1

The Godhead Beyond God and Proclus’s Henads: A Reading of Eckhart’s Trinity

Michael Fagge

Ohio Dominican University, USA

Gwendolen Jackson,

Independent Scholar, Columbus, Ohio, USA

Abstract:

Meister Eckhart fluctuates between a rather traditional understanding of the Trinity and an extreme

nontraditional, even heretical, one according to the Church. In his more traditional formulation,
Eckhart proposes that the Persons have come into being through bullitio, in which the essence of

God boils eternally within itself, generating the Son and thereby becoming the Father. He also

teaches that a Godhead exists beyond the Persons. This Godhead is purely passive, unreachable,

and unknowable, and the Persons are divine agents connecting the Godhead with the created

universe. This idea of the Godhead beyond God has its roots in Proclus’s writings which has the

One as imparticipable but surrounded by Henads, deities that have being from the imparticipable
One and act as a bridge between the wholly transcendent One and the rest of the existing entities.

Keywords: Eckhart, Proclus, Henad, monad, Trinity, bullitio/ebullitio.

In 1327, near the end of his life, Meister Eckhart was put on trial for his unconventional teachings

on divine nature and its relationship to human nature. Although he willingly recanted anything that

was found to be against the teachings of the Church and avoided a personal excommunication, a

number of his propositions were condemned as heretical.1 Among the rejected points is that God

1
For a discussion of Eckhart’s trial, see Senner, 2013, pp. 44-84.
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is absolutely one with no distinction at all, whether in the divine attributes or Persons. 2 It is this

flirtation with what might seem to be a rejection of the Trinitarian Persons that attracted the eye of

the Inquisitors.

His accusers, while perhaps misunderstanding the spirit of Eckhart’s mysticism,

summarized the facts of his teachings accurately. Eckhart did preach that God was a simple One,

utterly indivisible and without qualities or accidents. What separates his theology from a strict

monotheism or a purely apophatic expression of human unknowing is the way he handles the

Persons of the Trinity, asserting that they are the active agents of a passive Godhead beyond God. 3

One source for this idea is the henadology of Proclus, in which a single, wholly transcendent God

emanates other gods, some of which are lesser but some of which are of equal metaphysical

dignity. Eckhart’s dependence on Proclus is shown directly through the citations of Proclus’s

works themselves and the citations of the Book of Causes, but it is also shown indirectly in the

ideas that Eckhart uses foundationally in several places in his Latin works. These ideas are then

expanded and superseded in the German works.

Eckhart’s Trinitarianism

Eckhart’s thoughts on God as Trinity fluctuate in the Latin and German works. In the Latin,

his language tends to be more technical, while in the German, he relies on strings of adjectival

phrases to carry his concepts. At one extreme, he writes of a Trinity that is close to the traditional

Christian understanding, in which the Father begets the Son and the Holy Spirit proceeds as the

2
In agro dominico, Articles 23 and 24, (Trans.) Colledge and McGinn, 1981, p. 79. For primary texts, we will use a
reference system as follows: Title, traditional numbering, translator, date of edition, page number within the edition
used.
3
For an example of strict monotheism, see Maimonides, I.53, (Trans.) Friedländer, 1956, p. 73. Eckhart cites
Maimonides extensively in his Latin works, particularly in Commentary on Genesis and Commentary on Exodus, and
frequently uses Maimonides’ ideas on the pure, innumerable, indescribable Oneness of the divine as a starting point
for his own arguments on the nature of God.
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love between them. At the opposite extreme, he writes of a Godhead beyond God, a silent divinity

that forms the ground of the Persons, a ground that is inaccessible and untouchable.

In Commentary on Exodus, Eckhart uses Ex. 3,14 as a basis for his understanding of the

bullitio, boiling, of the Persons in God, a metaphor for the generation of the Son and the Spirit.

