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Part II: Distinctionless Godhead and trinitarian God
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Our inquiry is about two aspects of Eckhart’s theology of the Trinity. One aspect (treated in Part I, which appeared in last month’s issue of New Blackfriars pp. 169—181) is his use of the notion of bullitio (‘boiling’) in the Latin treatises to explain personal procession and plurality within God. The other is the distinction in Eckhart’s German sermons between the Trinity and the undifferentiated Godhead beyond the Trinity.
The conclusions drawn from the first part of this study were as follows:
Bullitio is a metaphor depicting the generation of the Son from the Father. It also depicts the procession of the Holy Spirit, but this aspect is less developed in the texts we have considered. The metaphor represents an attempt to explain and to understand not only the nature of this generation but also the reason for it. I have argued that Eckhart, unlike Aquinas, allies himself with the tradition of a priori proofs of the Trinity. Bullitio is a metaphor for the self-diffusiveness of the good, and is related to Bonaventure’s notion of fountain-like fulness (plenitudo fontalis). Bonaventure finds in the latter attribute, which he regards as a property of the Father, the reason for plurality in God. There are no grounds to suppose that the idea of bullitio involves a distinction between God as Trinity and as the hidden Godhead.
Ebullitio, the first moment, as it were, of the creative emanation from God, is rooted in bullitio, and these two ideas are linked by that of formal emanation. The generation of the Son is a formal emanation; it is also the formal cause of creatures, insofar as this cause is considered in abstraction from their efficient and final causes.
37 These sermons are identified by their enumeration in DW.
38 See for example Sermons 52 (DW II, pp. 504–5) and 69 (DW III, pp. 159 ff); and the sermon on ‘Nolite timere eos’: n. 26 in J. Quint's Meister Eckhart: Deutsche Predigten und Traktate (1955), and n. 56 in Walshe's enumeration.
39 Tobin, F., Meister Eckhart: Thought and Language (Philadelphia: Univ. of Philadelphia Press, 1986), p. 86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
40 DW II, pp. 419–21.
41 Eckhart, Meister, Sermons and Treatises, trans. Walshe, M. O'C., vol. 2 (Longmead: Element Books, 1987)Google Scholar, sermon 70, p. 175. (DWl, p. 133.)
42 Sermons and Treatises, vol. 1 (Longmead: Element Books 1987), sermon 8, p. 77Google Scholar. (DW I, pp. 43–44)
43 E. Colledge and B. McGinn, Meister Eckhart: the Essential Sermons (1981), p. 206. (DWUl, pp. 437–38.)
44 DW II, pp. 31–33.
45 R. Schtlrmann, Meister Eckhart (1978), p. 72.
46 Ibid., pp. 73 and 69.
47 See Principe, W.H., ‘St Bonaventure's Theology of the Holy Spirit with reference to the Expression “Pater et Filius diligunt se Spiritu Sancto”‘, in S. Bonaventura 1274–1974, vol. 4 (Grottaferrata, Rome: Collegio S. Bonaventura, 1974), pp. 243–69Google Scholar, esp. pp. 250–51 and 260–62.
48 Epistula aurea, PL 184:335C.
49 Bonaventure, I Sent. 3.1.un.4, resp. and ad lm, Opera theologica selecta, vol. 1 (1934), p. 55Google Scholar. Thomas, Summa theol. 1.52.2, ad lm, op. cit., p. 209a.
50 Con/. VII, 9(13) ff., CCL 27, pp. 101 ff.
51 Cf. Thomas, Summa theol. 1.15.2, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 110–112.
52 Summa theol. 1.43.5, resp and ad lm, ibid., p. 274b.
53 Structures et méthode dans la Somme Thiologique de saint Thomas d'Aquin (Paris/Bruges: Desclee De Brouwer, 1961), pp. 92–97Google Scholar.
54 See above, n. 39.
55 Summa theol. 1.40.4, ibid., pp. 255–56.
56 I Sent. 28.un.I–4, esp. 28.un.2, resp (vol. 1, p. 397a).
57 Trans. Walshe, vol. 2, p. 104. (DW II, p. 418.)
58 Trans. Walshe, vol. 1, p. 249. (DW IX, p. 180.) Italics are mine.
59 Quoted from Davies, Oliver, God Within (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1988), p. 105Google Scholar. I am grateful to Dr Davies himself for bringing this text to my attention.
