much of it through the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, a
Platonising Christian of the fifth century, whose writings were
believed in the Middle Ages to proceed from St Paul's Athenian
convert. It would, however, be easy to find parallels in St
Augustine's writings to most of the phases quoted in this paragraph.
The practical consequences will be considered presently.

The creatures are a way from God; they are also a way to Him. "In
Christ," he says, "all the creatures are one man, and that man is
God." Grace, which is a real self-unfolding of God in the soul, can
make us "what God is by Nature"--one of Eckhart's audacious phrases,
which are not really so unorthodox as they sound. The following
prayer, which appears in one of his discourses, may perhaps be
defended as asking no more than our Lord prayed for (John xvii.) for
His disciples, but it lays him open to the charge, which the Pope's
bull did not fail to urge against him, that he made the servant
equal to his Lord. "Grant that I, by Thy grace, may be united to Thy
Nature, as Thy Son is eternally one in Thy Nature, and that grace
may become my nature."

The ethical aim is to be rid of "creatureliness," and so to be
united to God. In Eckhart's system, as in that of Plotinus,
speculation is never divorced from ethics. On our side the process
is a negative one. All our knowledge must be reduced to
not-knowledge; our reason and will, as well as our lower faculties,
must transcend themselves, must die to live. We must detach
ourselves absolutely "even from God," he says. This state of
spiritual nudity he calls "poverty." Then, when our house is empty
of all else, God can dwell there: "He begets His Son in us." This
last phrase has always been a favourite with the mystics. St Paul