Friedrich Christoph Oetinger - Meditation on the First Chapter of Ezekiel

יְחֶזְקֵאל  Meditation on the First Chapter of Ezekiel

For Demonstrating the Idea of Life

Friedrich Christoph Oetinger 

(This was published as an addendum to his work "Theology Drawn out of the Idea of Life." (orig. 1765). The first translation of the Theology, by Oetinger, a leading Pietist thinker, will be available in the Spring of 2026). 

It was stated in the Preface that life is a binding together or a complex of powers freely emitted from God, immersed in the atoms of mass, so that by a continuously rotating motion originally impressed, the passive is elevated through the active. This idea is demonstrable from the nature of things only to philosophers possessing the science of life, such as the Arab Artphulius. We, professing Theology, abstract from those, aiming only to prove such things from the oracles. God aids the weakness of our intellect through the first chapter of Ezekiel, where nothing but wheels and circular motions are hinted at as the principal phases of life divinely arisen.

Ezekiel saw: 1. A whirlwind from the North and in the midst of the whirlwind a concentrated fire. 2. From the midst of this fire he saw the appearance of four beings of the most vivid kind, or living creatures. 3. He saw the course of the living creatures to have proceeded straight forward, although distinguished internally by a flashing, intersecting motion. 4. He saw on the earth one wheel near the living creatures looking towards the four sides. From these things, I will give here only those most precisely to be observed which present a clearer definition of life. Its first moment is that life is a binding together of powers freely emitted from God; that this may be understood, even though it does not agree with ideas hitherto accustomed, it must be noted first, from a comparison of the Apocalypse of John and the wheels of Ezekiel, that the wheels in the Apocalypse were not seen, but only the living creatures, yet those then full of eyes internally; but since in Ezekiel the eyes were fitted into the wheels, it follows, since the eyes and wheels are internally of the Apocalyptic living creatures; hence the living creatures denote the exterior of life, the wheels the interior; it follows further that the living creatures and the wheels, although depicted separately and optically as different, nevertheless denote the same thing.

It must be noted secondly that the wheels appeared to Ezekiel indeed as one wheel, but there were four wheels interconnected with one another, just as animal within animal; hence it becomes clear that life in living creatures is something intense, where power is within power, and thus a complex of powers bound together into one through the spirit of God. For there was one spirit of the whirlwind, the living creatures, and the wheels, distinct from the powers of which they consist. But that the powers are freely emitted by God is clear, both from that very distinction of the spirit of God from the powers of the wheels, and from the gyratory motion itself, which must be accomplished by contrary strivings, centripetal and centrifugal, divinely and freely coordinated into contrary directions.

Someone may object that it is not yet certain that the things represented to Ezekiel denote spiritual things; but it is responded that it is most certain that the origin of the four living beings is described as flashing forth from the north wind. What are these now if not spiritual things? That the vital powers have their beginning from that which they themselves are not, namely from the north wind, which indicates something chaotic on the invisible side, a certain abyss; but what is this abyss other than a spiritual and potential origin, known only to God who acts most freely. 

This is illustrated, moreover, from the musical basis: 1^infinity, 2⁵, 3², 5¹, 7⁰, where the unity, from which the powers 2, 3, and 5 proceed, is the point and the septenary, without which in individual octaves innumerable tones would be given, because the basis would not be sufficiently limited by 5; it is also the point or concentrated circle; where neither the point 1^infinity nor the circle 7⁰ can be subjected to comparison or homogeneity with the powers 2, 3 and 5, for the unity, with which 1^infinity and 7⁰ coincide, is not in the series of prime numbers 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, etc., but generates it from itself in a manner transcending every rule. Therefore each constitutes the abyss, which is neither a mere chaotic potential point, nor an absolute nothingness of differentiated things, but something positive acting ideally and plastically with the quaternary (4) and senary (6); for just as unity in itself makes a distinction through the double expression 1^infinity and 7⁰ of the foundation of all musical harmony, so the same also really distinguishes all numbers from 1 to 7 in its ground 1^infinity, 7⁰ from one another. Thus, the terminus of musical (i.e., creative) activity is not singular—not only the center (1 to the infinite)—but also involves another, fundamentally distinct principle: the Circle (7⁰), which generates a point through concentration. Hence, 1 raised to the infinite power = 7⁰ is that Abyss; 2, 3, and 5 are the Powers; 4 and 6 are the operative Ideas. The powers bound together from 2, 3, and 5 are also, as revealed to me, Essences in the process of becoming.i

I must be very brief; hence I proceed to the other moment of distinction, which is, that the powers are immersed in the atoms of mass and thus the passive is elevated through the active. You will say, whence do the atoms of mass arise? Response: From the spiritual abyss, through the flashing and intersecting collision of powers of different intensity and direction, while the goings and returnings of the powers are incessantly continued crosswise and cyclically through points on account of the law of Gyration once and freely imposed by God upon the powers, whence it follows that the passive and active arise, or the atoms of mass and the Spiritual chasm from the same abyssal points, the passive is precipitated and that it is always revolved through that active, called the chasm by Ezekiel, and elevated into a more vivid state, just as brute matter is elevated into animated matter, and in this consists that notable circle of Genesis, the νόος γένεσεως or the wheel of created nature naturing, indicated most briefly by James (Ch. 3,6), although noticed by very few in the German version, indeed not even by Luther himself. You will object again that the breath of life, nishmat chayim, in Genesis is life per se, before the powers were immersed in the atoms of mass. Resp.: In Ezekiel, relating each thing more fully, who does not see that something corporeal, and thus atoms of mass, concur to the figures of the living creatures? But how this happens is hinted at somewhat obscurely, while the internal motion exerts itself in the manner of lightning (V. 15. 14); but lightning arises from the collision of hot and cold, active and passive, and thus a continual subaction and elevation of the passive occurs in the internal vital motion. We, accustomed to successive geometrical figures, bear these simultaneous concepts with difficulty, but it suffices that God shows us the wheel of nature is not conceived by the Geometrical method, unless one is accustomed to recall the most principal Geometrical theorems under one simultaneous view, with an artifice of the most intense universalification aimed at squaring. For us here it suffices to be taught the ideas of life from Ezekiel; if we do not exhaust all things, yet many things are helpful.

