Jakob Böhme: The Tragedy of Free­dom and the Curse of the Law

The fol­low­ing text is the first study of a two-​part mono­graph writ­ten by Nikolai Berdy­aev¹, the former Marx­ist mil­it­ant turned auto­di­dact and Chris­tian exist­en­tial­ist, and was pub­lished in the journal Put’ in Feb­raury 1930. It seems to have been writ­ten as a tan­gen­tial reac­tion to a read­ing of Koyré’s La Philo­sophie de Jacob Boehme, which Bedy­aev reviewed in 1929. While Berdyaev’s con­cerns appear to be primar­ily con­fes­sional — he places Boehme’s mix of Luther­an­ism and mys­ti­cism with his own East­ern Church-​tinged exist­en­tial­ism on the same side against the author­it­ari­an­ism of Rome — the width and open­ness of his read­ing mani­fests itself in his assent­ing embrace of the Ungrund, that noth­ing con­sidered as a pure unground­ing which is argu­ably Boehme’s most crit­ical con­tri­bu­tion to philo­sophy. With the Ungrund, might we not say that in Boehme we have a pre-​Socratic cos­mo­lo­gist plucked from Mile­tus and dropped in the C16th Cen­tury on the banks of the Oder River?

It is this noth­ing which gen­er­ates a tragedy in God Him­self, and in so doing gen­er­ates in the divine justice the tragedy of its own undo­ing in actu­al­ity. Every thing, from the God­head down, is com­pre­hen­ded as enclos­ing within it already the seed of its undo­ing — Boehme reads Adam as being first both man and woman, and sees the cre­ation of Eve from Adam not only as a reduc­tion of woman before Adam, but as a reduc­tion of man before Adam, for the remain­ing Adam is deprived of his prior femin­ity. Like­wise God’s justice in grant­ing the first couple the fruits of the nat­ural state of grace must grants the free­dom which neg­ates grace, con­sti­tut­ing that moment when divine justice divides itself into a staid, accursed law that ban­ishes the sin­ners, and a lov­ing free­dom forever opposed to it. 

We have thus passed from the equi­vo­c­ity of the just par­ti­cip­at­ing in uni­vocal justice, to the sin­gu­lar case of the Man-​God as love, to the syn­thesis of the order of justice and the lov­ing con­nec­tion in God’s liv­ing justice, to the inher­ence of tra­gic self-​annihilation in God’s liv­ing justice.

The fol­low­ing text is a trans­la­tion from the Ger­man by Fr.S.Jonas, which is pub­licly and read­ily avail­able via open access sources.

“Im Wasser lebt der Fisch, die Pflan­zen in der Erden,
Der Vogel in der Luft, die Sonn im Firm­a­ment,
Der Sala­man­der muss mit Feur erhal­ten wer­den:
Und Gottes Herz ist Jakob Boehmens Element”.

[“In water lives the fish, the plant in the ground,
The bird in the sky, the sun in the firm­a­ment,
The sala­man­der must with fire be sus­tained,
And God’s Heart is Jacob Boehme’s ele­ment”.]
Angelus Silesius

I.Jacob Boehme has to be termed the greatest of Chris­tian gnostics. The word gnosis I employ here not in the sense of the her­es­ies of the first cen­tur­ies of Chris­tian­ity,² but in the sense of know­ledge basic to rev­el­a­tion and deal­ing not with con­cepts, but with sym­bols and myths; con­tem­plat­ive know­ledge, and not dis­curs­ive know­ledge. This is also a reli­gious philo­sophy or theo­sophy. Char­ac­ter­istic for J. Boehme is that he had a great sim­pli­city of heart, a child-​like pur­ity of soul. There­fore before death he could exclaim: “Nun fahre ich in’s Para­deis” {“Now I jour­ney on into Para­dise”}. He was not learned, not book­ish, not schooled a man, but rather a simple crafts­man, a shoe­maker. He belonged to the type of the wise-​seers from amongst the people. He did not know Aris­totle, he did not know Pseudo-​Dionysios the Areo­pa­gite, he did not know the Medi­eval Schol­asti­cism and mys­ti­cism. In him it is impossible, just as it is for the lar­ger part of Chris­tian mys­tics, to dis­cern any dir­ect influ­ences of Neo-​Platonism. He found his susten­ance first of all in the Bible³ and bey­ond this he read Paracelsus, Sebast. Franck, Wei­gel, Schwenck­feld. He lived within the atmo­sphere of the Ger­man mystico-​theosophic cur­rents of his time. Boehme was not a philo­sopher in the aca­demic school sense of this word, he was first of all a theo­soph­ist, a vis­ion­ary and myth-​creator, but his influ­ence on Ger­man philo­sophy was enorm­ous. His think­ing was not by cal­cu­lated and clear con­cepts, but by sym­bols and myths. He was con­vinced, that Chris­tian­ity had become dis­tor­ted by the learned and by the theo­lo­gians, by the popes and the car­din­als. Boehme by faith-​confession was a Lutheran and he died with the final unc­tion of a pas­tor. But the Lutheran clergy vexed and har­assed him, and for­bade him to pub­lish his works. This is a phe­nomenon typ­ical to all faith-​confessions. And just like with the greater part of mys­tics and theo­soph­ists, he was supra-​confessional. It is pos­sible to dis­cern in him strong Cath­olic ele­ments, des­pite his extreme hos­til­ity to pap­ism. The ori­gin from which the know­ledge of Boehme derived — is a very com­plex prob­lem. This prob­lem involves the pos­sib­il­ity of a per­sonal gnostic rev­el­a­tion and enlight­en­ing, by a spe­cial cog­nit­ive cha­r­ism. At present they tend to think, that Boehme was more widely read, than earlier was thought, but cer­tainly least of all can the teach­ings of Boehme be explained by bor­row­ings and influ­ences (an explan­a­tion unbe­com­ing for such an ori­ginal and remark­able thinker). Eck­hardt was a man learned and book­ish, he knew Aris­totle, Pseudo-​Dionysios the Areo­pa­gite, Thomas Aqui­nas, the Medi­eval Schol­asti­cism and mys­ti­cism. Boehme how­ever was self-​made, and with him undoubtedly were primal intu­itions. Boehme him­self says about the sources of his cog­ni­tion: “Ich brauche ihrer Art und Weise und ihrer Formeln nicht, weil ich es von ihnen nicht gel­ernt habe; ich habe einen andern Lehrmeister, und der ist die ganze Natur. Von dieser gan­zen Natur mit ihrer instehenden Geburt habe ich meine Philo­sophie, Astro­lo­gie und Theo­lo­gie studirt und gel­ernt, und nicht von oder durch Menschen” {“I use not their art and wis­dom and their for­mu­las, since from them I have learned noth­ing; I have an other Master-​Teacher, and this is the whole of nature. From this whole of nature with innate birth I have stud­ied and learned my philo­sophy, astro­logy and theo­logy, and noth­ing from or through man”}.⁴ There is here a sense of the Renais­sance reac­tion against the Schol­astics and a reori­ent­a­tion towards nature itself. Moreover, Boehme was con­vinced, that his know­ing was not by his own human powers, but with the help of the Holy Spirit. “In meinen eigenen Kraeften bin ich so ein blinder Mensch, als irgend einer ist, und ver­mag nichts, aber im Geiste Gottes siehet mein einge­borner Geist durch Alles, aber nicht immer behar­r­lich; son­dern wenn der Geist der Liebe Gottes durch meinen Geist durch­bricht, als­dann ist die anim­al­is­che Geburt und die Got­theit ein Wesen, eine Begreif­lich­keit und ein Licht” {“In mine own abil­ity I am as blind a man, as is any­one, and am cap­able of noth­ing, but in the Spirit of God through­out all stands my inborn spirit, but not always unwaver­ingly; but when the Spirit of the love of God is focused through my spirit, then is the creaturely birth and the God­head one essence, one under­stand­ing and one light”}.⁵ Sophia assists him in the per­cep­tion of the very mys­tery of God. He believes, that God “wird dich zum lieben Kinde anneh­men und dir ein neu Kleid der edeln Jung­frauen Sophiae anziehen, und einen Siegel­ring (Mys­terii Magni) an deine Hand des Gemueths stecken; und in dem­sel­ben Kleide (der neuen Wiederge­burt) hast du allein Macht, von der ewi­gen Geburt Gottes zu reden” {“wilt adopt thee as a beloved child and clothe thee in the new garb of the nobly vir­ginal Sophia, and a signet-​ring (Mys­terii Magni) upon thine hand of mind wilt set; and in the self­same garb (the new birth-​anew) hast thou alone the power, to speak from God’s eternal birth”}.⁶

