Meistcr Eckhart said : Doctors debate which is the nobler, knowledge or love. Some say that love is better than knowledge. I say it is not. Our best authorities declare that knowledge is nobler than . love. Love and will take God as being good. If God were not good, will would have none of him ; if God were not lovely, love would scout him. But understanding would not. Knowledge is not confined either to good or to love or to wisdom or lordship. By putting names to God the soul is only dressing him up and making a figure of Gk)d ; nor is this the doing of knowledge. Though God were neither good nor wise, still understanding would seize him ; it strips everything off, not stopping either at wisdom or good, nor majesty nor power. It pierces to naked being and grasps God bare, ere he is clothed in thought with wisdom and goodness. Where the Son has his beatitude, there in the Father, understanding finds hers.
Now I am going to say something never read nor preached before.
At the College yesterday they admitted that there is a ground within the soul corresponding to the Father-nature. Just as the Father is bringing forth his Son in the Holy Ghost and these three are one God, so this ground is bringing forth understanding and will, one power as God is one Word. Withal this ground is free from any taint of creature. All the things we attribute to the soul form a screen round this ground wherein God is looking at the soul and the soul is looking at God. According to St Paul, ‘ We beholding the vision of God’s splendour are changed in that same image from glory to glory.’ This image is too closely joined to God for creatures to dissever and God himself will not divide it. Alas ! we reck so little of this image, we keep it not so bright as it was given us by God ! Whatever we may do God is never satisfied unless we there abide in utter destitution and so enable God at all times without ceasing to bring his one -begotten Son to birth in this same ground. This birth befalls not once a year nor once a day nor once an hour, but all the time, above time, in the while which is neither here nor now. This is the ground I speak of. May we live in suchwise that God can energise in us. So help us God.
I have sometimes said that the soul is an imitation of God ; now I say that she is his image, and in the very same form the Father has eternally formed, and the same that Christ is formed in.
According to Meister Eckhart, All creatures contain one reflection : one, that is the denial of its being the other ; the highest of the angels denies he is the lowest. Gk)d is the denial of denials : the one which is exclusive of all otherness. To call a tree a tree is not to name it, for all the species are confused. If we name it in its first eruption, in its perfection, we do not call it a tree, we call it pure divine nature. Another notion of it, rather better. The divine nature is the great divider. Meister Eckhart says, The Pharisee besought our Lord to eat with him. What is the Pharisee ? He stands for detachment ; a
Pharisee is one who is detached from all and united into one. The prophet cries, ‘ Lord have mercy on the work which is in thee.’ The highest work God ever wrought was done in mercy. Understanding goes in deep enough to lay hold of being simply as beingin-itself, but where being is losing itself, drowned in itself, there understanding falls away.
Friar John says : It is a question among the theologians whether it lies with the soul, or with God, for her to be God. I say the power lies in the soul. Suppose the soul ready to be God, then God must work in that power and draw the power into himself : the energy then is in God and the capacity is in the soul. Were I wholly that I am I should be God ; there would be for me neither time nor place nor change. There is nothing so easy to me, so possible, as to be God. To stay quiet requires no work, whereas if I change to another I must reduce myself to naught : but I remain as I am.
I say, no creature is so vile but it can boast of being; in proportion to its being is its power of being God, for whatever is being is God.
Bishop Albertus says, Man is divine above all as receiving unhindered the inflowing Deity. In the words of the saint, The light of my soul is never extinguished and my desire is ever in the beholding of God.