The essays that make up this issue of Medieval Mystical Theology were all first delivered as talks at the 33rd Annual Conference of The Eckhart Society on September 17, 2022. The theme of the conference was Meister Eckhart and Divine Awareness. There was a palpable mood of excitement at this event for it was the first face-to-face conference in three years owing to the global pandemic. Consequently, there was a feeling of relief that we could all meet again, along with a sense of anticipation for what the conference had to offer. This always includes intellectual discussion, meditation, music, laughter, good food, and more. But perhaps the importance of simply being together again with old friends, and meeting for the first time those who became new friends was paramount.
Considering The Eckhart Society’s capacity for creating friendships, I am reminded of what C. S. Lewis says about this in his book, The Four Loves. Friendship, he says, is about seeing and caring for the same truth, a shared vision that forms kindred souls. Here such divisive things as age, gender, race, sexuality, profession, income, title, class, religion, and politics do not matter. And in a way this seems very apt to Meister Eckhart’s thinking, for Lewis says that Friendship: ‘Is an affair of disentangled, or stripped minds. Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.’Footnote1 Being of the soul and not the body, or more spiritual than worldly is why, for Lewis, Friendship has something angelic about it.
Stripped minds, naked personalities, soul and spirit also aptly indicate the divine awareness that each of the essays in this issue discuss in their different ways. We begin with Michael Demkovich’s essay, titled, ‘Meister Eckhart and the Nearness of God (Sermon 30 Praedica verbum).’ This is followed by Rebecca Stephen’s essay titled, ‘“Something within me which shines”: Knowing and Unknowing God and the Self.’ There then follows my own essay titled, ‘The Eye with which I See God is the Same Eye with which God Sees Me: Meister Eckhart on Divine Awareness.’ While the final essay by Christopher M. Wojtulewicz is titled, ‘The Nature of Divine Immanence in Meister Eckhart’s Thought.’ This issue also contains four book reviews by our prolific book reviews editor, Luke Penkett.
Notes
1 C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (London: Harper Collins, 1960), 85.