In con­trast to the major­ity of mys­tics, Boehme writes not about his own soul nor about his own spir­itual path, nor about what happened with him, but rather what has tran­spired with God, with the world and with man. This is a fea­ture dis­tin­guish­ing mys­tical theo­sophy from pure mys­ti­cism per se. The mys­ti­cism of Boehme belongs to the gnostic type. But Boehme per­ceives God and the world through man, his know­ledge issues forth from the sub­ject, and not from the object, des­pite the pre­dom­in­ance in him of nature-​philosophy and cos­mo­logy. The vis­ible world is a reflec­tion of the invis­ible world. “Und die sicht­bare Welt ist eine Offen­bar­ung der innern geist­lichen Welt, aus dem ewi­gen Lichte und aus der ewi­gen Fin­stern­iss, aus dem geist­lichen Gewirke; und ist ein Gegen­wurf der Ewigkeit, mit dem sich die Ewigkeit hat sicht­bar gemacht” {“And the vis­ible world is a mani­fest­a­tion of the inner spir­itual world, from the eternal light and the eternal dark­ness, from the spir­itual work­ing; and it is an oppos­i­tion of etern­ity, which etern­ity itself hath made vis­ible”}.⁷ Heaven reveals itself within man. “Ich bin auch nicht in den Him­mel gestie­gen und habe alle Werke und Gescho­epfe Gottes gese­hen, son­dern der­selbe Him­mel ist in meinem Geiste offen­baret, dass ich im Geist erkenne die Werke und Gescho­epfe Gottes” {“I how­ever have not climbed up to Heaven so as to have seen all the works and creatures of God, but the self­same Heaven is revealed in my spirit, so that I in spirit per­view the works and creatures of God”}.⁸ For Boehme, the nat­ural phys­ical ele­ments are essen­tially the same in com­mon with the ele­ments of soul. He sees in nature like­wise that which is in spirit. Man — is a micro­theos and a micro­cos­mos. Heaven and hell are within the soul of man. And it from thence only that there is pos­sible the cog­ni­tion of God and the world. The unseen spir­itual world is the found­a­tional basis of the vis­ible mater­ial world. And God can only be found in the depths of one’s own heart. Divine wis­dom is not to be sought for in the academies and books. The world-​view of Boehme is sym­bolic. All the vis­ible world is but a sym­bol of the inner world. “Die ganze aeussere sicht­bare Welt mit all ihrem Wesen ist eine Bezeich­nung oder Figur der inneren geist­lichen Welt; alles was im Inneren ist, und wie es in der Wirkung ist, also hats auch seinen Charak­ter aeusser­lich” {“The whole external vis­ible world with all its essence is a sign or fig­ure of the inner spir­itual world; all what is in the inner, and how it is in effect, also indeed has its char­ac­ter extern­ally”}.⁹ Phys­ical traits sig­nify the spir­itual ones. The pre­face to the greatest work of Boehme, the “Mys­terium mag­num”, begins with the asser­tion, that the vis­ible world — is a sym­bol of the invis­ible spir­itual world. “Denn die sicht­baren empfind­lichen Dinge sind ein Wesen des Unsicht­baren; von dem Unsicht­lichen, Unbe­greif­lichen ist kom­men das Sicht­bare, Begreif­liche” {“The vis­ible and sens­ible things are an essence of the invis­ible; from the unsee­able and incom­pre­hens­ible are come the see­able, the under­stand­able”}.¹⁰ The world is a sym­bol of God: “diese Welt ist ein Gleich­n­iss nach Gottes Wesen, und ist Gott in einem irdis­chen Gleich­n­iss offen­bar” {“This world is in like­ness to God’s essence, and God is mani­fest in the earthly like­ness”}.¹¹ The cog­ni­tion of God is a birth of God in the soul. And such a cog­ni­tion is pos­sible only through the illu­min­a­tion of the soul by the Spirit of God. Boehme quite dis­tinctly com­pre­hends the lim­it­a­tions of human cog­ni­tion, and he speaks about the fool­ish­ness of mere human wis­dom. But together with this, he pos­sesses a very sub­lime con­cep­tion con­cern­ing cog­nit­ive know­ledge. The cog­nit­ive know­ledge of God — is a duty of man, and for this he was cre­ated. Boehme — is a sym­bol­ist, but he is not an ideal­ist in the sense of the Ger­man Ideal­ism of the XIX Cen­tury. He — is a real­ist. He has not lost that liv­ing vital con­nec­tion with real being, he has not trapped him­self into an abstract world begot­ten of thought, a world of sub­ject­ive exper­i­ences. The con­tem­pla­tion of Boehme — is realistico-​symbolic. The cog­nit­ive know­ing of the spir­itual world was for him a dwell­ing within the spir­itual world, it was of the very life within him. Being for him was not trans­formed into an object, set oppos­ite the sub­ject. Cog­ni­tion tran­spires within being itself, it is an event within being.

The gnosis of Boehme was exper­i­en­tial and from life, it arose from the tor­ment over the fate of man and the world. Boehme had a child-​like pure, good and com­pas­sion­ate soul. But his feel­ing for worldly life was aus­there, not sen­ti­mental. His fun­da­mental intu­ition of being was of an intu­ition of fire. In this he was akin to Heraklei­tos. He had an extraordin­ar­ily acute and strong sense of evil in the life of the world. And there­fore he sees a struggle of oppos­ing prin­ciples, a struggle of light and dark­ness. As regards his sens­ing of the power of evil and of the struggle of God with the devil, of light and dark­ness, he was nigh close to Reform­a­tion sources, to the exper­i­ence of Luther.¹² He senses God not only as love, but also as anger, wrath. He senses within God a poignant and harsh qual­ity. Herein the phys­ical qual­it­ies sig­nify also the spir­itual qual­it­ies. He sees within the very Divin­ity a dark nature, an irra­tional abyss. As regards his feel­ing of life, Boehme stands already at the threshold of mod­ern times. He begins, hav­ing his roots still within the Medi­eval, and a mys­tical real­ism is a Medi­eval trait in him. But in him already there storms the blood of the man of the Reform­a­tion and the Renais­sance. With him there is a Renais­sance ori­ent­a­tion towards cos­mic life, towards nature, and the self-​consciousness of man becomes far higher, than that of the Medi­eval. As regards the dynam­ism of his world-​concept, his interest in the gen­esis and estab­lish­ing of order, his sense of the struggle of opposed prin­ciples, the idea of free­dom fun­da­mental to him, Boehme was a man of mod­ern times. The world is no longer still con­ceived of by him, as an etern­ally forever static order, as a rigid hier­arch­ical sys­tem. World life is a struggle, an estab­lish­ing of order, a fiery dynamic pro­cess. This is nowise sim­ilar to the world-​concept of Thomas Aqui­nas and Dante. Quite more pro­foundly than the people of the Middle Ages, Boehme pondered over the prob­lem of the ori­gin of evil, over the prob­lem of theodicy. He was very much tor­men­ted by the ques­tion, how God could have cre­ated the world, yet fore­see­ing the evil and suf­fer­ing. In the face of the evil and suf­fer­ing of world life, the anger and wrath of the Father, he sought sal­va­tion in the heart of the Son, of Jesus. There was a moment, when it seemed to Boehme, that God had with­drawn from the evil world and he seeks God close at hand. Koyre says quite accur­ately, that Boehme star­ted out with tor­ment over the prob­lem of evil and he sought sal­va­tion first of all, and thereupon know­ledge.¹³ How is one to con­ceive of evil in the face of the Abso­lute­ness of the Divin­ity? How is one to be saved from evil and from the anger, the wrath of the Divin­ity, such as is no longer dis­cerned in the Son, as Love? Boehme has affin­ity with the gnostics of old in his tor­ment over the prob­lem of evil. But his res­ol­u­tion is dis­tinct from the merely gnostic by its immeas­ur­ably more Chris­tian char­ac­ter. In any case, Boehme belonged to that pro­found select group of people, who are pained by the evil and tor­ment of world life. Boehme was the first in the his­tory of mod­ern thought to make a dis­tinc­tion, which will there­after play an enorm­ous role in Ger­man Idealism, — everything can be dis­cerned only through the other, through oppos­i­tion. Light can­not be dis­cerned without dark­ness, good without evil, the spirit without the oppos­i­tion of matter.

