Meister Eckhart's Sermons (Field translation) · 3 of 23 · tr. Claud Field
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THE ATTRACTIVE POWER OF GOD St John vi.
44.
—“No one can come unto Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him.” Our Lord Jesus Christ hath in the Gospel spoken with His own blessed lips these words, which signify, “No man can come to Me unless My Father draw him.” In another place He says, “I am in the Father and the Father in Me.” Therefore whoever cometh to the Son cometh to the Father.
Further, He saith, “I and the Father are One.
Therefore whomsoever the Father draweth, the Son draweth likewise.” St Augustine also saith, “The works of the Holy Trinity are inseparable from each other.” Therefore the Father draweth to the Son, and the Son draweth to the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost draweth to the Father and the Son; and each Person of the Trinity, when He draweth to the Two Others, draweth to Himself, because the Three are One.
The Father draweth with the might of His power, the Son draweth with His unfathomable wisdom, the Holy Ghost draweth with His love.
Thus we are drawn by the Sacred Trinity with the cords of Power, Wisdom and Love, when we are drawn from an evil thing to a good thing, and from a good thing to a better, and from a better thing to the best of all.
Now the Father draws us from the evil of sin to the goodness of His grace with the might of His measureless power, and He needs all the resources of His strength in order to convert sinners, more than when He was about to make heaven and earth, which He made with His own power without help from any creature.
But when He is about to convert a sinner, He always needs the sinner’s help.
“He converts thee not without thy help,” as St Augustine says.
Therefore deadly sin is a breach of nature, a death of the soul, a disquiet of the heart, a weakening of power, a blindness of the sense, a sorrow of the spirit, a death of grace, a death of virtue, a death of good works, an aberration of the spirit, a fellowship with the devil, an expulsion of Christianity, a dungeon of hell, a banquet of hell, an eternity of hell.
Therefore, if thou committest a deadly sin thou art guilty of all these and incurrest their consequences.
Regarding the first point: Deadly sin is a breach of nature, for every man’s nature is an image and likeness and mirror of the Trinity, of Godhead and of eternity.
All these together are marred by a deadly sin; therefore, it is a breach of nature.
Such sin is also the death of the soul, for death is to lose life.
Now God is the life of the soul, and deadly sin separates from God; therefore it is a death of the soul.
Deadly sin is also a disquiet of the heart, for everything rests nowhere except in its own proper place; and the proper resting-place of the soul is nowhere except in God as St Augustine saith, “Lord!
Thou hast made us for Thyself, therefore we may not rest anywhere save in Thee.” Deadly sin is also a weakening of the powers, for by his own power no one can throw off the load of sin nor restrain himself from committing sin.
It is also a blindness of the sense, for it prevents a man recognizing how brief is the space of time that can be spent in the pleasure of voluptuousness, and how long are the pains of hell and the joys of heaven.
Deadly sin is also a death of all grace, for whenever such a sin is committed, the soul is bereft of all grace.
Similarly, it is the death of all virtue and good works, and an aberration of the spirit.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The Trinity actively and purposefully draws each soul toward itself through specific attributes (power, wisdom, love), ordering the soul's conversion toward intelligible ends.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
Sin is defined as a breach, death, weakening, and blindness rather than a positive substance.
The divine conceived as active, present, and dynamic—not an abstract principle but a personal responsive reality.
God is presented as actively drawing, converting, and exercising power—'He needs all the resources of His strength in order to convert sinners'—emphasizing divine dynamism over abstract principle.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
The passage explicitly states that every man's nature is an image, likeness, and mirror of the Trinity.
The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.
Deadly sin is described as separating the soul from God, causing a death of the soul and grace.
The doctrine that the one Godhead or first principle subsists as three co-equal aspects or persons rather than a bare unity — the Christian Father/Son/Holy Ghost invoked in the recurring liturgical formula 'In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,' but structurally the same pattern as the Egyptian Amen/Ptah/Osiris, the Hindu Brahma/Vishnu/Siva, and the Kabbalistic Chochmah/Binah/Kether triads that esoteric writers explicitly map onto it as instances of one universal law. Distinct from unity_of_being (the general claim that all existence is one substance, agnostic about internal plurality) and divine_simplicity (God as having no parts or divisions at all) in asserting a definite three-aspected differentiation within a single divine essence.
The entire passage is structured around the three Persons of the Trinity each drawing the soul with their distinct attribute—Father with power, Son with wisdom, Holy Ghost with love—and their inseparable works.