In Meister Eckhart, the term Gottheit (rendered in English as Deity, distinct from “divinity”) designates the principle “beyond God”, prior to God insofar as God is understood as causa sui affirmed. Whereas God already signifies determination — relation, manifestation, gift — the Deity is the undetermined Absolute, without name, without form, without relation.
God can still be said; the Deity is unsayable — beyond all being, concept, or predication.

More precisely,

the Deity is the “groundless ground” (Abgrunt), the silent desert where no determination can be grasped. It is not a higher hypostasis added on top of God, but the non-condition of all things, prior even to God-as-God. Of the Deity, nothing can be said except that it is none of what can be thought — not nothing, but beyond-being (hyper-ontological), in continuity with apophatic theology.

A key distinction is therefore required:
— God (Gott): personal, relational, Creator, the Word who manifests and communicates;
— Deity (Gottheit): incommunicable depth, prior to any name, pure non-determinacy.

The Deity is not beyond God spatially, but metaphysically: it is the source of the God who reveals Himself. God proceeds from the Deity as determination and expression, without separation — as the apex of a summit expresses its hidden depth.

This does not posit two absolutes, but two modes of apprehending the same Principle:
— as manifested, relational (God),
— as unmanifest, apophatic absolute (Deity).

In apophatic terms, one may say that the Deity is what God is in His own depth, before any name. The hyper-theological expression “God beyond God” (Hypertheos) indicates this transcendence beyond all determination.

From a mystical standpoint, encounter with God-as-manifested leads ultimately to the experience of the Deity as silence — non-knowing, dispossession of every attribute. The true knowing of the Deity is not conceptual theory, but participation — a kind of ontological immersion.

For further reading

  • Meister Eckhart, Predigten und Traktate (Sermons and Treatises), ed. A. de Libera, Gallimard, 2023 — On the distinction Gott / Gottheit and the “nameless Deity.”
  • Meister Eckhart, Sermon 52 (Liber Benedictus), in Werke, Stuttgart, Kohlhammer — On the Abgrunt (“groundless ground”).
  • Pseudo-Dionysius, De divinis nominibus & Theologia mystica, trans. M. de Gandillac, Aubier, 1943 — On the hyper-ontological “beyond-being.”
  • Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, ed. H. Pasqua, Cerf, 2009 — On the principial indeterminacy beyond being.
  • Jean Borella, Problèmes de gnose (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2007) — On the structural distinction between God / Deity and the consequences for metaphysics and mysticism.
  • S. H. Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred, SUNY, 1989 — On the transcendent Principle beyond being (Hypertheos).
  • Bruno Bérard, Metaphysics for Everyone (Angelico Press), trans. of Métaphysique pour tous (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2022); it. Sui sentieri della metafisica ; es. ¿Qué es la metafísica? ; all. Was ist Metaphysik? — On the distinction between God and Deity, the hyper-theological dimension, and the vertical articulation of transcendence beyond determination.