Theologia Germanica - a scrutiny

[irichc]

“Next to the Bible and St. Augustine, no other book has come to my attention from which I have learned -and desired to learn- more concerning God, Christ, man and what all things are” (Luther).

Anonymous (around 1.350). Theologia Germanica, followed by my comments.

Saint Paul says that, when that which is perfect comes, then that which is imperfect and partial is done away with. Note how the perfect and the partial are. The perfect is a Being who has comprised and embraced in Himself and in His Being all that is. Without this Being and outside of it there is no true being and in it all things have their being since it is the core of all things.
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[In the Bible we can also read: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”. Therefore, by the act of Creation God reproduced Himself, and so His nature is somehow multiplied to a lesser degree in every soul].*

This ultimate Being is in Himself unchangeable and immovable, yet changes and moves everything else.

[Anyway, from this point it doesn’t follow that everything that changes and moves is totally changeable and totally movable. For if something changes completely, it doesn’t exist anymore and it is immediately replaced by some other being, no matter how similar. Moreover, if we deny the individual substance of everything by identifying it with God, we will have to admit that God doesn’t only tolerate evil in His plan, but also that He is an evildoer Himself].

But the incomplete and partial originates from or emerges out total perfection -just as the sun or a light emits radiance and beams- and becomes manifest in one form or another.
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[The sun -or, at least, its light- is nothing but the addition of every one of its beams. However, God is infinitely more than the addition of every soul created by Him. When God created us, He separated us from His Being in order that we could become living substances and not mere accidents of His actions].*

None of these parts is perfect. Thus the Perfect is not identifiable with any of its parts.
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[Perfection can be understood here in two senses: perfection in degree and perfection in nature. Only God is perfect in degree. Nevertheless, every substance is perfect in itself, as far as it doesn’t need anything else to be completed as a substance. God might keep it, but it is already done by Him, once and for ever].*

Creatures that are partial and imperfect can be comprehended, known, and described in words. But the Creator, the Perfect, cannot be comprehended, known, and described in the same manner by creatures, on account of their creatureliness.
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The Perfect must consequently be nameless because it is not any created thing.

The creature as created is incapable of discerning, comprehending, naming, or formulating in thought that which is perfect.

[Again, it is a matter of degree. From a certain point of view, our eye cannot grasp the ocean in its entirety, and yet we know what the ocean is. We cannot even watch tridimensional objects as a whole unless we complete them with our imagination. The limits of our senses are helped here by reason, that previously informs us about what does being an “ocean” and a “tridimensional object” means. That information is not given by senses, but can be confirmed through them. Following the argument shown in these examples, we can state that God -though uninferable and mostly unknown- can be imperfectly completed by our reason from the very moment that He reveals Himself to us].

Now, when that which is perfect comes, the imperfect will be rejected.
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[The expression “the imperfect will be rejected” can be taken here as “it will be destroyed” or as “it will be transformed, reshaped, etc.”. I accept the last sense only].*

When does it come, then? I say, when it is known and felt and tasted in the soul to the extent possible.

[A few lines above we could read that the creature “is incapable of discerning, comprehending, naming, or formulating in thought that which is perfect”. The autor is self-contradicting here].

Now one might ask: Since no creatures can know or apprehend the Perfect and since the soul is creaturely, how then can the Perfect be known in the soul?

Answer: That is why we speak of the soul as a creature.; that is to say, it is impossible for the creature to know on the basis of its creatureliness, createdness, and I-relatedness. For in whichever creature this perfect life is to be known, creatureliness, createdness, selfishness, must be abandoned and destroyed.

[If I cannot know as a creature, then I know as a Creator. So, according to this author, when I know God, I’m God. Knowing God, thus, equals being God, or God knowing Himself].

This is what Saint Paul’s words mean when he writes that when the Perfect comes -that is when it is known in the heart- then that which only exists in part -creatureliness, createdness, selfishness, impulse-ridden desire- will be spurned and considered nought.
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[It will be diminished for the sake of a new transformation, not destroyed].*

As long as one holds to these things and is cemented to them, the Perfect remains unknown.

[So, this so-called perfect knowledge depends on the creature’s will too, though negatively, that is to say, avoiding attention to worldly objects. By these means we are free to try to know God, and there is no blind predestination or fatal fate in it].

(…)

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[irichc]

(continues)

The Scriptures, the Truth, and the Faith proclaim that sin is nothing but a turning away on the part of the creature from the unchangeable Good toward the changeable.

This is to say that the creature turns from the Perfect to the imperfect, to separateness, to the partial, and preeminently to itself.

Note that when the creature assumes for itself some good thing, like being, life, knowledge, power -briefly, everything one might term good- as though the creature were indeed one of these goods, or as though the Good belongs to the creature- in such situations the creature is turning away from God.

[How is it possible if, as it has been stated, we are in a relationship of total dependence with God?].

Was that not what the devil did? What else did his apostasy and fall consist of but that he assumed for himself that he, too, was something, and that something was his and that something was his own property.

This assumption and his “I” and his “Me” and his “Mine” -that was his apostasy and his fall. And this is still the case.
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[The devil wanted to surpass God in power, not just “to own something”].*

What else did Adam do but precisely this thing?

We are used to saying that Adam was lost and fell because the ate that apple.

I say it was because of his presumption and because of his I and his Mine, his Me and the like.

He could have eaten seven apples, yet had this not been connected with his presumption, he would not have fallen.

[Adam fell because he failed to honor God’s name. God offered him to own everything but the fruit of that tree, which symbolized His wisdom. This wisdom cannot be usurped, since it must be given by Him -the fountainhead- through revelation].

But listen -I have fallen a hundred times deeper that Adam and strayed a hundred times further. No humans in the world could make amends for or undo Adam’s fall and apostasy.

How, then, shall the fall be redeemed? It must be amended like Adam’s fall and by the same one who amended Adam’s fall, and in the same manner.

By whom or in what manner did this healing take place?

Man could not do it without God and God has not designed to do it without man. Hence God assumed human nature or humanity. He became humanized and man became divinized. That is the way amends were made.
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[God incarnate can only redeem the ones that follow Him. If He wanted to redeem us without our consent, why should He have chosen this way of persuading and moving us?].*

Even if God would take to himself all humans in the world and become humanized in them and they would become divinized in Him and this did not happen in me, my fall and my apostasy would never be amended. No, it must also occur in me.

In this return and healing I can, may, or shall do nothing from myself but simply let it happen. This means that God alone works and I suffer His work and His will to take place.

When I do not suffer this to occur but let my I and my Me rule, I hinder God from working alone without obstruction.

Hence my fall and my apostasy remain unredeemed. Lo, my presumption brings all this about.

*[We have stated already that this revelation depends on the absence of resistance to God’s action. But we need something else. God cannot work through a blank slate, and we are not blank slates indeed. That’s why some objective knowledge of God, provided by the tradition held by the Church, is previously needed]. *

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