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Bullitio and the God beyond God: Meister Eckhart's Trinitarian Theology

Part I: The inner life of God

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

P.L. Reynolds
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Two of the most striking and memorable features of Meister Eckhart’s treatment of the Trinity are these. First, in several passages in the Latin works he uses the metaphor of bullitio—literally ‘boiling’ or ‘bubbling’—to explain the inner trinitarian life of the Deity; that is, to explain how and why there is procession within God. Secondly, in several passages in his German sermons he distinguishes between the personal, trinitarian God and a distinctionless, nameless ground or Godhead that transcends this. The latter distinction, apparently, is considered to exist within God: prima facie, at least, the distinction is not merely economic or between ‘God within’ and ‘God without’. My intention in this study is to examine each of these aspects in turn, to suggest how they are related, and to consider what all this can tell us about the general character of Eckhart’s trinitarianism.

Our task presents us with a problem which must always arise in the study of Eckhart: that of bringing together the Latin Eckhart with the German Eckhart and attempting to take a unified view, and this while conserving the peculiarities of each. Bullitio is a Latin word and, as far as I know, the notion is applied to the Trinity only in the Latin works. It may be noted, however, that there is a related family of German words such as ûzbruch and ursprunc which Eckhart uses to denote the idea of the supreme fountain-head or source, or the original outpouring, outspringing or outbreak of being. One of the things I wish to suggest in this study is that the distinction between God as Trinity and as Godhead is not made in the Latin works.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 70 , Issue 826 , April 1989 , pp. 169 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Footnotes

1

A shorter version of this paper was read at the Annual Conference of the Eckhart Society, Leeds, 2nd—4th Sept., 1988. The abbreviations DWand LW refer to the respective parts of Meister Eckhart, Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1936—). PL = Migne, Patrologia Latina. CCL=Corpus Christianorum: series latina (Turnhout). All translations from Latin are my own.

References

2 See Schurmann, Reiner, Meister Eckhart: Mystic and Preacher (Bloomington and London: Indiana Univ. Press, 1978), pp. 119—20Google Scholar. For instances of these words in Eckhart, see McGinn, B., Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher (New York, Mahwah, Toronto: Paulist Press, 1986), p. 403Google Scholar.

3 For a recent treatment see Hankey, W.J., God in Himself: Aquinas’ Doctrine of God as Expounded in the ‘Summa Theologiae’ (Oxford: O.U.P., 1987)Google Scholar. The appendices to vol. 6 of the Black friars edition of the Summa (1965) are also useful.

4 See Hankey, ibid., pp. 132—34.

5 I Sent. 3.1.un.4, Opera theologica selecta, vol. 1 (Quaracchi, 1934), pp. 54–55.Google Scholar

6 PL 210:624C—625A.

7 Ed. Baeumker, Clemens, ‘Das pseudo‐hermetische Buch der vierundzwanzig Meister’, Beitrge zur Ceschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters 25.1—2 (1927), p. 208Google Scholar. On the Book itself, see M.‐Th. d'Alverny's article in Kristeller, P.O., ed., Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum (Washington D.C.: Cath. Univ. Am. Press, 1960), pp. 151—54Google Scholar.

8 I Sent. 2.un.2, Opera theologica selecta, vol. 1 (Quaracchi, 1934), pp. 38–39.Google Scholar

9 LW II, pp. 20—22, nn. 14—16.

10 On the history of this idea, from Plotinus to Aquinas, see P.L. Reynolds, ‘God, Cosmos and Microcosm’, diss., Univ. of Toronto 1986, chs. 5 ff.

11 Meister Eckhart (1978), p. 247, n. 140.

12 Thiologie negative et connaissance de Dieu chez Maitre Eckhart (Paris: Vrin, 1960), p. 69Google Scholar, n. 109.

13 1.32.1, arg. 1 and ad lm, Ottawa edition, vol. 1 (1941), pp. 208a—b and 209a—b.

14 LW II, pp. 612—16, nn. 280–83.

15 L Will, p. 291, n. 342.

16 Cf. De Trinitate VI. 10(11), CCL 50, p. 241; De vera religione 43(81), CCL 32, p. 241. See also Sullivan, John E., The Image of God (Dubuque, Iowa: Priory Press, 1963), pp. 11—22Google Scholar.

17 Sermon XLIX. 3, n. 511, LWW, pp. 425—26.

18 Sermon XXV. 1, nn. 258—9, Iff IV, pp. 235—26.

19 See: pp. 10—12 of Sheldon‐Williams, I.P., ‘Eriugena's Greek Sources’, in The Mind of Eriugena, ed. by O'Meara, J.J. and Bieler, L. (Dublin: Irish Univ. Press, 1973), pp. 1—15Google Scholar; and p. 154 of the same author's ‘Eriugena's interpretation of the ps.‐Dionysius’, in Texte und Untersuchungen 115 (1975)Google Scholar, =Studia Patristica 12.1 (Berlin), pp. 151—54Google Scholar.

20 I Sent. 3.1.un.2, ad 4m, Opera theologica selecta, vol. 1, (Quaracchi, 1934), pp. 51–52.Google Scholar

21 See ibid.; I Sent. 3.2.1.2, resp., pp. 61—62; and II Sent. 14.1.3.1, ad 4m, vol. 4 (Quaracchi, 1938), p. 350.

22 Breviloquium 2.12, 1—3, Opera theologica selecta, vol. 5 (Quaracchi, 1964), pp. 55–56.Google Scholar

23 Itin. chs. 5—6, Opera theologica selecta, vol. 5, pp. 203–11.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., 6.2. pp. 208—09.

25 Ibid., 5.2. p. 204.

26 Ibid., 1.6, p. 184.

27 Colledge, E. and McGinn, B., Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense (New York, Ramsey, Toronto: Paulist Press, 1981), p.38Google Scholar.

28 Expositio sancti Evangeliisecundum lohannem, n. 43, LW III, p. 36.

29 I. 41.5, resp., Ottawa ed., vol. 1, p. 262a.

30 On quidity (to ti esti) as the final cause of generation, see Aristotle, Physics II.3, 198bl—5.

31 Summa theol. 1.28.2, resp., op. cit., vol. 1, p. 188b: ‘relatio realiter existens in Deo est idem essentiae secundum rem, et non differt nisi secundum intelligentiae rationem’.

32 See A.A. Maurer's introduction to Eckhart, Master, Parisian Questions and Prologues, trans. Maurer, A.A. (Toronto: P.I.M.S., 1974), pp. 13���14Google Scholar.

33 Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, p. 36.

34 McGinn, B., Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher (New York, Mahwah and Toronto: Paulist Press, 1986), pp. 135—36, n. 168Google Scholar.

35 Expos, lib. Ex., nn. 64—65, L W II, pp. 68—71.

36 1.28.2, resp., op. cit., vol. I, p. 188.