The Nature of Divine Immanence in Meister Eckhart’s Thought

ABSTRACT

For Eckhart, God is indistinct to creation; that is, supremely immanent or present to it. What, then, is left to be said about the creature’s union with God? Surely all the work is already done? Eckhart answers: yes and no. This paper traces the philosophical meaning of difference and sameness, distinction and indistinction, and finally transcendence and immanence in Eckhart’s thought. This does not yield the idea that we should straightforwardly turn from our composite nature in order to achieve union with God (a position long attributed to Eckhart). Instead, it shows that through an asymmetrical relation we become indistinct to God in virtue of our distinction; we are to discover union through our composite nature. Necessarily this means union with God is simultaneously and perpetually complete and incomplete. This follows from the fact that God is beyond the oppositional structure between distinction and indistinction, transcendence and immanence.

KEYWORDS:

• Meister Eckhart
• indistinction
• principium
• immanence
• negation
• union

Immanence, like transcendence, is a subject requiring a methodological choice. In essence it is a question of ultimate polarity: how does the infinite God relate to finite creatures? Are we to conceive of this relationship in univocal terms? In which case, immanence and transcendence are not opposed to one another, but corollaries on a spectrum, where closeness and distance are its two ends. Or are we to conceive of this relationship in equivocal terms? In which case, immanence and transcendence bespeak a difference which cannot be bridged. God must then either be immanent to the world or transcendent to it; the difference afforded by the otherness of transcendence makes it necessary for one or other to be true, but not both. The final possibility is analogy, whereby the difference between divine and creaturely immanence means God’s transcendence is secured and communicated by the unique nature of his immanence. This preserves transcendence by appeal to immanence, and not in spite of it; immanence being the vehicle that apophatically adumbrates divine transcendence. Failure in speaking adequately about divine immanence is to apophatically speak about divine transcendence.

In the context of a spiritual understanding of this relation, if God is maximally present to creation (either by univocity or analogy), what is the purpose of any talk of moving closer to him, or union with him? These are pertinent questions for Eckhart, and we address them here from what he says in his homilies and commentaries. But to be able to make sense of Eckhart’s pronouncements, we first need to understand the philosophical exigencies pertaining to all talk of difference and sameness, distinction and indistinction, and finally immanence and transcendence. For this reason, our scope is limited to a range of philosophical questions, and so we are not considering here Eckhart’s understanding of union, the birth of the Word in the soul, or the soul’s ground; though we will return to these matters in the conclusion.¹ These are important topics which touch upon the issues, but it is first required that we write with straight philosophical lines.

Distinction and indistinction

Divine immanence in Eckhart’s thought rests on the idea of God as indistinct to his creation. This is to be distinguished from identity with creation – indistinction does not entail that God and creation are the same. Here also, distinction is not equivalent to difference, and indistinction to sameness. This is because difference requires the comparison between two ‘things’, as between apples and oranges. Sameness also requires the comparison between two ‘things’. But God is no ‘thing’, and hence a difference or sameness of comparison cannot apply.

Why are difference and sameness not equivalent to distinction and indistinction? On the one hand this is because distinction and indistinction are, for Eckhart, also matters of separation and union rather than simply comparatives of difference and sameness.² To put this slightly differently: the question of (in)distinction is as much about theology as it is metaphysics. On the other hand, difference and sameness do not map onto distinction and indistinction because Eckhart equates distinction with the creature, and indistinction with God;³ whereas difference and sameness really belong only with the created order.

If God is not a ‘thing’ like things in the world, does talk of difference between God and the world in fact get a grip on anything? If we answer in the negative, we simultaneously see how we are to avoid the temptation to conclude that God and the world are thereby the same. One only has the opposites of difference and sameness where there is some shared commonality. In other words, the no-‘thingness’ of God eviscerates the either/or of difference and sameness to the world.

Once the essential metaphysical point is established that God is no ‘thing’, it does not follow that God does not exist (let us say, in the manner this expression is deployed in atheism). As Eckhart says, it means only that whatever kind of existence God has, it is higher than created existence.⁴ He gives a number of arguments for this, one of which is because in order to be the cause of all existence, God must himself be without existence, just as all effects are pre-contained in their cause according to a different mode.⁵ The painting in the mind of the artist does not have the same sort of existence as the physical painting produced from the idea in the mind (indeed, for Eckhart, a mental image does not really have existence at all).⁶ But what if it is existence itself that is the effect produced? As its cause, Eckhart thinks God must therefore hold all existence in himself in some different, non-formal way, meaning God himself does not have existence.⁷ This is not the same as saying God does not exist.

Distinction and indistinction are ways of speaking about the kind of relationship such a being has to the created world. If these two terms refer to separateness and union, we must further specify that this cannot be in the spatio-temporal sense we perceive between two objects or things in the world. A being that is no ‘thing’ is indistinct from the world in the sense of incomparable, indistinguishable, inseparable, and not a suitable subject for proposing comparative distinctions. Yet such a being is also rightly characterized as distinct because the no-‘thingness’ is itself a designation of being unlike anything else in the world. We might say that there are two different perspectives at work here: one from the side of God, and one from the side of creation.⁸ As all our language and categorization is necessarily on the side of creation, attempting to capture the divine perspective is precisely the goal of the apophatic, mindful nonetheless, as Denys Turner says, that this is nothing other than the signalled breakdown of language, and not a language in itself.⁹

We are nevertheless left to ask whether such a breakdown exceeds or remains part of language itself. Language breaks down by confronting something or someone beyond its scope – fair enough – but the breakdown itself is linguistically inscribed. The breakdown is not, in other words, anything other than a sign of the transcendent; it is still language. Is this a problem, and does it affect our thoughts about the immanent and the transcendent?

Whilst the apophatic might be the closest one gets to transcending language, it serves to remind us that nothing for creatures in fact exceeds language. One might be tempted to see this as a corseting from which we are due liberation. But it is certainly the case that Eckhart does not view the matter this way. Turner in fact highlights this when he describes Eckhart’s approach to be a ‘trying to get the paradoxical nature of his theology […] into the materiality of the language itself [… t]hereby the language performs rhetorically what it says technically: the performance utters what the utterance performs’.¹⁰ This Turner characterizes as an ‘apophasis by excess’,¹¹ but given that the breakdown of language is itself a linguistic phenomenon, it is not so clear why this would constitute an excess, rather than being simply expressive of the true nature of the apophatic.¹²

Far from seeking to flee the constraints of language, Eckhart embraces them in order to make use of their ascetic frustrations in the apophatic endeavour, which seems to be a leaning into the real demands of the apophatic rather than tending away from them. But this is not to suggest that a tending away from them, for example in the sober deployment of language used by Thomas Aquinas, to which Turner compares Eckhart’s approach, involves a falling short of apophatic demands, still less a failure. The distinctive ‘rhetorical possibilities’ of Eckhart are, nonetheless, ‘perfectly consistent with Thomas’s theology’,¹³ which perhaps suggests Eckhart is simply at the thicker end of the same wedge.

