Meister Eckhart on True Obedience
On true obedience.
True and perfect obedience is a virtue above all virtues, and
there is no work, however great it may be, that can take place or
be performed without this virtue, and even the very least of
works, whether it be saying or listening to Mass, praying, meditating,
or whatever you can think of, is more usefully done when it
is performed in true obedience.
Take any work you wish,
however minor it may be, true obedience will make it nobler and
better for you.
Obedience always brings out the very best in all
things.
Indeed, obedience never undermines or forgets those
things which we do out of true obedience, for it never neglects
what is good.
Obedience need never be anxious, for there is no
form of goodness which it does not possess in itself.
When we go out of ourselves through obedience and strip
ourselves of what is ours, then God must enter into us; for when
someone wills nothing for themselves, then God must will on
their behalf just as he does for himself.
Whenever !have taken
leave of my own will, putting it in the hands of my superior, and
no longer will anything for myself, then God must will on my
behalf, and if he neglects me in this respect, then he neglects
himself.
And so in all things in which I do not will for myself,
God wills on my behalf.
Now take note! What does he will for
me, if I will nothing for myself?
When I shed my own self, then
he must of necessity will for me everything that he wills for
himself, no more and no less, and in the very same way that he
wills for himself.
And if God did not do this, then by the truth
which God is, he would not be just nor would he be God (which
of course he is by his nature).
In true obedience there should be no i want this or that to
happen* or ‘I want this or that thing’ but only a pure going out of
what is our own.
And therefore in the very best kind of prayer
that we can pray there should be no ‘give me this particular
virtue or way of devotion’ or ‘yes.
Lord, give me yourself or
eternal life’, but rather ‘Lord, give me only what you will and do,
Lord, only what you will and in the way that you will’.
This kind
of prayer is as far above the former as heaven is above earth. And
when we have prayed in this way, then we have prayed well,
having gone out of ourselves and entered God in true obedience.
But just as true obedience should have no ‘I want this’, neither
should it ever hear ‘I don’t want’, for ‘I don’t want’ is pure poison
for all true obedience.
As St Augustine says: ‘The true servant of God does not desire to be told or to be given what they would like to hear or see, for their prime and highest wish is to hear
what is most pleasing to God. ~Meister Eckhart, Selected Writings, Page 40-41
Meister Eckhart: The Dominican Life
Eckhart was born in around 1260 and joined the Dominican priory in nearby Erfurt probably at fifteen years of age.
In joining the Friars Preacher, he was following a well-trodden path which would guarantee him an education commensurate with his ability:
the opportunity to study, to teach and to travel. Eckhart appears to have followed the Dominican route typical of the best students of his time. He may have undertaken his early studies of the Arts (grammar, logic and rhetoric) either in his native Germany or possibly in Paris, which was the principal centre of medieval academic excellence, but he was certainly in
Paris, as a Reader of the Sentences, in 1294.
As the title suggests, he was engaged at this time in studying Peter Lombard’s Sentences, which was the main textbook of the Middle Ages that formed the basis of intermediate theological studies.
He left Paris soon after to serve as Prior of the Dominican house in Erfurt, where he wrote his early Talks of Instruction and, perhaps, a number of early sermons (including Sermons 1 and 2 of the present selection).
The Talks of Instruction, which are included here, are an important testimony to the relative maturity of Eckhart even at this stage.
It is indeed striking how little change there is in the principal structures of his thought between this exciting early work and the later, more sophisticated, sermons of his maturity.
In 1302 Eckhart left Erfurt to return to Paris, this time in order to take up the Dominican chair in theology, and it is possible that during this period he wrote some of the extensive scriptural commentaries (composed exclusively in Latin) that survive from his hand.
Eckhart’s success as an academic theologian was matched by his popularity as an administrator. In 1303 he was named the first Provincial of the new Dominican province of Saxonia, a post which he seems to have held with great ability and energy.
In 1311, despite an attempt to lure him to the province of Teutonia,
Eckhart was sent back to Paris to the same Dominican chair he had occupied a decade previously.
Thus, in addition to receiving high administrative honours, Eckhart twice held a chair in theology at the University of Paris, an achievement which he has in common only with the greatest of Dominican theologians, Thomas Aquinas.
