God and Deity in Thomistic and Eckhartian Metaphysics

Abstract

Metaphysical reflection, which became the cause of our work, led us to a detailed consideration of one problem. This is about the reality of the Divine Being intelligible from the insight of the Angelic Doctor, but along with this, from the metaphysical- mystical side of Meister Eckhart. The intention is to establish closeness between both metaphysical definitions, which, according to a reading of them, are contradictory. Moreover, for our interpretation they are not only congruent, but also both are founded, ultimately, on the inheritance that the Platonic notion participation has left in metaphysics of the XIII and XIV centuries beyond, of course, the irreversible Aristotelian influence. Now the central hinge from which we must depart, in order to arrive at the edge of the divine being, whose speculation metaphysics takes the name of 'theology or science of the Causes', according to the object of the intellection of Book XII of Aristotelian Metaphysics, at the moment of conceiving God as Act, is the intuition of being. It constitutes for St. Thomas the principle of intelligibility of the first object of the created intelligence. That is the entity, and which in turn constitutes the actuality of every form and essence. But how is it possible that from the entity, and therefore from every creature, the metaphysical intelligence can rise to such an actuality that the essence not only constitutes its existence, but also in whom "to exist is form or nature in action"? In other words, the metaphysical question would be the following: what in God above speculative intelligence at the moment, in which it is found, just as a creature, condemned to transit through the composition itself, that is, to that whose definition is realized by a diverse essence of existence?