laszlo tengelyiblessed.”^51 Even the divine “spark in soul”^52 mentioned by Eckhart is
something intellectual; it is the germ of thought, the idea which occurs
to me and which it is not in my power to bring about arbitrarily.
However, Henry sees the core of Eckhart’s intellectual mysticism in
something else. Eckhart says that “it is the essence of the Father to
engender the Son and the essence of the Son that I should be born in
him and after him [... ].”^53 It is in the idea of this chain of generation
that Henry discovers the core of Eckhart’s intellectual mysticism. It is
this idea around which the whole analysis of Eckhart’s thought in
L’essence de la manifestation is centered.^54
The same chain of generation is the main object of the considerations
that, thirty years later, are brought together in the book C’est moi la
vérité.^55 The philosophy of Christianity that is expounded in this work
is based mainly on an interpretation of the gospel of John and not on
Eckhart’s works. But Henry remains faithful to the ideas developed,
for the first time, in the analysis that was dedicated to Eckhart’s
thought in L’essence de la manifestation.
It is his phenomenology of life that serves as the basic clue to the
interpretation of Christianity. Henry says: “The relationship between
Life and the living is the central theme of Christianity.”^56 It would be
highly misleading to interpret this relationship between Life and the
living as a kind of ontological difference, in the Heideggerian sense of
the word. For, according to Henry, the metaphysical concept of being
is “to be eliminated, without much ado, from the analysis of life.”^57
- Ibid., 199: “Nicht davon bin ich selig, daß Gott gut ist. [... ] Davon allein bin. Ibid., 199: “Nicht davon bin ich selig, daß Gott gut ist. [... ] Davon allein bin
ich selig, daß Gott vernünftig ist und ich dies erkenne.” These ideas are are close
to those expounded by Eckehart in his quaestio “Utrum in Deo sit idem esse et
intelligere.” (See Meister Eckehart, Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke, ed. by or-. by or-
der of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Stuttgart 1936ff, Bd. V, 44.) - Meister Eckehart,. Meister Eckehart, Deutsche Predigten und Traktate, 315f; cf. 215.
- Ibid., 270. Cf. 258: “Er gebiert seinen eingeborenen Sohn in das Höchste der. Ibid., 270. Cf. 258: “Er gebiert seinen eingeborenen Sohn in das Höchste der
Seele. Im gleichen Zuge, da er seinen eingeborenen Sohn in mich gebiert, gebäre
ich ihn zurück in den Vater.” - Henry,. Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, 415.
- Henry,. Henry, C’est moi la vérité, op. cit., 69.
- Ibid.. Ibid.
- Henry,. Henry, C’est moi la vérité, 74.