If God is beyond difference and sameness, is he not also beyond distinction and indistinction in Eckhart’s view? This necessarily follows from the Pseudo-Dionysian understanding of God ‘beyond both “affirmation” and “denial”: for eadem est scientia oppositorum, as Aristotle had said, what is sauce for the affirmative goose is sauce for the negative gander’.¹⁴ In other words it becomes necessary for us to say that God’s relationship to creation is beyond both distinction and indistinction (insofar as both are opposites). This is not to say that God is neither distinct nor indistinct to creation, but that he would have to be both, ‘in some way which excluded both specifications, in order to exclude the disjunction between them, and thus contain the notions of both in some non-exclusive way: by, to use an expression of Eckhart’s (though not Thomas’) “negating the negation” between them’.¹⁵

It remains to point out that when distinction and indistinction are applied to the creature and God respectively, one imposes the same oppositional structure found between difference and sameness, implying that God is a ‘thing’. It is only true to apply distinction to the creature and indistinction to God insofar as one thinks from the creaturely perspective; and that only insofar as one thinks from one aspect of the creaturely perspective. From another aspect, as we have seen, it is also possible for the creature to think, so to say, ‘outward’ to the perspective of a God who is beyond the difference between distinction and indistinction. One must clarify, then, that ‘distinction’ belongs to the creature as a category of partial exclusion (partial, because for one thing to be distinct from another thing requires the commonality of ‘thingness’, which is therefore not exclusive). On the other hand, ‘indistinction’, applied to God, does not mean the exclusion of distinction; rather, the exclusion of all exclusion, and hence that which makes ‘distinction’ exclusive.¹⁶

If God is beyond distinction and indistinction in a way which ‘exclude[s] the disjunction between them’,¹⁷ it is only so that each term cannot claim a determinative specification in God. In other words, the observation that all negation in God is itself negated, empties distinction and indistinction of their oppositional character. But if the oppositional character of distinction and indistinction is necessary to their definition – much in the way the term ‘father’ is determined by a relation to the term ‘son’ and vice versa¹⁸ – then does this not mean that distinction and indistinction are terms which are, in fact, excluded from God? If this is the case, it is only because the oppositional nature of the terms (the fact that they are exclusive; it is a choice between one or the other) belongs to created reality. Saying that both terms are contained in God ‘in some non-exclusive way’¹⁹ is tantamount to denying that God is a creature.

The question that then arises is whether, in being beyond distinction and indistinction, God’s distinction and indistinction can be spoken of without falling prey to creaturely oppositions.²⁰ The point is seen in the fact that to be beyond distinction and indistinction means to be, in Turner’s words, beyond ‘the disjunction between them’.²¹ Therefore God’s distinction cannot be to the exclusion of indistinction, or vice versa. This being the case, we are led to say that which makes God distinct is his indistinction, and his indistinction makes him distinct.²² In other words, only God is indistinct. Moreover, divine indistinction ‘is more distinguished from the distinct than any two distinct things are from each other’.²³ Eckhart gives an example: ‘something not colored is further from a colored thing than two colored things are from each other’,²⁴ or, as Turner puts it, ‘how does this piece of Camembert cheese differ from 11.30 in the morning? […] The bigger the difference, the harder, not easier, it is to describe the manner of its difference’.²⁵ But this itself is a creaturely determination, because what God is distinct from is creation’s non-indistinction, for nothing in creation is indistinct as God is indistinct, and this necessarily involves the comparative opposition between distinction and indistinction that is excluded in God. It follows that God’s indistinction, precisely because it is beyond the ‘disjunction’ between distinction and indistinction, is not affected by creaturely distinction. The fact that creatures are distinct, including from God, does not thereby make God distinct in a way which excludes his indistinction. There is, in other words, an asymmetry between God and creation.

This matter has a bearing on the question of immanence, and we see this both in what Eckhart says, and in a text from Aquinas to which he appeals. ‘God is something indistinct which is distinguished by his indistinction’, Eckhart says, ‘as Thomas says in Ia, q. 7, a. 1, at the end’.²⁶ The third objection in Thomas’ article states:

Whatever is in one place in such a way as not to be elsewhere is finite in place. Therefore whatever is one thing in such a way as not to be another is finite in substance. But God is one thing and not another, for God is not a stone or a piece of wood. Therefore God is not infinite in substance.²⁷

The issue revolves around the association of infinity with perfection – a matter we will turn to later – which is only adopted by Christianity as a result of Neoplatonic influence.²⁸ For Thomas, divine infinity is not an imperfection but a perfection. This is because form is infinite by ‘range’ and ‘apart from determination by matter’; form is then ‘restricted’ by matter.²⁹ Matter, considered abstractly, is infinite in that it can potentially take on any form; and then, when it does so, is ‘limited by form’.³⁰ God is not affected by this mutual limiting because ‘the divine existence is not received in anything’; God’s existence is ‘its own subsisting existence’, and as ‘what is most formal of all is existence itself’, God is infinite and perfect after the manner of form unrestricted by matter.³¹ Replying to the above objection, then, Thomas says that God’s existence, being infinite, ‘is thereby distinguished from all other beings, and separated from all else’.³² This is why Eckhart refers to God’s infinity as key to his indistinction,³³ and the fact that he is ‘distinguished by his indistinction’.³⁴

The objection raised by Thomas in article 1 of question 7 posits the link we need between distinction as a comment on being this thing as apposed to that, and immanence as being here as apposed to there. In other words, God is infinite and therefore indistinct, indistinction liberates God from the constraints of created ‘thingness’, and in like manner, God’s indistinction means he is not constrained by being here or there – i.e. in any finite place – but rather is spatially indistinct; he is somehow present to all heres and theres.

Transposing (in)distinction onto immanence and transcendence

Anastasia Wendlinder helpfully refers to Eckhart’s position as one of ‘transcendence-in-immanence’, building on the established idea that contrastive language about God leads us to an either/or choice between divine transcendence or immanence.³⁵ Deploying Kathryn Tanner’s ‘non-contrastive’³⁶ language about God, Wendlinder draws our attention to the way both Eckhart and Aquinas require us to suspend the creaturely commitment to contrast in order to make sense of divine immanence as a manifestation of transcendence. As such, divine immanence and transcendence cannot be subject to contrast, and are instead seen as analogically related, as with difference and sameness, distinction and indistinction. Contrast, otherwise, leads one either to a univocal or equivocal perspective: univocal in that it presupposes an underlying sameness which forms the basis of comparison and contrast (God and the creature are two ‘things’ – ‘thingness’ being a feature common to both), equivocal in that there is nothing but irreconcilable difference – an otherness so complete that it bars all further speech, and so is nothing but a negative pronouncement.

