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| Baruch Spinoza debates the shade of Meister Eckhart |
Meister Eckhart and Spinoza
What was Meister Eckhart's view of Jesus (Divinity, virgin birth, resurrection, Son of God, etc)? And what was his view of the Trinity? Finally, how does his thinking compare to Spinoza?
ChatGPT: It's a question that opens a trapdoor. One moment you're in the nave of high medieval Catholicism, the next you're free-falling through mysticism, Neoplatonism, and 17th-century rationalist monism. Let’s follow the descent.
Jesus: The Eternal Birth in the Soul
Eckhart, formally, upheld orthodoxy: Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified, resurrected, ascended. He is the Second Person of the Trinity, consubstantial with the Father, fully human and fully divine. But Meister Eckhart was not interested in defending doctrine so much as entering it—living it, interiorising it, translating it from history into metaphysics.
For Eckhart, the Incarnation is not a past event but a present and eternal one. Christ is not merely born in Bethlehem; Christ is eternally born in the ground of the soul. If the soul becomes empty—emptied of desire, image, doctrine, even of "God"—then it becomes the virgin womb in which the eternal Logos is begotten.
"The Father gives birth to the Son unceasingly, and I say more: He gives birth to me as His Son."
This is not metaphor. It is ontological participation. Christ is both unique and universal: the historical Jesus is the revelation of the eternal Word, and the eternal Word is the deep template of every soul.
Thus: Christ is not merely the redeemer for us, but the image in us. That’s why Eckhart sounds less like a scholastic theologian and more like a metaphysical midwife.
The Trinity: Not Dogma but Dynamism
Eckhart affirmed the Trinity—Father, Son, and Spirit—as one God in three persons, co-eternal, co-equal. But where Aquinas defends, Eckhart illuminates. His Trinity is not a juridical mystery but a divine dance:
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The Father is pure source, origin without origin.
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The Son is the eternal Word, the self-knowing intellect of the Father.
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The Spirit is the love between them, the unifying return.
This inner dynamism is not locked in heaven. The soul mirrors it. Its ground reflects the Father's origin, its intellect the Son's word, and its love the Spirit’s return. The Trinity is not a puzzle to be believed, but the deep architecture of being itself.
Here, Eckhart’s Neoplatonism shines: emanation without division, procession without separation, return without dissolution. The Trinity is the life of God—and the life of the soul that has become nothing.
And What of Spinoza?
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), writing centuries later, would seem an unlikely bedfellow: Jewish, excommunicated, rationalist, apostle of necessity. Yet something in Eckhart whispers down the corridors of time to Spinoza’s cool monism.
Similarities:
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Both reject anthropomorphic, managerial deities.
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Both speak of a God who is not a being among others, but Being itself - a neoplatonist concept.
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Both relativise the personal God in favour of the divine essence.
Where Eckhart says: “I pray God to rid me of God,” Spinoza might nod, saying: “God is Nature, and you are a mode of it.”
Differences:
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Eckhart is a Christian Platonist: creation flows from God but remains distinct. There is Creator and creature, even if they share the same ground.
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Spinoza is a rationalist monist: there is only one substance. Everything else is a mode or attribute.
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Eckhart believes in a personal path to union with God. Spinoza believes in the intellectual love of the universe as the highest freedom.
Eckhart empties the soul so God may be born within. Spinoza empties the illusions of separateness so the self may realise it was never apart from God/Nature. One kneels; the other thinks. But both, in their way, adore.
Why It Matters
In a world of slogans and catechisms, of moralism and management, Eckhart offers something subversive and freeing:
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A Christology that demands not sentiment but self-annihilation
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A Trinity not as arithmetic but as metaphysical symphony
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A mysticism that dares to echo even in Spinoza’s hall of mirrors
If you follow Eckhart’s thread far enough, you may find yourself alone, silent, emptied of everything—even of God. And then, perhaps, in that silence, a birth.
- Not a metaphor.
- A real birth.
- The eternal Word: In you.
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