A little while: Eckhart on four ways to see God

"Modicum videbitis me et modicum non videbitis" (John 16:17). I quote in Latin from the Gospel of St John a saying of our Lord to his disciples. The translation runs, "A little while, and you will see me, and a little while, and you will not see me." The disciples did not understand. They said to each other, "We do not know what he means." So St John tells us, and he was there. A parable follows, which I will not go into. Then, knowing what was in their hearts, he says quite plainly, "I shall see you again and your joy shall be full."

Now, to my mind, this saying will bear four interpretations.

More or less the same in wording but very different in meaning. The core of the first idea, and of eternal happiness, is knowledge. One theologian who spoke at Paris insisted with loud outbursts that this is not so. Then another stood up, a better one than the best they have at Paris, and said: "Sir, you are very sure of yourself, but did not God declare in the gospel the very thing you denounce so strongly? Our Lord's words are, 'This is eternal life, to know you, the only true God.'" "A little while, and you will see me." This means that you must come to see everything in you as little and of small account if you are ever to see God. It follows that we must look closely at what helps and what hinders the knowledge of God. However small what comes from God, if we treat it rightly it comes back again, it returns, for we have one thing of God's own that we can work with, as with our own soul. Not that I work and God looks on: I, so to speak, work together with my own tool, which is mine and in me. So a person, being lifted up in time, shall see God outside himself. I have sometimes said that when St Paul saw nothing, he saw God. Now I say something better: when St Paul saw all as nothing, he saw God. When he saw all things as nothing he saw God, and what God means to say is this: when all things are reduced to nothing in you, then you shall see God.

Again he says, "a little while, and you will not see me." While time and the world, which is a little thing, are within you, you will not see me. The angel swore by his eternal life that when this life is over there will be no more time. And in his gospel St John plainly states, "the world was made by him and they did not know him." In keeping with this, to quote a pagan teacher, world and time are a small thing. It is out of world and time that we see God.

Thirdly, he said, "a little while, and you do not see me," as if to say: the smallest thing that is foreign to the soul will keep her from seeing God. For heaven is shut to strangers; even an angel from another heaven would not get in, since it is not his own. Why do my mouth and my ear have no sense of heaven? Because they are not like it. St Bernard says, "My eye is like the heavens in being round and clear and set high in the body, and it cannot bear the entry of anything foreign." Before my eye can see a painting on the wall, this must pass through the air and, in a still thinner form, be carried into my imagination, to be taken up by my understanding. The soul must have both these properties, and this likeness, however faint it may be, with its suggestion, its hint of sin, the soul rejects as foreign to herself. If God himself were foreign to the soul, she would want nothing of him. What the eye perceives has to be brought to it by means, in images. If there were no means, we would see nothing. If an angel sees another angel, or anything God has made, he does so by some means. But himself and God he sees directly. If my soul knows an angel, she knows him by some means and in an image, an image without image, not an image such as we have here. Soul and angel are material things compared with God. Angelic knowledge, like knowledge of anything created, is a means. God wholly lacks this: he is known without means, without anything little. For my soul to know God with nothing in between, you must be with me and I with you.

I will now offer a meaning quite different from these three. "While you are little you do not see me. To see me you must grow great." The intellect is great indeed, yet small compared with the light of God. Our Lord rebuked his apostles, saying, "There is still in you but a little light." They were not without light, but it was weak, the light of grace, the brightest thing God ever made or ever could make. And after all, the soul is small as long as she is still in grace. At some point the soul must rise above grace. If grace is not yet overcome, the soul still has to climb within grace and, being made complete, go beyond grace. Then she sees God.

Fourthly: "and you will not see me" means that, being poor in light and grace, you cannot see God. One must overflow with light and grace before one can see God. Grace is a light beyond all others, beyond the angels. In grace we can see God, but from a distance. While grace exists in us as grace we cannot see God. "You do not see me because I am going to my Father." While the soul is still on its way, God remains unseen. While we are moving toward God we have not yet gotten him. With the finding of God all progress ends, as our Lord said to St Mary Magdalene, "Do not touch me, I have not yet ascended in you to my Father." While God is rising in the soul and has not reached the highest point, we cannot see God. St Paul says, "God dwells in light that cannot be approached." And one saint says, "No one has ever seen God." St Paul tells us, "We shall know God as we are known." As God knows himself, so we shall know him; as he sees all things in himself, so we shall see all things in him. "We shall know as we are known," St Paul says. Once the little is cleared away, I shall see as I am seen, as he sees himself, without anything little, with nothing in between, all in himself and in him all things, nothing outside him, and we too shall know without anything little and without means. We shall know in his Son. The Son is the image of the Godhead, not the Godhead itself: he is the idea of God the Father. The Father's reflection is his only Son. In that idea where nothing exists, in that image we shall be reflected in the Son and, by the Son, reflected back into the Father. In that image, just the same, where there is no this nor that, we shall know God with God's only Son. May the little depart from us and let us know you, the one true God. So help us God. Amen.