[German pronounciation: "Yah'-kobe Ber'-meh." Also: Jacob Boehme, Boehm,
Böhm, Behme, Behmen; the spellings were quite variable, even in original records. Early
English followers used the name "Behmenists".]
Jakob Böhme: Introduction; / His legacy; / His Aurora; / Theological ideas; / Summary
The end of the 20th century is witnessing a crisis of relevance of traditional church doctrine, and rapidly waning ecclesiastical influence. In western culture, spirituality has literally broken out of the churches, to seek expression in a wide variety of ways, especially through explorations of eastern and primal traditions, nature mysticism, and transcendental psychologies. Jacob Boehme was a 17th century shoemaker whose radical and mystical theology is consistent with modern knowledge of the relationship of the physical world to nonlocal reality, and of the dynamics of the psyche. His Renaissance emphasis on individual transformative spirituality is in tune with the renaissance of spirit of our times. It thus has much to offer to churches and other spiritual communities seeking to meet the spiritual needs of modern people.
Jacob Boehme was born on or soon before April 24, 1575 in Altseidenberg, near Görlitz in eastern Germany. Following apprenticeship, he set up his own shop as a shoemaker in Görlitz, where he resided (except for a period of exile in Dresden) until his death on November 17, 1624. After a profound mystical experience at the age of twenty five (1600), while remaining active as a shoemaker and later a merchant, he embarked on a remarkable career of independent scholarship and writing. Though censured for heresy and silenced for seven years by his town council, he eventually produced some twenty nine books and tracts on philosophical theology, and gained a growing following among the nobility and professional classes of the day.
Paul Tillich wrote, >> [A]lthough Boehme's thoughts have changed during his writings from a stage of crudity to a stage of comparative clarity, they are always expressed in a language which mirrors speculative vision, mystical experience, psychological insight, and alchemist traditions. It is often difficult to uncover the rational element in this mixture, but it is there and it had an astonishing influence on the history of Western philosophy. One need only mention Schelling's famous book on human freedom which is thoroughly dependent on Boehme's vision of the genesis of God, world, and man. From here, Boehme's indirect influence reaches Hegel and Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Hartmann, Bergson and Heidegger. << [preface to Stoudt, John Joseph: Sunrise to Eternity: A Study of Jacob Boehme's Life and Thought. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1957]
Boehme's ideas of process in creation and Deity presaged Alfred North Whitehead's twentieth century process theology. He was also frequently cited by Carl G. Jung in illustrating the transformative dynamics of the psyche's "alchemical" individuation process. Boehme himself apparently was aware that he was using alchemical symbolism in a psychological way. Jung's letters suggest Boehme's influence on his own religious outlook. Albert Schweitzer seems especially to be true to the Boehme spirit of an independent Protestant mysticism consistent with modern knowledge.
>> I contemplated man's little spark, what it should be valued before God
along side of this great work of heaven and earth. ...
I therefore became very melancholy and highly troubled. No Scripture could comfort me,
though I was quite well versed in it ...
When in such sadness I earnestly elevated my spirit into God and locked my whole heart and
mind, along with all my thoughts and will, therein, ceaselessly pressing in with God's
Love and Mercy, and not to cease until he blessed me ..., then after some hard storms my
spirit broke through hell's gates into the inmost birth of the Godhead, and there I was
embraced with Love as a bridegroom embraces his dear bride. ...
What kind of spiritual triumph it was I can neither write nor speak; it can only be
compared with that where life is born in the midst of death, and is like the resurrection
of the dead. ...
In this light my spirit directly saw through all things, and knew God in and by all
creatures, even in herbs and grass. ... In this light my will grew in great desire to
describe the being of God ... <<
(Aurora, xix, 7-13. Stoudt, op. cit. p 58-59.)
>> I did not climb up into the Godhead, neither can so mean a man as I am do it; but the Godhead climbed up in me, and revealed such to me out of his Love ... << (Aurora, viii, 7.Stoudt, p 61)
>> For I saw and knew the Being of all beings, the ground and the unground;
the birth of the holy trinity; the source and origin of this world and all creatures in
divine Wisdom (Sophia) ...
