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001 - Title Page and Preface · Meister Eckharts Sermons First English Translation

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  Speaker 1: Title page and preface of Meister Eckhart Sermons translated by
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  Speaker 1: Claude Field. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
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  Speaker 1: are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
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  Speaker 1: please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Eric Metzler, Albuquerque,
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  Speaker 1: New Mexico, United States of America. Meister eckhart Sermons, first
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  Speaker 1: time translated into English. Translated by Claude Field. Title page,
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  Speaker 1: Heart and Life Booklets Number twenty two. Meister Eckhart's Sermons,
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  Speaker 1: first time translated into English by Claude Field, M A. London, H. R.
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  Speaker 1: Allenson Limited, Racket Court, one hundred fourteen Fleet Street, e C. Preface.
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  Speaker 1: Meister Eckhart, who has been called the father of German thought,
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  Speaker 1: was a Dominican monk and one of the most profound
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  Speaker 1: thinkers of the Middle Ages. He was born about twelve
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  Speaker 1: sixty a d. In Thuringia and died at Cologne thirteen
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  Speaker 1: twenty seven a d. In twelve ninety five. He was
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  Speaker 1: Prior of the Dominicans at Eirefurt and Vicar General of Thuringia.
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  Speaker 1: In thirteen hundred he was sent to the University of Paris,
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  Speaker 1: where he studied Aristotle and the Platinists, and took the
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  Speaker 1: degree of Master of Arts. It is possible also that
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  Speaker 1: he taught at Paris. He already had a wide reputation
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  Speaker 1: as a philosopher, and was summoned to Rome in thirteen
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  Speaker 1: o two to assist Pope Boniface the Eighth in his
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  Speaker 1: struggle against Philip the Fair. In thirteen o four he
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  Speaker 1: became provincial of his order for Saxony, and in thirteen
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  Speaker 1: o seven Vicar General of Bohemia. In thirteen eleven he
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  Speaker 1: was sent again to act as professor of theology in
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  Speaker 1: the School of Dominicans in Paris and afterwards in Strasbourg.
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  Speaker 1: Everywhere his tea teaching and preaching left a deep mark.
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  Speaker 1: At Strasbourg he aroused suspicions and created enemies. His doctrine
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  Speaker 1: was accused of resembling that of the heretical sects of
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  Speaker 1: the Beguards and Brothers of the Holy Spirit. The Superior
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  Speaker 1: General of the Order had his writings submitted to a
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  Speaker 1: close examination by the priors of Worms and Maennes. The
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  Speaker 1: history of this episode is very obscure. It appears that
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  Speaker 1: Eckart was cited before the Tribunal of the Inquisition at Cologne,
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  Speaker 1: and that he professed himself willing to withdraw anything that
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  Speaker 1: his writings might contain contrary to the teaching of the Church.
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  Speaker 1: The matter was referred to the Pope, who in thirteen
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  Speaker 1: twenty nine condemned certain propositions extracted from the writings of Eckhart,
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  Speaker 1: two years before the death of the latter. The importance
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  Speaker 1: of Eckhart in the history scholastic philosophy is considerable. At
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  Speaker 1: that period, all the efforts of religious philosophy were directed
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  Speaker 1: to widen theologlogy and to effect a reconciliation between reason
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  Speaker 1: and faith. The fundamental idea of Ekart's philosophy is that
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  Speaker 1: of the absolute or abstract unity, conceived as the sole
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  Speaker 1: real existence. His God is the theos Agnostus of the Neoplatonists.
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  Speaker 1: He is absolutely devoid of attributes, which would be a
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  Speaker 1: limitation of his infinity. God is incomprehensible, in fact, with
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  Speaker 1: regard to our limited intelligence. God is the origin and
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  Speaker 1: final end of every being. How then, it may be asked,
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  Speaker 1: can God be a person? The answer is that by
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  Speaker 1: the eternal generation of the Son, the Father becomes conscious
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  Speaker 1: of himself and the love reflected back to the Father
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  Speaker 1: by the Son is the Holy Spirit. Together with the Son,
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  Speaker 1: God also begets the ideal forms of created things. The
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  Speaker 1: Absolute is thus the common background of God and the universe.
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  Speaker 1: Like as the sun does, so everything born of God
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  Speaker 1: tends to return to Him and to lose itself in
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  Speaker 1: the unity of His being. This theology is really pantheism
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  Speaker 1: of the absolute. We have no cognizance but only a phenomena.
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  Speaker 1: But by the resolute endeavor to abstract ourselves from time
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  Speaker 1: and space, we can, according to Ekart, at rare moments,
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  Speaker 1: attain to the Absolute by virtue of what he calls
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  Speaker 1: the spark funkelline of the soul, which comes direct from God.
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  Speaker 1: This is really God acting in man. To know God
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  Speaker 1: is to be one with God. This is the final
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  Speaker 1: end of all our activity, and the means of attaining
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  Speaker 1: there too is complete quietism. But Eckart shrank from carrying
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  Speaker 1: his doctrines out to their extreme logical conclusion, though some
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  Speaker 1: of the more fanatical among his followers did so on
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  Speaker 1: account of his insistence on the immediacy of man's approach
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  Speaker 1: to God apart from church institutions. He may be justly
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  Speaker 1: regarded as the forerunner of the Reformation. Note The best
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  Speaker 1: account of Eckhart in English is probably to be found
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  Speaker 1: in Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics, Volume one, end of
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  Speaker 1: title page and preface recording by Eric Metzler, Albuquerque, New Mexico.