John Scotus Eriugena, also known as Johannes Scotus Erigena, John the Scot, or John the Irish-born
( – c. 877) was an
Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
Neoplatonist
Neoplatonism is a strand of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a chain of thinkers. But there are some id ...
philosopher,
theologian
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...
and
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...
of the
Early Middle Ages
The Early Middle Ages (or early medieval period), sometimes controversially referred to as the Dark Ages, is typically regarded by historians as lasting from the late 5th or early 6th century to the 10th century. They marked the start of the Mi ...
.
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
dubbed him "the most astonishing person of the
ninth century
The 9th century was a period from 801 ( DCCCI) through 900 ( CM) in accordance with the Julian calendar.
The Carolingian Renaissance and the Viking raids occurred within this period. In the Middle East, the House of Wisdom was founded in Abbas ...
". The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states he "is the most significant Irish intellectual of the early
monastic
Monasticism (from Ancient Greek , , from , , 'alone'), also referred to as monachism, or monkhood, is a religion, religious way of life in which one renounces world (theology), worldly pursuits to devote oneself fully to spiritual work. Monastic ...
period. He is generally recognized to be both the outstanding philosopher (in terms of originality) of the
Carolingian era
The Carolingian Empire (800–888) was a large Frankish-dominated empire in western and central Europe during the Early Middle Ages. It was ruled by the Carolingian dynasty, which had ruled as kings of the Franks since 751 and as kings of the Lo ...
and of the whole period of
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
philosophy stretching from
Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480 – 524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, ''magister officiorum'', historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the tr ...
to
Anselm".
He wrote a number of works, but is best known today for having written ''De Divisione Naturae'' ("The Division of Nature"), or ''Periphyseon'', which has been called the "final achievement" of
ancient philosophy
This page lists some links to ancient philosophy, namely philosophical thought extending as far as early post-classical history ().
Overview
Genuine philosophical thought, depending upon original individual insights, arose in many culture ...
, a work which "synthesizes the philosophical accomplishments of fifteen centuries". The principal concern of ''De Divisione Naturae'' is to unfold from
φύσις
Fusis, Phusis or Physis (; grc, wikt:φύσις, φύσις ) is a Greek philosophy, philosophical, theology, theological, and science, scientific term, usually translated into English—according to its Latin translation "natura"—as "nature (p ...
(physis), which John defines as "all things which are and which are not", the entire integrated structure of reality. Eriugena achieves this through a dialectical method elaborated through exitus and reditus, that interweaves the structure of the human mind and reality as produced by the
λόγος
''Logos'' (, ; grc, λόγος, lógos, lit=word, discourse, or reason) is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric and refers to the appeal to reason that relies on logic or reason, inductive and deductive reasoning. Arist ...
(logos) of God.
Eriugena is generally classified as a Neoplatonist, though he was not influenced directly by such pagan philosophers as
Plotinus
Plotinus (; grc-gre, Πλωτῖνος, ''Plōtînos''; – 270 CE) was a philosopher in the Hellenistic tradition, born and raised in Roman Egypt. Plotinus is regarded by modern scholarship as the founder of Neoplatonism. His teacher wa ...
or
Iamblichus. Jean Trouillard stated that, although he was almost exclusively dependent on Christian theological texts and the
Christian Canon, Eriugena "reinvented the greater part of the theses of Neoplatonism".
He succeeded
Alcuin of York
Alcuin of York (; la, Flaccus Albinus Alcuinus; 735 – 19 May 804) – also called Ealhwine, Alhwin, or Alchoin – was a scholar, clergyman, poet, and teacher from York, Northumbria. He was born around 735 and became the student ...
(c. 735–804) as head of the Palace School at
Aachen. He also translated and made commentaries upon the work of
Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (or Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite) was a Greek author, Christian theologian and Neoplatonic philosopher of the late 5th to early 6th century, who wrote a set of works known as the ''Corpus Areopagiticum'' o ...
and was one of the few Western European philosophers of his day who knew Greek, having studied it in Ireland
[ (see specifically Freemantle, Anne, p78) and in ]Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
Athens
Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
. A later medieval tradition recounts that Eriugena was stabbed to death by his students at Malmesbury
Malmesbury () is a town and civil parish in north Wiltshire, England, which lies approximately west of Swindon, northeast of Bristol, and north of Chippenham. The older part of the town is on a hilltop which is almost surrounded by the upp ...
with their pens, although this may rather be allegorical.
Name
The form "Eriugena" is used by John Scotus to describe himself in one manuscript. It means "Ireland (Ériu)-born". "Scottus" in the Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
was the Latin term for "Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
or Gaelic
Gaelic is an adjective that means "pertaining to the Gaels". As a noun it refers to the group of languages spoken by the Gaels, or to any one of the languages individually. Gaelic languages are spoken in Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, and Ca ...
", so his full name translates as "John, the Irish-born Gael". "Scotti" was the late Latin term for the Irish people
The Irish ( ga, Muintir na hÉireann or ''Na hÉireannaigh'') are an ethnic group and nation native to the island of Ireland, who share a common history and Culture of Ireland, culture. There have been humans in Ireland for about 33,000 years ...
, with Ireland itself being Scotia (or in the Medieval period "Scotia Major", to distinguish it from Scotia Minor, i.e. modern Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
). The spelling "Scottus" has the authority of the early manuscripts until perhaps the 11th century. Occasionally he is also named "Scottigena" ("Irish-born") in the manuscripts.
According to Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known b ...
, John's byname
An epithet (, ), also byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) known for accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, di ...
may therefore be construed as the repetitious "Irish Irish".
He is not to be confused with the later, Scottish philosopher John Duns Scotus
John Duns Scotus ( – 8 November 1308), commonly called Duns Scotus ( ; ; "Duns the Scot"), was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher, and theologian. He is one of the four most important ...
.
Life
Johannes Scotus Eriugena was educated in Ireland. He moved to France (about 845) at the invitation of Carolingian King Charles the Bald
Charles the Bald (french: Charles le Chauve; 13 June 823 – 6 October 877), also known as Charles II, was a 9th-century king of West Francia (843–877), king of Italy (875–877) and emperor of the Carolingian Empire (875–877). After a ...
. He succeeded Alcuin of York
Alcuin of York (; la, Flaccus Albinus Alcuinus; 735 – 19 May 804) – also called Ealhwine, Alhwin, or Alchoin – was a scholar, clergyman, poet, and teacher from York, Northumbria. He was born around 735 and became the student ...
(735–804), the leading scholar of the Carolingian Renaissance, as head of the Palace School.[.] The reputation of this school increased greatly under Eriugena's leadership, and he was treated with indulgence by the king. Whereas Alcuin was a schoolmaster rather than a philosopher, Eriugena was a noted Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
scholar, a skill which, though rare at that time in Western Europe, was used in the learning tradition of Early and Medieval Ireland, as evidenced by the use of Greek script in medieval Irish manuscripts.[ He remained in France for at least thirty years, and it was almost certainly during this period that he wrote his various works.
