Out of Context: Eckhart's Scriptural Excursions

Late medieval thought reveals some anxiety that friars’ preaching practice, whose force relies on super-textual flourishes and interpretative readings of scripture, is at risk of sacrificing too great a degree of Biblical and theological accuracy in rhetoric's favour. The Papal Bull ‘In agro dominico’ condemned Eckhart for ‘turn[ing] away from truth and follow[ing] fables’. Eckhart, however, by contrast argued that truths are only revealed when we seek ‘under the surface of the letter’. This paper is a study of the way Eckhart's sermons, taking Biblical verses as their starting point, range off into the deeps of his philosophy. Taking Sermon 10 as an example, this paper explores some of the excursive and discursive preaching strategies employed by Eckhart as speaker.