A Commentary on the 9th Sermon of Meister Eckhart

May 23, 2025 | 6,964 words | 33min read

About Meister Eckhart

Meister Eckhart was a 13th-century German theologian, Catholic priest, and member of the Dominican Order.

He is best known for his sermons, which he delivered in German to lay audiences—an unusual choice at a time when Latin was the standard language of the clergy. His sermons are deeply mystical, characterized by rich and often poetic language. Although he was accused of heresy by the Church, many of the charges were later dropped.

Sermon 9

The sermon begins with a quote from the Book of Sirach (Sirach 50:6). This book is part of the Catholic Bible but not included in the Protestant canon, so don’t be surprised if you have trouble finding it.

While the passage in Sirach describes the outward appearance of the high priest Simon, son of Onias, Eckhart reinterprets this imagery. He shifts it from something external to a symbol of the inner life. Simon is no longer simply a historical priest, but becomes a figure for the soul enlightened by God. Likewise, the temple is no longer a physical structure, but a representation of the soul itself. This symbolic transposition will become clearer as the sermon progresses.

From this point, Eckhart poses the central question that shapes the rest of the sermon: he seeks to uncover the metaphysical reality of God. Who is God, truly?

Eckhart now gives us three competing definitions of what God could be. The first master definition fits with traditions such as Anselm, who defined God as the greatest conceivable being.

The third master definition is more in line with the concept of the logos, as formulated by Aristotle and the Stoics. Although the Stoic concept of logos is more on the cosmic level, Aristotle’s conception is more fitting, which can be seen through:

Therefore Mind thinks itself, if it is that which is best; and its thinking is a thinking of thinking.

~ Metaphysics, Book 12, 1074b

The second definition is the one Eckhart wants to focus on in his subsequent text. It is clearly inspired by the Neoplatonic thought of “The One”:

And all of these up to the Good are beautiful, but it itself is above Beauty and is the transcendent ruler of all that is best, all that is in the intelligible world

~ Ennead 1.8(51)§1.8.2.

In Neoplatonic thought, the One is identified with God, and everything stems from it. Every being is dependent on it, while it is necessary and not in need of anything. It overflows purely from its own abundance. Furthermore, all things seek to return to the One, because they yearn for it and need it as their source.

Eckhart states: “He is in all creatures, He is also beyond them;” — what does he mean by that?

Eckhart believes that God is fundamentally different from everything else that exists. Asking questions like “Where does God exist?” (Place) or “Did God always exist?” (Time) doesn’t make any sense. It’s like asking, “Is the number four blue?” — a category error. Just as numbers and colors belong to different categories, so too do God, time, and space. God is beyond all of them.

At the same time, Eckhart also believes that God is within everything. This again echoes the Neoplatonic notion of The One, where God is like a concentrated force from which everything else emanates. Like a fountain overflowing with water, God overflows and produces creation. Because creation comes from God, it is part of Him. All created things contain a spark of divinity simply by the nature of how they came into existence. This is why Eckhart says “The soul is whole and entire…” — here, “soul” refers to the divine spark. It is not located in any particular place but is in everything. The soul’s essence is indivisible and unconfined by space.

How, then, do they[the intelligible world] arise out of aimple One? […]

In fact, it is because there was nothing in that that all things come from it, and, in order that Being should exist, it is not Being but the gernarot of it. […]

All these things are the One and not the one; they are the one, because they are from it; they are not the One, becaue it endowed them with what they are while remaining by itself."

~ Ennead 5.2(11)

A similar notion appears in the work of Paul Tillich, who speaks of God as the Grund (ground) of being — that which makes existence possible in the first place. God is becoming, the power by which something arises from nothing. He gives creation the ability to resist non-being, and through that, becomes part of it.

The being of God is being-itself. The being of God cannot be understood as the existence of a being alongside others or above others. If God is a being, he is subject to the categories of finitude, especially to space and substance. Even if he is called the “highest being” in the sense of the “most perfect” and the “most powerful” being, this situation is not changed. […]

Many confusions in the doctrine of God and many apologetic weaknesses could be avoided if God were understood first of all as being-itself or as the ground of being. […]

Therefore, instead of saying that God is first of all being-itself, it is possible to say that he is the power of being in everything and above everything, the infinite power of being.

~ Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol 1, Part 2, Chapter 2, B3a)

Lastly, Eckhart’s treatment of time serves to clarify that God is also beyond temporality. God’s act of creation is not merely a past event — it is something eternally present. God’s “Now” encompasses past, present, and future simultaneously.

The idea of God as “that toward which all things strive as to their ultimate goal” is a classical Greek doctrine echoed by thinkers like Aristotle, who speaks of God as the prime mover—the first in a chain of causal events in his unmoved mover argument. This concept also appears in Neoplatonism, particularly in Plotinus, who sees the soul as yearning to return to the One. This idea is deeply connected to Eckhart’s notion of love for God.

The soul in its nature loves God and longs to be at one with Him in the noble love of a daughter for a noble father; but coming to human birth and lured by the courtships of this sphere, she takes up with another love, a mortal, leaves her father and falls.

But one day coming to hate her shame, she puts away the evil of earth, once more seeks the father, and finds her peace.

~ Enneads VI, 6.9(09), §6.9.9

Eckhart does not merely repeat these ideas but adapts them within a Christian framework, in line with theologians like St. Augustine. Consider this famous line from Confessions:

O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

~ Confessions

This again goes back to the notion that calling God a being is a category error. Eckhart criticizes theologians like Thomas Aquinas, who famously refers to God as being itself with the phrase:

Ostensum est autem supra, cum de divina simplicitate ageretur, quod Deus est ipsum esse per se subsistens.
(It has been shown above, when treating of the divine simplicity, that God is being itself subsisting.)

~ Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars, Question 44, Article 1

By prescribing certain properties to God, we also limit His power. For example, if we say a table is made of wood, then it cannot be made of stone. Similarly, if we say God is a being, or even being itself, then God is bound by the restrictions that apply to beings. Another example of a category error is saying “call the sun pale or black.” One I prefer is: “Music is delicious.” We can say music is like a delicious meal, but music is not edible and therefore not delicious. Calling it that would be a category error—a meaningless statement that does not make sense. For more on this, see my article on the Ontological Argument, where I discuss this topic further.

The second part of this section is that just because I can’t say God is a being or is wise, it does not mean I lessen Him or put Him down. In fact, the opposite is true: by saying God is wise or a being, I place God in the same category as humans, but He is far beyond us. Thus, we cannot describe God in human concepts.

That is not to say we cannot talk about God. But just like Eckhart says, when we describe God using human concepts like Good or Wise, what we do is not state how God really is, but rather use metaphors that attempt to approximate Him—much like saying “music is delicious.”

However, Eckhart thinks we can only truly approach God through negative theology by describing what God is not. For example, God is not being; He is beyond it. God is not wise; He is beyond wisdom.

The ten modes of being refer to Aristotle’s categories, which were later adapted by scholastic thinkers like Aquinas:

Of things said without any combination, each signifies either substance or quantity or qualification or a relative or where or when or being-in-a-position or having or doing or being-affected. To give a rough idea, examples of substance are man, horse; of quantity: four-foot, five-foot; of qualification: white, grammatical; of a relative: double, half, larger; of where: in the Lyceum, in the market-place; of when: yesterday, last-year; of being-in-a-position: is-lying, is-sitting; of having: has-shoes-on, has-armour-on; of doing: cutting, burning; of being-affected: being-cut, being-burned.

~ Organon, Categories, 1b25–2a4

All these categories, used in the scholastic tradition to describe everything from apples and chairs to morality and love, simply do not apply to God. We cannot say God has them, nor can we say God lacks them. As Eckhart puts it: “None of these modes touches God, yet He lacks none of them either.” God is beyond these categories.

When Eckhart speaks about archetypes, he means these kinds of Platonic ideas—abstract concepts we derive by stepping back from particular everyday objects to something more general. For example, there are many different apples, but all share the same archetype or Platonic idea of “apple.”

Well then, here are three beds: one existing in nature, which is made by God, as I think that we may say–for no one else can be the maker?

No.

There is another which is the work of the carpenter?

Yes.

And the work of the painter is a third?

Yes.

Beds, then, are of three kinds, and there are three artists who superintend them: God, the maker of the bed, and the painter?

Yes, there are three of them. […]

God knew this, and He desired to be the real maker of a real bed, not a particular maker of a particular bed, and therefore He created a bed which is essentially and by nature one only [The Form].