Whilst eating with King ]Charles the Bald
Charles the Bald (french: Charles le Chauve; 13 June 823 – 6 October 877), also known as Charles II, was a 9th-century king of West Francia (843–877), king of Italy (875–877) and emperor of the Carolingian Empire (875–877). After a ...
John broke wind. This was acceptable in Irish society but not in Frankish. The King is then said to have said "John tell me what separates a Scottus (Irishman) from a situs (a fool)?". John replied "Oh just a table" and the king laughed.
The latter part of his life is unclear. There is a story that in 882 he was invited to Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
by Alfred the Great, labored there for many years, became abbot at Malmesbury
Malmesbury () is a town and civil parish in north Wiltshire, England, which lies approximately west of Swindon, northeast of Bristol, and north of Chippenham. The older part of the town is on a hilltop which is almost surrounded by the upp ...
, and was stabbed to death by his pupils with their ''styli
A stylus (plural styli or styluses) is a writing utensil or a small tool for some other form of marking or shaping, for example, in pottery. It can also be a computer accessory that is used to assist in navigating or providing more precision w ...
''. Whether this is to be taken literally or figuratively is not clear,[.] and some scholars think it may refer to some other Johannes. William Turner says the tradition has no support in contemporary documents and may well have arisen from some confusion of names on the part of later historians.[William Turner: "John Scotus Eriugena", in ''The Catholic Encyclopedia''](_blank)
vol. 5 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1909), 30 June 2019
He probably never left France, and the date of his death is generally given as 877. From the evidence available, it is impossible to determine whether he was a cleric
Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the ter ...
or a layman
In religious organizations, the laity () consists of all members who are not part of the clergy, usually including any non-ordained members of religious orders, e.g. a nun or a lay brother.
In both religious and wider secular usage, a layper ...
; the general conditions of the time make it likely that he was a cleric and perhaps a monk
A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedica ...
.[
]
Theology
Eriugena's work is largely based upon Origen
Origen of Alexandria, ''Ōrigénēs''; Origen's Greek name ''Ōrigénēs'' () probably means "child of Horus" (from , "Horus", and , "born"). ( 185 – 253), also known as Origen Adamantius, was an early Christian scholar, ascetic, and theo ...
, St. Augustine of Hippo, Dionysius the Areopagite
Dionysius the Areopagite (; grc-gre, Διονύσιος ὁ Ἀρεοπαγίτης ''Dionysios ho Areopagitēs'') was an Athenian judge at the Areopagus Court in Athens, who lived in the first century. A convert to Christianity, he is venerate ...
, St. Maximus the Confessor, and the Cappadocian Fathers
The Cappadocian Fathers, also traditionally known as the Three Cappadocians, are Basil the Great (330–379), who was bishop of Caesarea; Basil's younger brother Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 – c. 395), who was bishop of Nyssa; and a close friend ...
. Eriugena's overall view of reality, both human and divine, was strongly influenced by Neoplatonism. He viewed the totality of reality as a "graded hierarchy" cosmology of gradual declensions from the Godhead, similar to Proclus, and likewise saw in all things a dual movement of procession and reversion: that every effect remains in its cause or constitutive principle, proceeds from it, and returns to it. According to Deirdre Carabine, both "ways" must be understood as intrinsically entwined and are not separate movements or processes."For the procession of the creatures and the return of the same are so intimately associated in the reason which considers them that they appear to be inseparable the one from the other, and it is impossible for anyone to give any worthy and valid account of either by itself without introducing the other, that is to say, of the procession without the return and collection and vice versa."
John Scotus Eriugena was also a devout Catholic. Pittenger argues that, too often, those who have written about him seem to have pictured John as one who spent his life in the endeavor to dress up his own personal Neoplatonism in a thin Christian garb, but who never quite succeeded in disguising his real tendency. "This is untrue and unfair. Anyone who has taken the trouble to read Erigena, and not merely to read about him, and more particularly one who has studied the ''De Divisione Naturae'' sympathetically, cannot question the profound Christian faith and devotion of this Irish thinker nor doubt his deep love for Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God. In the middle of long and some what arid metaphysical discussions, one comes across occasional passages such as the following, surely the cry of a passionately Christian soul: ''O Domine Jesu, nullum aliud praemium, nullam aliam beatitudinem, nullum aliud gaudium a te postulo, nisi ut ad purum absque ullo errore fallacis theoriae verba tua, quae per tuum sanctum Spiritum inspirata sunt, intelligam'' (Migne ed., ioioB)." The Greek Fathers were Eriugena's favourites, especially Gregory the Theologian
Gregory of Nazianzus ( el, Γρηγόριος ὁ Ναζιανζηνός, ''Grēgorios ho Nazianzēnos''; ''Liturgy of the Hours'' Volume I, Proper of Saints, 2 January. – 25 January 390,), also known as Gregory the Theologian or Gregory N ...
, and Basil the Great
Basil of Caesarea, also called Saint Basil the Great ( grc, Ἅγιος Βασίλειος ὁ Μέγας, ''Hágios Basíleios ho Mégas''; cop, Ⲡⲓⲁⲅⲓⲟⲥ Ⲃⲁⲥⲓⲗⲓⲟⲥ; 330 – January 1 or 2, 379), was a bishop of Cae ...
. Of the Latins he prized Augustine most highly. The influence of these was towards freedom and not towards restraint in theological speculation. This freedom he reconciled with his respect for the teaching authority of the Church as he understood it.
On the Body and Blood of the Lord
The first of the works attributed to Eriugena during this period was a pseudepigrapha
Pseudepigrapha (also anglicized as "pseudepigraph" or "pseudepigraphs") are falsely attributed works, texts whose claimed author is not the true author, or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past.Bauckham, Richard; "Pse ...
l treatise on the Eucharist
The Eucharist (; from Greek , , ), also known as Holy Communion and the Lord's Supper, is a Christian rite that is considered a sacrament in most churches, and as an ordinance in others. According to the New Testament, the rite was instit ...
, ''On the Body and Blood of the Lord'', which has not survived. In it he seems to have advanced the doctrine that the Eucharist was merely symbolical or commemorative, an opinion for which Berengar of Tours
Berengar of Tours (died 6 January 1088), in Latin Berengarius Turonensis, was an 11th-century French Christian theologian and archdeacon of Angers, a scholar whose leadership of the cathedral school at Chartres set an example of intellectual in ...
was at a later date censured and condemned at the Council of Vercelli in 1050. As a part of his penance, Berengarius is said to have been compelled to publicly burn this treatise. We now know this treatise was not written by Eriugena, but written by Ratramnus of Corbie.
''De Divina Praedestinatione''
Eriugena was considered orthodox by his authorities and a few years later was selected by Hincmar
Hincmar (; ; la, Hincmarus; 806 – 21 December 882), archbishop of Reims, was a Frankish jurist and theologian, as well as the friend, advisor and propagandist of Charles the Bald. He belonged to a noble family of northern Francia.
Biography Ea ...
