1 Introduction
Boehme's Legacy in Perspective
Ariel Hessayon and Sarah Apetrei1
I
Jacob Boehme has variously been called âthe illuminated Instrument of God,â âthe prince of divine philosophers,â âthe most comprehensive, abundant and multifaceted of all mystics,â âthe greatest and most famous of all Theosophists in the world,â âthe greatest of the mystics, and the father of German philosophy,â âa giant in intelligence,â âa religious and philosophical geniusâ rarely with âequal in the worldâs history,â âthe most imaginative geniusâ of the early seventeenth centuryâindeed âone of the greatest geniuses of mankind,â and, by no less a figure than the cultural critic Walter Benjamin, âone of the greatest allegorists.â2
Writing in German from about 1600 until shortly before his death in 1624 he wasâby his first biographerâs reckoningâthe author of thirty works, several of which are extremely long. In addition, Boehmeâs extensive correspondence survives for the period from January 1618 to June 1624. A Lutheran by birth, by formative religious instruction, and steadfastly at his death, Boehmeâs major theological concerns were with the nature of creation and how it came into being, the origin and presence of evil, and the attainment of salvation through a process of inward spiritual regeneration and rebirth. Nonetheless, influenced initially by the teachings of Paracelsus and the spiritual reformers Caspar Schwenckfeld and Valentin Weigel as well as by popular alchemical and astrological texts, and then, following the clandestine circulation of his first incomplete book in manuscript, by a widening social network of friends, learned correspondents, and noble patrons, Boehme began developing certain heterodox views that were furiously denounced by a local clergyman. These included his understanding of the Trinity, which he was accused of denying through his introduction of a fourth âperson,â Sophia (symbolizing the Noble Virgin of Divine Wisdom); his explanations for the fall of Lucifer and the rebel angels (constituting a first fall preceding the second fall of humanity from paradise); Adamâs prelapsarian androgynous nature; the existence of seven qualities (dry, sweet, bitter, fire, love, sound, and corpus); and the three principles that corresponded to the dark world (God the Father), the light world (God the Son), and our temporal visible world (the Holy Spirit). Moreover, having settled and established himself as a cobbler at Görlitz in Upper Lusatia and writing against a backdrop of vibrant scientific, astronomical, and medical enquiry, damaging regional political struggles, religious polemic, apocalyptic speculation, and, from 1618, the earliest phase of the Thirty Yearsâ War, Boehme interposed himselfâignorantly and presumptuously according to his better educated criticsâin important doctrinal debates over the nature of free will and the sacraments of Baptism and the Lordâs Supper by expounding an irenic, anticlerical message. This culminated in his announcement of an impending Great Reformationâa new age of love, patience, peace, and joy.
Boehmeâs writings divided nineteenth- and twentieth-century commentators. On the one hand, he was praised as an âindependent, bold and profoundly penetrating thinker,â with an âamazing range of thought and depth of experience,â whose âmajestic symbols drawn from the Bibleâ and contemporary chemistry expressed particular doctrines of âwondrous beautyâ to produce, in the words of the existentialist philosopher Paul Tillich, âone of the most profound and strangest systems of Western thought.â3 Furthermore, this âilliterate and untrained,â âsimpleâ âpeasant shoemakerâ was regarded as âone of the giants,â âone of the most amazing phenomena in the history of mysticism.â The âgreat sweepâ of his vision, with its âimmense heights and deeps,â led to comparisons with other Christian poets, notably Dante, while âa natural genius for the transcendentâ also enabled this âtheosophistâ and âmyth-creatorâ to leave his âmark upon German philosophy.â4 On the other, even Boehmeâs admirers acknowledged that, however memorable his concepts, they were nonetheless expressed obscurely. This ânotorious opacity,â this âcoagulated cyclone of language,â which understandably deterred generations of potential readers, has made Boehme, to quote Cyril OâRegan, âone of the most difficult reads in the history of Christian thought.â5 Less generously, it was suggested that few, if any, were âable to pierce the clouds in which his meaning has been charitably presumed to lie hid.â6 The âfantastic disorderâ of his âchaotic and shapelessâ notions supposedly came from an inability to âwinnow and arrangeâ the outpourings of a heated imagination, while Boehme was also âconstantly doing violence to languageâ by impetuously attempting to âexpress the inexpressibleâ through the introduction of barbarous neologisms. Consequently, the French idealist philosopher Ămile Boutroux regarded Boehmeâs work as âa mixture of abstruse theology, alchemy, speculations on the indiscernible, and the incomprehensible, fantastic poetry and mystic effusionsâ; in short, âa dazzling chaos.â7