The divine name, ‘I am who am,’ indicates two important concepts. First, God is supremely

existent, in contrast to all other entities whose existence depends on the divine. God can stand

independently, and proclaiming this fact effectively names God, separating the divine from all

other entities.4 Second, the repetition of ‘am’ indicates ‘a reflexive turning back of his existence

into itself and upon itself’, a ‘melting and boiling in and into itself.’ This internal boiling generates

the Persons of the Trinity.5

In a similar way, in a Latin sermon on the nature of the Son as the image of God, Eckhart

states that the Son has been begotten of the Father in ‘an emanation from the depths in silence […]

as if you were to imagine something swelling up from itself and in itself and then inwardly boiling

without any “boiling over” yet understood.’6 He is trying to understand what St Augustine says

when he speaks of the Son who generates the Holy Spirit through the abundance of his love for

the Father.7 The distinction that Eckhart raises between bullitio and ebullitio is that the boiling of

4
Commentary on Exodus, 15, (Trans.) McGinn, 1986, pp. 45-46. McGinn, 1982, p. 131, writes that these
proclamations of God’s unique existence are best understood in the context of Thomas Aquinas’ two-term (secundum
adiacens) and three-term (tertium adiacens) propositions. Two-term propositions identify the subject and predicate
with each other in an unlimited way, such as the above ‘I am’, while three-term propositions just show a limited
relationship between the subject and the predicate, such as ‘this man is just’. Linguistically the two-term propositions
are difficult to express, but in Eckhart existence, oneness, truth, and goodness apply to God in an unlimited sense
(secundum adiacens) and to humanity only in a limited sense (tertium adiacens). The reflexive ‘I am who am’ implies
an exponential expansion of the uniqueness of the two-term proposition that God exists.
5
Commentary on Exodus, 16, p.46. Eckhart states that this bullitio is the ‘prior ground of creation’, which has come
to be through a divine ebullitio, a ‘boiling over’. In Eckhart, the generation of the Persons in the Godhead is always
closely linked to the creation of the universe.
6
Sermon XLIX, (Trans.) McGinn, 1986, p. 236. Eckhart’s Latin sermons are numbered in Roman numerals, whereas
the German sermons are numbered in Arabic numerals. The phrase ‘from the depths in silence’ bears some similarity
to Eckhart’s Trinitarian theology in the German sermons, which emphasizes the quietness, passivity, and
inaccessibility of the Godhead beyond God.
7
Ibid., 237.
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the divine, on its own and without yet boiling over, results in the three uncreated Persons of the

Trinity. By contrast, ebullitio is the process by which God is the efficient cause of everything that

is not God; the divine creates all things ‘from itself, but not out of itself’.8

The bullitio/ebullitio ideas are revisited in Eckhart’s concept of the divine principium, or

Principle, which in Eckhart is a temporal concept (occurring in the mists of eternity before the

beginning of time), a causal concept (the source of all things), and, in a certain sense, a sentient

concept (the First Cause).9 According to Eckhart, the Principle is the ‘Ideal Reason’, and it became

the First Cause of creation and the source of the Persons at the same time. 10 The ‘beginning’ that

is referenced in Gen. 1,1 is also a point outside of time in which God eternally exists.11 Eckhart

insists that neither the creation nor the generation of the Persons occurred in time; they are ongoing,

eternal, concurrent processes couched in the principium of the Godhead.

Eckhart also discusses the Principle in his Commentary on John, particularly on John 1,1.

In these passages he seems to identify it with the Father rather than an amorphous supra-divinity,

as in: ‘The Son or Word is the same as what the Father or Principle is’.12 Identifying the Father

with the Principle draws Eckhart back to a more traditional Trinitarianism in which the Father

begets the Son, whereas identifying the Principle with the ground of divinity suggests a source that

is beyond any of the Persons.13 P.L. Reynolds, in working with these passages on the principium,

states that Eckhart’s Latin works never imply a Godhead beyond God. In reference to the

Commentary on Genesis text cited above, Reynolds writes:

8
Ibid.
9
McGinn, 2001, p. 75, states that principium is the Latin equivalent for the German grunt or ground, the ‘potentiality
for the “formal emanation” in the Trinity’. The grunt is one of Eckhart’s ‘master metaphors’, and to summarize, very
briefly, a complex (and unknowable) idea, it indicates a pure, unreachable, undivided divinity (ibid., 38).
10
Commentary on Genesis, B.5, (Trans.) Colledge and McGinn, 1981, p. 84.
11
Ibid., B.7, p. 84.
12
Commentary on John, 6, (Trans.) Colledge and McGinn, 1981, p. 124.
13
In the German sermons, an example of this traditional Trinitarianism is found in (Trans.) Blakney, 1941, p. 181: ‘In
eternity, the Father begets the Son in his own likeness.’
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We might suppose that bullitio describes the proceeding of the complexity of the Trinity

from the silent stillness of the undifferentiated Deity. We might envisage the latter as still,

clear water beneath a turbulent, boiling surface. But this is not what we find in the text.