, archbishop of Reims
The Archdiocese of Reims (traditionally spelt "Rheims" in English) ( la, Archidiœcesis Remensis; French: ''Archidiocèse de Reims'') is a Latin Church ecclesiastic territory or archdiocese of the Catholic Church in France. Erected as a diocese a ...
, to defend the doctrine of liberty of will against the extreme predestinarianism of the monk Gottschalk Gottschalk or Godescalc (Old High German) is a male German name that can be translated literally as " servant of God". Latin forms include ''Godeschalcus'' and ''Godescalcus''.
Given name
* Godescalc of Benevento, 8th-century Lombard duke
*Godescal ...
(Gotteschalchus), whose view of predestination pre-figured the Calvinist position. The Catholic Church opposed Gottschalk's position because it denied the inherent value of good works and condemned him at the Council of Quiersy 835. The treatise ''De Divina Praedestinatione'' composed for this occasion has been preserved, and it was probably from its content that Eriugena's orthodoxy became suspect. Eriugena argues the question of predestination entirely on speculative grounds, and starts with the bold affirmation that philosophy and religion are fundamentally one and the same. Even more significant is his handling of authority and reason. Eriugena offered a brief proof that there can be predestination only to the good, for all folk are summoned to be saints.
Augustine's view of predestination prefigured the debate as such: human beings cannot will what is good without the action of divine grace. Since they are dependent upon grace, it follows that human beings cannot save themselves; that means, some people are predestined to salvation.
Eriugena's view, as he sets it out in this "rather hastily written treatise", is that because God is simple and unchangeable, there can be nothing at all that can be predestined. Eriugena explains God's predestination as God's knowledge of the primordial causes. Carabine outlines Eriugena's argument against double-predestination as follows: God cannot predestine the human will, and people are blessed or punished because of their own free will. Since the free will of human beings can be misused, sins must be the fault of individuals. Sin and evil, and the fact that some souls are damned, cannot imply a change in God or a defect in God's power; if we accept the view of Gottschalk, God is responsible for sin and evil. Eriugena's way out of this difficult position is based on the Neoplatonic idea that God as good is simply existence and, therefore, the opposite of non-being. Evil and sin are negations that do not, in fact, exist and cannot be caused by God.
"In addition to the arguments based on the dialectical understanding of being and non-being and the unity of God's nature, Eriugena also invokes the principles of negative theology in his answer to Gottschalk's heresy. Foreknowledge and predestination imply temporal notions in God, who transcends time. Since God is simple and unchanging, ideas, signs, and language cannot properly signify the divine nature."
Thus, God cannot predestine any soul to damnation; rather, human sinfulness creates its own hell. This was, in brief, the case Eriugena presented to Hincmar for scrutiny. On one hand, against Gottschalk, Eriugena had followed Augustine in that the faults of the wicked and their resulting damnation are their own responsibility. But since Eriugena had denied the possibility of the predestination of the elect to eternal bliss, he had contradicted Augustine; for this reason Hincmar ultimately rejected the treatise.
The work was warmly assailed by Drepanius Florus, canon of Lyons, and Prudentius, and was condemned by two councils: that The Council of Valence III 855, and that of Langres
Langres () is a commune in northeastern France. It is a subprefecture of the department of Haute-Marne, in the region of Grand Est.
History
As the capital of the Romanized Gallic tribe known as the Lingones, it was called Andematunnum, then ...
in 859. By the former council his arguments were described as ''Pultes Scotorum'' ("Irish porridge") and ("an invention of the devil").
Translation of the ''Corpus Areopagiticum''
At some point in the centuries before Eriugena a legend had developed that Saint Denis, the first Bishop of Paris and patron saint of the important Abbey of Saint-Denis
The Basilica of Saint-Denis (french: Basilique royale de Saint-Denis, links=no, now formally known as the ) is a large former medieval abbey church and present cathedral in the commune of Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris. The building ...
, was the same person as both the Dionysius the Areopagite
Dionysius the Areopagite (; grc-gre, Διονύσιος ὁ Ἀρεοπαγίτης ''Dionysios ho Areopagitēs'') was an Athenian judge at the Areopagus Court in Athens, who lived in the first century. A convert to Christianity, he is venerate ...
mentioned in Acts 17.34, and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (or Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite) was a Greek author, Christian theologian and Neoplatonic philosopher of the late 5th to early 6th century, who wrote a set of works known as the ''Corpus Areopagiticum'' o ...
, a figure whose writings were not yet being circulated in the West in the ninth century. Accordingly, in the 820s ambassadors from the Byzantine emperor to the court of Louis the Pious
Louis the Pious (german: Ludwig der Fromme; french: Louis le Pieux; 16 April 778 – 20 June 840), also called the Fair, and the Debonaire, was King of the Franks and co-emperor with his father, Charlemagne, from 813. He was also King of Aqui ...
donated to Louis a Greek manuscript of the Dionysian corpus, which was immediately given to the Abbey of Saint Denis in the care of Abbot Hilduin. Hilduin proceeded to direct a translation of the Dionysian corpus from Greek into Latin, based on this single manuscript.
Soon after, probably by the middle of the ninth century, Eriugena made a second Latin translation of the Dionysian corpus, and much later wrote a commentary on "The Celestial Hierarchy". This constitutes the first major Latin reception of the Areopagite. It is unclear why Eriugena made a new translation so soon after Hilduin's. It has often been suggested that Hilduin's translation was deficient; though this is a possibility, it was a serviceable translation. Another possibility is that Eriugena's creative energies and his inclination toward Greek theological subjects motivated him to make a new translation.
Eriugena's next work was a Latin translation of Dionysius the Areopagite undertaken at the request of Charles the Bald
Charles the Bald (french: Charles le Chauve; 13 June 823 – 6 October 877), also known as Charles II, was a 9th-century king of West Francia (843–877), king of Italy (875–877) and emperor of the Carolingian Empire (875–877). After a ...
. A translation of the Areopagite's writings was not likely to alter the opinion already formed as to Eriugena's orthodoxy. Pope Nicholas I was offended that the work had not been submitted for approval before being given to the world, and ordered Charles to send Eriugena to Rome, or at least to dismiss him from his court. There is no evidence, however, that this order was carried out.
At the request of the Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
emperor Michael III (c. 858), Eriugena undertook some translation into Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
of the works of Pseudo-Dionysius and added his own commentary. With this translation, he continued in the tradition of St. Augustine and Boethius in introducing the ideas of Neoplatonism from the Greek into the Western European intellectual tradition, where they were to have a strong influence on Christian theology.
He also translated St. Gregory of Nyssa's ''De hominis opificio'' and St. Maximus Confessor's ''Ambigua ad Iohannem''.[Moran, Dermot, "John Scottus Eriugena", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)]
/ref>
''De Divisione Naturae''
Scope of the work
Eriugena's ''magnum opus
A masterpiece, ''magnum opus'' (), or ''chef-d’œuvre'' (; ; ) in modern use is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, ...