A critical point of difference here, however, is to be found in that I do not view the analogical relation as essentially a matter of language, but of being. With Eckhart, this also seems true because God’s indistinction is likened to or even identified with the common nature of existence itself; all things have existence, and as such existence is itself indistinct.³⁷ Not only therefore is there the question of (in)distinction between the creature and God, such a relation also bears upon the relationship between essence and existence: essence is distinct from existence, but existence is indistinct from essence. The question would then be whether this point serves as a univocal perspective, in which God is identified with existence itself, or an analogical point, in which the asymmetry of creaturely essence-existence (in)distinction is an analogy for God’s indistinction to a distinct world.

The possible problem with ‘transcendence-in-immanence’ is if it inadvertently dissolves the nature of transcendence into immanence – the ‘in’ itself describing an immanence of transcendence to immanence. In order to maintain the nature of analogy, therefore, I think it is better to formulate the relationship according to Erich Przywara’s preferred terminology of ‘in-and-beyond’ (in-über):³⁸ transcendence in-and-beyond immanence. This is to suggest that the unique mode of divine immanence accounts for the ‘in’ of transcendence (it is an immanence unlike any other – it is distinct – and therefore in some sense like all other immanences, such that the comparative ‘distinct’ has meaning). But to avoid any dissolving of transcendence into immanence (and thus a univocal view), the ‘beyond’ must be preserved. What this unique mode of divine immanence communicates is not a graspable alternative to creaturely modes of immanence or presence, but something that exceeds all codifiable immanences. The uniqueness ought not to be a temptation to reduce transcendence to immanence, but to see immanence as a point of departure for a transcendence which is beyond it.

Every sense of the unique ‘in’ of divine immanence stands in a ‘non-contrastive’ relationship to a transcendence beyond it. The sense of ‘beyond’ here cannot therefore mean there is some other, transcendent position which contrasts the unique immanence. On the one hand, one can say there is no transcendence other than creaturely conceptions of immanence. On the other hand, there is a transcendence other to creaturely conceptions of immanence, including an unthinkably unique form of immanence. Only in this way – in which we are enacting a failure of speech – are we able to approach the fact that God is beyond the difference between immanence and transcendence.

To put this another way, when speaking of God, ‘sameness’ is not the opposite of ‘difference’ (such that immanence becomes transcendence and vice versa), yet every creaturely difference stands in analogy to the unique difference of God beyond it. Even the unique immanence of God is a creaturely designation of difference (possible only because of a background similarity to other forms of immanence) that serves as an analogy for the way in which God is in fact immanently transcendent – that is, beyond all such affirmative similarities and negative differences.

Whilst it follows that God’s indistinction is what makes him distinct from creation, it is necessary to point out that this cannot be because the indistinction is constituted by that distinction. This is because the relationship is essentially asymmetrical, and therefore opposed only from the side of the creature. But it is precisely this that allows us to say that the unique immanence of God to creation cannot itself be the transcendence. In other words, for all the uniqueness, God’s transcendence cannot be ‘touched’ by the contrastive dimension of that uniqueness. We are speaking here, as it were, from the creaturely perspective. Therefore, although God’s transcendence is not other to his unique immanence, neither is it contained by it; the only reasonable position is to say that the uniqueness is but the beginning of a creaturely exploration of divine transcendence. Divine immanence and transcendence are beyond the contrastive difference between them, and as such, beyond even the negative formulation of God as beyond every immanence. The shorthand for this is the Przywaran formula: transcendence in-and-beyond immanence.

The transposition of (in)distinction to immanent transcendence highlights the necessity of ‘non-contrastive’ conceptualizations. But immanent transcendence is not simply a synonym for (in)distinction. Essential to the definition is the question of proximity to and distance from creation. Therefore the question of asymmetry can lead us to say that immanence is the way God is proximate to creation; whereas ‘union’ is the sense in which both God and the creature come together (‘mutual compenetration’³⁹).⁴⁰ It is here that we would speak of the creature turning away from the hoc et hoc, and the various spiritual counsels Eckhart gives in order for the creature to achieve an indistinct union with God.⁴¹

A final point may be made regarding the transposition to immanence. Through Eckhart’s Commentary on the Book of Wisdom and his appeal to Aquinas (Summa Theologica Ia, q. 7, a. 1, co. et ad. 3), we find that indistinction and divine infinity are closely associated. In Latin Sermon XXIX (Deus unus est), Eckhart expresses with greater acuity the relationship between these matters and the topic of immanence as a question of proximity and distance:

God is infinite in his simplicity and simple by reason of his infinity. Therefore, he is everywhere and everywhere entire. He is everywhere by his infinity, but entire everywhere by reason of his simplicity. God alone flows into all created beings, into their essences; nothing of other beings flows into anything else. God is in the inner reality of each thing, and only in the inner reality. He alone “is one.”⁴²

All of this is to reiterate the relation between the terms ‘one’, ‘indistinct’ and ‘immanence’. The talk of God as ‘one’, and thus indistinct, is to talk about proximity: God as ‘everywhere and everywhere entire’. To understand this more clearly, we need to turn to the topic of the principium (‘principle’).

‘Principium’ and atemporality

The question of the relationship of God to the world is not only a philosophical question. And the way we have considered it so far is in fact just philosophical. It is also a theological question, because the creation of the world by God already tells us something about the relationship. So whereas philosophically the question of the relationship between God and the world may be seen in terms of univocity, equivocity, or analogy; theologically the question is one of creation and union. God and the world are therefore theologically transferred into the more specific register of Creator and creation. And this is precisely why, for Eckhart, the locus of all talk about the relation of God to the world – or now we might say the relation of the Creator to his creatures – is to be found in the opening account of the Book of Genesis and in the prologue to the Gospel of John. It is also a major feature of his Commentary on the Book of Wisdom. But in any case, the central question is that of creation, and God as Creator. So it is in fact right to say that for Eckhart the question does not begin in pure philosophy, but in theology; or, perhaps even more accurately, in philosophical theology, which is to say, in the philosophical questions arising from the data of revealed truths.

It does not come as a surprise to us, then, that the opening question in Eckhart’s Commentary on the Book of Genesis focuses on the meaning of the term principium.⁴³ ‘What is this principium in which God is said to have created heaven and earth?’, Eckhart asks.⁴⁴ Historically, principium has been translated variously, but perhaps most commonly as ‘beginning’; but the reason for Eckhart’s question lies in his impression that it has an equivocal meaning. Principium does not just mean ‘beginning’, as in the temporal start of something, but a ‘principle’ or condition for something. So when Eckhart opens his commentary with this question, he is asking about something of a deeper and more resonant nature than the stricture to one biblical commentary might suggest. The question enters the heart of Eckhart’s metaphysics precisely because the act of creation, to which his question testifies, contains within it the quintessence of the Creator-creature relationship.

