Meister Eckhart's Sermons (Field translation) · 4 of 23 · tr. Claud Field
I-b
It is also a fellowship with the Devil, for everything hath fellowship with its like; and sin maketh the soul and Satan resemble each other.
It is also an expulsion of Christianity, for it depriveth the sinner of all the profit that comes from Christianity.
It is also a dungeon of hell, for if the soul remain in the purity in which God created her, neither angel nor devil may rob her of her freedom.
But sin confines it in hell.
Sin is also an eternity of hell, for eternity is in the will, and were it not in the will, it would not be in the consciousness.
Now, people say when they commit sin, that they do not intend to do so always; they intend to turn away from sin.
That is just as though a man were to kill himself and suppose that he could make himself alive again by his own strength.
That is, however, impossible; but to turn from sin by one’s own power and come to God is still much more impossible.
Therefore, whosoever is to turn from sin and come to God in His heavenly kingdom, must be drawn by the heavenly Father with the might of His divine power.
The Father also draws the Son who comes to help us with His grace, by stimulating our free will to turn away from, and hate sin, which has drawn us aside from God, and from the immutable goodness of the Godhead.
Then, if she is willing, He pours the gift of His grace into the soul, which renounces all her misery and sin, and all her works become living.
Now, this grace springs from the centre of Godhead and the Father’s heart, and flows perpetually, nor ever ceases, if the soul obeys His everlasting love.
Therefore He saith in the prophets: “I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee.” Out of the overflow of His universal love He desires to draw all to Himself, and to His Only-begotten Son, and to the Holy Ghost in the joy of the heavenly kingdom.
Now, we should know that before our Lord Jesus Christ was born, the Heavenly Father drew men with all His might for five thousand, two hundred years; and yet, as far as we know, brought not one into the heavenly kingdom.
So, when the Son saw that the Father had thus strongly drawn men and even wearied Himself, and yet not succeeded, He said to the Father: “I will draw them with the cords of a man.” It was as though He said, “I see well, Father, that Thou with all Thy might, canst not succeed, therefore will I myself draw them with the cords of a man.” Therefore the Son came down from heaven, and was incarnate of a Virgin, and took upon Him all our bodily weaknesses, except sin and folly, into which Adam had cast us; and out of all His words and works and limbs and nerves, He made a cord, and drew us so skillfully, and so heartily, that the bloody sweat poured from His sacred Body.
And when He had drawn men without ceasing for three and thirty years, He saw the beginnings of a movement and the redemption of all things that would follow.
Therefore He said, “And I, if I be lifted up on the Cross, will draw all men unto Me.” Therefore He was stretched upon the Cross, and laid aside all His glory, and whatever might hinder His drawing men.
Now, there are three natural means of attraction with which Christ on the Cross drew to Himself between the third and the ninth hour, more people than He had drawn before during the three and thirty years of His life.
The first means by which He draws is affinity, that affinity which brings creatures of the same species together, and like to its like.
With this cord of affinity he drew men to the Godhead, Whom He always resembles.
Eckhart's signature doctrine that the Father eternally begets the Son in the ground of the soul; the human interior as the actual site of the divine generative act, distinct from inner_light's static indwelling.
[auto] The passage describes the Father drawing the Son into the soul with grace to stimulate free will, reflecting Eckhart's core doctrine of the divine birth within.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The text states that everything hath fellowship with its like, establishing a principle of affinity between levels.
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
Affinity is explicitly named as a natural means of attraction where like draws to like, mirroring the doctrine of cosmic sympathy.
Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.
The soul must renounce all misery and sin to receive the gift of grace, reflecting a form of letting-go.
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 portrayed as a loss of original purity that makes the soul resemble Satan rather than God.
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.
Sin is depicted as drawing the soul aside from God and confining it in hell, representing a state of exile.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
Grace poured into the soul causes all works to become living and draws the person into the divine kingdom.