I saw all three worlds in myself, (1) the divine, angelical, or paradisaical; ... (2) the
dark world ...; (3) the external, visible world ...; and I saw and knew the whole Being in
evil and in good, how one originates in the other ... so that I not only greatly wondered
but also rejoiced. << (Epist., xii, 8. Stoudt, p.60)
Boehme's expression of his ideas is often deeply couched in the obscure theological and alchemical languages of his time. The following is a tentative personal attempt at a modern interpretation, based largely on a reading of John J. Stoudt (cited above).
A. "In Yes and No all things consist."
The central idea in Boehme's Lebensphilosophie (Life philosophy), is that reality, in both its physical and metaphysical aspects, is a living entity in constant tension between affirmation and suppression of the potentiality which exists in unity. "Yes" and "No" define each other, bringing forth new form, new substance, new definition within the unity.
Hegel builds on this idea in his development of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Jung's observation of the tension between polar opposities in the functions of the psyche (e.g. introversion- extraversion, thinking-feeling, sensing-intuiting, masculine-feminine, etc.) is also an illustration of the Boehme idea, as is the tension between the real and the potential in quantum theory (illustrated in Schroedinger's famous thought experiment about the dead/living cat in a box).
B. Deity evolving
The Deity is immeasurable and cannot be described definitively. But Deity is process, an eternally generating series without beginning or form. Boehme saw seven kinds of action of Deity, none ascendent over the other:
(1) Ungrund, the unground, the unknowable transcendent, the antithesis of the ground of ordinary reality, the groundlessness without beginning or end, the hidden Mystery in all things; (2) primordial will (Urwille), "Father", both no-thing (Nichts) and all; (3) will made subjective, from the point of view of that which is created, the "Christ" function; (4) will made objective, "Holy Spirit," movement, life; (5) Trinity, the expression of the creative unity of the Wills; (6) Logos, Word, creative ordering principle, "Let there be..."; (7) Wisdom, Sophia, the feminine principle of the divine androgyny wherein Trinity and creation are born and exist, made distinct from the Ungrund.
The Father "reveals the Word in the mirror of Wisdom, so that the three-fold nature of the Deity becomes manifest in Wisdom." (Menschw. II, ii, 12. Stoudt p 213) Deity thus consists of Duality, Trinity and Quaternity within a seven-fold Unity. These are also descriptions of God-consciousness in the human psyche. But Boehme writes, "I exhort the reader not to understand in an earthly manner the high supernatural meaning." (Gnad. iii, 10. Stoudt, p 197)
In the dialectic between Ungrund and primordial Will, Deity seeks to become thing and to know itself, to project itself into actuality and consciousness. "Here we remind the reader that God in Himself ... has no more than one desire, which is to give and bring forth Himself." (Gnad. i, 18. Stoudt p 202)
C. Pan en theo. All in God
"The Virgin [Wisdom] is visible like a pure Spirit, and the Element is her body ... the holy Earth ... and into this the invisible Deity is entered ... that the Deity is in the pure element and the element is in the Deity; for God and the element ... are become one thing, not [only?] in spirit, but in substance." (Princ. xxii, 72ff. Stoudt p 220)
Because Creation dwells radically in Deity, human consciousness is a function of Deity, serving the fulfillment of Deity's purpose in creation, namely, self-contemplation for completion and wholeness. God and creation form each other, and make each other whole.
D. Good and evil
The central issue apparently running throughout Boehme's work, is the perennial question of how Deity can contain evil. He writes, "For it cannot be said of God that He is this or that, evil or good, or that He has distinctions in Himself. For He has no tendency to anything, for there is nothing before Him to which He could tend, neither evil nor good. ... There is no quality or pain in Him ... [He] is a single will in which the world and the whole creation lies. ... He is neither light nor darkness, neither love nor wrath, but the Eternal One. (Gnad. i, 3. Stoudt, p 203)
Stoudt writes, "Boehme's whole idea of God is construed with a view towards maintaining two precious divine attributes: his personality and his tender concern for the world. The antinomies that result are due to his stubborn desire to hold on to both. A dialectical God results, a God of two modes, a God of love and a God of wrath."