This tendency to polarize opinion was nothing new. As the nineteenth-century Danish theologian Hans Martensen observed, Boehme:
had to pass, not only during his lifetime, but also after his death, through honour and dishonour, good report and evil report. Many have regarded him as a visionary, and have placed his teaching in the history of human follies. In many libraries his writings are to be found under the rubric Fanatici. Others have extolled him to the skies, and have believed that they have found in him all the treasures of knowledge and all enigmas solved.8
To illustrate Martensenâs point, the day after Boehmeâs burial, one of the physicians who had attended him on his deathbed lamented the loss of âa precious, enlightened, and highly God-taughtâ man who should have been revered by his fellow citizens rather than openly reviled as âa Fanatic, Enthusiast, and Visionary.â9 Indeed, a spectrum ranging from adulation to exasperation to repulsion characterized the main reactions to Boehmeâs thoughtâeither in the original German or in Latin, Dutch, English, Welsh, French, and Russian translationsâfrom the second quarter of the seventeenthto the mid-nineteenth century.10
Thus, Pierre Poiret, a French devotee of the mystics, believed it was Boehme alone to whom God had âuncovered the foundation of nature, of spiritual as well as corporeal things, and who, with an utterly penetrating insight into matters theological or supernatural, also knew the origin of the true principles of metaphysical and pneumatic, as well as purely physical, philosophy.â In the same vein, Boehmeâs early nineteenth-century French translator Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (âle philosophe inconnuâ) urged readers to âdip courageouslyâ into his ânumerous writings, which contain . . . extraordinary and astonishing expositions of our primitive nature; of the source of evil; of the essence and laws of the universe; of the origin of gravity; of what he calls . . . the seven powers of nature; of the origin of water; . . . of the nature of the disobedience of the angels of darkness; . . . of the way of reconciliation which eternal love employed to reinstate man in his inheritance.â11 Then, there was the German Catholic philosopher Franz von Baader, who had arrived at Boehme through reading Saint-Martin and who defended Boehme from the âabsurdâ charge of reviving the âblasphemous ancient Gnostic error, which would have the Devil as the cook and seasoning, and the stimulant in God as well as in Creation.â On the contrary, insisted von Baader, Boehme should be recognized for having established more profoundly than anyone else before him or since, the fundamental teaching of a supernatural, supra-worldly, and uncreated God.12
More ambivalent was the attitude of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, an eighteenth-century German scientist who, in a remark subsequently popularized by Sigmund Freud in a book on the jokeâs relation to the unconscious, likened the prose of Boehmeâs âimmortal worksâ to particular odes in that they are âa kind of picnic, where the author provides the words (the sound) and the reader the meaning.â13 For the poet Samuel Coleridge, Boehme was âthe great German Theosopher.â Although his âdelusionsâ may have been âgrossâ and easily controverted, and although as a visionary he frequently mistook âthe dreams of his own overexcited Nerves, the phantoms and witcheries from the cauldron of his own seething Fancy, for parts or symbols of a universal Process,â as a philosopher, he surprises rather than perplexes. For according to Coleridge, the âunlearnedâ shoemaker âcontemplated Truth and the forms of Nature throâ a luminous Mist, the vaporous darkness rising from his Ignorance and accidental peculiarities of fancy and sensation, but the Light streaming into it from his inmost Soul.â14 Similarly, the nineteenth-century American essayist and Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson regarded Boehme as a poet, sage, and mystic who, âtremulous with emotion,â listened âawestruck with the gentlest humanity to the Teacherâ whose lessons he conveyed. Notwithstanding his âmystical narrowness,â âincommunicableness,â and âvague, inadequateâ propositions, Boehmeâs âexcellenceâ was merited by his âcomprehensivenessâ: âIt is his aim that is great. He will know, not one thing, but all things.â15