Eckhart is describing the generation of the Son from the Father—monad begetting monad,

light from light, true God from true God—and the procession of the Holy Spirit from them

both.14

However, arguing that Eckhart never postulates a Godhead beyond God in the Latin works

disallows the theological flexibility that is key in his theology. In the Latin works, Eckhart writes

of a oneness of God so absolute that it would seem to deny the ultimacy of the Persons. For

example, in Commentary on Exodus he writes: ‘Above all and outside number there is only the

One. No difference at all is or can be found in the One, but “All difference is below the One”’.15

Slightly later in the same work, he writes, ‘No distinction can exist or be understood in God

himself. […] All distinction is repugnant to the infinite. But God is infinite’.16 It may be tempting

to read Eckhart as merely restating the fact that God is essentially and substantially one, but in

subsequent paragraphs he deals with the Persons in an unusual way. In contrast to other ways of

thinking about God which offer descriptions of the substance and are therefore erroneous because

they introduce distinction into the Oneness of God, Eckhart argues that it is plausible to describe

God in relation.17 This relationality, however, does not affect the substance of the divine; rather,

the essence of God remains untouched, and the relation ‘remains as it were standing on the

14
Reynolds, 1989, p. 172.
15
Commentary on Exodus, 58, p. 63. Eckhart’s quotation is from Ibn Gabirol, The Fountain of Life, 5.23.
16
Commentary on Exodus, 60-61, pp. 63-64.
17
Ibid., 64-65, pp. 64-65.
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outside’.18 The Persons, in other words, legitimately relate to each other, but it is a relationship

that does not penetrate to the source of the divine.

In the German works Eckhart fleshes out in stronger and more consistent terms the idea

that beyond the Father, Son, and Spirit there lies a passive Godhead, a pool of divine essence that

supports the Persons but with which they do not interact. This untouched divine essence is called

the ‘simple ground’, the ‘silent desert’, and the ‘impartible silence’, and Eckhart writes that this

divine essence is not associated with the ‘fertility of the divine nature’.19 Elsewhere he writes that

no attribute, including activity or relation, pertains to the Godhead except unity.20 This idea that

the Godhead is a passive pool of divinity beyond the active Persons is pervasive in the German

works. For example, after describing the work of the Persons of God as the activity in creation that

started in principio, Eckhart says that God rests after the work has ended:

What is the final end? It is the hidden darkness of the eternal Godhead, which is unknown

and never has been known and never shall be known. God abides there unknown in

Himself, and the light of the eternal Father has ever shone in there, and the darkness does

not comprehend the light.21

18
Ibid. Eckhart’s inquisitors also read these ideas as indicating an absolute unity inside God that was inappropriate
within the traditional view of the Trinity. The twenty-third article of the papal bull In agro dominico reads, ‘God is
one in all ways and according to every respect so that he cannot find any multiplicity in himself either in intellect or
in reality. Anyone who beholds the number two or who beholds distinction does not behold God, for God is one,
outside and beyond number, and is not counted with anything. There follows: No distinction can exist or be understood
in God himself’. As further evidence of this idea that there is a Godhead beyond the relationality of the Persons,
Eckhart writes in Commentary on Exodus, 28, p. 50: ‘The power of begetting in the Father is in the essence rather
than in Paternity, and this is why the Father begets God the Son but does not beget himself the Father’. McGinn, 2001,
pp. 81-82, writes that this idea of principium or grunt is the ‘pure possibility’ of divinity, and this conceptualization
means that the Son’s power as divine comes from this grunt, ‘but the ground itself does not beget, only the Father as
Father does’.
19
Sermon 60, (Trans.) Walshe, 1987, vol. 2 p. 105. A discussion of Eckhart’s key theology of the ground is outside
the scope of this paper but has been very well addressed in other writings. See, for example, McGinn, 2001, pp. 35-
52.
20
Sermon 56, (Trans.) Walshe, 1987, vol. 2 p. 81.
21
Sermon 53, (Trans.) Walshe, 1987, vol. 2 p. 67.
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This is a twist on the familiar reading of John 1,5, in which the darkness of the world does not

comprehend the light of God; here the darkness of the Godhead does not comprehend the light of

