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Document Details :

Title: Meister Eckhart
Subtitle: Man's Divine Life
Author(s): MAAS, Frans
Journal: Studies in Spirituality
Volume: 16    Date: 2006   
Pages: 71-109
DOI: 10.2143/SIS.16.0.2017793

Abstract :
This article shows the central ideas of Meister Eckharts mysticism, its structural form and its experiential content. The structure of his mysticism is Trinitarian. The whole creation is implicated in the Trinitarian life of the One God. The Son is the crucial figure in this intimate relation of God and creation. Meister Eckhart, as an academic professor (Lesemeister), develops this theological speculative vision, using the Greek ideas of participation, triple causality and the themes of exitus and reditus. Besides being a theologian he is also a spiritual guide and a preacher (Lebemeister). So he connects his thought on the Trinity to his own modification of the classical spiritual stages (purification, illumination and unification). In his sermons this growing process into intimacy with God can be divided into three moments: detachment, divine birth and nobility of the soul. This moments are profiled here in the master’s own words, taken from his mostly German work. This article on his mysticism ends with some remarks about the relationship between mysticism and ethics.


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