Eckhart writes, “This image is the Son of the Father and I myself am this image and this image is wisdom.” It is a characteristic formulation: The Son of God is born in believers such that the Son and believer become “identical.”
At the same time, Eckhart insists that he is not blurring the Creator-creature distinction. How can this be. In the same sermon, he explains by using the image of a mirror: “Imagine that a mirror is held up to my face – whether I wish to or not, with neither will nor knowledge of myself, my image is formed in the mirror. This image does not derive from the mirror, nor from itself. Rather this image is grounded in the one who gives it its being and its nature. When the mirror is removed from me, then I am no longer imaged in it, for I am myself this image.”
Just so: The soul is the mirror in which God is imaged. That image is not dependent on the soul; since the soul is a mirror, it contains nothing except what is reflected in it. In the sense that a mirror-image is identical to the original that is imaged, in that sense the soul is identical with God who is reflected in it.
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