Page History

PDF Version of this Document                                                                                       

  Meister Eckhart on Creation

In his Expositio libri Genesis, Eckhart comments on the statement that God created "in the beginning," that the '''beginning' is the 'now' of eternity, the indivisible 'now' (nunc) in which God is eternally God and the eternal emanation of the divine Persons takes place." "[I]n the same 'now' in which God the Father exists and generates [God's] coeternal Son, [God] also creates the world." "God created the world simultaneously with the generation of the Son, by whom 'all things were made. ", "It is possible ... that Eckhart did not mean that the object of the creative act, the actual world, is eternal, but rather that God eternally conceived and willed creation in and through the Word. This, in any case, is what he later said he had meant. 'Creation, indeed, and every act of God is the very essence of God. Yet it does not follow from this that if God created the world from eternity, the world on this account exists from eternity, as the ignorant think. For creation in the passive sense is not eternal, just as the created itself is not eternal' [Commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy of the Pseudo-Dionysius, 4]. Eckhart obviously utilized sayings like that of St. Albert the Great: 'God created from eternity, but the created world is not from eternity,' and of St. Augustine: 'In the eternal Word dost Thou speak eternally all that Thou speakest; and yet not all exists at once and from eternity that Thou effectest in speaking' [Conf. 11, 7]."

...