Jane Lead and her Transnational Legacy by Ariel Hessayon

Author:Ariel Hessayon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, London

Jacob Boehme’s Anthropology

Before examining Lead’s works some context is necessary. Teaching distinguishing spiritual from material corporality has a long history, going back to Neoplatonic philosophy, patristic debates and Kabbalistic tradition. Such teaching, however, cannot always be reduced to mere opposition and mutual exclusion. On the contrary, it entails several attempts to connect spiritual and corporal dimensions by a tertium quid: the halfway reality of the ‘subtle’ or ‘spiritual body’.12 This concept was used by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:44 to indicate the resurrected body prepared for eternity and inherited in the resurrection in order to replace the pre-death physical body, which is a mark of the postlapsarian nature and destined to perish. The new ‘subtle body’ is on the contrary imperishable, glorious and powerful (1 Corinthians 15:42–43) and in orthodox theology was closely connected with Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist and with the mystical body of the Church. However, the idea of a ‘subtle body’ often became controversial, indicating both Adam’s nature before the fall and an invisible, spiritual body subsisting beside the natural body before the resurrection.13

Jacob Boehme (c. 1575–1624) was a clear reference point in the early modern ‘spiritual body’ debate. The life and writings of this German shoemaker are well known and have been closely examined. Many of the influences on his thought (particularly Christian Kabbalah,14 as well as the teachings of Paracelsus, Caspar Schwenckfeld and Valentin Weigel) have been explored, so that his theosophical system now appears as a kind of reassembled compendium of different mystical and esoteric traditions. Ranging from alchemical ideas to Neoplatonic thought, from mysticism to the Hermetic tradition, Boehme’s theosophy had an enormous impact during the early modern period among readers from a variety of cultural milieus. In the eyes of contemporaries and subsequently of his English and German followers, he represented a kind of prophet, disclosing the deepest secrets of divine and natural principles. It was, however, his cosmological and anthropological teachings, both resting on an indissoluble connection of material and spiritual worlds, that drew most attention.

Boehme’s theosophy is extremely complicated and cannot be summarised without oversimplification. But it is nonetheless useful here to highlight at least its central features, particularly with regard to its ‘soteriological narrative’. Briefly, the creation represents a continuing process of divine self-expression which transcends the inner-trinitarian life. God’s revelation outside himself is his expression in an extra-divine existence, up to his externalization in nature. The first step of this process is the revelation of himself in the ‘virgin Sophia’, as divine Wisdom. The latter is a first hypostasis which enables God’s self-contemplation outside the trinity and assures at the same time the original connection between divine and human, spiritual and material natures.15 Virgin Wisdom comprises all divine essences, ‘models’ and archetypes and enables therefore not only God’s self-contemplation but also the second step of the process, namely God’s self-expression in the creation.16

Sophia, moreover, represents the perfect connection between God and the first man, Adam, who replaced the fallen Lucifer in Eden and restored a new harmony after the implosion of the ‘angelic kingdoms’ into chaos (Genesis 1:2).

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