'', ''De Divisione Naturae
''De Divisione Naturae'' ("The Division of Nature") is the title given by Thomas Gale to his edition (1681) of the work originally titled by 9th-century theologian Johannes Scotus Eriugena ''Periphyseon''.''John Scotus Erigena'', ''The Age of Bel ...
'' (''On the Division of Nature'') or ''Periphyseon'', is arranged in five books. It has been called the "final achievement" of ancient philosophy
This page lists some links to ancient philosophy, namely philosophical thought extending as far as early post-classical history ().
Overview
Genuine philosophical thought, depending upon original individual insights, arose in many culture ...
, a work which "synthesizes the philosophical accomplishments of fifteen centuries." The form of exposition is that of a catechetical
Catechesis (; from Greek: , "instruction by word of mouth", generally "instruction") is basic Christian religious education of children and adults, often from a catechism book. It started as education of converts to Christianity, but as the re ...
dialogue between a theologian and his pupil, and the method of reasoning is the ancient syllogistic. Nature (''Natura'' in Latin or ''physis'' ύσιςin Greek) is the name of the most comprehensive of all unities, that which contains within itself the most primary division of all things, that which is (being) and that which is not (nonbeing). It is presented, like Alcuin's book, as a dialogue between Master and Pupil. Eriugena anticipates St. Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known ...
, who said that one cannot know and believe a thing at the same time.
Eriugena explains that reason is necessary to understand and interpret revelation. "Authority is the source of knowledge, but the reason of mankind is the norm by which all authority is judged."
Sergei N. Shushkov has challenged the dominant strains of Eriugena scholarship in pointing out these key points regarding the approach to the structure, internal progression and purpose of the ''De Divisione Naturae:''
# Rather than the specific divisions of Nature, the modes of interpreting being and non-being are to the true constitutive subject-matter of each book of the Periphyseon (hence, of the five parts of his system, yet four divisions).
# The fourfold division of Nature is to be interpreted not as a basic structure of the system offered by Eriugena, but as a means of introducing dialectic to the body of theology through discourse and negation of St. Augustine's specific metaphysical hierarchy, indicating the way of resolution of the cardinally theological contradiction (God does and does not create at the same time).
# Thus one should not associate Eriugena's work with exploration of the division of God's Nature but rather reinterpret it as an immense anti-division project to be understood as an important turn in the history of Christian thought entirely focused on the truth of God's unity and perfection, and the lived human life assenting to it.
The fourfold divisions of nature
The Latin title refers to these four divisions of nature:
# Creating and not created.
# Created and creating.
# Created and not creating.
# Not creating and not created.
The first is God as the ground or origin of all things; the second, Platonic
Plato's influence on Western culture was so profound that several different concepts are linked by being called Platonic or Platonist, for accepting some assumptions of Platonism, but which do not imply acceptance of that philosophy as a whole. It ...
ideas or forms as ''logoi,'' following St. Maximus and Augustinia
exemplarism
the third, corporeal world of phenomena and formed matter world; and the last is God as the final end or goal of all things, and that into which the world of created things ultimately returns. The third division is the dialectical counterpart to the first, the fourth to the second. The inspiration of this division comes from Augustine's '' City of God'', "The cause of things, therefore which makes but is not made, is God; but all other causes both make and are made." The first and fourth divisions are to be understood of God, regarded alternately as the efficient and sustaining cause of all as dependent upon Him, and the ''teleological
Teleology (from and )Partridge, Eric. 1977''Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English'' London: Routledge, p. 4187. or finalityDubray, Charles. 2020 912Teleology" In ''The Catholic Encyclopedia'' 14. New York: Robert Appleton ...
'' end of all: Let us then make an “analytical” or regressive collection of each of the two pairs of the four forms we have mentioned so as to bring them into a unity. The first, then, ndfourth are one since they are understood of God lone For He is the Principle of all things which have been created by Him, and the end of all things which seek Him so that in Him they may find their eternal and immutable rest. For the reason why the Cause of all things is said to create is that it is from it that the universe of those things which have been created after it (and) y itproceeds by a wonderful and divine multiplication into genera and species and individuals, and into differentiations and all those other features which are observed in created nature; but because it is to the same Cause that all things that proceed from it shall return when they reach their end, it is therefore called the end of all things and is said neither to create nor to be created. For once all things have returned to it nothing further will proceed from it by generation in place and time (and) genera and forms since in it all things will be at rest and will remain an indivisible and immutable One. For those things which in the processions of natures appear to be divided and partitioned into many are in the primordial causes unified and one, and to this unity they will return and in it they will eternally and immutably remain. But this fourth aspect of the universe, which, like the first also, is understood to exist in God alone, will receive a more detailed treatment in its proper place, as far as the Light of Minds shall grant (us). Now what is said of the first and fourth, that is to say, that neither the one nor the other is created since both the one and the other are One — for both are predicated of God — will not be obscure, I think, to any who use their intelligence aright. For that which has no cause either superior to or equal with itself is created by nothing. For the First Cause of all things is God, whom nothing precedes (nor) is anything understood (to be) in conjunction with Him which is not coessential with Him. Do you see, then, that the first and fourth forms of nature have been reduced to a unity?
These divisions are not to be understood as separated and within the nature of God, but rather they are not God at all but our thought of God because we are compelled, by the very constitution of our minds, to think of a beginning and an end. The second and the third divisions, however, do not merely exist in our thought, but in things themselves and are the things in themselves, in which causes and effects are actually divided. The second division represents the primordial causes, of which the ''Logos'' is the unity and the aggregate. All that we see divided and a multiplicity in nature is one in the primal causes. The third division represents the created universe; it is all that is known in generation, in time and in space. These divisions of Nature do not mean that God is the genus of the creature, or the creature a species of God, though Gregory Nazianzen
Gregory of Nazianzus ( el, Γρηγόριος ὁ Ναζιανζηνός, ''Grēgorios ho Nazianzēnos''; ''Liturgy of the Hours'' Volume I, Proper of Saints, 2 January. – 25 January 390,), also known as Gregory the Theologian or Gregory N ...
does say, ''pars Dei sumus'', which is a metaphorical use of language, to express the truth that in God we live and move and have our being, which Eriugena himself follows. The four divisions are an example of analysis descending from the most general to the most special, and then reversing the process, and resolving individuals into species, species into genera, genera into essences, and ‘essences into the wisdom of the Deity, from where all these divisions arose and where they end.
Modes of non-being
Next in importance to the fourfold division of Nature for the understanding of Eriugena's philosophy, is his fivefold division of non-being. It is fundamental to Erigena's scheme that Nature, as the general name for all things, comprises both the things which are and the things which are not. All that is perceived by the senses or understood by the intellect is said to be (''esse''). The five modes of non-being are as follows:
# Non-being as the ineffable Godhead: All that by reason of the excellence of its nature (''per excellentiam suae naturae'') escapes the reach of the senses and of the intellect. The essence of all things belongs to this category. Whatever is known is a kind of accident of the underlying, unknown and unknowable substance. We know anything by quality and quantity, form, matter, difference, time and space. But the essence of it, to which these attach themselves, we cannot know. Since this essence cannot be known by us, it does not exist for us.