God.22

If Eckhart postulates the idea of a Godhead beyond God, a question arises about the role

of the Persons. Why do the Persons exist, and why is it insufficient to believe in the grunt (ground)

as the entire being of divinity? The answer appears to lie in the concept of bullitio/ebullitio and

the distinction between an active and passive divinity. In Eckhart’s divine ontology, the Persons

are generated out of the superabundance of existence within the principle. Additionally, they seem

to be generated along with us. As mentioned previously, Eckhart writes that the ebullitio, in which

creation is formed, eternally occurs simultaneously with the bullitio, in which the Persons are

generated. As Eckhart writes in the Commentary on John, as the First Cause, the original oneness

of God ‘precontains’ within itself the Persons and the creation.23 Similarly, in Commentary on

Genesis he writes that God created everything according to the forms that were held within the

ideal reason, and this ideal reason contained not only the universe but also the Persons. 24 Having

been generated, however, the Persons take on the task of interacting with the creation, while the

divine ground remains unreachable.25

22
Other German sermons also point to this idea that behind the active Persons there lies something yet more ultimate,
often perceived as nothing. For example, Sermon 96, (Trans.) Walshe, 1987, vol. 2 p. 335, reads: ‘You should love
[God] as He is: a non-God, a non-spirit, a non-person, a non-image; rather, as He is a sheer pure limpid One, detached
from all duality. And in the One may we eternally sink from nothingness to nothingness’. Or Sermon 8, (Trans.)
Walshe, 1987, vol. 1 p. 77, which reads: ‘Only in so far as He is one and indivisible, without mode or properties […]
in that sense He is neither Father, Son nor Holy Ghost, and yet is a Something which is neither this nor that’.
23
Commentary on John, 4.
24
Commentary on Genesis, 4-5.
25
In Eckhart’s theology, the culmination of divine interaction with the creation is the birth of the Word in the soul.
See Sermon 13(b), (Trans.) Walshe, 1987, vol. 1 pp. 115-119, for an explanation of how this birth occurs.
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Proclus and the Henads

As Eckhart presents his thoughts on Trinitarian theology, one can see the dependence on

the henadology of Proclus. This idea of God as an innumerable, imparticipable One surrounded by

Henads, divine beings in which creation participates, came down to Eckhart directly through

Proclus and likely through works by other writers that Eckhart read. 26 Proclus’s ideas influenced

Arabic thought through the Book of Causes, and it is through Arabic thought that many of these

ideas came to Western philosophers and theologians in the early Middle Ages. St. Thomas Aquinas

was one of the first in the West to recognize that the Book of Causes was originally from Proclus.

St. Thomas had requested that William of Moerbeke translate several texts into Latin, including

Proclus’s Elements of Theology. After an examination St. Thomas found that Elements of Theology

and the Book of Causes were very close in content. William of Moerbeke’s translation of Proclus

became the standard used for centuries as Proclus became integrated into medieval thought.27

Proclus, a fifth-century Neoplatonic philosopher, was the head of the Athenian Academy

for fifty years near the end of the Academy’s existence and was very much concerned with the

pagan rites and, following earlier work by Iamblichus and Syrianus, tied together both the religious

and philosophic realms. In doing so he used the Neoplatonic system to explain the relationship

between the wholly transcendent gods, especially the One, and existing material entities. He

develops the previously inchoate philosophy of the Henads, first suggested in their religious

context by Iamblichus, into a coherent system whereby all material existing entities have a

26
There has been some debate about how much Proclus Eckhart read or interacted with directly. Davies, 1994, p.
xix, emphasizes a German Dominican School operative around Erfurt when Eckhart was in seminary formation with
the Dominicans before he went off to university. The German Dominican School was not just a single school of
thought but rather a preference for a Neoplatonic understanding of the faith. As Sturlese, 1987, pp. 267 writes, some
have come to the conclusion that it was mainly through Pseudo-Dionysius that Proclean concepts were transmitted
to Eckhart, but further study shows that this is an issue on which many disagree. For more on the Pseudo-
Dionysius/Proclus connection, see Saffrey, 1982, pp. 64-74. Eckhart does cite Proclus directly from time to time,
such as in the Commentary on Wisdom, 39 and 151.
27
Meijer and Bos, 1992, p. 127.
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connection to the wholly transcendent One.28 It is this system that Eckhart adopts for some of his

work on the nature of God.

