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This study analyses Meister Eckhart's doctrine on "the eternal birth of God in the soul" in order to draw a comprehensive picture of how it is rooted in medieval philosophical discussions about the relation between epistemology and ethics. Its source is a hitherto insufficiently examined group of sermons which form the only homiletic cycle in Eckhart's work, the so-called Gottesgeburtszyklus (Prr. 101-104). Through a systematic interpretation of the cycle the study shows in what way Eckhart's motif of the eternal birth as a progressive interiorisation of the divine nature inside the human soul is to be evaluated as an epistemologically justified effort. Finally it is shown how this process finds its radicalization in Eckhart's poverty sermon (Pr. 52).