# Non-being as the inaccessibility of the higher to the lower: Derived from the first mode of non-being, in the order of Nature, the affirmation of the higher existence is the denial of the lower, and the denial of the lower existence is the affirmation of the higher. Anything is, in so far as it is ‘known by itself or by what is above it; it is not, in so far as it cannot be comprehended by what is below it.
# Non-being as all latent or seminal or potential existence: All men who will ever exist were potentially created in the first man; all plants that will ever exist now exist potentially in the seed of existing plants. But in this sense, actual existence is existence, and potential existence is non-existence.
# Non-being as that which is phenomenal and material: All that exists by generation as a form of matter in space and time, and is liable to increase and decrease. All this is not, in the full sense of being. Only what is solely comprehended by the intellect is real being. All else is appearance and not reality.
# Non-being as sin: This last mode of non-being belongs only to human nature. Man properly is in so far as he is in the image of God: in so far a he loses the image of God through sin, he is not. When is restored to him in Christ, he is again, as St. Paul the Apostle says: ''Who calleth the things that are not as though they were.''
Cataphatic and apophatic theology
This dimension of Eriugena's theology consists largely of his direct intellectual inheritance from Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. While the same predicate may rightly be affirmed and denied of God, the affirmation is metaphorical (''metaphorice'') yet truly indicative, the denial is literal (''proprie''). This depends upon the fact that every human thought involves a contrary, and God, as the Absolute, is beyond all oppositions, for He is the reconciliation and the resolution of contraries and tensions. Therefore, for Eriugena, God may be said to be ''essentia'', as He is conceived to be the essence of all that is, yet strictly He is not ''essentia'' (of which the contrary is ''nihil'') because God is beyond opposition, so he is more appropriately ''super-essentia''. Similarly He is more-than-good and more-than-goodness, more-than-eternal, and more-than-eternity. The use of phrases like these is the attempt to unite the affirmation and the negation in one statement, since the Absolute involves both the positive and the negative. But, as Eriugena sees it, every one of these attempts to express the nature of God by ''super-'' is really a negation. To say that God is superessential is not to say what He is, but what He is not. God indeed is beyond all words, and all thought, for He surpasses all intellect, and is better known by not knowing, and is more truly denied in all things than affirmed.
Theophany
It is therefore one of Eriugena's fundamental tenets that it is impossible to know God as He is. We know that He is, but not what He is. He is known to be only through the things He has created, that is, He is known only by theophany, as Dionysius the Areopagite before him argued. The sense which Eriugena attaches to this phrase is not particularly clear or consistent. It seems generally to mean every manifestation of God through the medium of the creation. But it is only the devout soul that is prepared to receive the higher manifestations, and it is only to such souls that these are given. The words of Maximus are quoted as a definition of theophany in the narrower sense. "As far as the human mind ascends in love, so far the divine wisdom descends in mercy." The "creation" of the world is in reality a ''theophania'', or showing forth of the Essence of God in the things created. Just as He reveals Himself to the mind and the soul in higher intellectual and spiritual truth, so He reveals Himself to the senses in the created world around us. Creation is, therefore, a process of unfolding of the Divine Nature. Theophany, therefore, in this more restricted sense, is, on the part of man, an ascent to God in which every good desire and deed is a step, and on the part of God, a revelation of Himself to the human spirit in such fashion as our intelligence can understand.
The nature of God
God is ἄναρχος, that is; without beginning, uncaused, the absolutely self-sufficient, uniquely possessing '' aseitas''. The essence of God is incomprehensible, as is the οὐσία of all that exists. But as our human intellect, which is one and invisible in itself, yet manifests itself in words and deeds, and expresses its thought in letters, and figures, so the Divine Essence, which is far above the reach of our intellect, manifests itself in the created universe. In this sense, it may even be said to be created, in those things which are made by it and through it and in it. Eriugena is fundamentally following St. Paul the Apostle here in saying that the Divine Nature is ''made'', where the Word of God is born in the heart. So the Divine Nature may, in this strictly qualified sense, be said to create itself inasmuch as it creates from itself the nature of things.
= Filioque
=
While God is ἄναρχος, strictly speaking Eriugena argues, only the Father is ἄναρχος, since the Son and the Spirit have a '' principium'' in the Father and are generated and cospirated respectively. While Eriugena does rely on the Greeks even more so than the Western Fathers, and at times does show sympathy to Constantinople, he is a staunch defender of the filioque clause
( ; ) is a Latin term ("and from the Son") added to the original Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (commonly known as the Nicene Creed), and which has been the subject of great controversy between Eastern and Western Christianity. It is a ter ...
. Eriugena argues that, as the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, so the Son is born of the Father through the Holy Spirit both in the Incarnation and, in a much different sense, in baptism.
Intersubjectivity
Moran refers to the communicating intelligences (i.e., the human merged with and in God) within Eriugena's theological schema as constituting an "intersubjective" domain of circular figuration which Eriugena inherits from Boethius: "Eriugena does not have a modern understanding of the self-enclosed isolated subject. Rather, he has the idea of a ''nous'' which as a 'circular' motion around God, and can come into a unity with Him." Likewise, Boethius’ description in the Consolation notes that the relation between Providence and Fate is as a set of concentric orbits around an axis, with Providence as the unmoved axis itself and Fate as occupying the outermost orbits, which must traverse ever longer distances around that center. For both Eriugena and Boethius, to the degree to which a soul can infuse itself with the Godhead, which is the omnipresent center, it can also be absorbed in its undivided, non-dual nature, and cease to experience the distension of being torn in multiple directions thus attaining beatitude.
Additionally, Moran argues that the notion of intersubjectivity is in Eriugena's philosophy, and it is "anti-hierarchical, bubble-like". Eriugena writes of a communion that occurs in the mind through intellectual penetration such that whenever the intellect knows something perfectly, it is "made in that thing and becomes one with it." Eriugena explication of his cosmological schema reveals how the traditional hierarchy of angels placed above the human is uniquely transfigured by Christian revelation and folded through the soul's proximity to the divine:If you look more closely into the mutual relation and unity which exist between intelligible and rational natures, you will at once find that not only is the angelic nature established in the human but also the human is established in the angelic. For it is created in everything of which the pure intellect has the most perfect knowledge and becomes one with it. So closely indeed were the human and angelic natures associated, and so they would be now if the first man had not sinned, that the two would have become one. Even as it is this is beginning to happen in the case of the highest men, from whom are the firstborn among the celestial natures. Moreover the angel is made in man, through the understanding of angel which is in man, and man is in the angel through the understanding of man which is established in the angel. For, as I have said, he who has a pure understanding is created in that which he understands. So the intelligible and rational nature of the angel is created in the intelligible and rational nature of man, just as the nature of man is created in the nature of angel, through the mutual knowledge by which angel understands man and man angel.
