To start with, I premise from his words, ‘ in the beginning,’ a beginning without beginning. In God’s name I proceed. In the beginning was the Word : in the source of the effulgent formal light of rational creature and in the origin of its radiance the Word subsisted as the perfect Word, perfect in its wordless potentiality, and this wordless word was with God. This gives me a. hint of some distinction, the word being with God. Now bring your best intelligence to bear on this. When the bound word of the Persons’ unity remained unuttered by the omnipotent intellect, then the Word, suspended in its divine origin tran- scended all words and names. When it was with God in the providential light dawning devoid of the created universe, then God was manifest to the world. Wherefore I, Meister Eckhart, do affirm: as soon as God was he created the world, the world being with God distinct in name. Whereas God in his motionless power was free from God and every name, God was the unspoken word in the bottomless abyss of his divine nature wherein the Word as such did never throughly understand itself. A thing that understands itself waxes and wanes in the act of understand- ing, but this word does not wax or wane, it is unchanging in itself, so it has never understood itself in itself albeit it is the intellect of the Father. It was in the beginning of the new procession of the Son that that the Son proceeded forth into the time of natural images united with the word ever-abiding in the paternal source. This same Word wrought its entire work of nature after the fashion of a person, humanly, and the bound Word itself energises in the Father in his characteristic nature, this same word being eternally immanent by nature. And such
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being the nature of the Word it is therefore porssible to say, ‘ In the beginning was the Word.’
I will now give the psychic interpretation, which whosoever cannot understand let him go to the truth for enlightenment.
In the beginning of the divine nature the soul is seeking herself above the points of time. Cast into the abysmal naught of the divine nature, her receptivity all gone, her portion in her felicity is the perfect naught that distinguishes her from creatures generally. As our Lord says, ‘ Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ But were it that the soul could know God with his own peculiar nature she would be loving something above God. Accord- ingly I say, that this word subsisting in the essential activity of the divine nature is the soul wholly deprived of receptivity, for with this she would be loving herself and all she is with a personal nature. So she may properly affirm herself to be the work of God in the beginning where, albeit she is formless, she is expressing form. But the form she gets from God is gotten by the sealing in the soul of God’s own nature. In the beginning of her nothing- ness was the word and the word was with God as Son and the Word was God.
He goes on to say, ‘ The same was in the beginning with God.’ Mark, I have just said, ‘ In the beginning was the Word.’ Now I say, ‘and the Word was in the beginning with God.’ From these cryptic statements it appears that the Word was with God ‘in the beginning. Now I suggest an obvious rational meaning. * The word was in the beginning with God.’ I say, in the principle of paternity this same principle is to the Father the source of his entire Godhead, personal and essential, of Son and Spirit.
St John says, ‘The word was in the beginning with God.’ Since there is in the Father an outpouring of his causeless divinity into the Word of his Son, this must occur in the paternal mind when, looking upon himself in the light of his abiding intellect, he perceives himself in the answering reflection in his divine essence ; or, in other words, the conception of the Word is God. Moreover by this reflection of his divine nature the intellect of the Father fashions or utters itself in imitation of his nature. So the Word is Son and it is in the divine substance, to wit, in the intellectual reflection of the Father, that occurs this birth of the Word proceeding, thus it is one in essence and distinct in Berson, Hence we may say: ‘ The same was in the beginning with God ’ and because introspection and reflection of the divine nature are involved in its continuous thinking of itself, therefore this birth is eternal. For if once this reflection were to stop, if mental holiday, inertia, should once supervene, there would remain one God without distinction of Persons. Thus the Word of the
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Father subsists eternally in its parental origin. Thereby it is ever being conceived and being born and born. The same was in the father-principle with God as distinct Person. This may well stand in lieu of my former explanations of the passage, ‘ In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.’ This is now fully explained.
Next come the words, ‘ All things were made by him and without him was not anything made.’ Examine this carefully. Granting that all things were made by him and that without him nothing was made, then supposing someone asks me, * Can God do anything without me seeing, that all things were made by him and without him was not anything made?’ I answer, No. God made all things with me standing in the groundless ground of God; God made all things through me while I stood in 'him idle. While the Father was performing the act peculiar to his nature I was standing right in the gate through which all things return perfectly free to their supreme felicity. As our Lord said, ‘ Father, to know thee one true God and only Son, that is eternal life.’ If life eternal be aught beside the rational soul I have no knowledge of it.
