Dialogue between Eckhart and Ruusbroec

A certain relation between the German Dominican Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260-1328) and the Brabantine mystic Jan van Ruusbroec (1293-1381) has been suggested by many scholars. It is likely indeed that Ruusbroec, the younger one, had some knowledge about Eckhart, given the fact that, shortly after the condemnation of some of Eckhart's doctrines in 1329, a number of manuscripts with his homilies have already been reaching Brabant. >>

However, it is perhaps a vain attempt to discover any kind of evidence of Ruusbroec's acquaintance with Eckhart's doctrines, since no phrase similar to Eckhart can be found in Ruusbroec's text. Their relation should be searched for rather in the fact that both of them are dealing with some of the central issues of mysticism at that time, from each of their particular perspectives. One of those issues is related to their understanding of the sonship (filiatio) of Christ and of the Einmaligkeit (one-time-ness) of His Incarnation. Traditionally Christians gave the highest possible position to Jesus Christ, that is, the Only-begotten Son of God (filius unigenitus dei), and they believed that His incarnation happened once and for all in the history of mankind. This Christology was challenged by the heresies typical for the late Middle Ages who radically insisted on the possibility of deification through one's own nature, just as Christ was God by nature. Eckhart's peculiar exemplarism which allows the human person the possibility of becoming the same Only-begotten Son through the given conformity (conformitas) to the only exemplar of Christ's sonship, was, in a way, an attempt of reconciliation between such heretical ideas and the Church's doctrine. Nevertheless, Eckhart's understanding was eventually condemned by the Church as contradictory to the Christian faith. In contrast to Eckhart, Ruusbroec distinguishes sharply the sonship of Christ and that of Christians, yet at the same time he maintains a room for mystical union in a loving relationship between God and the human person.

On the basis of this theme, this project tries to construct a meaningful dialogue between these two authors, and to trace developments in medieval mysticism.