Clint JOHNSON. Paradox at Play: Metaphor in Meister Eckhart’s Sermons. Washington, DC: The Catholic University Press, 2023. pp. 359. Reviewed by R. Gabriel PIVARNIK, O.P., Providence College, Providence, RI 02918.

In Paradox at Play, Clint Johnson situates the central importance of metaphor and how it operates for understanding the sermons of Meister Eckhart, the Dominican philosopher, theologian, mystic, and poet. Johnson’ s text is divided into two main sections: the first on Eckhart and his use of metaphor (Part I), and the second as a collection of Eckhart’s sermons, some of which were previously untranslated from the German and Latin (Part II).

At the outset, Johnson details the trajectory of his undertaking in Part I of the book.  He begins by situating Eckhart in his historical context (Chapter 1)—showing that much of the rhetoric he employs is part of the current of philosophical and theological debate on the nature of the human person.  Johnson recreates this historical arc of the individual beginning with pre-Homeric thought and moving all the way to Eckhart’s contemporaries.  The latter part of this section looks more at placing Eckhart in his theological context—while Johnson clearly places Eckhart amid the various theological influences of the time period, his thesis would be augmented by also including the profound influence of Eckhart’s Dominican life on his thinking (the life under the Constitutions and the communal celebration of the Eucharist and the divine office).  Like Aquinas, Eckhart demonstrates an immersion in scripture which goes far beyond mere intellectual study.  Johnson finishes this section (Chapter 2) by discussing the difficulty in interpreting Eckhart since he can never really be separated from his mysticism: “ineffable experiences that lie beyond intellectual understanding cannot be formulated or even referred to by traditional speech, since they are not like anything we have experienced and know” (62).

In the second section of Part I, Johnson seeks to look at the way that Eckhart uses metaphor and paradox and the play between them in his sermons (Chapter 3).  Relying on Hans Blumenberg’s, Johnson notes that metaphor and paradox allow the reader to enter more fully into the subconscious of the writer because they exist at a preconceptual level—metaphor and paradox work because they are part of lived experience that help guide thought (72).  And, perhaps more importantly for understanding Eckhart’s sermons, paradox “force the mystery to remain” (77)—they move the person without necessarily seeking resolution. 

Johnson uses Chapters 4-6 to unpack the paradigmatic metaphors within the repertoire of Eckhart’s work.  Chapter 4 explains the dynamics of Eckhart’s metaphors—that through the repetition of certain prepositions (in, by, through ,etc.) and through examples of explosivity, Eckhart’s metaphors are always in motion—they do less to convince the mind as they do to move it—to keep it in play. Chapter 5 looks at desire as a principle of ascent—love, taste, and joy all leading the believer toward God.  Chapter 6 demonstrates the metaphorical tension between activity and passivity—a fundamental tension in Dominican life itself which Johnson could have highlighted here.  For Eckhart, the individual must be simultaneously active in giving over the will to God and passive in receiving the grace to do so.   In this sense, Eckhart’s fundamental metaphorical paradox comes to the foreground: the individual must remain the individual while also realizing that the soul is divine and beyond the individual. 

Johnson uses the last section of Part I to transition to the contemporary world. Chapter 7 outlines Eckhart’s contribution to the development of modern thought around the nature of the individual.  While firmly rooted in medieval scholastic understandings of the person, Eckhart also serves as a bridge to the modern intellectual turn to the self.  Finally, chapter 8, which is probably Johnson’s most significant, explains why Eckhart is so popular among people today.  Eckhart, he posits, “compels us by way of beautiful speech and paradoxes that push us in the direction of returning to unity with God by dislodging habits which constitute obstacles to spiritual progress” (194). Johnson asserts that because the Christian image of the human person is always caught between the history of time and the eternity of the divine, then “paradox is the ground of what it is to be human” (200).  By taking that paradox to the extreme, Eckhart allows the human person to move beyond the constraints of the earthly. 

Part II of Johnson’s work provides English translations to the most recent critical edition of Meister Eckhart’s extant sermons. Of great benefit here are Johnson’s extensive notes on each sermon.  He cross-references metaphors and symbols that are used repeatedly by Eckhart and also details the intricacies of translating the German language into English when no easy English equivalent exists.  In so doing, he becomes the very thing of which he writes: Johnson’s notes become the play between the metaphor and paradox of Eckhart and our modern world.

Johnson has crafted a valuable resource not only for Eckhart scholarship, but also for any student of metaphor and language.  His careful reading of the sermons and his understanding of Eckhart’s metaphors provide essential groundwork for all further study on Eckhart.