:
The Philosophical Sphere or the Wonder Eye of Eternity (1620). The chief concern of Böhme's writing was the nature of
sin,
evil and
redemption. Consistent with
Lutheran theology, Böhme preached that humanity had fallen from a state of
divine grace to a state of sin and suffering, that the forces of evil included fallen
angels who had rebelled against
God, and that God's goal was to restore the world to a state of grace. There are some serious departures from accepted Lutheran theology, such as his rejection of
justification by faith alone, as in this passage from
The Way to Christ: For he that will say,
I have a Will, and would willingly do Good, but the earthly Flesh which I carry about me, keepeth me back, so that I cannot; yet I shall be saved by Grace, for the Merits of Christ. I comfort myself with his Merit and Sufferings; who will receive me of mere Grace, without any Merits of my own, and forgive me my Sins. Such a one, I say, is like a Man that knoweth what Food is good for his Health, yet will not eat of it, but eateth Poison instead thereof, from whence Sickness and Death, will certainly follow. Another place where Böhme may depart from accepted
theology (though this was open to question due to his somewhat obscure, oracular style) was in his description of
the Fall as a necessary stage in the evolution of the
Universe. A difficulty with his theology is the fact that he had a
mystical vision, which he reinterpreted and reformulated. According to F. von Ingen, to Böhme, in order to reach
God, man has to go through
hell first. God exists without
time or
space, he regenerates himself through
eternity. Böhme restates the
trinity as truly existing but with a novel interpretation. God, the Father is fire, who gives birth to his son, whom Böhme calls light. The
Holy Spirit is the living principle, or the divine life. It is clear that Böhme never claimed that God sees evil as desirable, necessary or as part of divine will to bring forth good. In his
Threefold Life, Böhme states: "[I]n the order of nature, an evil thing cannot produce a good thing out of itself, but one evil thing generates another." Böhme did not believe that there is any "divine mandate or metaphysically inherent necessity for evil and its effects in the scheme of things." Dr.
John Pordage, a commentator on Böhme, wrote that Böhme "whensoever he attributes evil to eternal nature considers it in its fallen state, as it became infected by the fall of Lucifer... ." Evil is seen as "the disorder, rebellion, perversion of making spirit nature's servant", which is to say a perversion of initial Divine order. , where he lived from 1590 to 1610 Böhme's correspondences in
Aurora of the seven qualities, planets and humoral-elemental associations: • Dry – Saturn – melancholy, power of death; • Sweet – Jupiter – sanguine, gentle source of life; • Bitter – Mars – choleric, destructive source of life; • Fire – Sun/Moon – night/day; evil/good; sin/virtue; Moon, later = phlegmatic, watery; • Love – Venus – love of life, spiritual rebirth; • Sound – Mercury – keen spirit, illumination, expression; • Corpus – Earth – totality of forces awaiting rebirth. In "De Tribus Principiis" or "On the Three Principles of Divine Being" Böhme subsumed the seven principles into the Trinity: • The "dark world" of the Father (Qualities 1-2-3); • The "light world" of the Holy Spirit (Qualities 5-6-7); • "This world" of Satan and Christ (Quality 4).
Cosmology In one interpretation of Böhme's
cosmology, it was necessary for humanity to return to God, and for all original unities to undergo differentiation, desire and conflict—as in the rebellion of
Satan, the separation of
Eve from
Adam and their acquisition of the knowledge of good and evil—in order for creation to evolve to a new state of redeemed harmony that would be more perfect than the original state of innocence, allowing God to achieve a new self-awareness by interacting with a creation that was both part of, and distinct from, Himself.
Free will becomes the most important gift God gives to humanity, allowing us to seek divine grace as a deliberate choice while still allowing us to remain individuals.
Marian views Böhme believed that the
Son of God became human through the
Virgin Mary. Before the birth of Christ, God recognized himself as a
virgin. This virgin is therefore a mirror of God's
wisdom and
knowledge. Böhme follows
Luther in that he views Mary within the context of Christ. Unlike Luther, he does not address himself to
dogmatic issues very much, but to the human side of Mary. Like all other women, she was human and therefore subject to sin. Only after God elected her with his grace to become the mother of his son, did she inherit the status of sinlessness.
Mary did not move the Word, the Word moved Mary, so Böhme, explaining that all her grace came from Christ. Mary is "blessed among women" but not because of her qualifications, but because of her
humility. Mary is an instrument of God; an example of what God can do: It shall not be forgotten in all eternity, that God became human in her. Böhme, unlike Luther, did not believe that Mary was the
Ever Virgin. Her virginity after the birth of Jesus is unrealistic to Böhme. The true salvation is Christ, not Mary. The importance of Mary, a human like every one of us, is that she gave birth to Jesus Christ as a human being. If Mary had not been human, according to Böhme, Christ would be a stranger and not our brother. Christ must grow in us as he did in Mary. She became blessed by accepting Christ. In a reborn Christian, as in Mary, all that is temporal disappears and only the heavenly part remains for all eternity. Böhme's peculiar theological language, involving
fire,
light and spirit, which permeates his theology and Marian views, does not distract much from the fact that his basic positions are Lutheran.
Influences Böhme's writing shows the influence of
Neoplatonist and
alchemical writers such as
Paracelsus, while remaining firmly within a Christian tradition. He has in turn greatly influenced many anti-authoritarian and mystical movements, such as
Radical Pietism (including the
Ephrata Cloister and
Society of the Woman in the Wilderness), the
Religious Society of Friends, the
Philadelphians, the
Gichtelians, the
Harmony Society, the
Zoarite Separatists,
Rosicrucianism,
Martinism and
Christian theosophy. Böhme's disciple and mentor, the
Liegnitz physician
Balthasar Walther, who had travelled to the
Holy Land in search of magical,
kabbalistic and
alchemical wisdom, also introduced kabbalistic ideas into Böhme's thought. Böhme was also an important source of German
Romantic philosophy, influencing
Schelling in particular. In
Richard Bucke's 1901 treatise
Cosmic Consciousness, special attention was given to the profundity of Böhme's spiritual enlightenment, which seemed to reveal to Böhme an ultimate nondifference, or
nonduality, between human beings and God. Jakob Böhme's writings also had some influence on the modern theosophical movement of the Theosophical Society. Blavatsky and
W.Q. Judge wrote about Jakob Böhme's philosophy. Böhme was also an important influence on the ideas of Franz Hartmann, the founder in 1886 of the German branch of the Theosophical Society. Hartmann described the writings of Böhme as “the most valuable and useful treasure in spiritual literature.” == Behmenism ==