Breakthrough
Greene, Dana
In Brief Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart's Creation Spirituality in New TRANSLATION. Introduction and commentaries by Matthew Fox. Image Books, $7.95, 579 pp. For more than six and a half centuries,...
...it will largely supersede Raymond Blakney's 1941 edition of Eckhart's sermons...
...As Barbara Tuchman recently showed, the fourteenth century saw not only the collapse of medieval economic, political, and religious institutions but the beginning of the disintegration of the intellectual and spiritual synthesis so brilliantly crafted by Aquinas...
...She is the perfection toward which Mary, enamored only of contemplation, should strive...
...the circle of being is completed...
...For him, the ideal is an active life which springs from contemplation...
...Eckhart's sermons are marked by humanity and directness...
...God is in us and we are in God" and hence we are made creative and compassionate as God is...
...This experience of blessedness is driven not beyond or below but inward, to another experience of God that is found in "letting go" and "letting be," namely, in permitting God to be in us and in the world...
...DANA GREENE...
...It was an age in search of new meaning and into this maelstrom appeared preacher Eckhart, a mystic whose this-worldliness forces one to redefine the meaning of that word...
...Although the great German philosophers - Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Marx and Heidegger - all claim his inspiration, his posthumous condemnation by the Catholic church largely ensured his fate as a very minor figure in the history of Western spirituality...
...This, then, is salvation, when we marvel at the beauty of created things and praise the beautiful providence of their creator or when we purchase heavenly goods by our compassion for the works of creation...
...This is symbolized in the spiritually mature Martha who can immerse herself in work...
...For more than six and a half centuries, Johannes Eckhart, better known as Meister Eckhart, has been relegated to obscurity...
...This is a book for those on a spiritual journey...
...Fox elucidates this biblical root in his commentaries, and attempts to minimize the traditional interpretation of Eckhart as a Neo-Platonist...
...The guide is indeed the pupil of Albert the Great and Aquinas, but more importantly one whose spirituality is rooted in a profound experience of God...
...His language is vivid, forceful, and his allusions to the ironies and incongruities of life give his message a joyfulness reminiscent of Julian of Norwich...
...While German and French scholarship kept interest in Eckhart the philosopher alive, English scholars ignored him...
...On the classical question of the meaning of poverty of spirit Eckhart suggests that this spirit is totally unconnected to actions but is rather "to will and to know nothing," to be rid even of our conception of God...
...Breakthrough is noteworthy because, along with Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn's Meister Eckhart (Paulist, $11.95, $7.95, 366 pp...
...These sermons were preached not to clerics or fellow academics but to lay believers in the Rhineland...
...Breakthrough is about the human experience of God which for Eckhart is always various, layered, and dialectical...
...He recognizes the debt to Aquinas, the Celtic mystics, and the lay women of the Beguine movement, but he focuses specifically on Eckhart's reliance on Scripture as the primary source for his inspiration...
...In another sermon he discusses the goal of the spiritual life not merely as purity of heart but purity which is fruitful...
...Matthew Fox's Breakthrough is part of this rediscovery, an anthology of thirty-seven of Eckhart's sermons followed by commentaries...
...Yet in the last decade a spate of English language studies of Eckhart have appeared...
...Its scholarly purpose, however, is less important than its popular one: to present Eckhart as a preacher and master of the spiritual life...
...The initial experience of God is in a creation discovered to be holy and blessed...
...The fourteenth century precursor of Luther and condemned Dominican mystic has been rediscovered...
...In his lengthy introduction Fox explores the sources of Eckhart's spirituality...
...This "letting be" and "letting go" creates an awakening of ourselves as the sons and daughters of God...
...In this "breakthrough" to the Godhead, all creation, ourselves, and even God, are given new meaning...
...In this divine compassion we experience God again and give birth to a "new creation" which we offer back, fulfilled and realized, to the God beyond God...
...For him it is the symbol of the "virginal wife'" which is central...
...The mystic Eckhart offers a new vision of salvation...
Vol. 109 • April 1982 • No. 8