Becoming-other through mutual embrace or absorption represents a medieval complication of the purely top-down hierarchies often representative of classical Neoplatonism. They are complicated insofar as, at one level of structure the hierarchy remains, but at another level, it is transcended and included in a wider notion of a single divine-self (i.e., network-refraction). A later medieval concordance is found with St. Thomas Aquinas, who in the thirteenth century wrote that, when a spiritual entity exists fully and completely in something, it contains that thing and is not contained by it. Gardiner notes how that is similar to Object-Orientated-Ontology, that in the relationship of knowing, a subject is brought into contact with an Other outside of the self, not in the interior of that Other, but rather in the interior of the relationship-with-that-Other-as-object.
Learned ignorance
In Eriugena's ''De Divisione Naturae'', the most excellent part of our nature as moving is nous, and as essence it is οὐσία. All emanation or "division," and all return or "analysis" begins and ends in οὐσία. It is known only in this ''exitus-reditus'' process; immediately it is knowable neither generically nor in particulars. According to Wayne J. Hankey, the ambiguity that was in Boethius is absent from Eriugena, who is far more confident in his trinitarianism: οὐσία names the One, the Godhead shared between persons. The Divine "nothingness by excellence" is "beyond all things which are and which are not". By plunging into this divine nature, which is said ''not to be,'' "because of its ineffable excellence and incomprehensible infinity”, Eriugena follows Pseudo-Dionysius's apophaticism into its extremes towards "the ineffable and incomprehensible and inaccessible brilliance of the divine goodness, unknown to any intellect", and so beyond the activity of intellect. The mystical attainment of this ascent to God is through a learning of ignorance; a trained effort towards going beyond discursive thought. According to Trouillard, learned ignorance is essential to human dignity and its cosmic role:God does not know himself. And the reason for this ignorance, is that God is nothing… God… remains… inaccessible to all thought and is communicable only as motion. Therefore we distinguish in God, so to speak, two levels: that of the Deity, which is an irremediably obscure centre, and that of God the Creator, who, by the rays which he projects, makes himself known through his creatures… Our spirit is in itself a silent spontaneity and, nonetheless, manifests itself to the outside and to itself by signs and figures… Because it is in the image of God our mind is nothingness, and this is why it expresses the totality of the universe. Becoming the meanings which it emits, it creates itself in them, and nevertheless however refuses to define itself by its own creations.
God is intimately woven to the human as the human is to Divinity. Eriugena came to understand human nature as more than being, "that in which all things could be found," but rather became; “that in which all things are created.” The human is the workshop of creation; as the ''imago Dei
The image of God (; ) is a concept and theological doctrine in Christianity, as well as in Judaism. This concept is a foundational aspect of Christian and Jewish understandings of human nature. It stems from the primary text in Genesis 1:27, whi ...
'', the human is the image of the creator. It is the medium in which God knows and creates himself out of his own unknowing nothingness, precisely because, uniquely among beings, the human possesses all the forms of knowing and ignorance, including sensation. Donald Duclow explains the indissoluble marriage between the two:Eriugena places the human being among the primordial causes within the divine Word. He further describes humanity as created in God's image and likeness, with two basic features: (1) a self-ignorance whereby humanity knows only that it is, not what it is; and (2) a self-knowledge that embraces all creation, visible and invisible. In the first, the human being reflects God's unknowable transcendence. In the second, the human being becomes — in Maximus's phrase — “the workshop of all things, officina omnium,” and faithfully mirrors God's creative Wisdom. Simultaneously transcending and embracing the whole created order, humanity thus becomes a precise image of its divine exemplar.
This is why Eriugena, while being a master of the dialectic of a Greek Rationalist flavour, is able to paradoxically "praise ignorance more than knowledge". It is precisely this kicking away of discursive multiplicity which can only gesture towards but never fully capture God that accords better to God:For the human mind does know itself, and again does not know itself. For it knows that it is, but does not know what it is. And as we have taught in the earlier books it is this which reveals most clearly the Image of God to be in man. For just as God is comprehensible in the sense that it can be deduced from His creation that he is, and incomprehensible because it cannot be comprehended by any intellect whether human or angelic nor even by Himself what He is, seeing that He is not a thing but is superessential: so to the human mind it is given to know one thing only, that it is — but as to what it is, no sort of notion is permitted; and, a fact which is stranger still and, to those who study God and man, more fair to contemplate, the human mind is more honoured in its ignorance than in its knowledge; for the ignorance in it of what it is is more praiseworthy than the knowledge that it is, just as the negation of God accords better with the praise of His Nature than the affirmation, and it shows greater wisdom not to know than to know that Nature of Which ignorance is the true wisdom and Which is known all the better for not being known. Therefore the Divine Likeness in the human mind is most clearly discerned when it is only known that it is, and not known what it is; and, if I may so put it, what it is, is denied in it, and only that it is, is affirmed. Nor is this unreasonable. For if it were known to be something, then at once it would be limited by some definition, and thereby would cease to be a complete expression of the Image of its Creator, Who is absolutely unlimited and contained within no definition, because He is infinite, beyond all that may be said or comprehended, superessential.
Alleged pantheism
''De Divisione Naturae'' was condemned by a council at Sens by Honorius III
Pope Honorius III (c. 1150 – 18 March 1227), born Cencio Savelli, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 18 July 1216 to his death. A canon at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, he came to hold a number of importa ...
(1225), for appearing to promote the identity of God and creation, and by Gregory XIII
Pope Gregory XIII ( la, Gregorius XIII; it, Gregorio XIII; 7 January 1502 – 10 April 1585), born Ugo Boncompagni, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 13 May 1572 to his death in April 1585. He is best known for ...
in 1585. According to Max Bernhard Weinstein
Max Bernhard Weinstein (1 September 1852 in Kaunas, Vilna Governorate – 25 March 1918) was a German physicist and philosopher. He is best known as an opponent of Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and for having written a broad examination ...
, Eriugena argued on behalf of something like a panentheistic
Panentheism ("all in God", from the Greek grc, πᾶν, pân, all, label=none, grc, ἐν, en, in, label=none and grc, Θεός, Theós, God, label=none) is the belief that the divine intersects every part of the universe and also extends bey ...
definition of nature. Lutheran theologian Otto Kirn
Otto Kirn (January 23, 1857 – August 18, 1911) was a German Lutheran theologian and university professor.
Life
Kirn went through the Evangelical Seminaries of Maulbronn and Blaubeuren, where he was trained, among others, by the philosopher Kar ...
severely criticised Weinstein, claiming sweeping generalisations and shallow assertions pertaining to Eriugena and other such Neoplatonic theologians. Eriugena maintained that for one to return to God, he must first go forth from Him and so Eriugena himself denied that he was a pantheist. Étienne Gilson
Étienne Henri Gilson (; 13 June 1884 – 19 September 1978) was a French philosopher and historian of philosophy. A scholar of medieval philosophy, he originally specialised in the thought of Descartes; he also philosophized in the tradition ...
also argued that Eriugena's alleged pantheism derived from a misunderstanding of the nature of "division" in the Periphyseon. Gilson writes that when we read Eriugena, "nature" is not meant as a totality of which God and creatures are parts; or as a genus of which God and creatures would be species. God is not all things, nor are all things God and Eriugena explicitly tells us that such a conception is a monstrosity. The division of nature signifies the act by which God expresses himself in hierarchical declension, and making himself known in a hierarchy of beings which are other than, and inferior to, him by being lesser grades of reality; "yet, in point of fact, Erigena only means that each and every creature is essentially a manifestation, under the form of being, of what is above being. The ''esse'' of a being is but a light radiated by the ''superesse'', which is God."