Historically, principium was a term associated with ‘aitias (cause)’, ‘archê (supreme principle)’ and ‘initium’ (beginning/an instant) within the various discussions between the Greek East and the Latin West, especially with regard to trinitarian theology.⁴⁵ A defining feature of the Milesian School, begun with Thales of Miletus, was a preoccupation with the archê (ἀρχή): what can be said to account for the fact that the world is? No longer satisfied with the mytho-poetic accounts of the world’s creation,⁴⁶ the pre-Socratic philosophers thought something more concrete, something more explainable and intelligible was required. For Thales this was the element of water; for Anaximenes this was air. But the important point is that the archê pointed to the principle, origin, or condition by which the universe was created. Capitulating the theme from the origins of philosophical enquiry through to the patristic and late medieval expositions of Genesis, Eckhart is posing his question with all the inquisitiveness of a philosophically-minded theologian. The principium, therefore, announces itself in revelation as key to understanding the relationship between Creator and creature; the ‘principle’ is what is revealed to us as that which promises to unveil the nature of the relationship between God and the world.

Eckhart speaks about the principium in the same manner we have outlined with respect to God as without existence (an argument made in the first of Eckhart’s Parisian Questions). If God is the cause of all existence, he must himself be something higher than existence, such that he can pre-contain all existence as an effect is pre-contained within its cause. Similarly, the principium is for Eckhart a ‘root’ which stands as prior and superior to that of which it is the root; yet it ‘remains “innermost” to the thing, which is to say, within and present to the thing in some unsurpassable sense’.⁴⁷ This has a clear bearing on our understanding of immanence, and relates to Eckhart’s Latin Sermon XXIX as quoted above. The condensation of meaning in the term principium results in the sense of God’s presence to creation not only in terms of ongoing causation or sustenance in being, but also in terms of a permanent proximity which includes a temporal dimension. God is immanent in the sense that he is present to creation (as ‘innermost’) but also permanently temporally present to creation; that is, God is in every instant, every momentary ‘now’.⁴⁸

The atemporality of the principium is what allows it to intersect with the defining moments of creation and re-creation from Genesis,⁴⁹ such that the principium in which God is said to have created heaven and earth is the site of a condensation of many meanings.⁵⁰ An atemporal principle in which heaven and earth are created does not mean it is unrelated to time, but present to all moments of time. Moreover, Eckhart refers to the creation of the world in the ‘first now of eternity’, and that it is false to think that any spatio-temporality comes between our present moment and this ‘first now’.⁵¹ One sees across the various facets of the principium the closure of distance, and therefore the sense in which it contributes to a discussion of immanence in Eckhart’s thought.

From atemporality to number

We have outlined, then, both the philosophical and the theological contours of immanence. The question lies in the way in which God is said to be present to creation. We have seen that there are a number of philosophical ways in which this can be conceived, starting with the problem of how one treats the relationship between an indistinct God and the distinct world, and how that involves suspending any contrary structure between them. In the theological picture this becomes a question of creation and is manifest in the means by which God creates. Eckhart outlines that the principium is key to understanding this, as it is in the principium that God is said to have created heaven and earth. This principium has a history of being atemporal, dissolving the moment of creation into all successive moments in time, as a first indication of God’s immanence to his creation. Eckhart’s analysis of the principium thus expands our understanding of divine indistinction and immanence.

Not infrequently Eckhart discusses the nature and role of number with respect to God and the world. The reason why this is important is found in our initial, philosophical questioning. If God’s transcendence is in-and-beyond his immanence, how can we speak of a relationship between him and the world without mistakenly treating God as if he were another being in the world? In other words, how do we avoid seeing God and the world as ‘two’? It is for this reason that Eckhart dedicates a number of arguments to the discussion of the nature of number, and specifically the relationship between the one and the many.

Eckhart’s presentation of the subject of the one and the many follows a decidedly Neoplatonic formulation, which has its roots in (as well as divergence from) a Pythagorean understanding of number. Eckhart considered Pythagoras to be tempore sui sapientissimus (‘the wisest man in his day’).⁵² Previously we considered the origins of philosophy and the search for the archê which could explain the world. The Pythagorean approach to the search for the archê centred on the role of number. In fact, thanks to Alexander of Aphrodisias, we know that the Pythagoreans ‘called the number one “insight” (noûs) and “essence” (ousía) … . Because of its constancy, its equality in every respect, and its ruling quality, they called insight unity [monás] and the number one, but also essentiality, because the First is essentiality’.⁵³ Anaximander, one of Pythagoras’ teachers,⁵⁴ is most notable for his view that the archê was to apeiron (the infinite or unlimited aspect of material potency). But the Pythagoreans wanted to push back against this indeterminacy, which they viewed as an imperfection, by suggesting that the union of odd numbers (‘a principle of limit’) and even numbers (‘a principle of illimitation’) results in the ‘One’ which forms and limits the ‘finished cosmos’.⁵⁵ It is not until we reach Plotinus and the Neoplatonists that we find ‘for the first time in Western thought a doctrine of participation linked with a wholly new concept of infinite and finite, correlated now with the perfect and the imperfect respectively in a complete reversal of the age-old classical Greek tradition’.⁵⁶

Given the Neoplatonic reversal resulting in the infinite being a sign of perfection rather than imperfection, Eckhart’s view of number is accordingly shaped such that the ‘One’ is aligned with the infinite and perfect, and number (two or more) is aligned with creatures and therefore imperfection. Eckhart says that ‘the term “one” is the same as indistinct, for all distinct things are two or more, but all indistinct things are one’.⁵⁷ Clearly this requires the association of what is ‘one’ with what is beyond number (i.e. what is infinite or without limitation), and does not posit that ‘one’ is the condition of all other number; in this sense, the number two is really the first number.⁵⁸ Eckhart continues the point by saying ‘nothing is so distinct from number and the thing numbered or what is numerable (the created thing that is) as God is. And yet nothing is so “indistinct”. […] God and the creature are opposed as the One and Unnumbered is opposed to number, the numerated, and the numerable’.⁵⁹

This leaves us with the question of whether the creature ought to turn away from number, from multiplicity, in order to become indistinct as God is indistinct. But this takes the argument further than we have established; it is a question of unity rather than a question of how God relates to the world in immanence. It is here that we find something paradoxical in Eckhart’s thought. He says that ‘the soul loves to be indistinguished, that is, to be and to become one with God’.⁶⁰ Given what we now know about indistinction, this cannot be as an alternative to distinction; it cannot simply be that the soul is to turn away from such distinction and towards indistinction, as this would perpetuate the mistake of seeing indistinction simply from the perspective of distinction – that is, as its opposite. Eckhart had already said that ‘[n]othing is as indistinct from anything as from that from which it is indistinguished by its own distinction. But everything that is numbered or created is indistinguished from God by its own distinction, as said above’.⁶¹ This means that what makes the creature indistinct is his very distinction from God (God himself already being indistinct to the creature asymmetrically). To abandon this distinction would be to abandon that which makes the creature indistinct to God. The more the creature leans into what makes him distinct, the more he embraces his indistinction from God. How can this be, given the criticism levelled by Eckhart at multiplicity and distinction? The answer seems to lie in the fact that ‘number or the numerable as such, is composed and subsists from unities’,⁶² and this shows in that ‘every composite thing draws its power and strength from the other things composing it’.⁶³ In other words, composite beings (creatures) draw their strength from being composed of many simple things. Eckhart continues:

That with us the more composite beings are more perfect is not against our position, but in its favor. This happens not because they are more composite (for as such they are later and dependent), but because there are more simple things that compose them. A thing is more powerful, able to work more things, insofar as power descends upon it from many [simple] sources.⁶⁴

We may take this as a comment on divine immanence. God, who is indistinct, is present to the creature in those simplicities that make up the composite multitude of his finite createdness. Therefore the creature becoming indistinct to God is not found somewhere other than in the composite, but (to return to an earlier theme) in-and-beyond that composite multitude. God’s transcendence – his distinction that makes him indistinct – is in-and-beyond his immanence to the creature. In a somewhat Pythagorean manner, Eckhart seems to want to push beyond the multiplicity of number to the simple ‘one’ that is multiplied in that number, as its basic unit; but instead of this ‘one’ being the basic, finite, distinct, delineated and determinable foundation of all number (e.g. 6 simply being a collection of six 1s), it is instead an indistinct principle, associated with the infinite and perfection.