Though separated from Plato by almost seven hundred years, Proclus holds fast to some of

the original tenets of the Academy such as a wholly transcendent One and the creation of the Many

through the process of participation in the Forms, e.g., trees participating in tree-ness or the Form

of tree. There is a metaphysical hierarchy found in both Plato and Proclus that explains how the

plurality of the individual entities derives first from small divine entities and eventually from the

Transcendent One. Unique to Proclus, though, is a fully developed philosophy of the Henads,

imparticipable entities that are on the same hierarchical level as the One, higher than the Forms

and in which the Forms find their existence. Using Iamblichus and Syrianus as sources for the

initial idea, Proclus develops the Henads into an important part of the hierarchy that connects the

Forms with the wholly transcendent One. Henads, coming from the One, are on the same

metaphysical level as the One but are distinct from the One. Their unique position offers the Forms

a connection to the One.

For Proclus, the metaphysical hierarchy begins with the One and descends to the Body.

Just below the One, or Unity (henas), is Being, followed by Life, Intellect, Soul, and Nature.29 In

order to connect the One and Being, something must exist that will bridge the transcendence of

the One. Just below and within the One are the two principles of Limit/Unlimited or Bound/Infinity

which make up every lower entity.30 It is some combination of the two that makes up the remaining

entities as they cascade down from the One. The entities in immediate proximity to the One, the

28
Clark, 2010, p. 57.
29
Proclus, On the Theology of Plato, III.3-17, in (Trans.) Taylor, 1995, pp. 152-154.
30
For a good analysis of the place of Limited/Unlimited, see Van Riel, 2001, pp. 417-432.
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Henads or ‘little unities’, allow the wholly transcendent, passive One to work, albeit remotely,

through the formation of these lower, active entities such as Being, Intellect, and Nature.

Motivated by classical Platonic thought, Proclus modifies the usual concept of monads and

applies it to this case. Plato used the idea of monads to describe the higher order entities, but

Proclus distinguishes special monads that are more perfect and calls them Henads due to their

nearness to the One. Proclus’s Neoplatonic understanding of the Platonic monads transforms these

special monads into gods so that they can allow a sort of access between the absolute One and the

lesser creations. In his Platonic Theology he describes the aspects of the hierarchy that are

important for his point: ‘It is requisite that every imparticipable and primary cause should establish

monads of secondary natures similar to itself, prior to such as are dissimilar’.31 With this idea

Proclus shows the relationship between the One and Henads. For Plato as well as Proclus, the One

is wholly transcendent and is not an entity that can be participated, but it produces entities from

itself that then can be participated. These generically named ‘monads’ which are Being, Intellect,

Soul, and Nature, are similar to the One but are participable and form the next hierarchical level

below each particular monad. This structure allows Proclus to retain the Platonic understanding

that the One is beyond Being since Being is lower in the metaphysical hierarchy.

The Henads are the exteriorization of the One produced in communion with Bound and

Infinity. The reason for their existence is an overflowing of power (periousios dunemeos, having

a wealth of power), that brings about these gods.32 Proclus also advances the notion of the Henads

in Book IV of his Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides.33 He begins by saying that the One must

31
On the Theology of Plato, III.1, p. 152.
32
On the Theology of Plato, III.1, p.152 Contemporaries of Meister Eckhart have used the Latin term ebullitio to
translate this concept. See Berthold of Moosburg, (Ed.) Sturlese, et al., 1984, and Albertus Magnus, (Ed.) Stadler,
1920.
33
Proclus, Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, (Trans.) Glenn R. Morrow and John M. Dillon, 1992.
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be looked at differently, as a principle of the whole: ‘Whereas, then, there exists there both

indescribable unity and yet the distinctness of each characteristic (for all the Henads are in all, and

yet each is distinct)’.34 Again the issue is to connect this wholly transcendent principle of the whole

to the various individual entities. Proclus proposes an intermediate step in the hierarchy, one that

maintains the oneness and primary status of the one while also pushing forward the causal chain

that brings about all the entities in existence.