Historian of philosophy Frederick Copleston
Frederick Charles Copleston (10 April 1907 – 3 February 1994) was an English Roman Catholic Jesuit priest, philosopher, and historian of philosophy, best known for his influential multi-volume '' A History of Philosophy'' (1946–75).
...
summarized the matter thus:
If one takes a particular set of isolated statements of John Scotus one would have to say that he was either a pantheist or a theist. For example, the statement that the distinction between the second and third stages of Nature is due only to the forms of human reasoning is in itself clearly pantheistic, while the statement that the substantial distinction between God and creatures is always preserved is clearly theistic. It might seem that we should opt for one or the other set in an unqualified manner, and it is this attitude which has given rise to the notion that John Scotus was a conscious pantheist who made verbal concessions to orthodoxy with his tongue in his cheek. But if one realises that he was a sincere Christian, who yet attempted to reconcile Christian teaching with a predominantly neo-Platonic philosophy or rather to express the Christian wisdom in the only framework of thought which was then at hand, which happened to be predominantly neo-Platonic one should also be able to realise that, in spite of the tensions involved and the tendency to rationalise Christian dogma, as far as the subjective standpoint of the philosopher .e., of John Scotuswas concerned a satisfactory reconciliation was effected.
Apocatastasis
Eriugena is believed to have held to a form of ''apocatastasis
In theology, apocatastasis () is the restoration of creation to a condition of perfection. In Christianity, it is a form of Christian universalism that includes the ultimate salvation of everyone—including the damned in hell and the devil. The ...
'' or universal reconciliation
In Christian theology, universal reconciliation (also called universal salvation, Christian universalism, or in context simply universalism) is the doctrine that all sinful and alienated human souls—because of divine love and mercy—will ul ...
, which maintains that the universe will eventually be restored under God's dominion. His form of ''apocatastasis'' however is fairly unique. It is not Christian Universalism
Christian universalism is a school of Christian theology focused around the doctrine of universal reconciliation – the view that all human beings will ultimately be saved and restored to a right relationship with God. "Christian universalis ...
,[.] but rather part of a broader Neoplatonic eschatology. As the cosmos for Eriugena gradually unfolds the grades of reality from the Godhead, so too will the various grades enfold into each other in a cosmic return to God, of which the Incarnation of Christ is a necessary tool for such a reversion. After the resurrection
Resurrection or anastasis is the concept of coming back to life after death. In a number of religions, a dying-and-rising god is a deity which dies and is resurrected. Reincarnation is a similar process hypothesized by other religions, whic ...
, the division between the sexes shall be abolished and elevated man will be as the fall had never happened for the elect. The body of each person will return to the soul from which it was separated such that, "life will become sense; sense will become reason and reason will become pure thought. A fourth stage will return the human soul to its primary cause or Idea and, together with the soul, the body it has reabsorbed...The fifth and last moment of this universal "analysis" will bring the terrestrial sphere back to Paradise. As this movement will propagate itself from sphere to sphere, nature and all its causes will let themselves be progressively permeated by God as air is by light. From that time and on, there will be nought else but God."
However for Eriugena, this deification does not result in annihilation, because he believes that things are more real in their primordial causes than in themselves, and as such he evades the Origenistic ''apocatastasis'' whereby the lower grades of reality are annihilated. So, while everything has indeed returned to God in Eriugena's account, material hell is a "pagan superstition", eternal punishment remains as "the supernatural distinction between the chosen and the condemned will remain whole and will persist eternally, but each one will be beatified or punished in his own conscience."
Influence
Eriugena's work is distinguished by the freedom of his speculation, and the boldness with which he works out his logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premise ...
al or dialectical system of the universe. He marks a stage of transition from ancient philosophy to the later scholasticism. For him philosophy is not in the service of theology. His assertion that philosophy and religion are fundamentally one and the same is repeated almost word for word by many of the later scholastic writers, but its significance depends upon the selection of one or other term of the identity as fundamental or primary. For Eriugena, philosophy or reason is first or primitive; authority or religion is secondary, derived. Eriugena's influence was greater with mystics
A mystic is a person who practices mysticism, or a reference to a mystery, mystic craft, first hand-experience or the occult.
Mystic may also refer to:
Places United States
* Mistick, an old name for parts of Malden and Medford, Massachusetts
* ...
, especially Benedictines, than with logicians, but he was responsible for a revival of philosophical thought which had remained largely dormant in western Europe after the death of Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480 – 524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, ''magister officiorum'', historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the tr ...
.
Eriugena is generally classified as a neoplatonist, though was not influenced directly by such philosophers as Plotinus
Plotinus (; grc-gre, Πλωτῖνος, ''Plōtînos''; – 270 CE) was a philosopher in the Hellenistic tradition, born and raised in Roman Egypt. Plotinus is regarded by modern scholarship as the founder of Neoplatonism. His teacher wa ...
or Iamblichus. Jean Trouillard stated that, although he was almost exclusively dependent on Christian theological texts and the Christian Canon, Eriugena, "reinvented the greater part of the theses of Neoplatonism."
St. Bernard of Clairvaux
Within the twelfth-century Cistercian Order
The Cistercians, () officially the Order of Cistercians ( la, (Sacer) Ordo Cisterciensis, abbreviated as OCist or SOCist), are a Catholic religious order of monks and nuns that branched off from the Benedictines and follow the Rule of Sain ...
, alongside William of Saint-Thierry, St. Bernard of Clairvaux's mystical theology was greatly influenced by the work of Eriugena. His influence came to Bernard through two principal texts;
* i) Eriugena's translation of St. Maximus the Confessor.
* ii) ''De Divisione Naturae'' itself.
From both St. Maximus and Eriugena he borrows the Dionysian concept of ''excessus'' and a milder version of Eriugena's Neoplatonic reversion and procession but blending it further with the Johannine
Johannine literature is the collection of New Testament works that are traditionally attributed to John the Apostle, John the Evangelist, or to the Johannine community. They are usually dated to the period , with a minority of scholars such as Jo ...
account of God as Love. "All things move towards God as towards the motionless Sovereign Good. The end of their movement, which is also their own proper good, is to attain this motionless Good. Natural things tend to Him in virtue of their very nature; intelligent beings by way of knowledge and love. Hence the ecstatic movement which bears them on towards Him... the effect of this ''excessus'' is to make him who loves ''fiat totum in toto amato'' (op. cit., 1 202 A), in such a way that there now remains nothing for him to will of his own will. Circumscribed by God on all sides, he is as air flooded with light, or as iron liquefied in the fire." And like Eriugena, the liquefaction and fusion of the soul in ecstasy does not involve its annihilation, but rather keeps the soul's essence perfectly intact and perfects it further.
