This question and answer appeared on the "Jacob Boehme Society Forum" on Facebook

Question by S K Abdullah Zachary

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Peace! I was reading the works of Jacob Boheme, but was perplexed by the following -- can anyone explain?

"Thus we now understand what God and his Essence is; We Christians say, that God is threefold, but only one in Essence: What we generally say and hold that God is threefold in Person, the same is very wrongly apprehended and understood by the Ignorant, yea by a great Part of the Learned: **** for God is no Person but only in Christ **** but he is the eternal begetting Power, and the Kingdom with all Beings" [Emphasis mine].

What does he mean by, "for God is no Person but only in Christ" ?

Thank you!

Answer or Response by Barry Burton

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Your question goes to the deepest mystery in Boehme's writings. It goes to the point that reason cannot reach. Boehme often reminds his readers that there are not words for what he was given.

The essence of his understanding lies in the revelation of what we can only conceive of as "process", which implies the passing of time, yet in eternity, all IS. He speaks of God becoming Father- in begetting the Son - which implies a "time" before there was the Son of God, though there is no such a time. That said, Boehme speaks of the Eternal Beginning, in which there exists no thing. No thing, because when all that exists is God, there is not only nothing else that exists, it is also impossible to know God. That is because everything that can be known or given a name is only known by its contrast to and/or relationship to what it isn't. So, when there was nothing but God, there was nothing to be God in relationship to. God of what?

It is this "Eternal Beginning" that was before God was a person. In Boehme's descriptions of the seven spirits of God, the first is characterized using different terms, such as Attraction or Desire. He not only saw all of creation operating according to the seven principles, but he understood the Eternal Beginning as having the same dynamic interplay. When there existed no thing, there was nothing - an abyss of nothingness. Yet out of the abyss, or in the abyss, there was a desire - an angst. This angst arose in, or out of the dark nothingness as the Eternal Essence (God) desiring to know Himself, or, to have being.

Much of what Boehme wrote has to do with this dynamic - in which the experience of desire is a crushing, compressing, astringency - and how that catalyzes the 2nd and 3rd principles, which constitute the context for the 4th principle. It is this 4th principle which "kindles" the harsh reality of the first three into the heavenly fulfillment of the last three (upper ternary).

To try to answer your question, it is in the dynamic interplay of the seven spirits that the Eternal Essence (God before He was a Person) moves from being All that there is (wherein there was no thing and no one to be the recipient of love) to the point of choosing to have specific being. The specificity of this Being, or Person, is Love. For there to be Love, there must be the Beloved. The Eternal Essence chose to die to "existing as a solitary essence" and to rather pour Himself out into Another. This is when God became a Person, known as The Father, and when The Son became the 2nd Person of the Godhead. Of course, the infinite Love of the Father for His Beloved and of the Beloved for His Father is the 3rd Person of the Trinitarian God. The part of the phrase that you quoted,"… but only in Christ…", could also be stated as, "only in the Trinity" - as the Father and the Son are One.