II.Boehme wants to decide the ques­tion, which has dis­quieted many a philo­sopher: how is it pos­sible to make the trans­ition from God to the world, from the one to the many, from etern­ity to time? But he fash­ioned him­self an even more auda­cious ques­tion: how did the Divine Trin­ity come about, how from the Divine Noth­ing, how from the Abso­lute did there become pos­sible the cre­ation of the world, how became mani­fest the Cre­ator, how did the Per­son become mani­fest in God? The Abso­lute of apo­phatic theo­logy and meta­phys­ics can­not be as such the Cre­ator of the world. God — the Cre­ator, as regards kata­phatic theo­logy, is cor­rel­at­ive to the cre­ation, is cor­rel­at­ive with man. And such­like it was there already in Eck­hardt.¹⁴ Er wird aber entweder fuer sich selbst, abso­lute, betrachtet, ohne alle Kreaturen, wie er in seiner ver­borgenen Ein­igkeit ist, oder respectu creat­urarum, wie er sich haelt und erzeigt in der Offen­bar­ung mit seiner Kreatur. Abso­lute, allein und fuer sich selbst, ohne alle Kreatur, ist und bleibt Gott per­son­los, zeit­los, staette­los, wirkun­glos, wil­len­los, affektlos und also ist er weder Vater noch Sohn noch hei­li­ger Geist, er ist die Ewigkeit sel­ber ohne Zeit, er schwebt und wohnt in sich sel­ber an jedem Ort, er wirkt nichts, will auch nichts, begehrt auch nichts. Denn was sollte er wirken, begehren oder wollen? Ist er doch mit seiner seli­gen Ruhe und Ewigkiet das vollkom­mene All, es ist ihm alles geg­en­waer­tig und nichts zukuen­ftig noch ver­gan­gen, darum begehrt er nichts, darum hofft er nichts, er besitzt alle Dinge in sich selbst, und ist keines Dinges beduerftig. […] Aber respekt­ive d.i. in, mit und durch die Kreatur wird er per­soen­lich, wirkend, wollend, begehrend, nimmt Affekte an sich, oder laesst sich unser­thal­ben Per­sonen und Affekte zus­chreiben. Da wird er zum Vater und wird zum Sohne und ist der Sohn sel­ber, er wird zum hl. Geiste und ist sel­ber der hl. Geist, er will, wirkt und schafft alle Dinge und ist alle Dinge, er ist aller Wesen Wesen, aller Lebendi­gen Leben, aller Lichter Licht, aller Weisen Weisheit, aller Ver­moe­genden Ver­moe­gen” {“God in Him­self is one and has no name. […] He will how­ever either have to be con­sidered for Him­self an abso­lute, apart from all creatures, as He is in His hid­den one­ness, or respectu creat­urarum, as He is and mani­fests Him­self in reveal­ing Him­self with His creature. Abso­lutely, alone and but for Him­self, without any creature, is and remains God such as is per­son­less, time­less, state­less, inact­ive, without will or affect, and is also neither Father nor Son nor Holy Spirit, He is Him­self etern­ity without time, He is present and abides in Him­self in every place, He works noth­ing, like­wise wills noth­ing, like­wise desires noth­ing. For then, what is He sup­posed to work, to desire or will? He is indeed in His bliss­ful repose and etern­ity the per­fect All, all is in the present for Him and there is noth­ing future nor of the trans­it­ory past, there­fore He desires noth­ing, there­fore He in hope expects noth­ing, He sus­tains all things in Him­self, and is need­ful for His things. But respect­ive, i.e. in, with and through the creature He is as Per­son, act­ive, will­ing, desir­ing, He assumes upon Him­self affect, or lets it be ascribed to Him in semb­lance to us of Per­son and affect. Therein He will become the Father, and the Son and is the Son Him­self, and the Spirit and is Him­self the Spirit, He wills, forms and cre­ates all things and is all things, He is at the essence of all essence, the life of everything alive, the light of all alight, the wis­dom of everything pro­found, the capa­city of everything pos­sible”}. “Deutsche Froem­mig­keit, Stim­men deutscher Gottes­fre­unde”. Ver­legt bei Diederichs 1917, p. 183. ] An invest­ig­a­tion of Boehme’s teach­ing con­cern­ing the concept of the Trin­ity does not at present enter into my task, and the theme of my study here is rather more lim­ited. The for­mu­la­tions of Boehme in this regard are not always dis­tinct with exactitude nor dog­mat­ic­ally sat­is­fact­ory. But his vir­tue is in this, that he sees every­where in the world and in man the Trin­it­arian prin­ciple, a reflec­tion of the Divine Trin­ity. The traditional-​type theo­logy has always been vexed with this, that Boehme taught about a theo­gonic pro­cess, about a birth within God, about a dynamic stir­ring within God. His under­stand­ing of God was to the highest degree dynamic. Chris­tian theo­lo­gical sys­tems, how­ever, have worked out their teach­ings about God, employ­ing cat­egor­ies of thought from Greek philo­sophy. Thus, the teach­ing about God, as pure act, com­pris­ing within Him no sort of poten­ti­al­ity, was con­struc­ted wholly upon Aris­totle. The teach­ing about the unstir­ring, self-​sufficient, static God of Chris­tian theo­logy was taken not from the Bible, not from the Chris­tian Rev­el­a­tion, but from Par­men­ides, Plato, Aris­totle. Within it was reflec­ted the static aspect from Greek onto­logy. An unstir­ring God, God as pure act, is God — as a concept, and not God — as life. The pre­dom­in­ant theo­lo­gical doc­trine deprives God of inner life, denies any sort of pro­cess within God, makes Him equi­val­ent to an unstir­ring stone. And this idea ulti­mately is idol­at­rous. Not such is the God of the Bible, the God of Rev­el­a­tion. He is full of inner life and drama, in Him there is dynamic stir­ring. There is a tra­gic aspect within God that is both Bib­lical and myth­o­lo­gical, though too non-​theological an under­stand­ing of God. God, under­go­ing the tor­ment and suf­fer­ings of the Cross, God, offer­ing the sac­ri­fice of love — is a God dynamic, and not static. Bl. Augustine in a cer­tain sense also admit­ted of dynam­ism in God. L. Bloy defined God, as a lonely and mis­un­der­stood suf­ferer, and in this he was more cor­rect, than Thomas Aqui­nas. The tre­mend­ous sig­ni­fic­ance of Boehme is in this, that after the dom­in­ance of Greek philo­sophy and Medi­eval Schol­asti­cism with their static concept of God, he then intro­duces a dynamic prin­ciple into the under­stand­ing of God, i.e. he sees an inner life within God, the tra­gic aspect char­ac­ter­istic of all life. And with Boehme it was bound up with this, that on the one hand he immersed him­self in the Bible and med­it­ated upon it, free from the cat­egor­ies of Greek thought, yet on the other hand he car­ried over into his con­tem­pla­tion of God an exper­i­ence about the evil in world life and about the con­tra­dic­tions rend­ing the world, about the struggle of light and dark­ness, of the sweet and the bit­ter, of love and anger. Boehme was of the mod­ern type of soul, which stood face to face afront the prob­lem of evil, unable to still yet humbly bow and hold back through a con­scious­ness of its own sin­ful­ness. He boldly wanted to gain insight into the ori­gin and mean­ing of evil. In this he was a gnostic. He saw a dark prin­ciple within the primal sources of being, deeper than being itself. He was com­pelled to admit of a dark prin­ciple within the Divin­ity itself, and that there is some pos­it­ive mean­ing to the very exist­ence of evil, which so tor­men­ted him. But he does not fall into a Manichaean-​gnostic dual­ism, into a dual­ism of gods. Without evil, good can­not be known. Through evil, the good is dis­cerned. As regards the char­ac­ter of his thought con­cern­ing Divine mat­ters Boehme is no Neo-​Platonist, as were the major­ity of Chris­tian mys­tics. Boehme like­wise was not at all a mon­ist, and he does not at all teach about eman­a­tion. Every­where for him it is a mat­ter of will and con­tra­dic­tion. The moral sense of evil in Luther was trans­formed in Boehme into the meta­phys­ical. The meta­phys­ics of Boehme is vol­un­tar­istic, and not intel­lec­tu­al­istic, as was the Greek and Medi­eval meta­phys­ics. The vol­un­tar­ism of Boehme is a new prin­ciple, intro­duced by him into philo­sophy, and Ger­man philo­sophy would tend to develope it along fur­ther. It is only Boehme’s vol­un­tar­ism also that has rendered pos­sible a philo­sophy of free­dom. The whole of Boehme is sat­ur­ated with the magic of will, which at its primal-​basis is still dark and irra­tional. Boehme to the very end is ser­i­ously con­cerned with the prob­lem of evil and he approaches it neither as the ped­agogue nor as the mor­al­ist, nor from the point of view of tend­ing to infants. Being for him is a fiery cur­rent. And this fire in the dark­ness — is both cold and scorch­ing: “ein jedes Leben ein Feuer ist” {“every life is a fire”}.¹⁵ The will is fire. The primal-​basis of being is a raven­ous and hungry will. In response to it issues forth light and love. The poten­ti­al­ity of dark­ness lies in the very depths of being, in the Divin­ity itself.¹⁶ It is bound up with meonic freedom.

The mys­ter­i­ous teach­ing of Boehme about the Ungrund, about the abyss, without found­a­tion, dark and irra­tional, prior to being, is an attempt to provide and answer to the basic ques­tion of all ques­tions, the ques­tion con­cern­ing the ori­gin of the world and of the arising of evil. The whole teach­ing of Boehme about the Ungrund is so inter­woven with the teach­ing con­cern­ing free­dom, that it is impossible to sep­ar­ate them, for this is all part and par­cel of the same teach­ing. And I am inclined to inter­pret the Ungrund, as a prim­or­dial meonic free­dom, inde­term­in­ate even by God.¹⁷ We tend to see that the teach­ing of Boehme con­cern­ing the Ungrund is not dis­tin­guished by any clar­ity of pre­ci­sion, such as is char­ac­ter­istic to a concept. But such a demand would be improper in approach­ing it, there can­not be such a pre­ci­sion in concept con­cern­ing the Ungrund and being, this is an area situ­ated at the very lim­its of rational con­cepts. In what regard do the teach­ings of Boehme come nigh to that of the tra­di­tional rational theo­logy, which has the desire to know noth­ing cor­res­pond­ing to the Ungrund? I have always ten­ded to think, that the theodicy, worked out by the pre­vail­ing sys­tems of rational theo­logy, only but trans­forms the rela­tion­ship between God and the world into a com­edy, into a mere play of God with Him­self, and it reflects upon the ancient slavery of man, his being crushed down into cower­ing fear. This — is an onto­logy of sin. Boehme has no desire to con­ceive of the mys­tery of the world-​creation, but as of a tragedy, a tragedy not only of man, but also of God. The only thing that saves the rational kata­phatic theo­logy is this, that at a cer­tain moment it is trans­formed into an apo­phatic theo­logy and then asserts, that we stand facing a mys­tery unfathom­able and unap­proach­able, before which we have to bow. But the kata­phatic theo­logy too late recourses to the mys­tery, as to its sole sal­va­tion and only way out, after it has already ration­al­ised everything so much so, that it has become impossible to breathe. This theo­logy both goes too far in the ration­al­isa­tion of Divine mys­ter­ies and too early on, it pro­claims an inter­dict for know­ledge, it asserts agnosti­cism. In this it is dis­tinct from theo­sophy, which both more admits the irra­tion­al­ity of Divine mat­ters and per­mits more the pos­sib­il­ity of an end­less move­ment in the cog­ni­tion of these mys­ter­ies, but a cog­ni­tion not through con­cepts. Theo­logy how­ever oper­ates primar­ily through con­cepts, espe­cially the Cath­olic school theo­logy, so beau­ti­fully worked out. I term it a com­edy, this fol­low­ing con­cep­tion from the kata­phatic rational theo­logy. God is per­fect and unstir­ring, hav­ing no need of any­thing, and as self-​sufficing, all-​powerful, omni­scient and all-​good He cre­ated the world and man for His own glor­i­fic­a­tion and for the good of the cre­ation. The act of the world-​creation was neither evoked by nor answered any sort of need in God, it was the product purely of free chance, it nowise added up to any­thing more for the Divine being and nowise enriched it. God endowed His creature, man, with his fatal free­dom, and sees in the free­dom the wor­thi­ness of His cre­ation and a like­ness to Him­self. Man how­ever made bad use of his free­dom, he rose up in revolt against his Cre­ator, he fell away from God and in his fall he dragged down after him the whole of cre­ation. Man, hav­ing trans­gressed the will of God, fell under a curse and the power of the law. The whole of cre­ation groans and weeps. Such was the first act. In the second act begins the Redemp­tion and there tran­spires the Incarn­a­tion of God for the sal­va­tion of the creature. The image of the Cre­ator is replaced by that of the Saviour. But it is remark­able, that this whole cos­mo­logy and anthro­po­logy is con­struc­ted upon the prin­ciple of a pure mono­the­ism, without any sort of rela­tion­ship to Christ or to the rev­el­a­tion of the Mos­tHoly Trin­ity. This is a dual­istic the­ism, know­ing noth­ing about the aspect of the Trin­ity within the Deity, know­ing only the mon­archic teach­ing about God, i.e. a teach­ing non-​Christian. The com­edy or play of God with Him­self here involves also this, that God, hav­ing endowed man with free­dom, in His Omni­science knew also all the con­sequences of this free­dom — sin, evil, worldly tor­ment and suf­fer­ing, the eternal per­ish­ing and the eternal tor­ments in hell of an inde­term­in­able, and evid­ently, enorm­ous num­ber of beings, cre­ated by Him for bliss. Man is rendered an insig­ni­fic­ant plaything, innately hav­ing received free­dom, but together with this there is imposed upon him an immense respons­ib­il­ity. He is great of stature only in his fall­ing. For God everything tran­spires within etern­ity and in the act of world-​creation, so that in etern­ity are pre­destined both the tem­poral and the eternal tor­ments. This inev­it­ably leads to the teach­ing about the pre­des­tin­a­tion of some to sal­va­tion, for oth­ers how­ever to eternal per­di­tion, a teach­ing, to which Bl. Augustine had already inclined and which Calvin took to its con­clu­sion. God in thus hav­ing cre­ated man, pre­destined him to eternal per­di­tion, since He knows the con­sequences of free­dom, He knows, what a man will choose. A man has received his free­dom from God, he does not pos­sess it of him­self and this free­dom is wholly set within the grip of God, wholly determ­ined by Him, i.e. ulti­mately, it is fic­ti­tious. God awaits a response from the creature to His call, so that the creature should love God and dwell in a godly life, but ulti­mately it is that God is await­ing an answer from Him­self, He plays Him­self a game, since He Him­self endows the free­dom and He knows Him­self the con­sequences of this free­dom, for Him it is clearly appar­ent. The prob­lem of Ivan Kara­mazov is pos­ited at greater depth and car­ries over into etern­ity. The mat­ter involves not merely the tears of a child in the tem­poral earthly life, but about the tor­ments both tem­poral and eternal of an enorm­ous quant­ity of liv­ing beings, hav­ing received the fatal gift of free­dom from God, know­ing, what this gift sig­ni­fies and to what it will lead. The soteri­ology of the tra­di­tional theo­lo­gical sys­tems can read­ily be inter­preted, as an unseemly cor­rec­tion by God of a mis­take cre­ated by Him and assum­ing the form of a crim­inal penal pro­cess. The rational kata­phatic theo­logy, in its cos­mo­logy and anthro­po­logy hav­ing for­got­ten about God in Trin­ity, hav­ing for­got­ten about Christ, about the God of Love and Sac­ri­fice and hav­ing releg­ated the mys­tery of the Chris­tian Rev­el­a­tion to the part con­cern­ing Redemp­tion, and not con­cern­ing the world-​creation, can­not as such rise about this Divine Com­edy and only therein but builds a fic­ti­tious theodicy. The theo­lo­gical teach­ing about the free­dom of the will bears a ped­ago­gical, moral-​juridical char­ac­ter and does not pen­et­rate down into the primal found­a­tions of the mys­tery of free­dom. All that is neces­sary is that there should be someone to pun­ish. And in such a sort of out­look, the apo­phatic and the kata­phatic get all hope­lessly jumbled together. J. Boehme was one of the few bold enough to rise above this rational kata­phatic theo­logy and to per­ceive the mys­tery of the world-​creation, as a tragedy, and not as a com­edy. He teaches about a pro­cess not only cos­mogonic and anthro­po­gonic, but also con­cern­ing a theo­gonic pro­cess. But the theo­gony does not at all sig­nify, that God has a begin­ning, that He arises within time, it does not mean, that He comes about to be within the world pro­cess, as with Fichte or Hegel, it sig­ni­fies, that the inner eternal life of God reveals itself, as a dynamic pro­cess, as a tragedy within etern­ity, as a struggle with the dark­ness of non-​being. The teach­ing about the Ungrund and free­dom is also a bold attempt to apper­ceive the world-​creation from the inner life of the Divin­ity. The world-​creation bears a rela­tion­ship to the inner life of the Divine Trin­ity, and can­not be for It some­thing com­pletely external. The prin­ciple of evil thus acquires an actual ser­i­ous­ness and tra­gic aspect. The cos­mogony and anthro­po­gony of Boehme is per­vaded by the Chris­tian Rev­el­a­tion, it does remain some­thing Old Test­a­ment, but it is within the New Test­a­ment light, in the light of Christ. Boehme teaches about a ser­i­ous “Quall [Qual] des Abgrundes”,¹⁸ about the tor­ment in the dark abyss, which the light of Christ has to conquer.