Eckhart’s next move was to Strasburg, in the year 1313, where he served as Vicar-General with oversight of the many women’s convents in south-west Germany.
This move was out of the ordinary in that a Parisian professor would generally return to his native province.
Eckhart’s arrival in Strasburg was probably the result of decrees formulated at the Council of Vienne (1311-12) which had accused a number of religious women known as Beguines of holding heretical views.
The many Beguine communities of continental Europe had for some time represented a challenge to the Bishops in that these devout women, with temporary vows and sometimes practising mendicancy (begging), did not fall easily into any of the existing categories for women’s religious life.
During the thirteenth century they were increasingly seen as a threat, culminating in two decrees which accused Beguines of harbouring the so-called heresy of the Free Spirit (which supposedly taught that a soul in union with God was freed from conventional moral constraints), although there was also an attempt to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Beguines.
One of these decrees specifically refers to the problem of the Beguines in ‘the German lands’, and both probably reflect the influence of the two prominent German prelates at the Council: John of Zurich (Bishop of Strasburg) and Henry II of Vimeburg (Archbishop of Cologne).
The political connotations of the Vienne decrees were immense in that it was the Franciscans and Dominicans who were responsible for many of the Beguine communities, which were often loosely affiliated to one or other of the mendicant orders.
Eckhart’s move to Strasburg in 1313, then, can easily be viewed as an attempt by the Dominican Order to protect its own interests in the face of an imminent conflict with the Bishops.
This would centre on the condemnation of ‘certain’ women for whom they, the Dominicans, bore a close pastoral responsibility.
It was probably during this period in Strasburg that Eckhart’s own troubles began. It was here that he wrote the Liber Benedictus (“The Book of Divine Consolation’ and ‘On the Noble Man’, both included in the present selection), and we begin to hear references to ‘those who do not understand’, suggesting that Eckhart was himself becoming subject to criticism.
Also, much of the material which was used in the first trial of his work during the subsequent period in Cologne was taken from the Liber Benedictus.
But when Meister Eckhart arrived in Cologne, in around 1323, he came as a leading Christian scholar and senior figure within the Dominican Order.
And yet in 132.5 Nicholas of Strasburg, who was both the papal Visitor to the Dominican Province of Teutonia and Eckhart’s academic subordinate, conducted an investigation into his work, pronouncing it to be orthodox.
It is impossible not to see this as an attempt to pre-empt a more serious threat from the Archbishop of Cologne, who did however initiate inquisitorial proceedings against Eckhart in 1326.
The charge against him was the grave one of heresy, and it was in certain respects an extraordinary accusation.
Eckhart was both the first (and only) Dominican to be charged with heresy under the Inquisition and he was also the first theologian of major rank to face this particular charge.
Controversial theologians were otherwise subjected to an examination of faith, since heresy was a matter of the will and not merely the propagation of theological error.
It is notable that the charge against him was immediately reduced when his case was finally referred to the Holy See.
Eckhart responded to the lists of suspect propositions, drawn up by his accusers, with a written defence, which has survived.
It is significant that the attitude adopted by Eckhart in this and at other points in his defence is not that he was introducing new teachings which were either different or superior to the doctrines of the Catholic Church, but rather that he was within
the orthodox tradition and was being misunderstood.
If his accusers charged Eckhart with heresy, then he charged them
with stupidity.
When his case moved to Avignon, where Pope John XXII was currently in exile, he was flanked by Henricus de Cigno, the Dominican Provincial of Teutonia, and three lectors.
Despite such strong local support, there is some evidence to suggest that the Dominican Order at large had already distanced itself from Eckhart during its General Chapter at Venice in 1325, and again in Toulouse in 1328, which prepared the way for his condemnation.
This duly followed on 27 March 1329, shortly after Eckhart’s death, with the publication of the Bull In agro dominion.
This identified twenty-eight articles, seventeen of which were judged to ‘contain error or the mark of heresy’ and eleven of which were ‘evil-sounding, rash and suspect of heresy’.
We have already indicated the extraordinary character of the accusations against Eckhart, and his condemnation is no less strange.
