The Call of the Origin: On Christology, Conversion, and Peregrine Identity in Reiner Schürmann’s Early Work on Meister Eckhart

In 1969, Reiner Schürmann submitted a thesis to the Dominican school of theology Le Saulchoir. It was titled Peregrine Identity: The Concept of Detachment in Meister Eckhart’s German Sermons. Three years later, Schürmann published Wandering Joy, his celebrated book on Eckhart. In this article, we examine four aspects of the earlier study that cannot, as such, be found in the later one: (1) the specifically Christological dimension of Eckhart’s teaching of detachment; (2) a logic of conversion at work in Eckhart and St. Francis; (3) Schürmann’s hermeneutics of the symbol; and (4) the practical outcomes of Heidegger’s ontological difference as it is inflected by what Schürmann calls wandering or ‘peregrine’ difference. We aim to show how the questions and issues raised in Schürmann’s thesis remain vital for all those readers of Eckhart who seek to restore their own existence to its essential freedom.