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Teaching a Mystical Theology – The German Theology [Theologia Deutsch] (14th Century, published in 1516 and 1518)

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Chapter 15

How all people have died in Adam and become alive again in Christ, and about true obedience and disobedience.

Everything that perished and died in Adam, arose again in Christ and became alive. Everything that arose in Adam and became alive, perished in Christ and died. What, however, was and is that? I say it is true obedience and disobedience.

But what is true obedience? I maintain that a person should stand and be so completely free of himself, that is, without self-centeredness and selfishness, that he would seek himself and what is his and consider it as little as though he did not exist. He should feel as little of himself and regard himself and what is his as little as though he did not exist, and pay as little regard to himself as to all created things. What is it then that he should be concerned about? It is the One alone that people call God. This is what is true obedience in the truth and therefore in blessed eternity. Then nothing will be sought or considered or loved but the One, so too nothing will be a matter of concern but the One.

Through this one can see what disobedience is. Disobedience occurs when a person has some regard for himself and imagines he is, knows and is capable of something and that he has looked for what is his in things and loves himself and so forth.

Humanity was created for true obedience and owes it to God. This obedience perished and died in Adam and arose and became alive in Christ, and disobedience arose in Adam and lived and died in Christ. In his humanity Christ was and existed entirely free from himself and so free from every created thing and was nothing but a house or dwelling place of God. Everything that pertains to God his humanity laid no claim to, even the fact that it was the same humanity and lived and was a dwelling place of the Godhead. It did not lay claim to that same Godhead whose dwelling place it was, nor anything that the same Godhead desired, performed or refrained from in it, nor anything that occurred or was suffered in that same humanity. But in the humanity there was neither claiming nor seeking nor desire, but only a seeking and desire such as may be sufficient to the Godhead, and it did not lay claim to that. About this sense no more can be written or spoken. It is ineffable, it was never spoken about comprehensively and never will be, since it can neither be spoken of nor written about by anyone except him who embodies and knows it.

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