To return. Since I was lying dormant in the personal nature of the Father when he created creatures as a whole in his own nature, it follows that I was working with him ; I was the work of God wherein he wrought all things as giver, I being then conscious in my Personal nature of co-operating with the divine nature in this divine process. All the while I was working with him I was resting in God’s nature exactly as I was in God before I was created. God made the universe and I with him, standing as I did all undefined albeit substantial in the Father.
Observe further, ‘ All things were made by him.’ If everything was made by him and without him nothing was made, then I affırm there is a power in the soul centred in the perennial now in the paternal heart and in the nature of God; nor does it differ from the essential nature of God save in being the created image of God, as one saint observes: ‘ What the soul cannot conceive by nature can never be hers by grace.’ Like corn-seed dropped into the ground and lost to view, even so the seed or spark in the soul is shed from the essential nature of the Father, and is shining back into the incomprehensible essence, into that wherein the soul conceives superintelligibly, beatifically. There, in beatific mode, bereft of life and power, she returns to the uncreated good where, robbed of every faculty, she is the image in the Trinity, as our Lord said, ‘ Father, make them one with us.’ And when my soul, doffing her beatific habit, is buried in the paternal
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field, in the living vine, as the gospel says: when in this sense I lose myself and come into my own as the rightful Son, then I with God do make all things and the Word is in the beginning with God.
Take the next words, “and without him was not anything made.’ I offer this interpretation of them. In all rational creatures I find the quest of God. They forge ahead according to the time and will bestowed upon it. But without him nothing is accomplished, in those creatures namely who, even as the brutes, stop at their outward powers; their mental works are worthless, lacking as they do the divine light and spiritual freedom which gives them permanence. Christ says, ‘ What my heavenly Father planted not shall be plucked up, yea by the very roots.’ That is all I want to say about this passage.
Take the next, ‘ What was made, in him was the life.’ To see what this means, turn O ye blessed and commune with the under- standing of your uncreated intellect. ‘ What was made, in him was the life.” In this eternal procession, wherein all things pro- ceeded forth without themselves, they were now; but in time they were created from nothing and their life is in him. Thereof they are the creatures, the effect of that cause, the patent of his power resplendent in luminous detail. Thus we came forth into time; but the revelation of himself to himself is in his eternal procession where the knower is the same as what is known, to wit, the eternal emanation which is the Son from the Father, in whom all things flow forth. Thus what was made was the life in him.
Look you. All rational creatures proceeded from God alike, ‘ wherefore I say: all things participate in every intellectual mode. I hold that in her abstract understanding every rational soul knows the uncreated image which is her life. Now if my life and the life of all creatures is in God, I ask then, Can God know himself in me without my soul? I answer, No. Man knows heat apart from the fire and light apart from the sun but God cannot know himself without the soul. And why? Because the soul is the out-flowing stream of the eternal deity and she is sealed in the image of the blessed Trinity. By this she knows she is God’s creation. Therein I know the love of the divine fire whereby rational creatures are illumined. Isay: as the Father made me naked and free that I might stay and make my home in the groundless ground of the innermost heart of the Godhead, even so my soul must be utterly despoiled if I am to be beatified with God. As St Paul observes, ‘ He who is joined to God is one spirit with him.’ The Father cannot know himself without me, seeing that I stand in the ground of his eternal deity wherein his whole incomprehensible work is wrought with me and what is compre-
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hended that I am. By which I mean the light of the divine Sun, the universal life-giver, therefore I see that God cannot know himself without me. ‘ The life was the light of men,’ St John says.
Der realize the marvellous significance of this. What I say is: the life which is the light of men is man himself understanding (conceiving) himself in the wonder of the primordial power of the Father, in the leaping forth of his mysterious naught, in the blinding light of his indwelling Word brought forth in eternal creation, albeit the uncreated nature of the nameless. essence. It is his nature and his wont, with perfectly receptive understand- ing, to take the incomprehensible essence for his own nature whereby the wonders of the negating naught are revealed to him, , the night of the mind becoming bright like noon in the light of his pure primitive perfection and his distinct ineffable perfections shine out as clear as day. As David says, ‘ The truth shall not be hidden from thee and thy night shall be as light as day.” And as his light is so is his enlightenment for in the naked essence man knows himself even as he is known. Which knowing, our Lord said, ‘I am the door of my sheep-fold.’ In these words he invites us. to enter by the door of his emanation and return into the source whence we came forth, for this gives promise in us of something more than is afforded by the soul’s beatitude.