Book of Truth

Read the original Middle High German text

Chapter 6: In What Points Those People Fall Short Who Live According to a Mistaken Idea of Freedom

One bright Sunday, as he (the disciple) was sitting withdrawn and deep in thought, there came to him in the calmness of his mind the figure of a rational being who was sophisticated in speech but inexperienced in deeds and who overflowed with rich ostentation.
He began speaking to the figure thus: Where do you come from?
It said: I never came from anywhere. He said: Tell me, what are you? It said: I am nothing. He said: What do you want?
It answered and said: I want nothing.
And he said: This is very strange.
Tell me, what is your name?
It said: I am called nameless wild one.
The disciple said: You are well named “the wild one” because your words and answers are completely wild. Now tell me something I shall ask you. Where does your wisdom take you?
It said: To unrestrained liberty.
The disciple said: Tell me, how do you define unrestrained liberty? It said: When a person lives completely according to his impulses heedless of all else, without looking ahead or behind.
The disciple said: You are not on the path of truth. Such liberty leads a person away from all blessedness and robs him of his true liberty; for if one lacks the power of discriminating, one lacks order. And whatever is without correct order is evil and defective. As Christ said: “He who commits sin is the slave of sin.” But a person who with a pure conscience and a prudent way of life enters into Christ in true detachment from himself attains true freedom, as Christ himself said: “If the Son frees you, then you shall become truly free.”
The wild one said: How do you define “orderly” or “without order”?
The disciple said: “Orderly” is when everything pertaining to an issue, both interiorly and exteriorly, is not left out of consideration, including the consequences. “Disorderly” is when one of these things has been neglected.
The wild one said: Unrestrained liberty will transcend all this and scorn it all.
The disciple said: Such recklessness would be against all truth and accords well with false, unrestrained liberty because it is against the order that the eternal nothing bestowed upon all things in its giving birth.
The wild one said: The person who has become nothing in his eternal nothing knows nothing of such distinctions.
The disciple said: The eternal nothing that is meant here and as understood by all well-oriented intellects is not nothing because it does not exist but because of its unsurpassable abundance of being which has absolutely no differences within itself and from which, as birth-giving, all ordered differences in things arise. A person never becomes so completely annihilated in this nothing that his senses are not aware of the difference of their origin or his reason not aware of its free choice, even if all this is ignored in his primal ground.
The wild one: Does anyone perceive anywhere else but in this same ground and from this ground?
The disciple: A person would not perceive it correctly because it is not just in the ground. It is also in itself a created something outside the ground, and it remains what it is. And one has to understand it as such also. If a person were to lose his distinctness (from God) in being, as he does in how he perceives (himself and God), then one could agree with this view. But this is not the case, as has already been said. It is important always to keep this distinction in mind.
The wild one said: I have heard that there was a learned teacher who denied all distinctions.
The disciple said: If you mean he denied all distinction in the Godhead, one could interpret this to mean a denial of each of the Persons in the ground where they are indistinct from each other, but not as they are contrasted to each other. In this sense they are certainly to be considered distinct as Persons. If you take it to refer to the condition of a person lost (in God), enough has already been said to show that this describes human perception of the event but does not affect the mode of being. Note that there is a difference between separation and distinctness. As is obvious, body and soul are not separate because the one is in the other and no member that has been separated can remain alive. But the soul is distinct from the body because the soul is not the body, nor the body the soul. In this sense, I take it that nothing truly exists that can be separate from the simple being (of God), because this gives being to all being. With regard to distinctness, however, the divine being is not the stone’s being, nor is the stone’s being the divine being, nor is one creature the being of another. This is why theologians say that this distinctness in a proper sense is not in God but rather from God. In interpreting the Book of Wisdom it is said: Nothing is more within (creatures) than God, just as nothing is more distinct (from them). Thus the other explanation is wrong, and this interpretation is correct.
The wild one said: This same teacher said much that is beautiful about the Christlike person.
The disciple said: In one passage this teacher says the following: Christ is the only-begotten Son and we are not. He is the Son by nature because his birth corresponds to his nature, but we are not the son by nature and our birth is a rebirth because its goal is to be uniform with his nature. He is the image of the Father; we are formed in the image of the holy Trinity; and in this, he says, no one is his (Christ’s) equal.
The wild one said: I have heard that he said such a person accomplishes everything that Christ accomplished.
The disciple answered: In one passage this same master says the following: The just man does everything that justice does. This is true, he says, because the just man is born from justice, as it is written: “What is born of flesh is flesh, and what is born of spirit is spirit.” This is true only of Christ, he says, and not of any other man because he (Christ) has no being but the being of the Father and no other progenitor than the heavenly Father. Therefore, he did everything as the Father does. But in all other men, he says, it happens that we co-act with him either more or less according to whether we are more or less born of him. This explanation directs you to the real truth.
The wild one said: His words proclaim that everything which is given to Christ is also given to me.
The disciple: This “everything” that is given to Christ is the perfect possession of substantial blessedness. He said, “Omnia dedit mihi pater—the Father has given everything to me.” This same “everything” he has given to us, but in a different manner. And he (Eckhart) says in many places that he (Christ) has this “everything” through the incarnation, and we (have it) through conforming union with God. Hence he has it more nobly to the extent that he was able to receive it more nobly.
The wild one kept objecting and said that this teacher denied all mere similarity and union (between God and creature) and that he posited us, naked and freed from all (mere) similarity, in pure oneness.
The disciple answered, saying: Your problem is without a doubt that you do not understand the distinction previously mentioned about how a person should become one in Christ and yet remain distinct, and how he is united though perceives himself to be one and not just united. The genuine light has not yet illumined you. Genuine light allows for order and distinction, while rejecting turbulent plurality. Your sharp mind with its agility in reasoning employs with complete control the light of nature, which illumines much like the light of divine truth.
The wild one was silent and then begged him in pliant submissiveness to talk more about this valuable distinction.
He answered and said: The most prominent shortcoming that disorients you and those like you is the inability to distinguish correctly in matters of rational truth. Therefore, whoever wants to reach perfection and not fall into these shortcomings should give serious attention to this subtle doctrine. Then he will attain unimpeded a blessed life.

Tr. Frank Tobin

At the Haas Collection

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