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NEW BOOKS ABOUT JACOB BOEHME 1

(1926 - #316)
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(Heinrich Bornkamm. Luther und Boehme. 1925. Paul Hankamer. Jakob Boehme. Gestalt
und Gestaltung. 1924. Jacob Boehme. Gedankgabe der Stadt Goerlitz zu seinem 300
jaerigen Todesgabe. Herausgegeben von Richards Jecht. 1924.)
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Jacob Boehme -- is one of the greatest geniuses of mankind, but of geniuses little accessed,
remaining in the shadows. Only but few read him and whole eras tend to forget him. The
spiritual atmosphere now at present has begun an era favourable for a rebirth of interest in
Boehme. Moreover, in the year 1924 was the tricentennial of his death. And in Germany several
new books about Boehme appeared. A trait of Germans is the honouring of their great people.
Yet there is little that is fine written concerning Boehme. Though the books of [Emile] Boutroux
and [Werner] Elert have to be acknowledged as not bad. For long a while within modern thought
J. Boehme has tended to remain obscure and forgotten. The arising of the spiritual interest in
Boehme is connected with the names Saint-Martin and Fr. Baader. Schelling too in his final
period, the period of the Philosophie des Mythologie and the Philosophie der Offenbarung
[Philosophy of Revelation] to a remarkable degree was influenced by the spirit of J. Boehme.
Hegel acknowledges J. Boehme as an originator of the lineage of modern philosophy and holds
him in high esteem. Jacob Boehme has to be indisputably acknowledged as the greatest Christian
theosophist (employing this term not in the modern vulgar, but in its old noble sense) and the
greatest mystic of the gnostic type. But the subsurface influence of Boehme runs wider than the
gnostico-theosophic and mystical currents. His name underlies all of German philosophy, which
in its most remarkable aspects received an engrafting from his spirit. Boehme, just as with all
that are genuinely great, belongs to eternity, but in the temporal aspect he was a man of the
Reformation and the Renaissance, he belongs to the spiritual current of this epoch. Boehme's
nature-philosophy bears a Renaissance character. As regards faith-confession Boehme was a
Lutheran and before death he accepted last rites from a Lutheran pastor. But the Lutheran clergy
vexed and persecuted him during his life, and forbade him to publish his works. It is a
phenomenon characteristic to all faith-confessions. Boehme bore within himself both the positive
and the negative features of the Reformation era. But as regards his spirit he stands higher than
the various faith-confessions, he is supra-confessional, just as are the greater part of mystics.
Boehme represents quite exceptional a phenomenon: the great Christian theosophist and gnostic
was a man from the common people, a simple craftsman, a shoemaker, a man having gone
through no sort of school, not erudite, not an academic bookish man. He found nourishment first
of all in the Bible and the bits of knowledge, which is received chiefly from the people, whom he
happened to meet in life. He knew certain works of Paracelsus, another great theosophist and
nature-philosopher of the Renaissance, and he adopted for himself his alchemist-astrological
terminology. He received likewise an engrafting from the Kabbala, by what sort of paths is
unclear to us. The influence of the Kabbala tends to free one from the abstract mysticism of the
Neo-Platonist and Eckhardt type, and introduces the principle of a concrete cosmology and