To say ‘Henad’ is to say first principle […] for all the Henads are in each other and are

united with each other, and their unity is far greater than the community and sameness

among beings. They are all in all of them, which is not the case with the Forms.35

It is important for Proclus to emphasize the unity and equality of the Henads while also showing

that they are distinct and not the One. This will respect the total transcendence of the One while

allowing the rest of the entities to connect to the One in a manner that is not the same as the Forms.

The Henads are the same as, yet different from, the One, but they have a very important

function as first principles of individual things. Instead of being hierarchical, the Henads are in

effect ‘in orbit’ around the One, which is completely indefinable and wholly other. Proclus also

receives from his teachers the idea that the Henads are gods. Iamblichus and Syrianus both have

posited that there are special monads that can be considered gods.36 Proclus will continue this idea

and develop it into a deeper theology within his philosophy:

34
Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, 1049, p. 408.
35
Ibid., 1048, p. 407.
36
Clark, 2010, p. 56.
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It follows necessarily, then, that the First Hypostasis is about God alone, in so far as he is

the generator of the plurality of Gods, he himself being transcendent over their multiplicity

and unconnected with those gods who have proceeded forth from him. It is for this reason

that everything is denied of this One, as being established as superior to all things and

transcendent over all things and producing all the characteristics of the gods, while itself

being undefinable and uncircumscribable in relation to all of them.37

His use of gods and the one God above all also required rites and rituals which form another part

of Proclus’s work not investigated here specifically. 38 Edward P. Butler has examined this aspect

of Proclus’s philosophical work, showing that Proclus was developing from Iamblichus and

Syrianus a religious version of Neoplatonism, including rituals and polytheism, but the many gods

may actually include (or perhaps be) one God with many centers.39 Butler goes into great detail

about the polytheism that is operative in Proclus. The polycentric polytheism he describes is

directly related to the relationship of the Henads to monads and how Proclus perceives them as

gods.

It is in this polycentricity that Proclus envisions the Olympic gods as interrelated and

interwoven. A follower of Proclus, Olympiodorus, illustrates this relationship between the gods,

teaching polycentric polytheism as a way of understanding how all the gods are in Zeus and Hera

as their higher level origin:

37
Ibid., 1069, p. 423
38
For an example of this type of work see ‘On the Hieretic Art’, in (Ed.) Bidez, 1928, facs. 6.
39
Butler, 2008, pp. 207-229.
 13

Therefore, Olympiodorus explicitly does not say simply that all the gods are in Zeus, but

that all the gods are in Zeus ‘zeusically,’ while all the gods are just as much in Hera

‘heraically,’ or in Apollo ‘apollonically’ and so on; we could obviously continue in this

fashion for however many gods there are.40

‘Zeusically’, ‘heraically’, and ‘apollonically’ are ways of saying that they exist in Zeus and

Hera and Apollo but exist independently and in their own unique way. They all exist in each other

in a way that reflects both their independence and their dependence. He speaks of the presence of

all to each and in each as the virtues, the focus of Olympiodorus’s treatise, are each in each other.

He understands this divine interdependence from Proclus’s concept of the Henads and monads.

The Henads are metaphysically higher than the monads (Being, Intellect, Soul, and Nature) and

are in union with the One in a way such that one can look at the One as the first uncial God and

the Henads as lesser gods.

As Proclus develops the religious elements of his henadology we find that he is not isolated

from Christian thinkers and even seems to dialogue with them to a small extent:

We shall, therefore, be very far from making the primal God the summit of the intelligible

world, as I observe to be the practice of some theologians, and making the father of that

realm the same as the cause of all things. For this entity is a participated henad. After all,

he is called an intelligible father and the summit of the intelligible world, and even if he is

the principle of coherence for the whole intelligible world, yet it is as its father that he be

40
Ibid. 207, quoting Friedrich Creuzer ed., Olympiodori in Platonis Alcibiadem priorem commentarii (Brönner, 1821),
214.
 14

so. The primal god, however, who is celebrated in the First Hypothesis, is not even a father

but is superior to all paternal divinity.41

One of the theologians he is referring to is most likely Origen, and this passage is evidence of his

arguments with Origen, especially on the transcendent One.42 Even though Proclus calls the

Henads gods, he does not see them in the same vein as the Christians. Without delving into the

rest of the metaphysical hierarchy involving the monads that are not gods, we can see in Proclus

how this system of Henads and the relationships they have with the transcendent One can be

interpreted or misinterpreted in the context of the Christian Trinity.

