Undoubtedly, Thomas Aquinas—as thankfully reinterpreted through great minds such as Rahner, Congar, de Lubac, Chenu and many others—had a dramatic effect on my spiritual and religious formation as I grew up in the immediate aftermath of Vatican II,1 even though I had no inkling of this; it was not until I was off to college at 18 that I remember even hearing Aquinas’ name, and that only because I attended the Roman Catholic church closest to my secular college campus; the parish was called St. Thomas Aquinas. This was a spirited, Vatican II-centered parish serving those Roman Catholic students attending the University of Colorado at Boulder and a number of families and community members who just wanted to be there.
Yet it was not Aquinas who directed my unrelenting theological inquiry during those young adult years, at least not explicitly, but other theologians, mystics, and spiritual guides, namely the charismatic and controversial Jesuit from India Anthony de Mello, initially through his meditation exercises in Sadhana, A Way to God: Christian Exercises in Eastern Form,2 and several years later (as a master’s student) through his final reflections in The Way to Love,3 and Thomas Merton, whose book Zen and the Birds of Appetite,4 was assigned reading in a junior undergraduate sociology of religion course. This book was my first introduction to Meister Eckhart, with whom I fell in love upon reading a passage Merton quotes from Eckhart’s sermon on the Beatitudes: “since true poverty of spirit requires that man [sic] shall be emptied of god and all his [sic] works so that if God wants to act in the soul he himself must be the place in which he acts.”5 Although it is impossible for me to fully communicate why, this passage is perhaps what led me to moving from the disciplines of psychology and sociology as an undergraduate, to theology as a graduate student, through my doctoral work on the relationship between Eckhart and Aquinas, and still grounds me today as a teacher, scholar, and believer—what gives me my reason for being, so to speak.
It is important to explain that it was in no way a negation or denigration of my own sense of self-hood that drew me to this passage, nor is it now. Quite the opposite, these words touch in me the deepest and most profound sense of myself—that which is in communion with, and which identifies with my own Divine Source and End, God beyond god. It is where I find my truest self: in and with God; my Center; my Silence. The emptying of self, of god and of all “god’s works” is for me a constant reminder of the necessity of moving beyond all personal fears, all conceptions of god which are inevitably false and misguided, and beyond all of my own hidden agendas for which I would like to call God’s agendas, so that I might become what I am truly called to be. No small task, and an unending one at that!
Enter Aquinas, whose lessons assisted me in organizing and developing facility in articulating my unbridled theological self-reflection. This grace came to me through my dear mentor, Fr. David Burrell, C.S.C., who I first came to know from his doctoral course “Metaphysics of Creation” at Notre Dame. David, a former student of Lonergan, is a theological giant in his own right, with significant contributions not only in Aquinas, but also in comparative theology and Islamic philosophy.6 In this intensive doctoral seminar, under David’s tutelage we worked our way through Aquinas’ Prima pars in the Summa theologiae, and during the second half of the semester, led by David’s colleague and friend from the Romance Languages department, Christian Moevs, we worked through Dante’s metaphysics. Christian, in addition to being a first-rate Italian teacher and renowned Dante scholar, possesses a unique and profound spirituality as a devout Roman Catholic, and simultaneously, is a follower of Hindu guru Sri Sathya Sai Baba—although in him these two diverse religious sensibilities find a deep communion that flowed through every word and gesture he made.7 Our study of Dante, interspersed at times with Hindu wisdom, became a strangely beautiful commentary on Aquinas’ first thirteen questions.
During the same semester, I was blessed to participate in Catherine Mowry LaCugna’s doctoral seminar on the Trinity, only one year before her passing. One of Catherine’s pedagogical methods, which I have adopted in my own teaching, particularly with graduate students, was to assign at the beginning of the semester a specific theologian to each student who was to research, write on, and take on the task of teaching the class. Here the students became teachers as well as scholars. To my great surprise and delight, I was assigned Meister Eckhart’s theology on the Trinity and, even though my turn to facilitate was not until later in the semester, I wasted no time plunging back into his enigmatic mind!