~ Republic, Book 10, 597b–598d

When Eckhart says that this archetype is shared in God, he means that these general ideas behind everyday objects come from God—the Platonic ideals reside in God.

Furthermore, there is no hierarchical difference between creatures from God’s perspective: a gnat or an ant is the same as an angel. It doesn’t matter whether it is an ant or an angel—both belong to this world, part of being—but only God is beyond that. In that sense, an ant or an angel are the same to Him.

Just as we cannot ascribe modes of being to God, we also cannot ascribe goodness to Him, since goodness is a property or predicate that arises from beings. But God transcends being, and thus also transcends goodness.

Therefore, if we say God is good, we insult Him, because we pull Him down to the level of ants and angels. Saying “God is good” is as wrong as saying “the sun is black.”

Here, Eckhart addresses a deep theological question: If God is truly beyond all being and beyond all categories, including goodness, why does scripture call God “good”?

To answer this, Eckhart links goodness to self-communication. He argues that something is called “good” when it gives of itself or interacts benevolently with others. This makes sense when we consider the etymology of “morality”, which comes from the Latin moralis, meaning something like pertaining to manners or conduct—that is, how one acts toward others. So: if goodness is a kind of relational behavior, how can someone be “good” in complete isolation?

This is why God is the ultimate form of goodness:

God is the most self-communicating of all. All things come from Him. Everything we share or give to others ultimately has its origin in God. And unlike us, whose giving is separate from our essence (I can give without being the gift), God’s essence is the act of giving itself.

So in this sense, we humans can have goodness as a quality or attribute, while God is goodness itself—not as a moral quality, but as infinite self-giving being. At first glance, this seems to contradict Eckhart’s earlier claim that God is beyond all categories, including goodness. But Eckhart would say: *his contradiction is not a flaw—it is the point.

There are two reasons why this contradiction is essential:

1. Mysticism thrives on paradox. When we reach the limits of what language and logic can express, we begin to touch the divine. Only where language fails—where it breaks apart in contradiction—do we start to approach God, who is beyond all form, word, and concept.
2. When we say “God is goodness,” we do not mean He fits within our usual human category of goodness. Instead, we mean He is the source from which all real goodness flows. This is where the analogy helps:

Ice is a form of water, but water is beyond ice—it can be solid, liquid, or gas. In this way, goodness is like ice, and God is like water. Goodness emerges from God but does not exhaust what God is. God is the source and ground of all goodness, without being limited to it.

Here we use a spatial metaphor to differentiate between two levels of understanding God:

1. Courtyard: We are near the house of God but not inside it—a superficial, indirect knowledge of God. We do not know His true essence.
2. The Temple: We are inside God’s house, representing a more intimate knowledge of God.

The first understanding, the courtyard, is how God appears to us through His works—that is, through Scripture (the Bible) and His Creation (nature), which we observe every day. In short, it is knowledge gained through outward experience.

The second, more intimate understanding of God is in rationality. Here, rationality does not mean the kind of logical, argumentative, syllogistic thinking typical of analytic philosophy (e.g., statements like 1 + 1 = 2). Instead, it refers to deep contemplation and mystical experience—shifting from looking outward to looking inward. Think more in line with continental philosophers: rather than harsh logical statements, the truth is found in poetry, music, and beauty. It is a truth more felt and experienced immediately than deduced.

This rationality is not obtained through outward looking but by turning inward in solitude—“remaining alone in itself”—and stillness—“is there in His stillness.”

The final sentence is tautological—that is, true by definition. This is no accident. It portrays God as completely self-referential and utterly closed to all external grasping—a paradoxical God who is also open, because we can draw near to Him through this self-referential stillness in solitude.

Building on the theme of rationality and deep contemplation, at the very core of our being—our soul—there is a spark of divinity given by God. This divinity cannot be seen with our ordinary eyes, the ones we use to perceive everyday objects like chairs, trees, or other people. Instead, to see this divinity, we must use our soul and look inward through exhaustive meditation. This divinity is hidden and quiet, “active more at night than by day.”

This idea of an inner divine spark goes back to the Greeks, such as the Stoics:

God is near you, he is with you, he is within you. This is what I mean, Lucilius: a holy spirit indwells within us, one who marks our good and bad deeds, and is our guardian.