The Henads, as entities consubstantial with each other yet grounded in the transcendent

One, can be an analog for the Trinitarian Persons, a way of trying to make sense of the Trinitarian

doctrine so foundational to Christianity. An example of how this was attempted, we believe, is

found in the work of Meister Eckhart.

Proclus in Eckhart: A Closer Look

As mentioned above, Eckhart occasionally references Proclus directly, and quite often his

thoughts seem to echo this Proclean idea of God as composed of an unknowable, uncial divine

with divinities in orbit around it. In keeping with his flexible theology, Eckhart pushes these ideas

to greater or lesser extremes depending on the text in question, at times running close to the

Christian tradition and at other times pushing past the Christian tradition, past Proclus, and into a

41
Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, 1070, p. 424.
42
For more on Origen as protagonist for Proclus see Luc Brisson, ‘The Reception of The Parmenides before Proclus’s,
in Plato’s Parmenides and its Heritage: Volume I, Reception in Patristic, Gnostic and Christian Neoplatonic Texts,
(Eds.) John D. Turner and Kevin Corrigan, (Society of Biblical Literature, 2010), pp. 49-64.
 15

new arena of thinking about the Henads (‘Persons’ in Eckhart) as a theological construct meant

for human understanding.

In Commentary on Wisdom, Eckhart cites Proclus in his explanation of God as a perfect

One beyond number. This section describes God, in this case personified as Wisdom, as the only

infinite being and in fact the only Being. Everything receives its existence from God, who controls

the limits of all other beings within the infinity of the divine self.43 This simple, infinite Oneness

is unique in its indistinction: it has no characteristics or limits, nothing that might identify it in

relation to another entity; it simply is, and all other things, complex as they may be, participate in

this One.44

In this section of Commentary on Wisdom, as in most of the Latin works, Eckhart relies

heavily on secondary sources, including not just Proclus (or even primarily Proclus) but also

Aristotle, Macrobius, and Christian theologians such as St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and Boethius.

By citing the respected authorities of Christianity, Eckhart shows that his thoughts do not, in this

instance, run afoul of the Christian tradition. However, in this section he is focusing solely on the

relationship between God and the created universe, not the Trinity or the Trinitarian Persons.

When Eckhart does draw the Trinity into his discussion, he nuances his argument to

maintain the superiority of the Oneness of God. Still in the Latin works, which in Eckhart’s oeuvre

tend to be much tamer theologically than the German works, the notion of the One God and the

orbiting, coequal Persons/Henads begins to take shape. In Commentary on Exodus, Eckhart takes

up these themes in a long section commenting on Ex. 15,1-3, in which Moses sings of God the

Almighty. Eckhart discusses the inappropriateness of making positive appellations for the One,

43
Commentary on Wisdom, 151, (Trans.) McGinn, 1986, p. 168, citing Elements of Theology prop. 1: ‘The One itself
also gives number existence, for number is a multitude composed of unities. The One even conserves number and
multitude in existence; “Every multitude participates in the One,” as Proclus says’.
44
Ibid., 154, p. 169: ‘ Indistinction belongs to God’s nature; distinction to the created thing’s nature and idea’.
 16

such as Almighty.45 Building his argument through the use of Proclus, Avicenna, Maimonides,

and others, Eckhart writes that God is both unknowable and ‘above description’, which results in

a paradox in which God is both unnameable and ‘omninameable’.46

The exception to the inappropriateness of describing God or comparing the divine to other

things is the concept of relationality. Because Eckhart is writing within the Christian tradition, he

must reconcile the oneness of God with the Persons of the Trinity. To do this Eckhart sees the

divinity of each Person as being received from the essence or oneness of God, but the relationship

formed between the Persons is superficial to the essence.47 Eckhart then clarifies this statement

with a quote from Proclus: ‘This is what the Book of Causes says in proposition 18 that “all things

are beings because of the First Being, and are living things…because of the First Life, and are

intellectual things…through the First Intellect”’.48 In this construction, the essence is considered

to have primacy over the Persons, and while the Persons are divine and receive their divinity from

the essence, they do not completely comprise it.49

In the sermons, Eckhart carries this idea of the primacy of the essence and the subordination

of the Persons much further, beyond the limits of the Christian tradition. As mentioned previously,

in the bullitio/ebullitio concepts, the Persons and humanity come into being at the same time, and

in the German works, the bond between the two is extraordinarily close. In the same way that the

