One God and Father of all: Eckhart on divine oneness

Unus deus et pater omnium qui est super omnes et per omnia et in omnibus nobis (Ephesians 4): I am quoting St Paul's words, 'One God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in us all.' From the gospel I will take another saying, the saying of our Lord, 'Friend, go up higher.'

To begin with, when St Paul speaks of 'one God and Father of all,' the omission of the particle suggests some variation from his 'one God.' God is one in himself and apart from all. God belongs to no one and no one belongs to him. God is one. Boethius says, God is one and does not change. God created his whole creation without changing. All things, once created, go on changing. The lesson in this is that we ought to be one in ourselves and wholly free of attachment. We should be firm and unshaken in God. Outside God there is nothing but nothing. No change and no movement can get into God. What looks for another place outside him, that changes. God has all things in him in one omnipotence. God looks for nothing outside himself, for he has it in him in its perfection. No creature can grasp it as it is in God.

Another teacher says, 'Father of all, blessed are you.' This too carries change in it, for in calling him Father he makes us his children. And if he is our Father then we as his children will hold his honour dear. Our Lord says, 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' Purity of heart means separation and cleansing from all bodily things, the setting apart of the self, and in this withdrawal, the plunging into God and being made one with him.

David says, 'Those works are pure and without guile which are pursued and perfected in the light of the soul,' and those are even more without guile which stay there in the depths of the spirit and do not come forth. 'One God and Father of all.'

The other saying, 'Friend, come up higher, take the higher seat.' I will make one out of two. 'Friend, come up higher, draw up,' is the friendly conversation of the soul with God. He says, 'Friend, draw up, come up higher,' and, answering her: one God and Father of all. A certain philosopher says that friendship has its seat in the will. But so far as friendship has its seat in the will, it does not unify. Love does not unify. True, it unites in act but not in essence. It only says, One God, come up higher.

'Draw near.' Into the ground of the soul nothing enters but God himself. Even the highest angel, close as he is to God and endowed so fully with God's love (his works are grounded in God in one essence, not one operation; he has in God an indwelling, a settled dwelling place), this angel, strange as it may seem, exalted as he is, is not let into the soul. One master lays it down that every creature on its own merits that God himself should work in it. The soul, as it transcends the body, is too pure and fine to set her heart on anything but pure Deity himself. But nothing enters there until it has been stripped of all additions. That is why she was answered, 'one God.'

St Paul says, 'one God.' One is something simpler than goodness and truth. Goodness and truth are constant; they are only added to in thought, for thinking attributes things to them. There is no addition to the one as it proceeds in itself into the Son and into the Holy Ghost. He said, 'Friend, go up higher.' A master says, one is the denial of denials. If I say God is good, that is an affirmation. One is the denial of denials, the grave of all expectations. What does one mean? That to which nothing is added. The soul receives Godhead as it is spoken forth in her, with nothing added, unthought. One is the denial of denials. Every creature makes its own denial within itself; the one denies that it is the other; an angel denies being any other creature. But God makes the denial of denials; he is one and denies all else, for there is nothing without God. All creatures are in God; they are his very Godhead, that is to say, his fullness. He is the Father of all deity. One God, not proceeding, unmoved, with no thought of the Word. By denying God something, and in denying God goodness I am not denying God, by denying God something I form some idea of him, of what he is not; and even this has to go. God is one, he is the negation of negation. According to one master, the angelic nature holds back no power and no work, it has no knowledge but of God alone. It takes no notice of anything else. As he says, 'one God and Father of all.'

Some of the powers of the soul take things in from outside, the eye for example. Though it lets in only a little and rejects the greater part, it still depends on and receives something from outside, in the mode of here and now. But intelligence and intellect, cutting to the core, grasp what is neither here nor now. In its unconditioned state it stays in touch with nature, but it still receives from the senses; what the senses bring in from outside, the intellect makes use of. Not so the will. In this respect the will ranks above the intellect. The will accepts nothing except in abstract understanding, where there is neither here nor now. God means to show what a pure and exalted thing the will is. It rises to familiar conversation with God, and God says, 'Friend, come up higher, honour awaits you.'

The will wills happiness. The question has been asked, what is the difference between grace and happiness. Grace, as we have it now in this life, and happiness as ours to be hereafter in eternal life, stand to one another as the flower to its fruit. When the soul is full of grace and nothing is left wanting in her, then grace works to bring to perfection all that exists in the soul. Grace brings to perfection what the soul does simply by its presence in the soul, without any actual work taking place. Grace pours itself out wholly, all at once, into the soul, doing its work through presence alone. This grace brings the soul into oneness with God. Its completion, its effect, is to bring the soul back to God. Hers, after the blossom, is the fruit. The will, as the will to happiness, as the will to be with God and the actual rising up to him, in this singleness of heart God slips into the will, and in the single mind that sees God as the truth, God slips into the intellect. But his entering into the will raises the will up. As he says, one God. 'Friend, come up higher.' One God: God's oneness is the crown of God's divinity. God could never bring forth his only-begotten Son if he were not one. His being one determines all that he does, as creature and as God. Oneness belongs to God alone. God's own mark is oneness. God must be one God or not be God at all. Divine riches or wisdom or truth, it is all the same thing in God, and that sameness is itself unity. God has all that he has in himself, and it is one with him. Theologians say that the heavens turn in order to gather all things in, and that is why their motion is so swift. He said, 'Friend, come up higher, you are honoured.' It is the honour and adornment of the soul that God is one. God behaves as if he existed for no purpose but to please the soul, as if he adorned himself only to draw the soul to him. And a man wants now one thing, now another. He takes up now wisdom, now art. If the soul has nothing of the one she will never rest, she will never rest until she is wholly the same in God. God is one. That is the soul's blessing, her adornment, her rest. A philosopher says, God orders all things in his working. The soul is all things, and in every way the noblest and highest, and God pours in all at once. God is one.