uses very similar language, and the Epistle to Diognetus, written in
the second century, speaks of Christ as, "being ever born anew in
the hearts of the saints." Very characteristic, too, is the doctrine
that complete detachment from the creatures is the way to union with
God. Jacob Bšhme has arrived independently at the same conclusion as
Eckhart. "The scholar said to his master: How may I come to the
supersensual life, that I may see God and hear Him speak? The master
said: When thou canst throw thyself but for a moment into that place
where no creature dwelleth, then thou hearest what God speaketh. The
scholar asked: Is that near or far off? The master replied: It is in
thee, and if thou canst for a while cease from all thy thinking and
willing, thou shalt hear unspeakable words of God. The scholar said:
How can I hear, when I stand still from thinking and willing? The
master answered: When thou standest still from the thinking and
willing of self, the eternal hearing, seeing, and speaking will be
revealed to thee, and so God heareth and seeth through thee."

In St Thomas Aquinas it is "the will enlightened by reason" which
unites us to God. But there are two sorts of reason. The passive
reason is the faculty which rises through discursive thinking to
knowledge. The active reason is a much higher faculty, which exists
by participation in the divine mind, "as the air is light by
participation in the sunshine." When this active reason is regarded
as the standard of moral action, it is called by Aquinas
synteresis.[12] Eckhart was at first content with this teaching of
St Thomas, whom he always cites with great reverence; but the whole
tendency of his thinking was to leave the unprofitable
classification of faculties in which the Victorine School almost
revelled, and to concentrate his attention on the union of the soul
with God. And therefore in his more developed teaching,[13] the