At the other extreme, Boehme was denounced as an âingenious madmanâ by the eighteenth-century theologian John Wesley. In his journal and correspondence, Wesley fulminated against what he deemed to be Boehmeâs unscriptural, irrational, contradictory, crude, and indigestible blending of religion with philosophy. On reading part of Boehmeâs allegorical exposition of Genesis, he spluttered, âit is most sublime nonsense; inimitable bombast; fustian not to be paralleled!â16 A German church historian agreed: those who honored Boehme as an âinspired messenger of heavenâ or admired him as a âjudicious and wise philosopherâ were âdeceived and blinded in a very high degree; for never did there reign such obscurity and confusion in the writings of any mortal, as in the miserable productions of Jacob Behmen, which exhibit a motley mixture of chemical terms, crude visions, and mystic jargon.â17 Such censure chimed with the objections of two eighteenth-century English bishops. William Warburton, bishop of Gloucester, believed that heavenly and earthly wisdom should be communicable and easily understood. Accordingly, he dismissed Boehme as an imposter, a âpretenderâ to divine inspiration, whose effusions were nothing but a âheap of unmeaning,â âunintelligible words,â âthe jargon of the spirit of infatuation .â18 Likewise, George Horne, bishop of Norwich, objected to these âstupendous reveriesâ: either Boehmeâs scheme was a ânew revelation, or an explanation of the old.â If the latter, why was it wrapped up in âmystic jargon â unheard of before in the Christian church and not given in plain âScripture language â? If the former, it was âan imposture and delusionâ since âextraordinary inspirationsâ were only to be credited if supported by miracles.19
Modern scholarship has generally focused on three complementary approaches in an effort to comprehend Boehme: the taxonomic, the genealogical, and the contextual. The first asks how we should define Boehme; the second, which intellectual and religious traditions he inherited and contributed towards; and the third, what milieu he should be situated within. As we have seen, various Protestant clergymen and church historians tended to label Boehme a heretic, fanatic, enthusiast, visionary, or impostor, discrediting his unwelcome plebeian challenge to ecclesiastical power structures and doctrinal orthodoxy by ridiculing him as an ignorant, delusional artisan venting derivative, impenetrable gibberish. By contrast, Boehmeâs followers generally revered him as a divine instrument, sanctified figure, prophet, illuminate, sincere teacher, and genius. Others, including those intrigued but frustrated by his writings, have usually classed him either a mystic, Theosopher, philosopher, or prodigy. Boehme, however, does not readily conform to a specific type. Nor are these neutral terms, because each disclosesâ albeit to different degreesâthe readerâs perspective. So it may be unhelpful to categorize Boehme as one thing or another and more useful to envisage him as an exceptional hybrid.
Similar issues arise from the second approach. Here, investigators run the risk of repeating the methodology of both heresiographers and hagiographers, who sought to damage or enhance Boehmeâs reputation by seeking precedentsâthough rarely with sufficient attention to subtle doctrinal distinctions or indeed an adequate explanation for how ideas were transmitted to and received by him. All the same, Boehmeâs concepts clearly did not originate from nothing, so it is worthwhile to briefly review these traditions and his potential sources. Writing approximately a century after the German Reformation and calling for a Great Reformation, Boehme was occasionally likened to a second Luther, and Lutheran thoughtâespecially as mediated in Görlitzâclearly had a big impact on his development. Boehme has also been positioned within a tradition of German mysticism, with roots going back to pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, which attempted to understand and describe the divine nature by emphasizing what God was not. Moreover, he has been regarded as an independently-minded successor of the spiritual reformers, notably Caspar Schwenckfeld and Valentin Weigel. Then there is Paracelsus, whose influence is undeniable. Through him and his interpreters, Boehme became acquainted with the wider alchemical tradition, while his knowledge of heliocentrism shows familiarity with astrological texts. These resonances, in conjunction with perceived pantheistic elements, have prompted suggestions that Boehme drew ultimate inspiration from an ancient theology that embraced currents of Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, and Christian adaptations of the Jewish Kabbalah. In addition, although not a staunch millenarian, Boehme expected an imminent period of great tribulation, and hence his apocalyptic thought has been compared with Joachim of Fioreâs eschatological scheme.
Despite the paucity of evidence, the third approach, namely the painstaking recovery of Boehmeâs milieu, has been instrumental in overturning enduring misconceptions. Here, biographical discoveries have supplemented and corrected the familiar, idealized portrait, while important research on the backdropâGörlitzâs lively intellectual scene; contemporary r...