From number to the negation of negation

A further problem arises as a result of this understanding of God as indistinct or one. Surely, we might say, one is a number, because it is determined: it has a perimeter, it is able to be distinguished from two, three, four and so on? Eckhart takes up this point in the following way. What that question presupposes is that the sense in which God is ‘one’ is positive. It asserts, it has boundaries, it is delimited. Eckhart sees the problem, and responds with an ingenious move. We may say that God is ‘one’ in a positive sense; but only if one reaches that positivum by a specific route. The creature thinks of something positive, something asserted, as just that: a movement forward, a statement, an assertion, a concept, something with boundaries. For Eckhart, the positive sense in which God is one is only ever achieved through negation.⁶⁵

More specifically, the positive is achieved through the negation of negation. Eckhart explains by saying that there cannot be ‘two or more indistinct things’.⁶⁶ If you have two indistinct things, those two things must be distinct, otherwise you would not have two, but one. To say there are two or more indistinct things is a contradiction. This is another reason why Eckhart links ‘one’ with ‘indistinction’. But, he adds, from this and the other arguments he has made, we may think that ‘the term “one” is a negative word but is in reality affirmative’.⁶⁷ In other words, we might think that ‘one’ is negatively defined because we are saying that it is what one gets when there are ‘not two or more’. We are creatures, we live in multiplicity, and therefore we start thinking, as it were, from the number two onwards. To get to the idea of ‘one’ in the sense Eckhart is deploying it, we have to negate multiplicity: we have to think in terms of the ‘not’ two or more. And so, Eckhart says:

Therefore, it should be recognised now that the term “one” is a negative word but is in reality affirmative. Moreover, it is the negation of negation which is the purest form of affirmation and the fullness of the term affirmed’.⁶⁸

Here Eckhart is introducing us to the now-famed idea of the ‘negation of negation’. But we need to understand how it gets us from what he is saying about ‘one’ and ‘indistinct’ to the idea of divine immanence. To negate a negation is indeed to result in a positive affirmation; but the point is that the positive affirmation one reaches by this route is not the same as simple positive affirmation alone.⁶⁹ To understand this we need to go back to a philosophical point. Any negation rests, in fact, on an underlying affirmation.⁷⁰ One cannot simply ‘negate’: there has to be something to negate. But the affirmation that is the opposite of the negation – the flip side of the same coin, we might say – is not the kind of affirmation Eckhart is talking about as a result of the negation of negation. The reason why he calls it ‘the purest form of affirmation and the fullness of the term affirmed’ is because it is not like this, so to say, ‘original’ affirmation. The negation of negation has delivered us up to something else.

What effect does this have? It is that ‘the negation of negation is the real guarantor of gratuity […] because God cannot deny anything to His creatures, for there is no negation in Him (save for the negation of negation itself)’.⁷¹ It provides a basis for saying in a theological register that divine immanence concerns God gifting himself completely to the creature.

The creature’s indistinction to God must not therefore be an abandonment of himself – a leaving behind; but an abandonment in the sense of total consecration, of giving over everything to God.⁷² The individual who prays does not achieve the detached, indistinct state by cutting out or suppressing images and attachments (this would be just ‘negation’ on its own); rather, the individual retains the images and objects of attachment but has now detached from their oppositional structure – from that which makes them ‘distinct’ from each other. Whatever is involved in prayer, be it frustration or joy, be it difficulty or ease, be it focussed or distracted, these are all accepted as they are and not suppressed. This, then, is the second negation that transforms the individual into the indistinct ‘one’: the negation is negated, the abandoning is abandoned.⁷³ And so the creature transcends multiplicity and distinction; he or she is able to be present to a whole manner of different things,⁷⁴ love and fear, joy and trembling, focus and distraction. This is both the freedom that is brought by indistinction, and the giftedness that characterizes the indistinction of God. Just as God cannot deny himself to anything, so the indistinct creature can be present to all things as one. It is not an emptying or a suppression,⁷⁵ but an ability to find the one in and through multiplicity, between ‘[…] cognitio matutina, “knowing things in God” [… and] cognitio vespertina, “knowing God in things” […]’.⁷⁶

The analogates of hunger and thirst

What are these simple things that make up the composite of the creature, and are the locus of divine indistinction to the creature? Perhaps we might find an explanation of this in what Eckhart says about eating and drinking, as a comment on the verse John 16:16. The idea here is that ‘drinking diminishes its opposite, thirst, with every gulp; therefore, the first gulp is the best because it is most opposed to thirst’.⁷⁷ To sustain this initial sense of opposition, and to prevent its degeneration with subsequent drinking, Eckhart connects the experience of the first gulp when thirsty with the notion of principium. This is how he wants to characterize ‘spiritual and divine things’, as the reverse of the corporeal experience of drinking when thirsty.⁷⁸ In other words, when it comes to God, the creature does not experience a diminishment of the opposition, as when thirst diminishes and eventually vanishes with each subsequent sip of a drink when thirsty. On the contrary, everything is structured like the opposition of the first gulp of a drink when thirsty. It is the nature of principium to preserve this eternal freshness of opposition.

The point is ingeniously made with reference to the verse from John’s Gospel:

Eckhart notes that John’s Gospel says of other things: “a little bit, and you will no longer behold me” (John 16:16), which means if I have some of something (for example, food/drink), then what is opposite (hunger/thirst) begins to disappear. […] From this rationale, the more one “progresses” corporeally to the finis, the more one quenches the opposite (as in hunger or thirst); conversely, the more one “progresses” in spiritual and divine things to the finis, the more one is actually entering into the principium and thus never quenches the desire.⁷⁹

As soon as I eat or drink a small amount, my hunger or thirst diminishes and then vanishes; therefore, there is an ‘all or nothing’ element at play; there is no such thing as a little bit, only the whole or the ‘one’. So too with God: we cannot receive a little bit, we only ever receive the whole of God. And so too with existence: we cannot exist a little bit, something either exists or it does not.