Stoudt continues, "Here begins to appear Boehme's solution to the problem of evil. Evil is related to self-consciousness, to nay-saying, to mystery. He distinguishes between the God in self-contemplation and the God in action. Two cadences, passive and active, give a God of these two modes. And for Boehme evil is the rebellion of self-centered activity against the passive, unyielding, mysterious power of the self-contemplating God." (Stoudt, p 217)
E. Redemption as wholeness
Stoudt writes, "Boehme had no idealist antithesis between body and spirit; body was for him not flesh [as in St. Paul's idea of sinful flesh]. It was rather form, definiteness, comprehensibility, that which can be known, willed, and loved, perhaps even personality." Also, "the body is the spirit's mother." (Aurora xxvi, 50; Stoudt p 263)
The human being is a spirit fashioned as primordial androgynous Adam, image and similitude of Deity. All humans are fundamentally one, whose self-knowledge comes from the one God- man, Adam-Christ. Humans are formed from the Urground in the mirror of Wisdom, as is Trinity itself. Nakedness is the sense of not-belonging in an earth-body. (Princ. x, 6-7; Stoudt p 269) In nakedness, "man remembers his primitive, essential unity and his angelical form." (Stoudt, p 270)
Boehme writes, "[To the detractor who says that I was not there] I say, that I, in the essence of my soul and body, when I was not yet I, but when I was in Adam's essence, was there, and did fool away my glory in Adam. But seeing Christ has restored it again to me, I see, in the spirit of Christ, what I was in Paradise; and what I now am in sin; and what I shall be again." (Myst.Mag., xviii,1. Stoudt, p 261-262)
"In Christ are all the treasures of [W]isdom. If we have Him we have all; but if we lose Him, then we have lost all, and ourselves too. The one ground of our religion is, that we love Christ in us, and love one another as Christ has loved us. ... But this love is not manifest in us unless Christ become man and be manifested in us. He gives His Love to us so that we love one another in Him." (Gnad. xii, 21ff. Stoudt, p 297)
The gulf of language, time, and world-knowledge between us and Boehme makes his thought difficult for us to access. Images and allusions which would have been highly meaningful to his contemporaries, are totally obscure to us now. Further, an outline such as this, which consists of notes from only one source, must be all too brief and selective.
Yet perhaps this is enough to illustrate that Boehme offers much which can be healing for ourselves individually and for organized Christianity. He understands the immanence of Deity while retaining a profound sense of transcendent Mystery. His understanding of creation in a dynamic unity with Deity gives to all life, and especially to conscious human life, a secure place in divine purpose. He gives expression to the balance of feminine and masculine functions both in Deity and in human nature. For him, redemption is the restoration to the wholeness of ourselves in alignment with continuing divine purpose. Life can be lived and celebrated in full appreciation both of the spiritual essence which we are, and the formative essence which we know as "body" and physical creation.
A healing perspective such as this is consistent with our modern understandings of
the dynamics of deep psyche described by Jung, and with the concept of unity in
nonlocality now known also in quantum physics. Perhaps Boehme's 17th century vision of
Dawn can help guide individuals and spiritual communities toward the transformative
convergence of knowledge and spirit now dawning toward yet another century.
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Citations for Boehme quotations
These standard abbreviations are used by early editors and by Stoudt, John Joseph: Sunrise to Eternity: A Study of Jacob Boehme's Life and Thought. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1957
Aurora -- Aurora, Die Morgenroethe im Aufgang, 1612 (The rosy dawn ascending)
Epist. -- Letters, 1730 edition.
Gnad. -- Von der Gnadenwahl, 1623 (On predestination, i.e. On election by grace)
Menschw. -- Von der Menschwerdung Jesu Christi, 1620 (On the incarnation of Jesus Christ)
Myst.Mag. -- Erklaerung ueber das Erste Buch Mosis, 1623 (Exegesis of the first book of
Moses)
Princ. -- Tafel der Drey Principen, 1619 (Chart of the three principles)