anthropology. But it is in vain to seek for influences, determining the world-concept of Boehme,
-- he is a phenomenon of the first order and original. The sources of Boehme's knowledge -- are
from life, and not from books, he is foremost of all a visionary, a seer, given the gift of sight, the
contemplation of the mysteries of life -- Divine, natural and human. The problem, which the
appearance of Boehme presents, is the problem of a gnostic talentedness, of a special gift of
sight, which does not appear directly proportional to a degree of holiness, blessed by a church.
Boehme, in the guise of a Protestant, did not belong to the body of the Church, but to the soul of
the Church he certainly belonged. Here was a man, uniting within himself an extraordinary
complexion of knowledge, the wisdom of the serpent with a dove-like simplicity of heart and
righteousness of life. And moreover the appearance of Boehme presents the problem of a
Christian esotericism, of the moreso concealed knowledge of the mysteries of Christianity, the
revelation concerning revelation, as J. de Maistre tended to express it.
In the world-concept and world-perception of J. Boehme there were aspects absolutely new
both in comparison with the philosophy of antiquity and in comparison with medieval
Scholasticism. Being for him is not an external order and harmony, as it was for the thought of
antiquity, and with which Scholasticism was smothered. Being, both Divine being and cosmic
being, -- is dynamic, and not static. Boehme sees everywhere the struggle of opposing principles,
of light and darkness, of good and evil, of the sweet and the bitter. He discerns the antinomic
aspect of being, he sees tragedy within the world process. And this tragedy is lodged within the
Divinity itself. This simple craftsman, not erudite, not bookish, not smothered off by some
academic sense of tragedy, set himself the audacious task to conceive of the coming about of the
Divine Trinity from the Primal-Divinity. The Ungrund, the abyss, as the primal-fundament of
being, is a basic idea of Boehme. This indeed is a fundamental and verymost original idea of
German mysticism, influencing the whole of German philosophy. Eckhardt already makes a
distinction between the Gottheit [Godhead] and Gott [God]. German mysticism is one of the
greatest aspects in the world of spiritual life. The creative dynamics of being is caused by the
Ungrund, by the dark influxes from the primordial abyss of being, which has to have light
brought into it. Boehme thinks not by means of concepts, but by means of symbols and myths.
This always indeed represents a peculiarity of religious gnosis as distinct from pure philosophy.
And Boehme creates a theogonic myth. He admits of a process transpiring within God in
distinction from the official theology, which tends to employ the categories of thought from
antiquity, such as admit of an absolute immobility, stasis, and quietude within God. At the basis
of being for Boehme lies an irrational principle and from this transpires a dynamic process,
theogonic, cosmic and anthropogonic. The genius and originality of German thought, its
principal distinction from the thought of antiquity and Scholasticism, is bound up with Boehme's
idea. German philosophy set itself the task of a rational understanding of the irrational basis of
being. Ancient and medieval thought did not see set at the primal foundations of being a struggle
of opposing principles, it affirmed instead an ab-original solar brightness of being. In the greatest
of his works -- in the "Mysterium magnum", Boehme attempted to interpret the book of Genesis,
as a cosmogonic and anthropogonic process. Official theology has tended to remain within an
Old Testament framework in its understanding of Genesis. Boehme makes an attempt at a New
Testament understanding of the Bible, i.e. its explanation set within the spirit of the New Adam.
And particularly remarkable is not the nature-philosophy of Boehme, to which greater the
attention has been turned, but rather his anthropology, his teaching about man. His anthropology
is grounded upon Christology. And especially of genius and dazzling is his teaching about the

Androgyne. Of genius also is Boehme's teaching about Sophia, as the virginal aspect of the soul,
as the Virgin, flown off to the heavens after the SinFall, and it is more in keeping with the spirit
of Christianity than is the teaching of Vl. Solov'ev, who nonetheless also was influenced by
Boehme. In general, the whole teaching of Boehme is pervaded by a Christian pathos, at its
centre for him always stands Christ, the New Adam. The dynamism and antinomism of Boehme
bears more Christian a character, than the staticism of the Scholastics, such as was derived
wholly from the influence of Aristotle and Greek philosophy. Boehme is free and sets free from
the grip of the static thought of antiquity. For him the world is not a congealed order, not at
harmony, and he instead understands the world, as dynamism and struggle, as a tragic process, as
a fiery current. In the thinkers of antiquity he was nigh close to Herakleitos. It would be quite
erroneous to define the world-view of Boehme as some sort of pantheism. Boehme was not at all
a pantheist and he never considered God as identical with the world. One might the sooner term
him a panentheist. And it would likewise be erroneous to regard the world-view of Boehme as
naturalistic, as certain theologians tend to do, themselves being very guilty of naturalism. With
Boehme the Divinity is not abased down to nature, but rather nature is elevated to the Divinity,
and is understood, as a symbol of spirit. The Divinity does not disappear into nature and does not
become identical with it. All the natural processes, all the natural elements of fire, brimstone, all
the natural qualities of sweet and bitter are mere symbols of the spiritual world. Boehme -- is a
great symbolist, and he does not permit of the chaining down of the infinite to the finite. In his
theosophy he gets the farther on with theology, but with him it always remains inexhaustible
mystery. And the dogmas, such as are expressed within theological formulae, are not yet still the
final mystery, the ultimate depth. In the mystical gnosis of Boehme are concealed inexhaustible
riches. Much to him was revealed like a flash of lightning. And it is possible to make use of him
for opposing ends. A Christian follower and promulgator of Boehme was Fr. Baader, a Catholic
with strong sympathies for the Orthodox East. With Vl. Solov'ev it is possible to find much from
Boehme. But Boehme's ideas can be developed also along non-Christian lines, as for example
with E. Hartmann, or along a pseudo-Christian line, as for example in the anthropology of R.
Steiner. Within Boehme was already lodged the German pessimistic metaphysics, for which the
world is the offspring of a mindless and dark will. But this is a distortion of Boehme's teaching
concerning the Ungrund, in that Boehme was acutely aware of evil yet amidst this he was
conscious of the significance of freedom. Boehme, just like Nietzsche, for his purposes employs
opposing trends. This witnesses to the inner richness and variety of motifs.
Over the last three years in Germany there have appeared three new books concerning J.
Boehme -- the books of Hankamer, Bornkamm, and the jubilee anthology of Boehme's native
city -- Goerlitz, in which are printed articles by Richard Jecht and Felix Voight, chiefly of
interest as biographical materials regarding Boehme. The book of Hankamer treats Boehme in a
very modern and aesthetic fashion but provides little for understanding him at depth. Hankamer
wants to treat of and understand Boehme in context of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky,
Stefan Georg. He tends quite to stress, that the thinking of Boehme was of an artistic and sensory
contemplation and therefore not transferable into concepts. Boehme, a great artist of knowledge
and thought, as it were himself created a world. In the book of Hankamer there are isolated
nuances of thought, where the general approach to Boehme is non-religious and foreign to the
inner pathos of Boehme himself, who in any case was a Christian and who always wanted to live
and think in terms of Christ. The book has significance chiefly as symptomatic of a
contemporary modernised interest of soul towards a great mystic and gnostic of the old times.