III.The teach­ing of Boehme about the Ungrund was not all imme­di­ately worked out, and was as yet not there in the “Aurora”. It was chiefly revealed in the “De sig­na­tura Rerum” and in the “Mys­terium mag­num”. It answers the need of Boehme to pen­et­rate the mys­tery of free­dom, the ori­gin of evil, the struggle of dark­ness and light. In Chapter III of the “De sig­na­tura Rerum”, which is entitled “Vom grossen Mys­terio aller Wesen” {“Of the Great Mys­tery of All Being”}, Boehme says: “Aus­ser der Natur ist Gott ein Mys­terium, ver­stehet in dem Nichts; denn aus­ser der Natur ist das Nichts, das ist ein Auge der Ewigkeit, ein ungru­end­lich Auge, das in nichts stehet oder siehet, denn es ist der Ungrund; und dasselbe Auge ist ein Wille, ver­stehet ein Sehnen nach der Offen­bar­ung, das Nichts zu finden” {“For out of nature is God a Mys­terium, i.e. the Noth­ing; for from out of nature is the Noth­ing, which is an eye of etern­ity, a ground­less eye, which stands nowhere nor sees, for it is the Ungrund and the self­same eye is a will, i.e. a long­ing for mani­fest­a­tion, to dis­cern the Noth­ing”}.¹⁹ The Ungrund thus is the Noth­ing, the ground­less eye of etern­ity, yet together with this it is will, without found­a­tion, unfathom­able and inde­term­in­ate will. But this — is a Noth­ing, which is “ein Hun­ger zum Etwas” {“an hun­ger to be some­thing”}.²⁰ And together with this the Ungrund is free­dom.²¹ Within the dark­ness of the Ungrund there is ablaze a fire and this is free­dom, a free­dom meonic with poten­tial. Accord­ing to Boehme, free­dom is con­trary to nature, but nature has issued forth from free­dom. Free­dom is a semb­lance of the Noth­ing, but from it issues some­thing. The hun­ger of free­dom, of the ground­less will to some­thing has to be sat­is­fied: “das Nichts macht sich in seiner Lust aus der Freiheit in der Fin­stern­iss des Todes offen­bar, denn das Nichts will nicht ein Nichts sein, und kann nicht ein Nichts sein” {“The Noth­ing loves to make itself mani­fest from out of free­dom in the deathly dark­ness, for then the Noth­ing wills not to be the Noth­ing, and can­not be the Noth­ing”}.²² The free­dom of the Ungrund is neither light, nor dark­ness, neither good, nor evil. Free­dom lies within the dark­ness and thirsts for the light. And free­dom is the cause of light. “Die Freiheit ist und stehet in der Fin­stern­iss, und gegen der fin­stern Begierde nach des Lichts Begierde, sie ergre­ifet mit dem ewi­gen Wil­len die Fin­stern­iss; und die Fin­stern­iss gre­ifet nach dem Lichte der Freiheit und kann es nicht erreichen, denn sie schleusst sich mit Begierde sel­ber in sich zu, und macht sich in sich sel­ber zur Fin­stern­iss” {“Free­dom exists and is set within the dark­ness, and over against the dark desire is still yet the desire for light, it seizes the dark­ness with the eternal will; and the dark­ness aspires after the light of free­dom and can­not attain it, for then it passes with desire over into itself, and attains in itself but to the dark­ness”}.²³ Boehme apo­phat­ic­ally and as an anti­nomy describes the mys­tery, tran­spir­ing in the depths of being, at that depth, which is con­tigu­ous with the prim­or­dial Noth­ing. In the dark­ness there is kindled a fire and a glim­mer of light, the Noth­ing comes to be some­thing, the ground­less free­dom gives rise to nature. And two pro­cesses occur: “Die Freiheit […] ist des Lichts Ursache, und die Impres­sion der Begierde ist der Fin­stern­iss und der pein­lichen Quaal Ursache. So ver­stehet nun in diesen zwei ewige Anfaenge, als zwei Prin­cipia: eines in der Freiheit im Lichte, das andre in der Impres­sion in der Pein und Quaal der Fin­stern­iss; ein jedes in sich sel­ber wohnend”{“Freedom […] is the cause of the light. And the impres­sion made of the desire is the cause of dark­ness and pain­ful tor­ment. So there arises now in this two eternal points of depar­ture, as two prin­ciples: one in free­dom in the light, the other in the impres­sion made in the pain and tor­ment of the dark­ness; ; each liv­ing in itself”}.²⁴ Free­dom, as the Noth­ing, as meonic, pos­sesses in itself no sub­stan­tial essence.²⁵ Boehme was per­haps the first in the his­tory of human thought to have seen, that at the basis of being and prior to being lies a ground­less free­dom, the pas­sion­ate desire of the Noth­ing to become some­thing, the dark­ness, within which would blaze the fire and light, i.e. he was the ori­gin­ator of an unique meta­phys­ical vol­un­tar­ism, unknown to Medi­eval and ancient thought.²⁶ Will, i.e. free­dom, is at the ori­gin of everything. But Boehme thinks it is so because the con­jec­tured Ungrund, the ground­less will lies within the depths of the Divin­ity, and prior to the Divin­ity. The Ungrund is also the Divin­ity of apo­phatic theo­logy and is together with this an abyss, a free Noth­ing deeper than God and out­side God. In God there is a nature, a prin­ciple dis­tinct from It. The Primal-​Divinity, the Divine Noth­ing — is on the other side of good and evil, of light and dark­ness. The Divine Ungrund — is some­how prior to the arising within etern­ity of the Divine Trin­ity. God arises, real­ises Him­self from out of the Divine Noth­ing. This is a path of thought about God akin to that, whereupon Meister Eck­hardt makes a dis­tinc­tion between the God­head (Got­theit) and God (Gott). God, as the Cre­ator of the world and of man, cor­res­ponds with the cre­ation, He arises from the depths of the God­head, the unfathom­able Noth­ing. This is an idea that lies deep down within Ger­man mys­ti­cism. Such a path of think­ing about God inev­it­ably involves an apo­phatic theo­logy. Everything, that Boehme says con­cern­ing the Divine Ungrund, relates to the apo­phatic, the neg­at­ive theo­logy, and not to the kata­phatic pos­it­ive theo­logy. The Noth­ing is deeper and more primieval than any­thing that is, the dark­ness²⁷ is deeper and more prim­or­dial than light, free­dom is more prim­or­dial and deeper than any nature. The God of kata­phatic theo­logy is already some­thing and He as such sig­ni­fies a think­ing about a second-​level aspect: “und der Grund der­selben Tinc­tur ist die goet­t­liche Weisheit; und der Grund der Weisheit ist die Dreiheit der ungru­end­lichen Got­theit, und der Grund der Dreiheit ist der ein­ige uner­forsch­liche Wille, und des Wil­lens Grund ist das Nichts” {“And the ground of the self­same tinc­ture is the Godly wis­dom, and the ground of the Wis­dom is the Trin­ity of the ungroun­ded God­head, and the ground of the Trin­ity is the one unfathom­able Will, and the ground of the Will is the Noth­ing”}.(Ital­ics mine. N.B.)²⁸ This also is a theo­gonic pro­cess, a pro­cess of the birth­ing of God within etern­ity, within eternal mys­tery, which is described in accord with the method of apo­phatic theo­logy. And this there­fore is all the less heretical, than it would seem to the exclus­ive adher­ents of the kata­phatic, i.e. ration­al­ising theo­logy. The pon­der­ing of Boehme lies deeper than all the second-​tier ration­al­ising kata­phat­ics. Boehme opens out a path from the eternal found­a­tion for nature, from the free will of the Ungrund, i.e. the ungroun­ded­ness without found­a­tion, which is the nat­ural ground of the soul.²⁹ Nature always is sec­ond­ary and deriv­at­ive in aspect. Nature is not the will, is not free­dom. Free­dom is uncre­ated. “Wenn ich betrachte, was Gott ist, so sage ich: Er ist das Eine gegen der Kreatur, als ein ewig Nichts; er hat weder Grund, Anfang noch Staette; und besitzet nicht, als nur sich sel­ber: er ist der Wille des Ungrundes, er ist in sich sel­ber nur Eines: er bedarf keinen Raum noch Ort: er gebaeret von Ewigkeit in Ewigkeit sich sel­ber in sich: er ist keinem Dinge gleich oder aehn­lich, und hat keinen son­der­lichen Ort, da er wohne: die ewige Weisheit oder Ver­stand ist seine Wohne: er ist der Wille der Weisheit, die Weisheit ist seine Offen­bar­ung” {“When I pon­der, what God is, I then say: He is the One in con­trast to the creature, as an eternal Noth­ing; He has neither a ground, a begin­ning nor state; and is of naught, save only of Him­self: He is the Will of the Ungrund, He is in Him­self only One, He occu­pies no space nor place: from etern­ity in etern­ity in Him­self He comes to be: He is like or sim­ilar to no thing, and hath no par­tic­u­lar place, which He inhab­its: the eternal Wis­dom or Intel­li­gib­il­ity is His hab­it­a­tion: He is the Will of the Wis­dom, the Wis­dom is of His mani­fest­a­tion”}.³⁰ God comes about to be every­where and always, He is both the found­a­tional ground and the groundlessness.