~ Seneca, Letter XLI: “On the God Within Us”

Additionally, our soul has the power to remember. Here, see means the inward perception described above, not ordinary sight. When we see divinity inwardly, we also recognize it as such. This reminds of Plato’s dialogue Meno, where he argues that knowledge is nothing other than the soul recalling what it has forgotten:

The soul, then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all; and it is no wonder that she should be able to call to remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue, and about everything; for as all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things; there is no difficulty in her eliciting or as men say learning, out of a single recollection all the rest, if a man is strenuous and does not faint; for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection"

~ Meno, 81d

But the power Eckhart describes with remembering goes beyond simple recalling. It is a power to create, to reach into non-being and possibility. It enacts what God does and thus moves beyond what exists. In doing so, it comes closer to God, who Himself is beyond all that exists.

It is a mistake to try to understand God through human notions of goodness—to “grasp Him under the veil of goodness.” When we impose our limited, human concepts on God, we inevitably fail to see Him as He truly is. This is the stance of a “Pagan Master.”

True knowledge of God does not come from conceptualizing or defining Him within familiar categories. Instead, it arises when we love God despite our inability to fully comprehend Him.

Only by suspending all preconceived knowledge and concepts—letting go of what we think we know—and turning inward to the depths of our own being can we begin to encounter God in His true essence. Then, and only then, can we be called a “Holy Master.”

Eckhart differentiates between rationality and will. Rationality is a deep contemplative focus on the inner essence, a kind of pure knowing. The will, by contrast, is the power of the soul that chooses and desires—it is about longing.

Some say the will of God is better than His rationality because the will sees things as they truly are, unfiltered and direct, while rationality perceives things more like how they appear—less immediate, more mediated.

Eckhart uses the metaphor of an eye to clarify this: the eye represents the will that sees reality directly, while a painting of an eye or its reflection sees the world filtered through artifice or distortion.

However, Eckhart disagrees with the idea that will is superior. He argues that rationality is actually superior because it “takes God bare,” apprehending God in pure nakedness, while will “takes God under the garment of goodness,” meaning it grasps God only through mediated qualities like goodness.

How does this make sense? Shouldn’t it be the opposite—that will, as direct desire, is unfiltered, while rationality is more mediated?

For Eckhart, the will relates to love and desire, which are necessarily connected to the concept of goodness. While will may be more primitive or come before rationality, it is still filtered through what Aristotle calls the “irrational part of the soul” or “animal parts.” Aristotle explains:

That one element in the soul is irrational and one has a rational principle. […] For we praise the rational principle of the continent man and of the incontinent, and the part of their soul that has such a principle, since it urges them aright and towards the best objects; but there is found in them also another element naturally opposed to the rational principle, which fights against and resists that principle.

~ Nicomachean Ethics, Chapter 13

If we try to grasp God through the will, we always see Him through a lens of desire and thus through goodness (because only godo things can be desired). But God transcends goodness, so we can only understand Him through a more contemplative measure—rationality. Although rationality is also biased, contemplation gives us a chance to recognize and strip away those biases. The will, being more primitive, does not offer that opportunity.

As a metaphor, Eckhart speaks of “clothing a king on the day of his coronation in gray garments,” symbolizing that calling God merely “good” is inadequate and inappropriate, like dressing a King in beggers clothes.

Only when we have stripped God from the “veil of goodness”—that is, when we no longer look at God through human concepts like goodness—can we see Him as He truly is.

Eckhart further illustrates the importance of rationality with the metaphor of angels: the being of angels depends on the presence of divine rationality. They recognize their own being in God’s rationality; thus, angels are like images in a mirror, while God is the source of the image. Without God’s rationality, their being would vanish, just as an image disappears if the mirror falls.

The section begins with a return to the opening of the sermon, citing the Book of Sirach, where the morning star—representing Venus—becomes a symbol for our soul seeking God. Our soul shines bright like the morning star amid confusion and fog.

Eckhart focuses on the word “quasi” (“as if” or “like”), emphasizing that whenever he speaks about God, he does not describe God as He truly is. Instead, he offers analogies or approximations. This holds true even for his statements about God—they are metaphorical, not literal descriptions.

