FULLNESS AND EMPTINESS IN BONAVENTURE AND ECKHART
Keywords:
FULLNESS, EMPTINESS, BONAVENTURE, ECKHARTAbstract
The tension between negative and positive theology permeated the thought of Western Christianity in thë High Middle Ages. Medievtl writers found their classical source for these two approaches in the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius, whose works had been introduced into the West by the translations of John Scotus Erigena in the ninth century. The via positiva was explored extensively in The Divine Names, on which Thomas Aquinas wrote a commentary and which povided the basis for his treatment of our knowledge of God's attributes in the early questions of the Summa theologiae. The via negatiya was formulated much more concisely in The Mystical Theology, which influenced Bonaventure in his final stage of The Sou I's Journey into God and the author of The Cloud of Unknowing in formulating his methcd of contemplation.
References
Bonaventure, Legenda maior, IX, 1 ; English translation from Bonaventure's The Soul's Journey into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of St. Francis, trans, Ewert Cousins (New York Paulist Press, 1978), pp. 262—263,
Meister Eckhart : Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke (Stuttgart : Kohlhammer, 1936— Hereafter Die deutschen Werke will be abbreviated as DW ; this text is found in DW, I, 69—70
Raymond Bernard Blakney, Meister Eckhart : A Modern Translation (New York : Harper and Row, 1941), p. 185
Joseph Quint, ed., Deutsche Predigten und Traktate (München . Hanser, 1963), p. 418 ; trans., Blakney, p. 98.
C. de B. Evans, Meister Eckhart (London : John M. Watkins, 1947), P. 209.
Ewert Cousins, Bonaventure and the Coincidence of Opposites (Chicago . Franciscan Herald Press, 1978), pp. 18—22.
