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

for modern philosophy, theology and literature that McGinn ascribes to him: “Perhaps no
mystic in the history of Christianity has been more influential and more controversial
than the Dominican Meister Eckhart. Few, if any, mystics have been as challenging to
modern readers and as resistant to agreed-upon interpretation.” 247 McGinn suggests that
although Eckhart was forgotten for a few centuries this does not call into question his
status as a great, and might even, on the contrary, prove and affirm it.
Theologians in Weigel’s immediate context had an Eckhartbild that is rather
distant from this modern image of Eckhart. Far from Eckhart being a dreaded heretic or
heroic Einzelgänger, these sixteenth century Lutheran readers were cautiously
appreciative of Eckhart. With this in mind, the following chapter turns to Weigel’s
writings themselves, in which Weigel enthusiastically takes up Eckhart’s concept of
Gelassenheit and uses it to criticize his own Lutheran church for being too willing to
serve the interests of secular power and too willing to ignore its pastoral duties in favour
of engaging in endless petty theological disputation. In the end, Weigel takes his critique
of the Lutheran church so far that he abandons the notion of a church altogether.
247 McGinn, Mystical Thought, 1.
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