Our paradox returns at this moment. If God is present to the creature indistinctly, with reference to the principium we may say that there is no question of degree or proportion: God is entirely and completely present to the creature. Moreover, it paradoxically introduces the oppositional structure: the first gulp that is the opposite of thirst is the best, and what is perpetuated in principio with God. Therefore indistinction does not do away with the oppositional structure, but reinforces it. How can this be if God is beyond all distinction and indistinction? His being beyond it does not mean they are mutually excluded, but that they are present in-and-beyond one another (he is distinct because he is indistinct and vice versa). The creature, as we have seen, does not approach indistinction with God by abandoning the multiplicity of his composite nature; rather, it is through such composition that the indistinction is found. It makes sense, then, that Eckhart thinks ‘spiritual and divine things’ preserve and reinforce distinction in the creature, precisely as the means by which indistinction is achieved. This is exactly what one would expect when considering the creaturely perspective relative to a God who is beyond the difference between distinction and indistinction.

Following Augustine, Eckhart does not seem to want to abandon or do away with the asymmetry of (in)distinction when considering divine immanence; rather to find some way to reinscribe it. It is possible, he thinks, and not only possible but usual, for the relationship of God to the creature to be asymmetrical. This is to say, that God can be immanent to the creature without the creature equally reciprocating (because ‘it is impossible for there to be two infinite things [… or] two or more indistinct things’⁸⁰). Eckhart quotes Augustine to make the point: ‘speaking to God [Augustine] says, “You were with me and I was not with you”. “You were with me”, because indistinct from all things; “I was not with you”, because I am distinct as something created’.⁸¹ This perfectly summarizes the asymmetry of divine immanence. If I place my hand on your shoulder, my hand is present to you: I am touching you. But as a passive recipient of my touch, you are not said to be ‘touching’ me, even though your body is in contact with my hand. This serves as an analogy for the asymmetry of relation between the indistinct God and the distinct creature.

An eschatological conclusion

Eckhart’s view of immanence can be said to centre on questions of divine infinity and indistinction, and the fact that God is one. Philosophically we can more clearly address the difficulty of how difference and sameness relate, and how distinction and indistinction relate, and through this we find an emerging asymmetry between God and creatures, whereby God is indistinct and creatures are distinct. Yet, owing to his infinity, we see that God’s indistinction is not the opposite of distinction in the way that sameness is the opposite of difference; rather, that God is beyond the oppositional difference between distinction and indistinction. It therefore becomes possible to speak about God as indistinct without compromising the truth of saying that this is the way in which he is distinct from creation. By the same token, the creature is indistinct from God in virtue of his distinction and not in spite of it; and this leads us to wonder about a major theme in Eckhart’s thought, namely, how is it that creatures are to be encouraged to leave distinction behind in order to become indistinct and one with God? Eckhart thinks that this is possible because what belies the composite nature of creatures is a series of simple things, in which God dwells.

God’s indistinction means that he can be present to all places and all times, and we see this most clearly in Eckhart’s exposition of the concept of principium. Rather than indicating a temporal beginning of creation, the principium refers instead to that divine condition of indistinction which makes possible his unique immanence. That immanence is unique (and therefore distinct) because of the conditions that make it possible; it is unlike other forms of immanence, even if it is analogous to it. But because God is similarly beyond the difference between immanence and transcendence, his immanence is neither in contravention of his transcendence (which would be mutual exclusion, or equivocity), nor is it the same thing as transcendence (which would be univocity), and nor, we may add, does it suggest that God is both immanent and transcendent as two independent states.⁸² Instead, God’s immanence is the means by which his transcendence is glimpsed, and this is best expressed in the kind of formulation preferred by Erich Przywara: transcendence in-and-beyond immanence. Only in this way does one avoid the univocal or equivocal traps that haunt creaturely thinking on the matter.

At this point we are brought back to our earlier question, which has now taken on greater acuteness, namely, if God is present to his creation in virtue of being one or indistinct, what is left to be said about the creature’s union with God? Surely all the work is already done? To answer this, we may turn to Sermon 39 (Iustus in perpetuum vivet et apud dominum est merces eius etc.) which looks at the heavenly state of the creature:

Some teachers claim that the spirit takes its happiness from love; others claim that it takes it in seeing God. I say, however, it takes it neither from love nor from knowing nor from seeing. Now one could ask: In eternal life does not the spirit see God? Yes and no. Insofar as the spirit is born, it does not look up to or see God. But insofar as it is being born, it sees God. Therefore, the happiness of the spirit consists in its having been born and not in its being born; for it lives where the Father lives: in oneness and in the nakedness of being.⁸³

Here Eckhart leaves open a question about the completeness of the union of the creature with God. This is quite far from any idea that such a union is already achieved in this life. His ‘yes and no’ answer makes sense when contemplating union with a God who is beyond the difference between distinction and indistinction. Although it would be a stretch to say Eckhart is advocating a complete doctrine of epektasis, there is nonetheless a similar stream running through his thought which might serve as a point of connection with Gregory of Nyssa or Gregory Palamas.⁸⁴ At any rate, it raises interesting questions about the deferral of desire, which hearken back to Eckhart’s analogy of perpetual thirst-quenching when talking about the principium.

Eckhart seems to be saying that in heaven, the creature both has union with God and also lacks union with God simultaneously.⁸⁵ Frank Tobin, analysing the same passage and themes, puts it: ‘even in heaven the human spirit exists in a condition including both the birth as a state implying utter oneness with the divine existence, and the birth as an incomplete and ongoing process’.⁸⁶ Tobin sees a problem here, and asks two pertinent questions: why is it that Eckhart frequently ‘[…] suppresses this duality to the point of misleading his audience and his ecclesiastical judges?’ and ‘Why is the union of creature with God so emphasized, to the detriment of the whole picture?’ His answer is: ‘because the reality of the birth […] is so overwhelming, so existentially vital, that all else pales beside it’.⁸⁷

Whilst fervour may well explain a great deal in terms of different moments of emphasis, a careful tracing of the philosophical dimensions of Eckhart’s thought on immanence, as we have done here, suggests something else. Eckhart does not seem to suppress the two dimensions outlined above, but clearly and regularly explains them. Moreover, he gives philosophical grounds for shifting between one and the other, as he had outlined in the Prologue to the Book of Propositions.⁸⁸ So much here seems to rest on the fact that God is beyond the difference between distinction and indistinction. And it is in this that we find an answer to our question of why and how divine immanence does not do away with the need to speak of union.

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Notes on contributors

Christopher M. Wojtulewicz

Dr Christopher M. Wojtulewicz is a Lecturer in Philosophy at St Mary’s College Oscott, a Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford, and an Associate of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism.

Notes

1 On the matter of an ‘ontological interpretation’ of ‘divine indwelling’, which would be the closest point of contact to our concerns here, see Kieckhefer, ‘Meister Eckhart’s Concept of Union’, 208–9.