It seemed that in some providential way, I had come full circle; however, between the two courses an interesting, unconscious and unintended convergence began to happen, and at the end of the semester I stepped hesitatingly into David Burrell’s office and asked him if he would be my director, to which he emphatically said, “of course.” When asked what my interest was, I declared I wanted to focus on Eckhart’s metaphysics of creation, to which he smiled and replied—I’m paraphrasing now—“Ah yes, Aquinas and Eckhart, that sounds like a splendid dissertation!” My mind immediately stated to itself, “wait, what? I didn’t say anything about Aquinas.” But I acquiesced and pleasantly nodded my approval of his modification. And so, the journey commenced, and the bond I feel for my teacher and mentor lasts to this day. When, a few years later, it was time to focus on actually writing, I was again blessed by an exceptional community of scholars as my dissertation committee, co-directed by David Burrell and Joseph Wawrykow and rounded out with Mary Catherine Hilkert, O.P., Lawrence Cunningham and Christian Moevs.
This book, Speaking of God in Thomas Aquinas and Meister Eckhart: Beyond Analogy, is what has been brought to birth from that conception. Originally entitled, “Beyond Analogy: Articulating the Transcendence and Immanence of God According to Thomas Aquinas and Meister Eckhart,” I have made only moderate revisions. Having set it aside for some time while focusing on my vocation as teacher, first at the University of Notre Dame and then at Gonzaga, the Jesuit university where I now reside, my initial intention was for more revision; however, as I took it up again, I realized that it spoke to me as strongly as it did while I was writing it, and still provides the freshness and relevance on its own that it did when it was originally conceived and developed. Having said this, I did give it a good cleaning up where needed, and in the final chapter, I added some further reflections on how Aquinas and Eckhart together may be applied to contemporary religious forms of life, based on other scholarship I have published in the meantime and that I am currently working on, particularly in the area of ecumenical and inter-faith dialog, and in the area of inculturated worship. I hope this book is read in the spirit in which it is offered—written by a student of Aquinas and Eckhart, imperfectly yet diligently struggling to put words to the inexpressible experience of the Creator who is everywhere always present in all things, while in no way being limited by this intimacy. I look forward to the well-meaning and thoughtful responses of my readers—positive and critical—to help me move my own reflections and scholarship to ever deepening levels.
I am modestly proud of the work that has been accomplished in this book, and in fact, I am pleasantly astonished to realize my work on Aquinas and Eckhart has thoroughly permeated my scholarship in other theological areas, my personal spirituality, and my pedagogy, even though it now sounds very Ignatian (of course—St. Ignatius must have been greatly influenced by Aquinas during his own formation at Paris and elsewhere, a thought to be pursued in the future). Having said this, I am profoundly grateful and humbled by the wealth of wisdom, guidance, and care of so many without whom I could not have taken even the first step forward let alone come to this place: my deepest thanks, first and foremost, to Sean, who was my companion in this journey for twenty years, and who is still my dear and beloved friend, and to David Burrell and Joseph Wawrykow, for their directorship, mentorship—and friendship—as well as to my wise committee members already mentioned. To all those un-named, my many excellent teachers, colleagues, and, of course, my students from whom I learn an unfathomable amount each year, my enormous appreciation. And finally, to Aquinas and Eckhart, and to all of those scholars of theirs who have provided such a rich and fertile soil for me to till, gratias vobis ago. I only hope that I have done justice to all of your creative labor.
1 For a very informative and short read of the controversy over the use of Thomas Aquinas at the Council, see the essay by Joseph Komonchak entitled “Thomism and the Second Vatican Council,” in Continuity and Plurality in Catholic Theology: Essays in Honor of Gerald A. McCool, S.J., ed. Anthony J. Cernera (Fairfield, CT: Sacred Heart University Press, 1998), 53-73.
2 Anthony de Mello, Sadhana, A Way to God: Christian Exercises in Eastern Form (New York: Doubleday Dell, 1984).
3 The full title is The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello (New York: Doubleday, 1992).
4 Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite (New York: New Directions, 1968).
5 Ibid., 9. Merton is quoting from Eckhart’s Sermon, “Blessed are the Poor.” Note that both “God” and “god” are used—“God” is used to express God as existing in God-self and “god” used to express any conception of God, which of course is the point of the passage.
6 See David’s impressive biographical information, at http://www3.nd.edu/~dburrell/ (accessed July 31, 2013).
7 To get a sense of Christian’s unique spirituality, read this deeply personal and engaging interview found in the Sathya Sai Newsletter [USA], 34, No. 1 (2010): 3. The newsletter may be found online at http://us.sathyasai.org/ssn/2010/JanFeb2010_Dec19b-FINAL.pdf (accessed July 31, 2013).