Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and Defense (Classics of Western Spirituality)

This is an exquisitely satisfying work. Edmund Colledge provides a thorough history of Meister Eckhart's life, and Bernard McGinn makes a valiant job of outlining the Meister's theological positions. But the gem is the Meister himself. The Sermons are engaging in a way that only great poets can be. Although I am a novice reader of the bible, and not a little given to scoffing at it from time to time, Eckhart's illuminations excite a veritably quivering emotion in me. What a great pity that the high-medieval church was such a brutal, stupid suppressor of 'heresy'! Christian mysticism is all but non-existent, no doubt because of this. But the Meister scintillates, extracting gasps of delight and surprise as he crafts sacred sense -- for instance, that of the virgin wife whose productivity is high and love immense, but forever 'disinterested': and therein lies her perpetual virginity. How much more love-inducing this is than the virgin of dogma! Fortunately, Eckhart's students were persons of much higher mind that John Paul XXII (the Avignon pope) who hauled him before inquisitors, and was crass enough to declare him a heretic on numerous counts, and posthumously. It is those students we must thank for the survival of Eckhart's theology. I would urge students of theology to immerse themselves in Meister Eckhart's work. For my own part, though I am not formally a student, I shall do just that, having thumbed all other theologians for the time being.

The Classics of Western Spirituality Series published by Paulist Press offers an outstanding way to get to know the breadth and depth of the spiritual, mystical tradition in Western thought. The works of the German philosopher-mystic Meister Eckhart (1260 -- 1327) are among the treasures of this tradition. In 1329, after Eckhart's death, some of his teachings were condemned by the Pope. Eckhart's works fell into eclipse until the rise of German idealism in the 19th Century. Today, his works offer inspiration and insight to people from many religious traditions and backgrounds, including Eckhart's own Catholicism.Published in 1981, "Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense" is the first of two books in the Classics of Western Spirituality series on Eckhart. In addition to a selection of Eckhart's writings, the book includes lengthy introductions by both Edmund College, O.S.A. who translated the German works in this collection, and Bernard McGinn, the leading American scholar of Eckhart, who translated the Latin works. The introductions are scholarly and difficult but essential to readers with a serious interest in Eckhart. The book also includes extensive endnotes which help the reader understand Eckhart and the issues surrounding his writings.By any measure, Eckhart is a profound, difficult writer. He is best-known for his vernacular German sermons in which he brought his mystical philosophy to a broad range of people rather than only to scholars. The sermons are highly poetic with imaginative flights of language, hyperbole, and paradox. Part of the Eckhart's goal was to get people out of habitual, lazy thinking to try to seek spiritual understanding for themselves. Eckhart was highly educated in scholastic philosophy, taught on two occasions at the University in Paris and earned the honorific academic title "Meister". He wrote lengthy, dry, and erudite Scriptural commentaries in Latin. These works lack the flair of the German writings but in their apparent dryness they teach a Neoplatonism that presents an alternative to the prevailing scholastic philosophy and complements the teachings Eckhart expressed in his German sermons. Eckhart also wrote a number of treatises in German.This book includes highly important writings of Eckhart from the Latin and the German. The editors are correct that a serious engagement with Eckhart requires some familiarity with the scholastic, intellectual writings and the more poetic, hyperbolic German texts. The book is organized around the documents relating to Eckhart's condemnation, including Eckhart's defense and the Papal bull. These selections help frame Eckhart's writings and show the reader the heart of the controversy surrounding Eckhart in his own times and today. The teachings that the Church found objectionable at the time are found in both the Latin and German works included in this volume.This book will show even the casual reader how deeply emeshed Eckhart was in the Church and its teachings. The book also shows, in my view, how Eckhart went beyond these these teachings. It wasn't a matter of Eckhart denying anything the Church taught, in my opinion: instead Eckhart put these teachings in a philosophical-mystical perspective that could be read to include Christian teachings and dogma but which also went beyond them to encompass other approaches to the spiritual life. Eckhart is a difficult, important thinker in part because of the way his teaching straddles the line between orthodoxy in a particular tradition and a broad approach to spirituality.Perhaps the most accessible way to approach this volume is to begin with the German treatises. The "Counsels of Discernment" is an early work in which Eckhart speaks in a personal voice over meals to his brothers in the Dominican order. These small lectures do not have the full range of Eckhart's teachings but they show deep insight into the spiritual life and are relatively easy to read. The treatise "On Detachment" is highly important and also more straightforward than the sermons. The reader should look at the Latin texts, including the commentaries on John and Genesis for their form and approach and not worry about the difficulty in following the details. The selection of nine sermons included in the volume get to the heart of Eckhart for most modern readers and will offer a great deal that will be both inspiring and provocative.In 1987,Classics of Western Spirituality published a second volume of Eckhart edited by McGinn and Frank Tobin. This volume includes additional selections from both the Latin and German works for readers wanting more of Eckhart.The literature on Eckhart, both popular and scholarly, is large and written from widely varying perspectives. There are easier, popularly-oriented introductions, but it is better to grapple with Eckhart's writings themselves under the guidance of a scholar such as McGinn. Many studies of Eckhart are insightful and helpful but nothing replaces a study of Eckhart's own words. Readers wanting a good overview of Eckhart and his times may want to consider Joel Harrington's recent book, "Dangerous Mystic: Meister Eckhart's Path to the God Within."Robin Friedman