Jakob Böhme
1575-1624 · German (Görlitz, Upper Lusatia) · Mystical Theology, Christian Theosophy, Philosophy of Nature, Lutheran Spiritualism
It is in thee, and if thou canst for a while cease from all thy Thinking and willing, thou shalt heare unspeakable words of God.
Jakob Böhme (1575 – 1624) was a shoemaker of Görlitz in Upper Lusatia who had no Latin, no university and no ordination, and who wrote some of the most difficult books in the Christian tradition. Born to a farming family at Alt Seidenberg and apprenticed to a cobbler, he sought God through years of inner trouble until, as he later wrote to a friend, the gate was opened, and in a quarter of an hour he saw and knew more than years at a university could have taught him. In 1612 he wrote it down for himself in the unfinished *Aurora*. A copy reached Gregory Richter, the chief pastor of Görlitz…
Topics Jakob Böhme addresses
- the Unground and the eternal One
- God's will to self-manifestation
- contrariety as the ground of manifestation
- the seven properties of eternal nature
- harsh astringent desire
- the anguish wheel of the turning
- the fire-flash and the division of light and darkness
- the three principles
- the dark world of wrath and fire
- the light world of love
- divine Wisdom as the noble Virgin Sophia
- the mirror of wonders
- Lucifer's fall into self-will
- imagination and selfhood
- the signature of all things
- the language of nature
- Adam as masculine virgin
- the two tinctures of fire and light
- the Fall and the sleep of Adam
- the heavenly flesh of Christ
- the incarnation and the Tree of Christian Faith
- election of grace and universal salvation
- true repentance and true resignation
- regeneration and the new birth
Questions to put to Jakob Böhme
The Unground and God's Self-Manifestation
- What do you mean by the Unground — what kind of God exists before creation or nature?
- Why can't God simply know himself without bringing forth a world of contrariety?
- What is the Byss and the Abyss, and how do they relate to each other?
- How does the eternal will move from a silent nothing to the seven properties of nature?
- What did you actually see when the gate was opened in your illumination around 1600?
Wrath, Fire, and the Three Principles
- What are the three principles, and how does each one relate to the others?
- How should I understand the dark world of wrath — is it evil, or something else?
- What is the fire-flash, and why does the division of light and darkness happen there?
- If wrath and love both belong to God's eternal nature, does that put the origin of evil inside God himself?
- What is the anguish of the turning wheel, and why must God pass through it?
- How does the harsh astringent desire at the root of nature become the ground of joy rather than its opposite?
Sophia, Adam, and the Fall
- Who is the noble Virgin Sophia, and what is her relationship to the Trinity?
- What do you mean when you say Adam was created as a masculine virgin?
- How do you argue that the division into male and female is a consequence of the Fall rather than part of God's original design?
- What role does imagination play in Adam's fall — how does imagining into the outward world bring about ruin?
- What is a tincture, and why does it matter that Adam carried both the fire tincture and the light tincture before the Fall?
Incarnation, Regeneration, and the New Birth
- What did Christ restore to human nature that Adam had lost, and how does his birth from Mary accomplish that?
- What is true resignation, and why is dying to self-will the necessary first step of the new birth?
- What does it mean to live the supersensual life — what does that feel like from the inside?
- How do repentance and regeneration differ from what the church ordinarily teaches about conversion?
- Why do you say a reader must be born again before they can truly understand your writings?
Election, Babel, and the Living Temple
- How do you argue that God wills no one's damnation, given the plain words of Scripture about election and reprobation?
- What does it mean that every person carries both the line of Isaac and the line of Esau within themselves?
- Why do you call the quarrelling churches Babel, and what would a true church look like in your view?
- How can Scripture be true and authoritative if it can only be understood by the spirit that wrote it — doesn't that make every reader their own judge?
- What gives a shoemaker without Latin or university learning the right to speak on matters the clergy have studied for a lifetime?
The Signature of All Things and the Language of Nature
- What do you mean when you say every thing has its mouth to manifestation?
- How does the outward visible world of plants, metals and planets mirror the inward spiritual world of the seven properties?
- What is the signature of a thing, and how would someone actually read it?
- When you call nature the body of God, are you saying God and the world are the same thing?
- How does the alchemist's work on sulphur, mercury and salt figure the transformation of the soul?
Converse with Jakob Böhme on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Jakob Böhme's own writing, cited to the page.