When Eckhart says he “prays God to rid me of God,” he is emphasizing the apophatic divinity, the “God without a name who will never be given a name.” Holding up the apophatic divinity holds political consequences. It gives us permission—as it did to peasants in Eckhart’s day—to critique those powers that claim to speak in God’s name.
Eckhart does not confuse the church with the kingdom of God. He also rejects subject/object relationships with divinity in favor of what I would call a political panentheism. Or democracy. He is central in my chapter on “Jesus and Democracy” in my recent book on the Antichrist.
Marx talked about changing the world rather than gazing at it. For Eckhart, contemplation is a “participating in” being and not a “gazing at” being. As Reiner Schurmann puts it, he seeks a “practical guide to what we must become.” He invites all to give birth, to beget, to create, to change and be changed. Like Marx, he is action-oriented. “We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born.” His Via Creativa leads to the Via Transformativa.
Eckhart paid an ultimate price for his commitment to justice when he was condemned a week after he died and much of his work went underground for centuries. But scholars agree that it was a political condemnation typical of what prophets regularly undergo, which Jesus warned about in his Beatitudes.
Eckhart says that we need to “practice equality in human society.” Since then Christ’s whole nobility belongs equally to us all and is equally near to us, to him as much as to me . . . you must understand that, if someone wants to come by this gift equally to receive this good and the common nature which is equally near to all people, you must needs practice the same equality in human society, being no nearer to yourself than to another, just as in human nature there is nothing alien, nothing farther or nearer.
If we are brothers and sisters in one God, then we are all equals. This is the springboard for compassion. Eckhart advises: You are to love, esteem, and consider all people like yourself; what happens to another, be it bad or good, should be for you as if it happened to you. All love demands equality. Love will never be anything else than there where equality and unity are. Between a master and his servant there is no peace because there is no real equality. Peace and tranquility among people demand their equality.
For Eckhart, the same holds for personal relations and for marriage. “A wife and a husband are not alike, but in love they are equal.” Where equality is lacking, we are to bring it forth. “There can be no love where love does not find equality or does not create equality.” Societal leadership is of the same ilk. If I were to lead people, they would never follow me with pleasure if they did not receive equality with me. For a movement or a deed is never accomplished with pleasure in the absence of equality.
Thus Eckhart, writing 450 years before Thomas Jefferson, has a far broader understanding of democracy than he did. Eckhart does not limit the dignity of personhood to white people or men or men with property, as did Jefferson in practice if not on paper. For Eckhart, we are born noble—all of us—and it is from that royalty that our rights derive, and we in turn are urged to treat others as ourselves and live “equally.” In Eckhart’s view, based on the teachings of Jesus, “there can be no love where love does not find equality or does not create equality.”*
* See Matthew Fox, Passion for Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart, pp. 522-530.
Banner image: “One for all, all for one.” Diversity, maPhoto by Rineshkumar Ghirao on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
Do you agree with Eckhart that equality and love go together and that “love will never be anything else than there where equality and unity are”? What are the implications of that teaching for a renewed democracy? And a healthy economics? And politics?
Related Reading by Matthew Fox
“Jesus and Democracy,” in Fox, Trump and the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: Recognizing the Archetype of Evil in Our Time, pp. 63-70.
Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times.
Meditations with Meister Eckhart: A Centering Book, pp. 89-131.
“Meister Eckhart and Karl Marx: The Mystic as Political Theologian,” in Fox, Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life, pp. 165-198.
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet.
Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality.
Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation.
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society.
The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’ s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved.