The Ungrund must­needs first of all be under­stood as free­dom, a free­dom in the dark­ness. “Darum so hat sich der ewige freie Wille in Fin­stern­iss, Pein und Quaal, sowohl auch durch die Fin­stern­iss in Feuer und Lichte, und in ein Freuden­reich einge­fuehret, auf dass das Nichts in Etwas erkannt werde, und dass es ein Spiel habe in seinem Gegen­wil­len, dass ihm der freie Wille des Ungrundes im Grunde offen­bar sei, denn ohne Boeses und Gutes moechte kein Grund sein” {“So there­fore in the dark­ness doth the eternal free will have itself the pain and tor­ment, just also as with the fire and light through the dark­ness, and it passes over into a king­dom of joy, so that the Noth­ing can be known as some­thing, and that it should have a play­ing out in its oppos­i­tion of wills, so that by it the free will of the Ungrund should have a ground upon which to mani­fest itself, for without the evil and the good it would have no ground upon which to be”}.³¹ Free­dom is rooted in the Noth­ing, in the meonic, it is also the Ungrund, “Der freie Wille ist aus keinem Anfange, auch aus keinem Grunde in nichts gefas­set, oder durch etwas gefor­met… Sein rechter Urstand ist im Nichts” {“The free will is from no sort of ori­gin, like­wise upon no sort of ground is it con­sti­tuted, nor through any­thing is it formed… Its proper primal set­ting is in the Noth­ing”}.³² The free will has within it both good and evil, both love and wrath. “Darum hat der freie Wille sein eigen Gericht zum Guten oder Boesen in sich, er hat Gottes Liebe und Zorn in sich” {“The free will there­fore hath its own court for the good and the evil within it, it has its proper path within it, it hath God’s love and wrath within it”}.³³ The free will like­wise pos­sesses within it both light and dark­ness. The free will in God is of the Ungrund within God, of the Noth­ing within Him. Boehme provides a pro­found inter­pret­a­tion to the truth about the free­dom of God, which like­wise the tra­di­tional Chris­tian theo­logy admits of. He teaches about a free­dom of God, deeper than that of Dun Scotus. “Der ewige goet­t­liche Ver­stand ist eine freier Wille, nicht von Etwas oder durch Etwas entstanden, er ist selbst eigener Sitz und wohnet einig und allein in sich sel­ber, uner­grif­fen von etwas, denn aus­ser und vor ihm ist nichts, und dasselbe Nichts ist einig, und ist ihm doch auch sel­ber als ein Nichts. Er ist ein ein­i­ger Wille des Ungrundes, und ist weder nahe noch ferne, weder hoch noch niedrig, son­dern er ist Alles, und doch als ein Nichts” {“The eternal Divine mind is a free will, not hav­ing arisen from any­thing nor through any­thing, it is itself its own seat and abides at one and alone in itself, ungrasped by any­thing, for then beside it and before it is noth­ing, and the self­same Noth­ing is at one, and is moreover itself as the Noth­ing. It is the one Will of the Ungrund, and is neither near nor far, neither high nor low, but is rather the All, and moreover as the Noth­ing”}.³⁴ For Boehme chaos lies at the root of nature, chaos, i.e. free­dom, the Ungrund, will, an irra­tional prin­ciple. In the Divin­ity itself there is a ground­less will, i.e. an irra­tional prin­ciple. Dark­ness and free­dom for Boehme are always cor­rel­at­ive and con­joined. God Him­self is also free­dom and free­dom is at the begin­ning of all things: “darum sagen wir recht, es sei Gottes, und die Freiheit (welche den Wil­len hat) sei Gott sel­ber; denn es ist Ewigkeit, und nichts weit­ers. […] Erst­lich ist die ewige Freiheit, die hat den Wil­len, und ist sel­ber der Wille” {“We prop­erly there­fore say, such would be God, and the Free­dom (which hath the Will) would be the self­same God; there­fore it is etern­ity, and noth­ing fur­ther. […] Firstly is the eternal Free­dom, which hath the Will, and is the self­same Will”}.³⁵ Boehme was appar­ently the first in the his­tory of human thought to have pos­ited free­dom at the primal found­a­tion of being, deeper and more primary than all being, deeper and more primary than God Him­self. And this would bear enorm­ous con­sequences for the his­tory of thought. Such an under­stand­ing of the primacy of free­dom would have induced ter­ror in both the Greek philo­soph­ers and the Medi­eval Schol­astics. And this would open up the pos­sib­il­ity of a com­pletely dif­fer­ent theodicy and anthro­podicy. The primal mys­tery of being is a kind­ling up of light within the dark free­dom, in the Noth­ing is also the solid firm­ness of the world from this dark free­dom. Boehme speaks won­drously about this in the “Psy­cho­lo­gia vera”: “denn in der Fin­stern­iss ist der Blitz, und in der Freiheit das Licht mit der Majestaet. Und ist dieses nur das Scheiden, dass […] die Fin­stern­iss mater­i­al­isch macht, da doch auch kein Wesen einer Begreif­lich­keit ist; son­dern fin­ster Geist und Kraft, eine Erfuel­lung der Freiheit in sich sel­ber, ver­stehe in Begehren, und nicht aus­ser: denn aus­ser ist die Freiheit” {“Then in the dark­ness is the flash of light­ning, and in the free­dom is the light with majesty. And this is only the point of depar­ture, so that […] the dark­ness be made mater­ial, while how­ever therein is no man­ner of intel­li­gib­il­ity; rather only a dark spirit and power, a full­ness of free­dom in itself, i.e. in desire, and noth­ing else: for the else is but free­dom”}.³⁶ There are two wills — the one within the fire, the other within the light.³⁷ Fire and light — are basic sym­bols for Boehme. “Denn die Fin­stern­iss hat kalt Feuer, so lange bis es die Angst erreicht, dann entzuen­det sich’s in Hitze” {“For the dark­ness pos­sesses a cold fire, to the extent of attain­ing anguish, then it sparks itself forth into heat”}.³⁸ The fire — is the ori­gin of everything, without fire there would be noth­ing, only the Ungrund would be: “und waere Alles ein Nichts und Ungrund ohne Feuer” {“And without the fire all would be a Noth­ing and the Ungrund”}.³⁹ The pas­sage over from non-​being to being is accom­plished through the blaz­ing up of fire from out of free­dom. Within etern­ity there is the primeval will of the Ungrund, which is out­side of nature and prior to nature. Fichte and Hegel, Schopen­hauer and Hart­mann pro­ceeded from this point, although they de-​Christianised Boehme. Ger­man ideal­ist meta­phys­ics passes in trans­ition dir­ectly from the Ungrund, from the uncon­scious, from the primary act of free­dom, passing over to the world pro­cess, and not to the Divine Trin­ity, as with Boehme. The primal mys­tery of being accord­ing to Boehme con­sists in this, that the Noth­ing seeks to become some­thing. “Der Ungrund ist ein ewig Nichts, und machet aber einen ewi­gen Anfang, als eine Sucht; denn das Nichts ist eine Sucht nach Etwas: und da doch auch Nichts ist, das Etwas gebe; son­dern die Sucht ist sel­ber das Geben dessen, das doch auch nichts ist als bloss eine begehrende Sucht” {“The Ungrund is an eternal Noth­ing, and it opens upwards to an eternal begin­ning, as with a pas­sion; for then the Noth­ing is a pas­sion for some­thing: and therein yet moreover it is the Noth­ing, giv­ing forth into some­thing; for the pas­sion is itself the fruition of such, and the yet still Noth­ing is a bare desir­ing pas­sion”}.⁴⁰ The teach­ing of Boehme con­cern­ing free­dom is not some psy­cho­lo­gical or eth­ical teach­ing about the free­dom of the will, but is rather a meta­phys­ical teach­ing about the primal basis of being. Free­dom for him is not a ground­ing of moral respons­ib­il­ity upon man nor a reg­u­la­tion of the rela­tion­ship of man to God and neigh­bour, but rather an explan­a­tion of the gen­esis of being and together with this the gen­esis of evil, as a prob­lem onto­lo­gical and cosmological.

