Vc

Platonic recollection: knowledge as the soul's recovery of what it knew before birth, with learning as remembering rather than acquisition.

Sanctification involves knowing 'what we were before time,' implying a recovery of pre-existent knowledge.

Attributing human characteristics, emotions, or form to the divine; embodied divine imagery.

The Son is described as having a 'countenance' and becoming man.

Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.

The text states 'the darkness comprehendeth it not,' indicating God transcends human comprehension.

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.

God in human nature is described as a lamp, hinting at the indwelling divine generation.

The material body viewed as a prison, tomb, or source of error that hinders spiritual knowledge and return.

The soul 'recketh naught of the body,' viewing it as something to be disregarded for spiritual progress.

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 passage maps divine attributes (essence, Trinity) onto human nature, implying a structural correspondence between God and man.

Ontological opposition between two primal principles (light/darkness, truth/lie, spirit/matter) as the fundamental structure of reality.

The passage sets up a clear opposition between light and darkness.

The supreme God's radical concealment beyond ordinary knowledge or perception; the Hidden Father.

The divine light is incomprehensible to darkness, suggesting a radical concealment of God's essence.

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.

Darkness is described as fleeing light, implying it is an absence rather than a substantive force.

Sufi self-effacement in God — the via by which the lover is unmade as a separate ego and recovered as God's act; specifies the practice/event rather than mystical_union's resulting state.

The soul 'loses itself' in the three temporal states, indicating self-effacement.

The divine spark or luminous quality residing within the human person, potentially recognisable through introspection.

God in human nature is explicitly called a 'lamp of living light' residing within.

The claim that the divine realm is present inside the individual, accessible without external mediation.

The soul learns what God is 'in man,' locating the divine realm within the individual.

The divine conceived as active, present, and dynamic—not an abstract principle but a personal responsive reality.

God is described as active, stooping out of pity and becoming man.

The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.

The Son is described as an 'image and countenance of the Father,' functioning as the divine Word/mediator.

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 text explores what God is in His essence, the Trinity, and 'in man,' suggesting a reflection of divine structure within humanity.

The merging of the individual soul or self with the divine, transcending personal identity.

The text describes the soul losing itself and Christ being 'united with the Godhead,' indicating a merging of identities.

Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.

The 'most despised man' is united with the Godhead, using contradiction to reveal spiritual truth.

Eckhart's radical reading of Matthew 5:3 — the saint as one who wants nothing, knows nothing, and has nothing, having emptied even the will and the self with which to receive God; distinct from renunciation_of_wealth (material poverty).

The instruction to 'recketh naught' aligns with Eckhart's concept of spiritual poverty and emptiness.

The soul's journey back to its divine origin, reversing the fall into matter through stages of purification or illumination.

Knowing 'what we were before time' implies a journey back to the divine origin.

The recognition of one's own true divine nature as the primary path to liberation; 'know thyself' as soteriology.

Sanctification is defined as knowing what we were, are, and shall be.

A staged journey of the soul upward through heavenly realms or levels of being toward the divine source.

The soul 'goes to God to school,' indicating an upward journey of learning.

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.

Sanctification is linked to knowing God and the union of the despised man with the Godhead in Christ.

The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.

The text describes the union of the human person with the Godhead in Christ.

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.

[auto] The soul 'recketh naught of the body,' reflecting Eckhart's specific doctrine of radical letting-go and detachment.

The uncreated luminous quality of the divine, sometimes experienced directly in mystical states; illumination as revelation.

[auto] God in human nature is described as a 'lamp of living light' and the text contrasts light with darkness extensively.

Salvation through direct experiential knowledge of the divine nature, not through faith, ritual, or moral works alone.

[auto] The passage explicitly defines sanctification as knowing God's will and one's pre-temporal state, prioritizing knowledge over ritual.