The Birth of the Word in the Soul

In classical trinitarian theology, the Father eternally generates the Son — the Logos, the Word — within the divine life. Eckhart takes this eternal generation and makes it the pattern for the soul's own destiny. Just as the Father speaks the Word in eternity, so the Father speaks the same Word into the ground of every soul. The birth is not metaphorical: the same event that constitutes the Trinity also constitutes the soul's union with God, when the soul is properly disposed.

Eckhart uses the image of Mary to describe the soul's dual role. To receive the Word, the soul must be virgin — empty of all self-will and creaturely attachment. To bear the Word outward into works, it must be mother. The highest spiritual life is not one or the other but both together: the soul that has received the Word in its ground must also bring it forth in love and action, transforming the world as Mary bore Christ into the world.

What makes Eckhart's preaching on the birth so radical is its insistence on the present. The birth is not something that happened in Bethlehem and that we recall; it is something that happens in the soul whenever the soul is still enough to receive it. Eckhart denies that the past event in history is more real than the present event in the ground. For him, all of time converges on an eternal now in which the birth is always occurring.

Sermons on the theme of the birth include the Christmas sermons (Sermons 1–4 in Walshe's numbering) and Sermon 101. The theme of the eternal now (nunc aeternum) is central to Eckhart's conception of how the temporal soul participates in divine eternity.