler/Eckhart. Weigel, as we will see in Chapter 2, uses Eckhart’s ideas to achieve
the opposite goal, to criticize Luther and the Lutheran church.
That Neander was involved in writing the Konkordienbuch (a document that
Weigel greatly disliked, as we saw in the introduction) suggests that reading mystical
219 Michael Neander, Theologia Bernhardi ac Tauleri in illis Tenebris Pontificiijs singulari ac magno
spiritu Monachorum (Eisleben: Urbanus Gusius, 1581). There are no page numbers in this volume.
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