Meister Eckhart: Analogy, Univocity and Unity by Burkhard Mojsisch

Abstract

482 BOOK REVIEWS certify and withhold approval of liturgical texts and other pastoral initiatives of the local hierarchy will continue to be a source of irritation until local bodies-from the parochial to the national level-cultivate a proper sense of communion that acknowledges that the Eucharist demands of every community that celebrates it ("in union with John Paul our Pope ...") a desire for direction and confirmation from the organs of the universal Church. William C. McDonough, in honor of his late friend and esteemed bishop, has put together a series of essays that seek to advance contemporary discussion on issues that divide Catholics. Some attempt faithfully to sum up official Church teaching, and then respectfully invite reflection on the means by which it is generated and disseminated. Others seem to read into papal and other magisterial texts positions that are difficulty to justify-as when William McDonough and Catherine Michaud assert that John Paul II's Jubilee "apologies" constituted an actual "development of doctrine." Terence Nichols's piece on evolutionaryscience and faith stands out as an example of Catholicism's proper engagement with culture. Raymond A Lucker chose for his episcopal motto the words of the distraught father whose sick son Jesus' disciples were unable to cure: "Lord, I do believe. Help my lack of faith" (Mark 9:24). Bishop Lucker and his academic colleagues who have honored him with this volume show themselves to be men and women deeply committed to passing on the faith in these troubled times for the Catholic Church. Would that their efforts, however, had widened the conversation to include other voices more resonant with the less trendy convictions of John Paul II and his coworkers at the Vatican. Then we might have h:id a conversation even more "catholic." Immaculate Conception Seminary Huntington, New York JAMESMAsSA Meister &khart: Analogy, Univocity and Unity. By BURKHARD MOJSISCH. Translated by ORRIN F. SUMMERELL. Philadelphia: B. R. Griiner Publishing Co., 2001. Pp. 215. $95.00 (cloth). ISBN 90-6032-465-X. One of the main currents in German scholarship on Eckhart over the past few decades has been to show how deeply Eckhart's thought was rooted in the life-world of medieval religious praxis and the thought-world of high Scholasticism. Mojsisch's book is among the best-researched and best-argued products of this trend that, far from depreciating the originality of Eckhart, has only made more striking Eckhart's originality and profundity by laying bare his debt to Scholastic thought. It is therefore good to see this work available in BOOK REVIEWS 483 English translation, since perhaps it will, from now on, receive more attention from English-speaking scholars who can only benefit from its often dense, but always illuminating, analyses. Mojsisch remarks near the outset that, for Eckhart, as for all Scholastic theologians, faith and Scripture form the basis of all genuine thinking. For Eckhart, human reasoning attains to truth not by its own power but only insofar as it is applied to unlocking the inner meaning of Scripture. By the same token, the inner meaning of Scripture becomes intelligible only insofar as it is framed in terms of rationes naturales or "natural reasonings" that express the parabolic content ofScripture in rational, conceptual form. As Mojsisch puts it, "Eckhart's methodological demand consists in showing how the godly (divina) and the human (humana) realms-the realm of the divine and that of the naturalia (res naturales), artificialia and moralia-reciprocally illuminate one another" (8). Eckhart, moreover-and this is the thesis of Mojsisch's book-articulates this mutual illumination in terms of the Scholastic language of analogy, univocity, and unity. Analogy articulates the relation of res naturales (and of the soul qua res naturalis) to God; univocity articulates the relations immanent without the Godhead (such as the Trinity and other divine mysteries). Both relations, however, are grounded in the divine unitywhere, qua intellect, the soul is reborn from analogically differentiated creature to univocally related son of God. The strong influences ofThomas Aquinas, Albert the Great, and the German Dominican School of Scholastic theology are evident on Eckhart's thinking, as Mojsisch immediately makes clear. Particularly noteworthy is the concept of the causa essentialis developed...