Boehme thus becomes accessible also for people of our time. But for the study of Boehme
Hankamer provides little and in his book there is an untoward pretentiousness. The book of
Bornkamm purports to be an examination of Protestant theology, setting itself the task to
demonstrate the connection of Boehme with Luther. This theme represents, perchance, a certain
area of interest in the study of Boehme, but its exclusive absorption with this makes of it onesided an investigation. And there are indisputably strained stretches of interpretation of the
thesis, that Boehme was in spirit a Lutheran. Bornkamm sees an affinity of Boehme with Luther
first of all in this, that with Boehme there was a strange sense of evil, that he proceeds from the
dualistic struggle of light and darkness. Boehme, just as with Luther, was a voluntarist, and both
had their voluntaristic character determined by German metaphysics. In Boehme, just as in
Luther, God reveals Himself in love and in wrath. Boehme, just as with Luther, transfers the
centre of gravity of the religious life inwards and believes first of all in the spiritual Church. It is
indisputable, that Boehme was bound up with certain spiritual motifs of the Reformation. But
Boehme was not a confessional man, he was altogether untypical of Lutheranism, he was supraconfessional. There are profound differences between Boehme and Luther, upon which
Bornkamm fails to turn sufficient attention. Boehme was not only a man of the Reformation, but
also a man of the Renaissance, of the Renaissance orientation towards nature, towards cosmic
life. Boehme was tormented most of all by the question about the transition from God to nature,
from the one to the many, from the eternal to the temporal. Boehme -- was a gnostic, whereas
Luther however was no gnostic, Luther was anti-gnostic. Luther likewise was anti-cosmic in his
world-view, for his theme -- was the human soul and the action upon it by Divine grace. Boehme
in contrast was first of all concerned with the cosmos, and foreign to him is the Protestant
individualism. With Luther foremost was the personal relation with God. But for Boehme
however, God is as Person only in Christ. With Luther, grace has significance foremost, as a
justifying and saving power, whereas for Boehme it is a renewing and transfigurative power.
With Luther it is the moral consideration that prevails, whereas for Boehme it is the
metaphysical. With Boehme there was a totally different teaching concerning freedom, than
obtained with Luther. Luther taught about the non-free will, and with him freedom is consumed
by grace. With Boehme, however, freedom lies at the very basis of being. And finally, for
Boehme the problem of man stands altogether otherwise, than it does for Luther. With Luther
there was an indisputable monophysite tendency, which was not there in Boehme. Man possesses
a central significance for Boehme and the anthropological problem is resolved by his
Christology. Boehme is rich in inner motifs, foreign to Luther. And Bornkamm in vain wants to
Lutheranise Boehme. But his book does hold interest indisputably, as an examination into certain
sides of the world-view of Boehme. Still, the most valuable item may be the jubilee collection on
Boehme. In it can be found much by way of an account about the life of Boehme and about his
relationship to his predecessors and contemporaries. The article of Voight is of interest also for
an understanding of the world-view of Boehme. The revival of interest in Boehme, just as in
general in the history of mysticism, is very remarkable and witnesses to this, that we are entering
into more spiritual an epoch.
Nikolai Berdyaev.

2007 by translator Fr. S. Janos.


(1926 - 316 - en)
NOVIYA KNIGI O YAKOVE BEME. Journal Put', oct/nov. 1926, No. 5, p. 119-122.

At the beginning of the XIX Century in Russia J. Boehme was popular in mystically
minded circles and they translated him into the Russian language. And in the XX Century also
the "Aurora" was published in a fine Russian translation, very acclaimed, but not the best of the
works of Boehme.

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