In the first place, it was published only in Cologne, although Eckhart had also lived and taught (in German) in Erfurt and Strasburg.
Secondly, the Bull was published after his death, when any threat from Eckhart’s preaching, if threat there was, could reasonably be considered to have passed.
To this extent Itt agro dominico stands out as a condemnatory text without parallel in the history of Catholic medieval Europe.
But there is, in fact, a single perfectly consistent explanation for all the unusual factors that surround the accusations against Eckhart and his condemnation.’
It was the Archbishop of Cologne who instigated inquisitorial proceedings against Eckhart and who opposed Eckhart’s appeal to the Holy See.
It was Henry too who wrote to John XXII evoking the assurance that the condemnation would be pronounced despite Eckhart’s death.
The fact that the Bull was promulgated only in Cologne well illustrates Henry’s key influence in the affair, and we need only inquire why it was
that the Pope felt himself unable to oppose Henry or, as we might have expected, simply to allow the case to sit on the shelf. The condemnation of a prominent Dominican can only have embarrassed the Pope and his close ally, the Dominican Order.
A clear answer to this question emerges from a consideration of the political situation in which the papacy found itself in the first decades of the fourteenth century.
Since the exile of the papacy to Avignon in 1309, Clement V and his successor John XXII entertained the ambition to return to Italy.
In particular, the latter viewed the Italian ambitions of Lewis of Bavaria, the
German Emperor, with great foreboding, fearing that the incursions into Italy by Lewis would destroy his hope of returning to Rome with a benign Habsburg buffer to the north.
Accordingly the Pope engaged in a fierce controversy with Lewis which culminated in his excommunication in 1324.
Henry of Virneburg’s role in this complex political situation was that of chief supporter of Lewis’s challenger to the throne, the Habsburg Frederick of Austria, and he was thus one of John XXII’s principal allies.
The extent of the Pope’s obligation to the Archbishop can be judged by a letter which John wrote to Henry on 3 June 1324 in which he urged him to publish the process against Lewis (which he had so far failed to do on account of local opposition).
As an enticement, the Pope offered to force the return of whatever toll-rights King Albrecht had removed from him during the toll-war in the Rhineland area; all the Archbishop had to do was inform him who the present owners of such rights were.
This letter clearly shows that shortly before the trial against Eckhart began, the Pope believed himself to be so indebted to the Archbishop of Cologne as to explicitly offer him favours.
Finally, the question must be asked why Henry of Vimeburg should have felt himself provoked by Meister Eckhart, to the
extent of pursuing him mercilessly by all the means at his disposal.
The answer probably lies in Henry’s campaign against the Beguines.
Not only did Eckhart become involved in that controversy on behalf of the Dominican Order and thus, indirectly, on behalf of the Beguines themselves who were their pastoral charges, but also he himself seemed, to an unsympathetic mind, to be teaching the very heresy of which the Beguines stood accused.
In sermons attributed to Eckhart it is not difficult to read certain tatements, removed from their context, as advocating a mystical religion which is potentially free of ethical content.
Indeed, it is very likely that his sermons were read in this way in certain quarters. Eckhart himself was aware that there was much that was subtly put, with a rhetorical elan, but in his defence he also disclaimed a number of statements attributed to his name.
Also, of course, he frequently warned against just such an antinomian misinterpretation of his thought, stressing the place of morality and of the practices of the Church.
With hindsight we know today that Meister Eckhart emphatically taught the Christian faith, albeit in a highly original manner and with certain philosophical presuppositions which lent his thought a wholly distinctive edge.
But the distasteful events surrounding his trial point not only to the political machinations of the age, they also remind us how easy it is to misread Meister Eckhart and to misappropriate his teachings for purposes remote from his own.
To some extent this was the consequence of his own occasional predilection for quite extravagant rhetoric, but it was also the result of the discrepancy between the deep structures of his thought and the brilliant surface of his imagery and language.
Moreover, the failure to see any single part of Eckhart’s work within the context of the whole, and the whole in the context of his intellectual and social world, remains as much a danger now as it was then. ~Oliver Davies, Meister Eckhart: Selected Writings, Page 9-15
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