Persons receive their divinity from the essence as the First Cause, humanity also receives a bit of

the essence of God as ‘the light of the spirit’ or ‘a spark’.50 This spark, which he calls by many

45
Modern English translations of the Bible use the word ‘warrior’ rather than ‘Almighty’.
46
Commentary on Exodus, 35, p. 54. ‘Above description’ is an Eckhartian reference to the Book of Causes, props. 6
and 22.
47
Ibid., 65, p. 65. For example, the Father relates to the Son as Father, but the essence is neither Father nor Son.
48
Ibid. Ellipses in original.
49
McGinn, 2001, p. 82, states that this passage means that ‘the root of all the Son’s divine existence, wisdom, and
power is from the ground or essence; but the ground itself does not beget, only the Father as Father does’.
50
Sermon 8, (Trans.) Walshe, 1987, vol. 1 p. 76.
 17

names, is the link between humanity and the Godhead and is the telos of human existence. It is not

a piece of the Trinity but rather a piece of the source of the Trinity’s divine nature. It is an

irremovable part of the human soul, but no one can observe it or touch it, not even the Persons. 51

Here Eckhart’s adaptation of the Proclean One and Henads comes into focus. The One is so

imparticipable that even the Persons cannot enter it, and if they wish to do so, they must leave

behind everything that makes them personal.52

The separation between God and Godhead may be, at times, even greater than Proclus

posits in his henadology. In Sermon 56, Eckhart states that ‘God’ is really just a human construct

based on the need for a conscious being to communicate with other conscious beings. Before a

person is created, he has no need for a concept of the divine because there is no differentiation

between him and the divine: ‘God becomes when all creatures say “God” – then God comes to

be’.53 The concept of God is only needed as an expression between conscious entities.

Therefore, despite the current imparticipable nature of the Godhead during our lifetime as

differentiated creatures, one day the One will reabsorb all the smaller entities and be a simple,

silent whole: ‘When I enter the ground, the bottom, the river and fount of the Godhead, none will

ask me whence I came or where I have been. No one missed me, for there God unbecomes’.54 Even

the Persons are a temporary distinction from the One, meant to be rejoined to the unity at some

time.

Conclusion

51
Ibid., p. 77.
52
Ibid.
53
Sermon 56, (Trans.) Walshe, 1987, vol. 2 p. 81. Italics in the translation.
54
Ibid. Italics in the translation.
 18

Eckhart’s unique Trinitarianism, which vacillates between a fairly traditional

understanding and a heretical idea of the Godhead beyond God, depends in part on Proclus’s

thought. Proclus posits a metaphysical structure in which little deities, Henads, that receive their

existence from the imparticipable, unknowable One, rule over the various monads Being, Life,

Intellect, and Soul, and give them their individual qualities. In much of Eckhart’s work, the Persons

of the Trinity assume a similar role around the impenetrable principium, ground, or essence of the

divine. Eckhart receives the henadology of Proclus, works it into his writings, and creates his own

hint of a human and divine teleology from it. Whether this connection between Provlus and Eckhart

is direct or indirect, it is clear that the Proclean elements appear in various ways from the subtle to

the more obvious in Eckhart’s work.

The use of Proclus’s modified henadology makes sense of the need to keep a radical

transcendence of God and yet have the three Trinitarian Persons involved at the most foundational

point. It was, unfortunately for Eckhart, a speculative step too far and became the source of his

theological trouble with the Church’s Magisterium. A separate Godhead that was beyond the

Trinity was unacceptable to Christianity but, even though Eckhart recanted whatever was deemed

problematic by the authorities, one gets the sense that he himself did not find his system

problematic.
 19

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