Thinking about God Beyond God. Intuitions from Mystical Theology in Klaus Müller’s Philosophy of Religion

Abstract

In line with the theology of Klaus Müller, this article entertains the idea of mediating between the philosophy of subjectivity, or consciousness, and panentheistic accounts. By bringing together Klaus Müller’s and Meister Eckhart’s respective views on the relation between negative theology and panentheism, it shows that an epistemological-critical mysticism based in experience may allow for such a mediation. Mystic theology aims at transforming the world by making us aware of God’s immanence in it. It thus opposes some dogmatic stipulations of classical theistic mainstream that are easily taken for granted. Instead, it suggests how the personal-theistic conception of God might be transformed. According to this, the idea of a personal God and Creator on the one hand, and the model of an all-encompassing unity on the other, need not be viewed as mutually exclusive alternatives. Rather, both ways of thinking mirrors actual dimensions of the relation between God, human beings, and the world.