Continuing the analogy, Venus is known both as the morning star and the evening star, a fact famously used by philosopher Frege when discussing language, meaning, and reference (Though that’s a side note here). Venus always remains close to the sun, never straying far—sometimes below it, sometimes above, sometimes before it, sometimes after it, but always near.

In this metaphor, the sun represents God and divinity, and Venus represents us—more precisely, our soul. Just as Venus never leaves the sun’s proximity, so too should our soul remain steadfastly close to God.

In other words, spiritual steadfastness—the soul’s constant nearness to God—is key.

The quote from Sirach continues, introducing the symbol of the moon, which represents a full soul. Just as the moon receives its light directly from the sun, a full soul is completely open and oriented toward God, reflecting divine illumination.

The stars that are nearer to God symbolize higher beings—such as angels—who remain closer to God’s presence. Compared to them, even if our soul is full and directed toward God, we lose the sun’s light more quickly, illustrating how we stray from God’s path through distractions.

It is often when we are farthest from God—in the sense of detachment from worldly concerns—that we are most spiritually powerful. This represents a distance from mundane affairs and daily troubles.

Detachment is a major theme for Eckhart and earlier thinkers like Plotinus, both emphasizing that closeness to the material world weakens the soul. Plotinus writes:

In fact, purification would be leaving it [The Soul] alone and not with others [The Senses] or not looking at something else [External Things] and in consequence not having beliefs [Opinions] which are alien to it [Believing Pleasure, Pain of importance] – whatever is the nature of the beliefs or of the affections [Emtions, Desire, Fears, ect.], as has been said – and not looking at images [Fantasies froom Desire] or making affections derived from them.

~ Ennead 3.6(26)§3.6.5.

All creatures have God within them, but spiritual insight arises only when one focuses on the divine. Like the morning star that forever hovers near the sun, we too should hover near God—high above the earth and its desires.

God is often associated with the Word in Christianity and with the Logos in ancient Greek philosophy, both meaning the same—Logos being Greek for word.

In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He existed in the beginning with God.
God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him.
The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone.

~ John 1:1-4

Of this logos which holds always, humans prove to be uncomprehending, both before they hear it and after hearing it for the first time. For although all things come to be in accordance with this logos, they are like the unexperienced experiencing words and deeds such a I explain when I distinguish each thing according to its nature and show how it is. Other men are unaware of what they do when they are awake just as they are forgetful of what they do when they are asleep.

~ Heraclitus, Fragment B1

This word, Logos, can be separated into three levels:

1. Spoken outwardly: These are angels, humans, and all other creatures. They are spoken in the sense that they are created by God.
2. Thought and spoken: This is the imaginative world, which we can think of as spoken in this sense.
3. The Word that never comes: This is the eternal and unchanging world of the Word/Logos. It does not exist in our reality or world but exists only in eternal unity in God, “eternally within the one who speaks.” It is always in a state of “becoming,” as Paul Tillich would say, “always in a state of being received.”

We come closer to the good — the Word that never comes — by looking inward through thought and spoken, because “God’s blessedness lies there”, not in the outward physical things spoken outwardly. We should engage in this inward looking through rationality, in a contemplative and meditative process.

Our souls should not be merely servants of God but an attribute of Him; we should participate in God’s own being. This reminds us of other mystics who speak of a deep union with God:

I saw no difference between God and our substance: but as it were all God; and yet mine understanding took that our substance is in God: that is to say, that God is God, and our substance is a creature in God.

~ Revelations of Divine Love, The Fourteenth Revelation, Chapter 54

I want to end with the following thought:

Poetry itself does not matter; what matters is what the poem points to—what it allows us to see, feel, and most of all, hear. If poetry were ever to fully reach its goal, to find precisely what it aims at, this would lead to the annihilation of poetry. The idea of decreation is important, since the only way we can draw close to the thing itself is by approaching it through negatives, by using the logic of poetry—of ascension and negation—that proceeds through contradiction, antitheses, and paradox. Disjointed opposites do not result in anything positive; rather, it is through the continuous work of negation that words can point darkly toward what surpasses them. The thing itself can only find voice when words break.

~ On Mysticism: The Experience of Ecstasy

In the end, the content of Meister Eckhart’s sermon is not what truly matters; what matters is what it aims at—the unintelligible connection with the divine that it provides us.

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