Therefore, let it be well weighed what Ezekiel says about the course of the living creatures, that they ran and returned in the appearance of most vehement lightning (v. 14; although it was said before they did not turn, V. 12), then it will be understood that the life of the living creatures retains in its interiors the force of quadratic, intersecting lightning, while in external affairs the motion is most simple. But lest anyone say that Spiritual things are nevertheless conceived materially, I will say in the briefest terms: the immateriality of spirits is far better preserved by this way than the Wolffian. For first, the two chaotic points and the powers themselves are something most immaterial; powers in power are something intense, not extended; but that a certain material type always enters these concepts, is from this, that both the formal and the material have their origin through the operative ideas of the quaternary and senary from the same chaotic points, so that the material and immaterial are discriminated by a perpetual law and again united with the atoms of mass; but this cannot be sufficiently vividly figured by successive types in the Geometrical manner, as is clear from the first chapter of Ezekiel. Each mode of conceiving, the Wolffian and the Ezekielitic, has its own knots, at least with this difference, that a) there the word of God suggests no norm of conceiving, here certainly not none, b) that there the corporeal as a mere Phenomenon, here as real, c) that there the corporeal is joined to the incorporeal only by an external harmony (if however it can be called harmony), here by an internal one. Furthermore, in either mode of conceiving the material and immaterial are indeed presented as different, but among the Wolffians only nominally, among us really. And this already emerged long before Spinozism in Jewish Spinozism, so that the Marcionites held the body of Christ only as a Phenomenon. 

You will say: You certainly make a composite out of the soul? I respond: If you call that a composite which is joined part outside part like a board, then the soul is not such; if you call that composite, insofar as it is something united from powers, then composition no less prejudices the soul than the composition of the Theanthropes prejudices God. It pleased God that all the fullness of the Deity should dwell in man bodily. This is perfection, not imperfection. The soul in this sense is not composed materially, but is essenced from 2. 3. 5, that is from the intellective 2, the potestative 5 and the sensual appetitive 5 through the principiative points 1 and 7 united with 4, into a substance complete from powers. Then the soul as a hypostasis complex from diverse powers is simplified divinely through the Logos.

You will say: What new word is this, 'essentiare'? I respond: It is to reduce to the intensity and inexistence of power in power. Thus the contradictory concept of antitypy is guarded against, offering the greatest escape to the Leibnizian monads, together with the principle of indiscernibles. The unity with the septenary are the first chaotic powers, and as the monad corresponds to the septenary, so the binary harmonizes with the senary, the ternary with the quinary. Only the quaternary stands in the middle, and is the formal principle with respect to the rest, mixing the atoms of mass with the formal origin of essentation. Thus we place the intense before the extensive, and we render those metaphysical terms of principle, essence, substance far more intelligible, since among metaphysicians they are most difficult to distinguish, indeed they differ only nominally. The principles to me are 1 and 7 with 4, the essences 2 3 5, the substance is all those in one. No materiality of the soul is inferred by us, but a true enduring perduration of matter surviving. Then also the principle of individuation depends for us not on an omnimodal external determination, but on internal manifestives of itself. But in the Leibnizian system, that which is called of itself is lacking in the indivisible manifestive, because there no genetic essentation, no circle of genesis originally impressed by the Father of lights, can be discerned there, but only mere representation. 

Here indeed the powers are essenced, here the intellective power makes its own Logos, the potestative with the sensitive in union with the intellective manifest themselves.  All powers entering the musical substrate operate also in the innermost of other subjects that are not externally musical, according to the law already received by the learned: The square root of elasticity/density, through which, what is lacking in attraction, the great Euler corrects, touching the innermost life of nature more closely, and then the dense is essenced through the subtle, and this through the dense. The power 5 denotes something dense, 3 with respect to this something elastic, although it is a certain medium between 2 and 4, which, since they are in struggle through 5 that works retentively and through 5 that works extensively; these effect  continuous division by means of the rest, yet with division always again simplified, i.e., recalled through simpler radical numbers to unitive essentation. I confess that naturally we do not know that such a thing underlies spiritual things; but through the first chapter of Ezekiel we are infallibly taught that the matter stands so also in spiritual things, albeit in an eminent mode.ii

Therefore, no bad consequences for Epicureanism, for the destructibility of the soul, can be connected. The life of the soul, although it is not incapable of being dissolved, like the divine, nevertheless cannot perish on account of the divine simplification. All things ought to be well considered before objections are formed. All objections can be answered. Let the fair weighers of truth now judge who is nearer to metaphysical or physical Fanaticism, the Leibnizians or the Newtonians. The former deduce all things from the ideal nexus of substances of God, reducing the great principle of sufficient reason to a phantasm, i.e., abusing it, where they subject God himself to this principle. The latter, however, so commit the inexhaustible freedom of God and his most free actions with the nexus of substances, that it is plain that God subjected all things to his will, his command, and the divinity tends that finally after a certain cycle of aeons he may be all in all.