A random selection from Meister Eckhart's work (a famous
Christian mystic): http://www.geocities.com/athens/acropolis/5164/eckhart.htm
XV
THE DIVINE BEING
No man can tell of God exactly what he is. According to St
Dionysius, God is not anything we can say or think. St Augustine
cries: 'I who have ever been in God and ever more shall be, would
sooner I had never been and never more should be than that we found
a single word that we could say of God. Were we compelled to speak
of God, in that case I should say: Verily, in no sense is God
comprehensible not yet attainable. God is what thought cannot
better.' Nay, I declare God beggars human thought; he transcends
all human conception. No man knows what God is. Aught that a man
could or would think of God, God is not at all. It is the nature of
the soul not to be satisfied except with God. But all the heart can
desire is small, is insignificant compared with God. Yet man's
thought may never so rich or so rare but his desire outstrips it.
So he transcends man's desire as well as transcending man's
thought.
St Dionysius says, God is naught. Meaning that God is as
incomprehensible as naught. St Bernard says, I know not what God
is; but what I know not that he is that same is he. A heathen
philosopher maintains that what we know of the First Cause is
rather what we are ourselves than what is the First Cause. For that
passes understanding. And in this strain the heathen doctor argues
in his book, The Light of Lights, that God is supra-essential,
super-rational, super-intelligible, i.e., beyond the natural
understanding. I speak out of gracious understanding. By grace man
may be carried to the length of understanding as St Paul understood
who was caught up into the third heaven and saw unspeakable things.
He saw, but was not able to express them. For what a man knows he
knows in its cause or in its mode or in its effect. But in these
respects God remains unknown, for he is the first. Further, he is
modeless, i.e., undetermined. And he is without effect, that is, in
his mysterious stillness. Here he abides apart from the names that
are given him. Moses asked his name. God answered, He-who-is hath
sent thee. Otherwise he could not tell it. God as simply being, in
that sense he could never give himself to be known to creatures.
Not that he could not do it, but creatures could not understand it.
-- I have often laid it down that God's lordship does not lie
merely in his lordship over creature; his lordship consists in his
power to create a thousand worlds and dominate them all in his
abstract essence. Therein lies his lordship. Dionysius and Gregory
both teach that the divine being is not comprehensible in any
sense: not to any wit nor any understanding, not even to angelic
understanding. Its simplicity and triplicity is a thing not to be
grasped by the human mind even at its best, nor by the angelic mind
even at its clearest. It was said by a philosopher that whoso knows
of God that he is unknown, that man knows God. For it is the height
of gnosis and perception to know and understand in agnosia and
a-perception. To know him really is to know him as unknowable. As
the master puts it: If I must speak of God, then I will say, God is
something which is in no sense to be reached or grasped; and I know
nothing else about him. According to St Augustine, what we say
about God is not true; what we say that God is he is not; what we
say he is not that he is rather than what we say that he is.
Nothing we can say of God is true. God's worth and God's perfection
cannot be put into words. When I say man, I have in my mind human
nature. When I say grey, I have in my mind the greyness of grey.
When I say God, I have in my mind neither God's majesty nor his
perfection. Dionysius insists that the more we can abstract from
God the better we shall see him. God is such that we apprehend him
better by negation than by affirmation. Hence the dictum of one
master that to argue about God from likeness is to argue falsely
about him, but to argue by denials is to argue about him correctly.
Dionysius says, writing about God, He is super-essential, he is
super-luminous; he attributes to him neither this nor that. For
whatever he conceives, God far transcends it. There is no knowing
him by likeness. Rather by attributing unlikeness may we make some
approach to understanding him. Take an illustration. Supposing I
describe a ship to someone who has never seen one, then on looking
at a stone he will plainly see that it is not a ship. And the
plainer he sees that it is not ship-like, the more he will know
about a ship. It is the same with God. The more we can impute to
him not-likeness, the nearer do we get to understanding him. Holy
Scripture yields us merely privatives. That we should credit God
with matter, form and work is due to our gross senses. We fail to
find God one because we try to come at him by likeness. Dionysius
cries, 'Friend Timothy, if thou wouldst catch the spirit of truth
pursue it not with the human senses. It is so swift, it comes
rushing.' God is to be sought in opposites; in unknowing knowing
shall we know God; in forgetfulness of ourselves and all things
even to the naked essence of the Godhead. Dionysius was exhorting
one of his disciples. 'Friend,' quoth he, 'cease from all activity
and empty thyself of self that thou mayst commune with the Sovran
Good, God namely." Pray God we may seek him so that we shall find
him nevermore to lose him. Amen.