2 Meister Eckhart, Prolog. in Opus propositionum n. 11, LW I/2 45, 22-4. All citations of Eckhart’s works are taken from the critical edition: Eckhart, Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke. The abbreviation style follows ‘Lateinischen Werke’ (LW) or ‘Deutschen Werke’ (DW), followed by the volume, page, and line number(s). Abbreviated titles of works are used: Prologus in Opus propositionum [Prolog. in Opus propositionum]; Predigt [Pr.]; Expositio libri Genesis [In Gen. I]; Expositio libri Sapientiae [In Sap.]; Quaestiones Parisienses [Quaest. Par.]; Expositio libri Exodi [In Ex.]; Expositio sancti evangelii secundum Iohannem [In Ioh.].

3 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 144, LW II 482, 4–9.

4 Meister Eckhart, Quaest. Par. I n. 12, LW V 47, 14–48, 4. For a very fine introduction to the themes of this question, as well as an overview of the different ontological and henological approaches to it, see Keenan OP, ‘Theological Epistemology’.

5 Meister Eckhart, Prolog. in Opus propositionum n. 6, LW I/2 43, 16-20.

6 Meister Eckhart, Quaest. Par. I n. 7, LW V 43, 13–44, 2.

7 Meister Eckhart, Quaest. Par. I n. 9, LW V 45, 6–15.

8 Meister Eckhart, Prolog. in Opus propositionum n. 25, LW I/2 55, 13–15.

9 Turner, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God, 101.

10 Ibid., 101–2.

11 Ibid., 102.

12 See also O'Regan, ‘Theological Epistemology and Apophasis’, 379–80. O’Regan seems to offer a similar analysis to that of Turner in this regard. However, ‘excess’, we may note, suggests either something inappropriate, or else (as we would expect in the context of any discussion of transcendence) the only appropriate description of what apophasis is attempting to do.

13 Turner, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God, 105.

14 Ibid., 101.

15 Ibid., 189. I am applying Turner’s point here to distinction and indistinction; his original point is about rational and non-rational animality.

16 Meister Eckhart, In Ex. n. 74, LW II 77, 9–78, 4.

17 Turner, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God, 189.

18 See Wojtulewicz, ‘Deconstructing Sophisms in Meister Eckhart’, 121–44.

19 Turner, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God, 189.

20 It is worth noting the difference between Aertsen’s and Mojsisch’s interpretations regarding the transcendentals and being here. Mojsisch thinks Eckhart’s concept of God as One ‘breaks through’ the ‘transcendental level’ with his negatio negationis (and this, Mojsisch thinks, ‘advances the theory of univocity’, Mojsisch, p. 100). Aertsen, on the other hand, thinks the transcendental ‘is not surpassable’ because the convertible transcendentals (which includes ‘one’ and ‘being’) ‘are identified with the Transcendent’ (Aertsen, p. 139). This is the ground on which Aertsen argues against Etienne Gilson’s conclusion that Eckhart’s Quaest. Par. I dissociates God from being. It is not clear why Mojsisch’s theory advances the case for univocity rather than equivocity here; but certainly his concept of analogy is etiolated (‘it sets the absolute in relation to the limited’, Mojsisch, p. 68). Oddly, Aertsen’s reading seems more in line with Mojsisch’s description of univocity than his own. I therefore see Mojsisch’s position as more equivocal in practice, and Aertsen’s as properly univocal. But for reasons I set out here, I think it makes greater sense of Eckhart’s position to read it analogically (especially where he leans on Aquinas’ understanding of infinity), which is why I think Turner’s analysis of the mutual exclusion of disjunction between opposite terms is correct. Mojsisch, Analogy, Univocity and Unity, especially 67–8 and 100–1; Aertsen, ‘Ontology and Henology in Medieval Philosophy’, especially 139.

21 Turner, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God, 189.

22 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 154, LW II 490, 4–5.

23 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 154, LW II 489, 9-10; English translation taken from McGinn, Tobin, and Borgstädt, Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, 169.

24 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 154, LW II 489, 10–11; English translation taken from ibid.

25 Turner, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God, 163.

26 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 154, LW II 490, 7–9; English translation taken from McGinn, Tobin, and Borgstädt, Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, 169.

27 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica Ia, q. 7, a. 1, obj. 3; English translation taken from Aquinas, The Treatise on the Divine Nature, 61, 9–13.

28 Clarke, ‘The Limitation of Act by Potency’, 185.

29 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia, q. 7, a. 1, co.; English translation taken from Aquinas, Treatise on the Divine Nature, 62, 33–5.

30 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia, q. 7, a. 1, co.; English translation taken from ibid., 62, 25–8.

31 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia, q. 7, a. 1, co.; English translation taken from ibid., 62, 36–8.

32 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia, q. 7, a. 1, ad. 3; English translation taken from ibid., 62, 46–8.

33 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 144, LW II 482, 5–7.

34 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 154, LW II 490, 7–8.

35 Wendlinder, Speaking of God in Thomas Aquinas and Meister Eckhart, 17–18.

36 Ibid., 18.

37 See for example In Ex. n. 106, LW II 106, 14–107, 3.

38 Przywara, Metaphysics: Original Structure and Universal Rhythm.

39 Wojtulewicz, Meister Eckhart on the Principle, 246–51.

40 Davies, Mystical Theologian, 99ff. Davies distinguishes between the ‘theology of union’ and the ‘imagery of union’ which more or less maps onto the distinction I am making here between the question of analogy and the question of union, or, a philosophical and theological analysis.

41 Wendlinder, Speaking of God in Thomas Aquinas and Meister Eckhart gives a very good overview of this aspect of Eckhart’s thought, and the points of connection that exist with Thomas Aquinas. Guerizoli gives insightful analysis on the immanent and transcendent aspects of the ‘Gottesgeburtszyklus’ ('birth-of-God cycle’), see Guerizoli, Die Verinnerlichung des Göttlichen, 18–25.

42 Meister Eckhart, Sermo XXIX n. 296, LW IV 263, 13–264, 3; English translation taken from McGinn, Tobin, and Borgstädt, Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, 223–4.

43 For an in-depth study of this concept in Eckhart’s Latin and German works, see Wojtulewicz, Meister Eckhart on the Principle. Different expositions of the term principium in Eckhart’s work can be found in Waldschütz, Denken und Erfahren des Grundes; Goris, Einheit Als Prinzip Und Ziel. Despite due caution from both authors, I am myself more sceptical about any association between principium, as principally found in the Latin works, and grunt, as found in the German works. Any equivalence between Latin and German terms has been a thorny issue at least since the time of Martin Grabmann, and it is worth noting that Eckhart does sometimes deploy the term ‘principium’ in his German works, which is suggestive of his own frustration at finding equivalences. I find myself more in agreement with McGinn’s analysis of principium, especially given his comment on what I have been calling the asymmetrical relation between God and the creature; principium being, McGinn thinks, something which belongs ‘to the divine side, but not the human’. See McGinn, The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart, 42–3.

44 Meister Eckhart, In Gen. I n. 2, LW I/2 61, 4–5.

45 Wojtulewicz, Meister Eckhart on the Principle, 55–22.

46 For an excellent account of this theme in the pre-Socratics, see Miller, ‘The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics’.