The evil has happened from a bad inner-​imaging, i.e. from the ima­gin­a­tion. The magic effect of the ima­gin­a­tion plays an enorm­ous role in the world-​view of Boehme. Through it the world was made and there occurred the down­fall of the devil into the world. The fall of the cre­ation for Boehme is a mat­ter not of the human, but of the angelic world, wherein the human world arises later and has to set right the deed wrought by the fallen angel. The fall of Luci­fer is defined by Boehme thus: “Denn Luzifer ging aus der Ruhe seiner Hier­archie aus, in die ewige Unruhe” {“Then Luci­fer went from out of the tran­quil repose of his hier­archy, out into an eternal unrest”}.⁴¹ There occurs a con­fu­sion of the hier­arch­ical centre, a trans­gres­sion of the hier­arch­ical order. And here is how Boehme describes the Fall: “Dass sich der freie Wille im Feuer­spiegel besah, was er waere, dieser Glanz machte ihn beweg­lich, dass er sich nach den Eigenschaften des Centri bewegte, welche zuhand anfin­gen zu qual­i­fi­ciren. Denn die herbe, strenge Begierde, als die erste Gestalt oder Eigenschaft, impres­sete sich, und erweckte den Stachel und die Ang­st­be­gierde: also ueber­schat­tete dieser schoene Stern sein Licht, und machte sein Wesen ganz herb, rauh und streng; und war seine San­fmuth und recht eng­lische Eigenschaft in ein ganz streng, rauh und fin­ster Wesen ver­wan­delt: da war es ges­chehen um den schoenen Mor­gen­stern, und wie er that, thaten auch seine Legionen: das ist sein Fall” {“Thus the free will caught sight of itself in the fire reflec­tion, what it was, and the bril­liant lumin­ance of this caused it to agit­atedly shake, so that it itself shook the unique order­ing of the centre, which had ini­tially star­ted the pro­cess of qual­i­fic­a­tion. Then the severe bit­ter desire, as a first form or qual­ity, made its impres­sion, and aroused hurt and anguished desire: therein this beau­ti­ful star over­shad­owed its light, and made its nature to become quite embittered, rough and severe; and its gen­tle­ness and rather angelic qual­ity was trans­formed into total sever­ity, a rough and dark nature: so the bright morn­ing star was lost, and how he acted, so acted his legions: that is his Fall”}.⁴² The Fall through sin occurred from a dark desire, from a lust, from a bad inner ima­gin­a­tion, from the dark magic play­ing out of the will.⁴³ Boehme tends to describe the Fall myth­o­lo­gic­ally, never in clear con­cepts. The devil exper­i­ences a fiery tor­ment in the dark­ness because of his own false desire (Begierde). Without Boehme’s teach­ing about the Ungrund and about free­dom, the ori­gin of the Fall and evil would be incom­pre­hens­ible. The Fall and evil for Boehme rep­res­ents a cos­mic cata­strophe, a moment in the world cre­ation, a cos­mogonic and anthro­po­gonic pro­cess, the res­ult of the struggle of con­trary qual­it­ies, of dark­ness and of light, of rage and of love. The cata­strophes are prior to the arising of our world, prior to our aeon was many another aeon. Evil pos­sesses also a pos­it­ive sig­ni­fic­ance in the arising of the cos­mos and of man. Evil is a shad­ow­ing of light, and light pre­sup­poses the exist­ence of dark­ness. Light, the good and love for their reveal­ing have need of a con­trary prin­ciple, in oppos­i­tion. God Him­self pos­sesses two vis­ages, a vis­age of love and a vis­age of wrath, a bright and a dark vis­age. “Denn der hei­li­gen Welt Gott und der fin­stern Welt Gott sind nicht zween Goet­ter: es ist ein ein­i­ger Gott; er ist sel­ber alles Wesen, er ist Boeses und Gutes, Him­mel und Hoelle, Licht und Fin­stern­iss, Ewigkeit und Zeit, Anfang, und Ende: wo seine Liebe in einem Wesen ver­bor­gen ist, allda ist sein Zorn offen­bar” {“For the holy world God and the dark world God are not two Gods; there is only one God; He is Him­self all being, He is the bad and the good, heaven and hell, light and dark­ness, etern­ity and time, the begin­ning, and the end: wherein lies con­cealed His love in a being is all therein His wrath revealed”}.⁴⁴ And fur­ther on: “Die Kraft im Lichte ist Gottes Lie­befeuer, und die Kraft in der Fin­stern­iss ist Gottes Zorn­feuer, und ist doch nur ein einig Feuer, thei­let sich aber in zwei Prin­cipia, auf dass eines im andern offen­bar werde: denn die Flamme des Zornes ist die Offen­bar­ung der grossen — Liebe; in der Fin­stern­iss wird das Licht erkannt, sonst waere es ihm nicht offen­bar” {“The power in the light is God’s love-​fire, and the power in the dark­ness is God’s wrath-​fire, and is but yet only one self­same fire, it divides itself over into two prin­ciples, in order that the one be revealed in the other: for the flame of wrath is the rev­el­a­tion of great — love: in the dark­ness will be known the light, else­wise would noth­ing be revealed to it”}.⁴⁵ With Boehme there was a teach­ing of genius in this, that the love of God amidst the dark­ness is trans­formed into wrath, thus per­ceived. Boehme thinks always in oppos­i­tions, in anti­theses, in anti­nom­ies. All life is fire, but the fire has a two­fold aspect: “der ewi­gen Leben zwei in zwei­er­lei Quaal sind, und ein jedes stehet in seinem Feuer. Eines bren­net in der Liebe im Freuden­reich; das andere im Zorne, im Grimme und Wehe, und seine Materia ist Hof­fart, Geiz, Neid, Zorn, seine Quaal ver­gleichet sich einem Schwefel-​Geist: denn Auf­steigen der Hof­fart im Geiz, Neid und Zorn macht zusam­men einen Schwe­fel, darinnen das Feuer bren­net, und sich immer mit dieser Materia entzuen­det” {“The two eternal lives are in a two­fold ten­sion, and each one is set within its own fire. The one burns within love in a state of joy; the other within wrath, in fury and woe, and its mater­ial is pride, greed, envy, anger. Its tor­ment makes of it a sulphurous-​spirit: then the arousal of pride, in greed, envy and wrath mix alto­gether that sul­phur, wherein the fire doth burn, and is always fired up with this mater­ial”}.⁴⁶ But Christ upon the Cross hath trans­formed the wrath into love. “Am Kreuze musste Chris­tus diesen grim­mi­gen Zorn, welcher in Adams Essenz war aufge­wacht, in sein hei­liges, himml­isches Ens trinken, und mit der grossen Liebe in goet­t­liche Freude ver­wan­deln” {“Upon the Cross Christ had to suf­fer that furi­ous wrath, which had in Adam’s essence been aroused, imbib­ing it into His holy and heav­enly Being, and with great love in godly joy trans­formed”}.⁴⁷ Boehme’s under­stand­ing of the Redemp­tion is cos­mogonic and anthro­po­gonic, a con­tinu­ation of the world creation.

