The Desire for God, the Ordering Principle of Nature

This essay is an enquiry into the relation of the medieval understanding of creation and the mystical knowledge of God. Drawing upon the theology and epistemology of Aquinas and Meister Eckhart, a distinction is made between the medieval notion of 'truth' and the modern empirical notion of truth. It is proposed that this difference involves a quite distinct contrast in orientation towards reality or nature and a different understanding of the proper end of the act of knowing. From this it will be argued that the inherent desire in all things to unite with God is the ordering principle of nature, and that it is this ordering principle that opens the way to mystical knowledge of God and of the creation.