47 Wojtulewicz, Meister Eckhart on the Principle, 132.

48 See for example Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 161, LW II 497, 7–11 and In Ioh. n. 582, LW III 510, 1-2.

49 See Wojtulewicz, Meister Eckhart on the Principle, 9. Note here the patristic theme of layering the re-creation accomplished by Christ’s resurrection on top of the Genesis account of creation.

50 Grotz gives a sophisticated analysis of language-use in Eckhart, especially with respect to modistic use, and considers the negation of negation as important in explaining the exegetical technique Eckhart deploys in order to ‘weniger sagt und dabei mehr meint’. This gives rise to what Grotz calls ‘Mehr-Deutigkeit’. For my own part, I am describing something similar by referring to ‘condensation’. See Grotz, ‘Zwei Sprachen und das Eine Wort’, 52–7.

51 Meister Eckhart, In Ioh. n. 216, LW III 181, 7–182, 6.

52 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 201, LW II 536, 6. Eckhart even compares Pythagoras with John the Baptist; to be taken on the strength of his word, just as John was believed and admired though he did not perform miracles: In Ioh. n. 520, LW III 449, 1–10.

53 Riedweg, His Life, Teaching, and Influence, 81.

54 Ibid., 44.

55 Clarke, ‘The Limitation of Act by Potency’, 174.

56 Ibid., 184.

57 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 144, LW II 482, 4–5; English translation taken from McGinn, Tobin, and Borgstädt, Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, 166.

58 Wojtulewicz, Meister Eckhart on the Principle, 133–4.

59 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 154, LW II 489, 7–8 and 490, 1–3; English translation taken from McGinn, Tobin, and Borgstädt, Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, 169.

60 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 282, LW II 614, 13–615, 1; English translation taken from ibid., 172.

61 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 155, LW II 491, 7–9; English translation taken from ibid., 170.

62 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 155, LW II 491, 3–4; English translation taken from ibid.

63 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 156, LW II 492, 4–5; English translation taken from ibid.

64 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 156, LW II 492, 8–12; English translation taken from ibid. Square brackets are original to the translation.

65 See Aertsen, ‘Ontology and Henology in Medieval Philosophy’, 137–9.

66 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 146, LW II 484, 6; English translation taken from McGinn, Tobin, and Borgstädt, Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, 167.

67 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 147, LW II 485, 5–6; English translation taken from ibid.

68 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 147, LW II 485, 5–7; English translation taken from ibid.

69 See Wojtulewicz, ‘Late Medieval Mysticism’, 2 and 15.

70 Przywara puts this well when he says, following De Pot. q.7, a. 5, corp., ‘To be sure, there is such a thing as a positive statement concerning God, but it is merely the basis of a negative statement concerning his absolute otherness’. Betz and Hart give the translation of De Pot. q. 7, a. 5, corp. in n. 211 as ‘The perception of negation is always founded upon a certain affirmation … : hence, unless the human mind possessed some positive knowledge of God, it would be impossible for it to deny anything of God’. Przywara, Analogia Entis, 231 and 231n.211.

71 Wojtulewicz, ‘Late Medieval Mysticism’, 15.

72 Key to this determination of self-abandonment is the idea that immanence does not become a matter of possession for the creature, but of dispossession. But we may add that the question of possession itself presupposes a distinction which treats God as a ‘thing’, which for reasons we have explored, is false. See Dubilet, ‘Meister Eckhart’s Kenotic Lexicon and the Critique of Finitude’, in The Self-Emptying Subject, 51–5.

73 This is to say that the negation of what is creaturely is already to negate the negation, for the distinction that characterizes the creature is itself already a negation. In this sense, I agree with Williams, ‘Two Masters Negating the Negation’, 49–53.

74 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 156, LW II 492, 6–7.

75 Przywara affirms this point about Eckhart’s thought in that it is not a flight from creatureliness, but also adds why he thinks Eckhart’s position ultimately to be wrong, see Przywara, Ringen der Gegenwart, 488: ‘Wenn also Meister Eckhart von den Stufen des Entwerdens spricht, so ist das, im Lichte dieser Zusammenhänge, letztlich weniger Geschöpfflucht oder Geschöpfverachtung, sondern Eindringen in die mystische Tiefe der Schöpfung in Gott, Eindringen in ihr geistiges Urwesen. Es handelt sich letztlich nicht um Entwerdung im strengen Sinn, sondern um Geistwerdung oder Verinnerung. Aber auch diese Ausdrücke sind noch falsch. Denn die Schöpfung ist bereits Geist in Gott, ist bereits ein “Innen” in Gott, und die Menschenseele trägt bereits als Geistseele das All geistig in sich und das Außen als ihr Innen und trägt als Christenseele auch das Geistsein und Innensein dieser Schöpfung in Gott in sich, da nicht mehr sie lebt, sondern Christus, Gott in ihr’.

76 Ibid., 52: ‘[…] cognitio matutina, das “Erkennen der Dinge in Gott”, im Gegensatz zur cognitio vespertina, dem “Erkennen Gottes in den Dingen” […]’. Przywara is making a point about mysticism in reference to Jan van Ruusbroec and not Meister Eckhart here, but its application to Eckhart seems appropriate.

77 Wojtulewicz, Meister Eckhart on the Principle, 174.

78 Ibid., 174–6.

79 Ibid., 175.

80 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 146, LW II 484, 2 and 6; English translation taken from McGinn, Tobin, and Borgstädt, Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, 167.

81 Meister Eckhart, In Sap. n. 145, LW II 483, 8–10; English translation taken from ibid., 166.

82 Between these possibilities is found the tension in how Eckhart relates to questions of hierarchy (Neoplatonic or ecclesial). See Dubilet, ‘Conceptual Experimentation with the Divine: Expression, Univocity, and Immanence in Meister Eckhart’, in The Self-Emptying Subject, 61–2. I contrast Eckhart’s and Ruusbroec’s spiritual and metaphysical commitments with respect to this question of ecclesial hierarchy in Wojtulewicz, ‘Late Medieval Mysticism’.

83 Meister Eckhart, Pr. 39, DW II 265, 1–266, 2; English translation taken from McGinn, Tobin, and Borgstädt, Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, 298.

84 On the subject of epektasis and where it sits in relation to the broad history of Christian thought on the beatific vision, see Boersma, Seeing God, 76–96 and 129–62. See also Petcu, ‘The Doctrine of Epektasis’. Particularly interesting in the context of immanence are the topological questions raised by Conway-Jones, ‘The Greatest Paradox of All’.

85 On this point see also McGinn, ‘Mystical Union’, 414–15.

86 Tobin, Meister Eckhart, Thought and Language, 114.

87 Ibid.

88 Meister Eckhart, Prolog. in Opus propositionum n. 25, LW I/2 55, 13–15. On the point of the changing emphases of Eckhart’s language in the specific context of the Commentary on the Book of Wisdom, see Duclow, ‘Meister Eckhart on the Book of Wisdom’, 232–5.