Schelling, in his book, “Philo­soph­is­che Unter­suchun­gen ueber das Wesen der mensch­lichen Freiheit” {“Philo­sophic Invest­ig­a­tions Con­cern­ing the Nature of Human Free­dom”}, moves along the lines of Boehme’s ideas con­cern­ing the Ungrund and free­dom, although he does not always cor­rectly under­stand Boehme. Clearly echo­ing Boehme resound the words of Schelling: “Alle Geburt ist Geburt aus Dunkel ins Licht” {“All birth is a birth from dark­ness into light”}. The ini­tial primal cre­ation is noth­ing other, than a birth of light, as a sur­mount­ing of dark­ness. In order that there be the good from dark­ness, from a poten­tial con­di­tion that should pass over into an actual con­di­tion, free­dom is neces­sary. Being for Schelling is will. He is the first in Ger­man philo­sophy to develope Boehme’s vol­un­tar­ism. Things pos­sess their ground not in God Him­self, but in the nature of God. Evil is pos­sible only because, that in God there is that, which is not God, which is an ungroun­ded­ness in God, a dark will, i.e. the Ungrund. Nature both for Schelling, and for Boehme, is an his­tory of spirit, and for Schelling everything, which is examined within nature, within the object­ive world, leads forth through the sub­ject. The idea of pro­cess within God, of a theo­gony, is taken by Schelling from Boehme. In his “Philo­sophie der Offen­bar­ung” {“Philo­sophy of Rev­el­a­tion”}, Schelling makes an heroic effort to sur­mount Ger­man ideal­ism and break through into philo­sophic real­ism. And Boehme helps him in this.⁴⁸ Dass nun frei­lich die pos­it­ive Philo­sophie nicht Theo­soph­is­mus seyn koenne, diess liegt schon darin, dass sie eben als Philo­sophie und als Wis­senschaft bestimmt worden; indess jener sich selbst nicht Philo­sophie nennen und auf Wis­senschaft ver­zichtend aus unmit­tel­barem Schauen reden will” {“Noth­ing is known to ration­al­ism through action, i.e. to ori­gin­ate through action a free cre­ation, it knows merely the bare essen­tial con­di­tions. All fol­low it blindly modo aeterno, in an eternal i.e. blindly logical man­ner, through an imman­ent move­ment… The false ration­al­ism comes nigh close in points to theo­sophy, caught up no less than it in bare sub­stan­tial know­ledge; theo­sophy itself seeks by and by to sur­mount it, but if suc­cess­ful, it would be for naught, as clearly is seen with J. Boehme. Scarcely ever has another spirit in the glow of this bare sub­stan­tial know­ledge been so notice­able as J. Boehme; God is revealed for him as the unme­di­ated sub­stance of the world; he indeed wants a free cre­ation, a free con­di­tion of God in rela­tion to the world, but he can­not pro­duce it. Though it calls itself theo­sophy, mak­ing pre­ten­sion to be the know­ledge of God, it is rather a con­tent, which theo­sophy intro­duces into it, only still a sub­stan­tial move­ment, and it pos­tu­lates God only in the sub­stan­tial move­ment therein. Theo­sophy of its nature is nowise less his­tor­ical than ration­al­ism. But the God of a genu­ine his­tor­ical and pos­it­ive philo­sophy moves noth­ing, He acts. The sub­stan­tial move­ment, in which ration­al­ism is involved, pro­ceeds from a neg­at­ive Prius, a first prin­ciple, i.e. from an unfathom­able such that it is the first in being to have move­ment; his­tor­ical philo­sophy how­ever pro­ceeds from the pos­it­ive, i.e. from the fathom­able Prius, a first prin­ciple, such that it is not the first in being to have move­ment, yet also only with a per­fect free­dom, without some­how through itself being obliged to be, a set­ting of being, indeed not uniquely unme­di­ated, without the hav­ing from its being a dif­fer­ent being, in which this is on the con­trary denied or sus­pen­ded as legit­im­ate, since in this case only the dir­ectly imme­di­ate is legit­im­ate. God has to be effort­lessly in His own being. He should not have to make the effort to be, should not Him­self have to be allowed being, should not Him­self be born into His being, as J. Boehme tends to express it, with all the whole con­tent of the utmost know­ing, i.e. theo­sophy, with even the birth of the Divine Being, speak­ing about a birth of God, as some sort of an actual theo­gony. Pos­it­ive philo­sophy cer­tainly can­not grant this now of theo­sophy, the reason for this is that it is philo­sophy and know­ledge; for this can­not call itself philo­sophy, because it renounces of know­ledge and speaks of an unme­di­ated view”}. (Ibid, p. 124 – 126). Schelling him­self might be quite the more guilty than Boehme in a tend­ency towards nat­ur­al­ism and ration­al­ism. The intu­itions of Schelling, bear­ing primar­ily a philo­sophic char­ac­ter, would be thus less primary, than the intu­itions of Boehme. But Schelling is subtle in his remark, that theo­soph­ism is not his­tor­ical and not feli­cit­ous for the under­stand­ing of his­tory. ] Schelling attemp­ted to sur­mount the pan­the­istic mon­ism of Ger­man ideal­ist philo­sophy. He was aware, that pan­the­ism is incom­pat­ible with free­dom. The pan­the­istic denial of evil leads to a denial of free­dom. The fun­da­mental basis of evil, accord­ing to Schelling — is pre­dic­ated to the utmost. Evil is the ungroun­ded­ness of exist­ence, i.e. bound up with the Ungrund, with poten­tial free­dom. All this involves Boehme’s motifs. But closer to Boehme and more in accord with him was Fr. Baader, who to the extreme felt poisoned by the ideal­ist rift from being and like Schelling became immersed in Boehme. Fr. Baader was Cath­olic, but a Cath­olic very free and very in the spirit of East­ern Ortho­doxy. Baader with a remark­able sim­pli­city and clar­ity finds jus­ti­fied Boehme’s dynamic under­stand­ing of God, with the admit­ting of a gen­esis within the Divine life. If there were no gen­esis within the self-​consciousness of God, then the Divine self-​consciousness would be bereft both of life and of pro­cess.⁴⁹ A dynamic under­stand­ing of God means also, that God for us is alive, has an inner life, that within the Divine life is the dram­at­ism com­mon to all life. This is per­haps incon­sist­ent with Thomas Aqui­nas and with the Schol­astic theo­logy, but it is con­sist­ent with the Bib­lical Rev­el­a­tion. Baader indeed provides a remark­able defin­i­tion of evil, as a sick­ness, a dis­tor­tion of the hier­arch­ical order, a dis­place­ment of the centre of being, after which being passes over into non-​being.

IVChar­ac­ter­istic to Boehme’s world-​view is that he hated the idea of pre­des­tin­a­tion. And in this he was not a man in the Prot­est­ant spirit.⁵⁰ He wanted to defend the good­ness of God and the free­dom of man, both alike under­mined by the teach­ing about pre­des­tin­a­tion. He was pre­pared to sac­ri­fice the almigh­ti­ness and omni­science of God and admit, that God not fore­see the con­sequences of free­dom. He asserts, that God did not fore­see the down­fall of angels. This prob­lem deeply tor­men­ted him and in this tor­ment was the moral sig­ni­fic­ance of his cre­at­ive path. But Boehme herein does not always say one and the same thing, and his thoughts tend to be anti­nomic and even con­tra­dict­ory. Char­ac­ter­istic to him was an anti­nomic atti­tude towards evil. And sim­ilar to him in this is our Dosto­evsky. The evil, so tor­ment­ive for Boehme, finds its explan­a­tion in this, that at the primal basis of being lies the Ungrund, the dark, irra­tional, meonic free­dom, a poten­ti­al­ity determ­ined by noth­ing. The dark free­dom is unpen­et­rable for God, He does not fore­see its res­ults and is not answer­able for evil as regards its ori­gin, it is not cre­ated by God. The teach­ing about the Ungrund removes from God the respons­ib­il­ity for evil, which the almigh­ti­ness and omni­science of God evokes a sense of. Yet amidst all this Boehme sees the Ungrund in God Him­self, within God there is the dark prin­ciple, there is the struggle of light and dark­ness. It might be said, that the dark prin­ciple (dark here does not mean evil) is in the Got­theit, in the God­head, but not in Gott, not in God. Boehme to the extreme sets in oppos­i­tion the Per­son of the Son, as love, in con­trast to the Per­son of the Father, as wrath. In the Son already there is no sort of dark prin­ciple, He is all entirely light, love, good. But thereupon the Father is trans­formed into the Divin­ity of apo­phatic theo­logy. And herein are to be sensed gnostic motifs. But the evil, which so tor­ments Boehme, has for him also a pos­it­ive mis­sion. The Divine light can reveal itself only through the oppos­i­tion of the other, the dark­ness set oppos­ite. This is a con­di­tion of every actu­al­isa­tion, of every gen­esis. The evil is not only a neg­at­ive prin­ciple, but also pos­it­ive. Yet amidst this, the evil remains evil and has to burn itself out, has to be conquered. Every­where in nature there is the struggle of oppos­ing prin­ciples, and not calm, not an eternal order. And this struggle of oppos­ing prin­ciples pos­sesses also a pos­it­ive sig­ni­fic­ance. Only through it there is revealed the supreme light, good, love. Being is a com­bin­a­tion of con­trast­ing oppos­ites, of the yes and the no.⁵¹ The yes is impossible without the no. And the whole of being and the Divin­ity itself — is in a fiery move­ment. But this does not mean, as the Ger­man ideal­ist meta­phys­ics at the begin­ning XIX Cen­tury ten­ded to assert it, that God is merely becom­ing, merely the end of the world pro­cess. Hell does exist for Boehme, but in the hell of Boehme, just as in the hell of Sweden­borg, they do not suf­fer. With Boehme already there was that new man­ner of soul, which could not say like Thomas Aqui­nas, that the right­eous one in para­dise takes delight at con­tem­plat­ing the tor­ment of the sin­ner in hell. The thoughts of Boehme con­cern­ing free­dom and evil remain anti­nomic. His thoughts, begot­ten of a basic intu­ition of the Ungrund, were not logic­ally har­mo­ni­ous and con­sist­ent. When the Ger­man ideal­ist meta­phys­ics attemp­ted to har­mon­ise them and take them to their logical con­clu­sion, within an higher con­scious­ness, it failed to sur­mount the tra­gic anti­nomy of evil and free­dom, it sought to annul, it dulled down into a prim­or­dial mon­ism the acute and burn­ing aware­ness of evil and free­dom. Boehme’s teach­ing about the Ungrund explains as deriv­ing from free­dom the ori­gin of evil, the down­fall of Luci­fer, draw­ing after him in the Fall the whole of cre­ation, yet together with this the Ungrund car­ries over into God Him­self and explains a gen­esis, the dynamic pro­cess within the Divine life. Herein becomes pos­sible a break with extreme mon­ism and extreme dual­ism, alike mis­taken from the per­spect­ive of the Chris­tian rev­el­a­tion. The think­ing of Boehme is all as it were on a slender edge and con­stantly sub­ject to danger from the oppos­ite sides, but his fun­da­mental intu­ition is a mat­ter of genius, organic and fruit­ful. The teach­ing con­cern­ing the Ungrund and free­dom run counter to Greek ration­al­ism, with which the Medi­eval Schol­asti­cism was infec­ted and from which even the Patristic thought was not free. Boehme has to be acknow­ledged as the founder of the philo­sophy of free­dom, which is genu­inely a Chris­tian philo­sophy.⁵² The non-​tragic and ration­al­istic optim­ism of Thomas Aqui­nas gives way to a tra­gic philo­sophy of free­dom. Free­dom — is the source of tragedy.

