Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence
And therefore also our re-birth and salvation through the Christ within us are but a return to our own primordial divine being. Boehme writes : " Nothing can " rest in itself ; it must return to that whence it came. " The mind has turned away from unity in a desire for " perception [experience], to try the qualities in separa- " tion [as apart from one another], and therefore the " separation [division, contrary will, evil] arose in it, " which now governs the mind. Neither can it be set " free, until it forsakes itself in the desire for the " qualities, and lifts itself again into perfect stillness, " silencing its own will, so that the will may penetrate " [merge again] beyond all sense and form, into the " eternal will of the Abyss whence it originated ; willing " nothing of itself, but only what God wills through it " (Mysterium Magnum, Abstract 7). j
We have tried in the above to extract from Boehme's teaching that kernel which lies embedded therein, of first principles and essential truths drawn from nature, and therefore irrefutable. We will now briefly consider the shell of myth and symbolism which encloses the same. / Boehme himself is well aware of the inadequacy of his exposition, inasmuch as he unceasingly impresses upon his readers that, on account of human weakness, he describes as a time-process that which is eternal, and sets side by side things which are inter-dependent and joined with one another in a perfect unity. Having pointed this out, he describes how originally God only is the Abyss out of which all " Byss " issues ; the primordial condition of all being, and therefore Himself
Iviii THE THREE PRINCIPLES
without substance, nature or qualities ; the eternal silence, the All and the No-thing ; neither darkness nor light ; manifest to none, not even to Himself. In the portraying of this eternal One, Boehme links the Christian tradition of the Trinity with the Neoplatonic division of the One in subject and object, by placing Son and Spirit between the Father (subject) and the "wisdom" wherein He mirrors His being (world of ideas). " The first only will, without a beginning, begets " in itself a comprehensible will which is Son to the " Abyssal Will, when the Nothing makes itself within " itself into a Something .... wherein the Abyss " conceives [forms] itself into a Byss, and the issue of " the Abyssal Will through the conceived Son is called " Spirit ; and that which is issued is the delight wherein " the Father ever finds and beholds Son and Spirit ; and " it is called God's Wisdom, or Contemplation " (Election, i. 10-17). " Therein lie all things as a divine Imagina- " tion, wherein all ideas of angels and souls are seen " eternally in divine likeness, not as creatures, but as a " reflection ; as when a man beholds himself in a mirror " (Clavis, par. 43). This constructive blending of Christian and Neoplatonic traditions, on account of which Boehme was reproached with teaching a " Quaternary " ( ' quartitatem ' instead of ' quantitatem ' is anyhow used in Richter's abusive verses), is entirely in contradiction to his fundamental idea, because it assumes opposites to be already in God; while the very lack of contraries and the necessity for the same is made the motive for further developments, as the following shews : —
And therefore also our re-birth and salvation through the Christ within us are but a return to our own primordial divine being. Boehme writes : " Nothing can " rest in itself ; it must return to that whence it came. " The mind has turned away from unity in a desire for " perception [experience], to try the qualities in separa- " tion [as apart from one another], and therefore the " separation [division, contrary will, evil] arose in it, " which now governs the mind. Neither can it be set " free, until it forsakes itself in the desire for the " qualities, and lifts itself again into perfect stillness, " silencing its own will, so that the will may penetrate " [merge again] beyond all sense and form, into the " eternal will of the Abyss whence it originated ; willing " nothing of itself, but only what God wills through it " (Mysterium Magnum, Abstract 7). j
We have tried in the above to extract from Boehme's teaching that kernel which lies embedded therein, of first principles and essential truths drawn from nature, and therefore irrefutable. We will now briefly consider the shell of myth and symbolism which encloses the same. / Boehme himself is well aware of the inadequacy of his exposition, inasmuch as he unceasingly impresses upon his readers that, on account of human weakness, he describes as a time-process that which is eternal, and sets side by side things which are inter-dependent and joined with one another in a perfect unity. Having pointed this out, he describes how originally God only is the Abyss out of which all " Byss " issues ; the primordial condition of all being, and therefore Himself
Iviii THE THREE PRINCIPLES
without substance, nature or qualities ; the eternal silence, the All and the No-thing ; neither darkness nor light ; manifest to none, not even to Himself. In the portraying of this eternal One, Boehme links the Christian tradition of the Trinity with the Neoplatonic division of the One in subject and object, by placing Son and Spirit between the Father (subject) and the "wisdom" wherein He mirrors His being (world of ideas). " The first only will, without a beginning, begets " in itself a comprehensible will which is Son to the " Abyssal Will, when the Nothing makes itself within " itself into a Something .... wherein the Abyss " conceives [forms] itself into a Byss, and the issue of " the Abyssal Will through the conceived Son is called " Spirit ; and that which is issued is the delight wherein " the Father ever finds and beholds Son and Spirit ; and " it is called God's Wisdom, or Contemplation " (Election, i. 10-17). " Therein lie all things as a divine Imagina- " tion, wherein all ideas of angels and souls are seen " eternally in divine likeness, not as creatures, but as a " reflection ; as when a man beholds himself in a mirror " (Clavis, par. 43). This constructive blending of Christian and Neoplatonic traditions, on account of which Boehme was reproached with teaching a " Quaternary " ( ' quartitatem ' instead of ' quantitatem ' is anyhow used in Richter's abusive verses), is entirely in contradiction to his fundamental idea, because it assumes opposites to be already in God; while the very lack of contraries and the necessity for the same is made the motive for further developments, as the following shows : —