Jacob Boehme: His Life and Thought

by John Joseph Stoudt

Jacob Boehme, the German religious mystic of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, had an astounding influence on the history of Western philosophy. The impact of his thought left its mark on such men as Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bergson, Heidegger, and especially through his ideas concerning creation and evil, he was a power in the speculative theology of the nineteenth century. This fresh study of Jacob Boehme's life and writings not only presents a concrete and vivid picture of Boehme's personal affairs and of the spiritual situation of Protestant Germany more than three hundred years ago; it also demonstrates for the first time the development and growth of Boehme's thought. Utilizing new biographical sources and newly discovered manuscripts, the author has, in addition, analyzed Boehme's speculative system in its mature form after he had worked through his strange symbolic language to a more traditional synthesis. This is an objective examination of Boehme's life and thought. It avoids depicting him either as a heaven-blessed saint or a Baroque Faust. On the basis of the evidence now available, Dr. Stoudt offers a new portrait of Boehme as the proponent of a theology that stresses feeling and intuition instead of reason and intellect. As Paul Tillich states in his Foreword to this ""John Stoudt's book will be a help to all philosophers and theologians who desire an introduction to one of the most profound and strangest systems of Western thought - strange in comparison to the prevailing method of modern philosophy, profound in comparison with much theism in modern theology.""

318 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2004

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This text does a fine job of cutting to the core of Boehme's voluminous output and often muddled ideas, revealing the startling theology he developed from his mystical experiences in an accessible form.

[r0b · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although it has its flaws I found it rather fascinating.

‘Not only did Boehme disclaim Nirvana; he asserted that it was man’s chiefest sin.
Nirvana is the necessary religious goal of monism. It appears only within those metaphysical systems which consider the self’s finitude evil per se.
...Buddhism, identifying evil with suffering selfhood, had sought to void the self in apophatic pantheism.’

I think the author (Stoudt) has some confusion around Buddhism and nirvana.

‘In our opinion-and the reader may take it for what it is worth- most interpreters have made two mistakes; first, they have failed to see his growth, his ability to discard ideas when they no longer suited him; secondly, they have failed to appreciate Boehme’s own understanding of his categories, of the “joints” in his system. The fatal mistake, made by Hegel and so many others, is to identify the seven spirits of God with the seven natural powers.’

[Wayne Kraus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most thorough of Boehme's biographies, and as far as I know, the only one written by a professional historian. Here is a wealth of information about JB's personal life and the world-events that surrounded his grand literary project. Stoudt is a Christian and does not conceal his disdain for alchemy and Kabballah. His thesis is that JB was torn between his love for Paracelsus' nature mysticism and the Christian mysticism of the German pietists. In The Signature of All Things he brilliantly fuses the two, and then discards the former, and becomes a purely evangelical writer. The thesis is plausible and well-defended but by no means unassailable. I do not agree with most of Stoudt's interpretations but cannot say that he fails to understand the topic. I have read this book more than once, because both the research and the talent behind it are prodigious.