Hegel attemp­ted to apply an optim­istic char­ac­ter to the very prin­ciple of con­tra­dic­tion and the struggle of oppos­ing prin­ciples. He trans­ferred life over into the concept and made the concept itself to be the source of dram­at­ism and pas­sion. After Thomas Aqui­nas, Hegel rep­res­ents a second genius-​like flar­ing up of ration­al­ism. But at the found­a­tional basis of Hegel’s philo­sophy lies an irra­tional prin­ciple. The Divin­ity for Hegel is a prim­or­di­ally uncon­scious Deity, which comes to con­scious­ness only through human philo­sophy, in the philo­sophy of Hegel him­self. The irra­tional has to become ration­al­ised, within the dark­ness there has to be awakened the light. The rational per­cep­tion of the irra­tional, lying at the ground of being, is a fun­da­mental and gran­di­ose theme of Ger­man meta­phys­ics. Ger­man philo­sophy is that of the meta­phys­ical north­lands. The world is not illumined nat­ur­ally and from the start by the solar light, it is plunged in dark­ness, light is obtained through a plunging into the sub­ject, from the depths of the spirit. In this lies a deep-​rooted dif­fer­ence of Ger­man thought from the Latin. Ger­man thought under­stands the reason dif­fer­ently, than does the Latin. Within the Ger­man under­stand­ing, reason stands afront the irra­tional dark­ness and has to bring light into it. In the Latin under­stand­ing, antiquity’s under­stand­ing, reason from the start illu­mines the world, like the sun, and the reason within man but reflects reason in the nature of things. The Ger­man idea how­ever comes from Boehme, from the teach­ing about the Ungrund, about free­dom, about the irra­tional prin­ciple, lodged within the depths of being. With Boehme begins a new era in the his­tory of Chris­tian thought. His influ­ence is enorm­ous, but extern­ally not so obvi­ous, act­ing moreso like an inner engraft­ing. This influ­ence is obvi­ous only in Fr. Baader and Schelling. But it is there also in Fichte, in Hegel, in Schopen­hauer.⁵³ And very strong is Boehme’s influ­ence in Roman­ti­cism and in occult cur­rents.⁵⁴ Without Boehme’s intu­itions of genius, the ration­al­ism of antiquity and Schol­astic philo­sophy, as also the ration­al­ism of mod­ern philo­sophy, of Descartes and Spinoza, count not be sur­moun­ted. Only a myth­o­lo­gic con­scious­ness could have seen an irra­tional prin­ciple within being, wherein the philo­sophic con­scious­ness had always seen but a rational prin­ciple. Boehme returns meta­phys­ics back to the sources of the myth­o­lo­gical con­scious­ness of man­kind. But his myth­o­lo­gical con­scious­ness itself is nour­ished by the well­springs of the Bib­lical Rev­el­a­tion. From Boehme comes the dynam­ism of Ger­man philo­sophy, and it might even be said, the dynam­ism of all the thought of the XIX Cen­tury. Boehme was the first to have con­ceived of the world, of life as a pas­sion­ate struggle, as move­ment, pro­cess, an eternal gen­esis. Only amidst such an intu­ition of world life could there become pos­sible the phe­nomenon of Faust, could there become pos­sible Dar­win, Marx, Niet­z­sche, already so remotely sundered from the reli­gious pon­der­ings of Boehme. The teach­ing of Boehme about the Ungrund and about free­dom makes it pos­sible to explain not only the ori­gin of evil, even though anti­nom­ic­ally, but also to explain the cre­ativ­ity of the new in world life, cre­at­ive dynam­ics. Cre­ativ­ity by its nature is a cre­ativ­ity from out of meonic free­dom, from out of noth­ing, from the Ungrund, it pre­sup­poses this unfathom­able well­spring within being, it pre­sup­poses the dark­ness, under­ly­ing the enlight­en­ing. There was an aber­ra­tion of Boehme in this, that he thought the Ungrund, the dark prin­ciple was in God Him­self, rather than see­ing the prin­ciple of free­dom in the Noth­ing, in the meonic, out­side of God. It is neces­sary to dis­tin­guish between the Divine Noth­ing and the non-​being out­side God. But the thought of Boehme is incon­du­cive to the under­stand­ing, it is some­what coarse. Boehme would not have con­sen­ted to this, that within God is the source of evil. This also is some­thing that tor­men­ted him. His thought remains anti­nomic, not sub­ject to logical explic­a­tion. But his moral will was pure, not for an instant poisoned by an inner evil. Boehme — was a pious Chris­tian, fer­vently believ­ing, and with a pure heart. His viprous wis­dom was com­bined with a sim­pli­city of heart, with faith. This must­needs always be kept in mind in mak­ing judge­ments on Boehme. Boehme was neither a pan­the­ist nor a mon­ist, nor was he a Mani­chaean. Car­ri­ere also cor­rectly says, that Boehme was neither a pan­the­ist, nor a dualist.

Boehme’s idea about the Ungrund ten­ded not only to be fur­ther developed, but also dis­tor­ted, within Ger­man philo­sophy, sim­ilar to what res­ul­ted from the well­springs of the Chris­tian rev­el­a­tion, from the Chris­tian real­ism. Ger­man meta­phys­ics thus became prone to imper­i­al­ism, to mon­ism, it taught about God, as com­ing about to be within the world pro­cess. But the vol­un­tar­ism of Boehme was very fruit­ful for philo­sophy, just as also was the teach­ing about the struggle of oppos­ing prin­ciples, of light and dark­ness, about the neces­sity of oppos­i­tion for the develope­ment of pos­it­ive prin­ciples. The meta­phys­ics of Boehme is a musical Chris­tian meta­phys­ics and in this it is in char­ac­ter for the Ger­man spirit. In this it is dis­tinct from the archi­tec­tural Chris­tian meta­phys­ics of Thomas Aqui­nas, in char­ac­ter for the Latin spirit. The Ger­man meta­phys­ics of the XIX Cen­tury attemp­ted to con­vey a musical theme into a con­cep­tual sys­tem. In this gran­di­ose scope of their pro­ject was also the cause for the break­down of their sys­tems. At present a revival of Boehme has become feas­ible. He is writ­ten about in a series of new books. He can be of help in sur­mount­ing not only the routines of Greek thought and Medi­eval Schol­asti­cism, but also that Ger­man Ideal­ism, upon which he him­self had an inner influ­ence. Just also as with Fr. Baader, Boehme for us as Rus­si­ans ought to be nearer and dearer than other thinkers of the West. By the unique traits of our spirit we are called to con­struct a philo­sophy of tragedy, and for­eign to us is the optim­istic ration­al­ism of European thought. Boehme so loved free­dom, that he saw therein the authen­tic Church, only where there is free­dom. Boehme had an influ­ence on Rus­sian mys­tical cur­rents of the late XVIII and early XIX Cen­tur­ies, but they assim­il­ated him naively and without any cre­at­ive work­ing out. He was trans­lated into the Rus­sian lan­guage and pen­et­rated right down into the seg­ments of the com­mon people, into the theo­sophy of the people, where they esteemed him as almost a father of the Church. Curi­ously, Herzen, in his “Let­ters Con­cern­ing the Study of Nature”, spoke enthu­si­ast­ic­ally about Boehme. Boehme’s influ­ence later on can be found in Vl. Solov’ev, but it was over­shad­owed by the ration­al­istic schem­at­ism. The philo­sophy of Vl. Solov’ev can­not be called a philo­sophy of free­dom or a philo­sophy of tragedy. But in the Rus­sian thought of the begin­ning XX Cen­tury those closest to Boehme were writ­ing along such­like lines. The guard­i­ans of Ortho­doxy, hav­ing an espe­cial taste for the detec­tion of her­es­ies, tend to fear the influ­ence of Boehme, as being someone non-​Orthodox, a Prot­est­ant, as well as a gnostic and theo­soph­ist. But actu­ally the whole West­ern world is non-​Orthodox, the whole of the thought of West­ern Europe is a non-​Orthodox thought. From such a point of view, indeed, it would become neces­sary to flee any involve­ment with West­ern thought and moreover struggle against it, as a tempta­tion and evil. This is a most unadul­ter­ated form of obscur­ant­ism and a return to our old empty-​headedness. The Chris­tian world in its most cre­at­ive period nour­ished itself upon the pagan thought of antiquity. And in any case Boehme was more a Chris­tian, than was Plato, who stands for high esteem with us as regards the Patristic tra­di­tion, and moreso also than Kant, who is held in high regard by many Ortho­dox theo­lo­gians, e.g. Met­ro­pol­itan Ant­onii. Boehme is very dif­fi­cult a chal­lenge for the under­stand­ing and from him can res­ult very diverse and con­trary con­clu­sions. I see the sig­ni­fic­ance of Boehme for Chris­tian philo­sophy and Chris­tian theo­sophy to be in this, that he attemp­ted by his con­tem­pla­tion to sur­mount the grip of Greek and Latin thought over the Chris­tian con­scious­ness, he immersed him­self in the primal mys­tery of life, which the thought of antiquity had avoided. Chris­tian theo­logy, and not only the Cath­olic theo­logy, is so over­grown with Greek thought, with Pla­ton­ism, Aris­totelian­ism and Stoicism, that any infringe­ments upon the routines of this thought are regarded as an infringe­ment upon the Chris­tian Rev­el­a­tion. And indeed the Greek teach­ers of the Church were learned in Greek philo­sophy, they were Pla­ton­ists and upon their think­ing lies the imprint of the lim­ited­ness of Greek ration­al­ism. This think­ing failed to resolve the prob­lem of the per­son, the prob­lem of free­dom, the prob­lem of cre­at­ive dynam­ics. Boehme not only was not an Aris­totelian, he also was not a Pla­ton­ist, and his influ­ence lies out­side the struggle between East­ern Pla­ton­ism and West­ern Aris­totelian­ism. Boehme was nigh close only to Heraklei­tos. I think, that there has to be sur­moun­ted in Chris­tian philo­sophy not only the Aris­totelian­ism, but also the Pla­ton­ism, as rep­res­ent­ing a philo­sophy static and of a repet­it­ive world, incap­able of pon­der­ing the mys­tery of free­dom and cre­ativ­ity. The teach­ing of Boehme about Sophia, to which I shall shift in the fol­low­ing étude, is not a Chris­tian Pla­ton­ism, as Rus­sian Sophi­o­logy tries to con­ceive of itself, its sense is alto­gether dif­fer­ent. Boehme’s teach­ing con­cern­ing the Ungrund and free­dom needs how­ever to be fur­ther developed regard­ing the dis­tinc­tion between the Divine abyss and Divine free­dom, in con­trast to the meonic abyss and meonic free­dom.⁵⁵ In the final inex­press­ible depths of the mys­tery this dis­tinc­tion also will dis­sip­ate, but at the threshold in approach of this mys­tery, this dis­tinc­tion ought to be made.

IZ ETIUDOV O YA. BEME. ETIUD I. UCHENIE OB UNGRUND’E I SVOBODE. Journal Put’, feb. 1930, No. 20, p. 47 – 79.

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