St. Hildegard von Bingen
St. Hildegard's ''Ordo Viritutum'' and ''Scivias
''Scivias'' is an illustrated work by Hildegard von Bingen, completed in 1151 or 1152, describing 26 religious visions she experienced. It is the first of three works that she wrote describing her visions, the others being and (also known as ...
'' express much of an influence from Eriugena. Following in the Irish theologian's footsteps, Hildegard boldly admits the possibility of an individual who is raised above the angel, implying an intersubjective contact within the Godhead. In this unique medieval interpretation of the ontological scale, the Platonic mean serves not as a lower reflection but as a type of interface linking divine and sublunary worlds within the mind of its user. A common theme which she borrows from him also is the notion of cosmological, top-down hierarchies that both contain, and are transcended by, the human as ''Imago Dei
The image of God (; ) is a concept and theological doctrine in Christianity, as well as in Judaism. This concept is a foundational aspect of Christian and Jewish understandings of human nature. It stems from the primary text in Genesis 1:27, whi ...
''. Hildegard also follows Eriugena on his account of intersubjectivity as well as his view of the soul's return through the cosmos to God. "The networked centricities in the Ordo allow distant tonalities to be drawn close, collapsing linear progressions into folded, synoptic structures. In this way, Eriugena's intersubjective proximity through spherical absorption... becomes one of the organizing principles of the ''Ordo Virtutum'' as a whole, and its expression of what we might today call the phenomenological aspects of a spiritual pilgrimage, the soul's ''navigatio'' through the chaos of the world, its re-ordering, and return to the One, i.e., the celestial city ''Ordo Virtutum'' ''86'' (''celestem Ierusalem'')."
Nicholas of Cusa
As Catà argues, the philosophical relationship between John Eriugena and dialectician Nicholas of Cusa, connecting directly two different thinkers through six centuries, is a fundamental moment in the history of Christian Neoplatonism. Cusanus is the most significant interpreter of Eriugena's thought, between Eckhart and the German Idealism
German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary ...
. "The strong influence of the Irish philosopher on Cusanus’ work is decisive. The idea of God as the infinite One wherein all beings are contained; and the conception of the universe as a self-creation of God, elaborated by Eriugena, constitute the fulcrum of Cusanus’ metaphysical system."
Modern philosophy
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski (; ; 23 October 1927 – 17 July 2009) was a Polish philosopher and historian of ideas. He is best known for his critical analyses of Marxist thought, especially his three-volume history, '' Main Currents of Marxism'' (1976 ...
, a Polish Marx scholar, has mentioned Eriugena as one of the primary influences on Hegel's, and therefore Marx's, dialectical form. In particular, he called ''De Divisione Naturae'' a prototype of Hegel's ''Phenomenology of Spirit''. Eriugena's systematic earned the reputation as the "Hegel of the ninth century," among German Hegelian scholars.
Legacy
Eriugena gives his name to the John Scottus School
John Scottus School comprises a primary and secondary school in Dublin, Ireland.
History
The schools are named after John Scottus Eriugena, the Platonist philosopher, theologian and poet of Early Medieval Ireland. The school ethos is inf ...
in Dublin. John Scotus also appeared on the Series B
A venture round is a type of funding round used for venture capital financing, by which startup companies obtain investment, generally from venture capitalists and other institutional investors. The availability of venture funding is among the ...
£5 note, in use between 1976 and 1992.
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
called him "the most astonishing person of the ninth century". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states he "is the most significant Irish intellectual of the early monastic
Monasticism (from Ancient Greek , , from , , 'alone'), also referred to as monachism, or monkhood, is a religion, religious way of life in which one renounces world (theology), worldly pursuits to devote oneself fully to spiritual work. Monastic ...
period. He is generally recognized to be both the outstanding philosopher (in terms of originality) of the Carolingian era
The Carolingian Empire (800–888) was a large Frankish-dominated empire in western and central Europe during the Early Middle Ages. It was ruled by the Carolingian dynasty, which had ruled as kings of the Franks since 751 and as kings of the Lo ...
and of the whole period of Latin philosophy stretching from Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480 – 524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, ''magister officiorum'', historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the tr ...
to Anselm".
William of Malmesbury
William of Malmesbury
William of Malmesbury ( la, Willelmus Malmesbiriensis; ) was the foremost English historian of the 12th century. He has been ranked among the most talented English historians since Bede. Modern historian C. Warren Hollister described him as " ...
's humorous anecdote illustrates both the character of Eriugena and the position he occupied at the French court. The king having asked, (What separates a sot runkardfrom an Irishman?), Eriugena replied, (''Only a Table'').
William of Malmesbury is not considered a reliable source on John Scotus Eriugena by modern scholars. For example, his reports that Eriugena is buried at Malmesbury is doubted by scholars who say that William confused John Eriugena with a different monk named John. William's report on the manner of Eriugena's death, killed by the pens of his students, also appears to be a legend. "It seems certain that this is due to confusion with another John and that the manner of John's death is borrowed from the Acts of St. Cassian of Imola
Cassian, or Saint Cassian of Imola, or Cassius was a Christian saint of the 4th century. His feast day is August 13.
Life
Little is known about his life, although the traditional accounts converge on some of the details of his martyrdom. He was ...
. Feast: (at Malmesbury), 28 January."[ illiam wrote'that John quitted Francia because of the charge of erroneous doctrine brought against him. He came to King Alfred, by whom he was welcomed and established as a teacher at Malmesbury, but after some years he was assailed by the boys, was later translated to the left of the high altar of the abbey church, chiefly as the result of whom he taught, with their styles, and so died. It never occurred to any one to identify the Old Saxon abbat of Athelney with the Irish teacher of Malmesbury—with the name John as the single point in common—until the late forger, who passed off his work as that of Ingulf, who was abbat of Croyland towards the end of the eleventh century ('Descr. Comp.' in Rer. Angl. Script. post Bedam, p. 870, Frankfurt, 1601); and the confusion has survived the exposure of the fraud. It is permissible to hold that William has handed down a genuine tradition of his monastery, though it would be extreme to accept all the details of what happened more than two centuries before his birth as strictly historical (see an examination of the whole question in Poole, app. ii.).' ''Dictionary of National Biography'', 1885-1900, Volume 51 Scotus by Reginald Lane-Poole.]
Works
Translations
*''Johannis Scotti Eriugenae Periphyseon: (De Divisione Naturae)'', 3 vols, edited by I. P. Sheldon-Williams, (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies
The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS) ( ga, Institiúid Ard-Léinn Bhaile Átha Cliath) is a statutory independent research institute in Ireland. It was established in 1940 on the initiative of the Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, in Dub ...
, 1968–1981) he Latin and English text of Books 1–3 of ''De Divisione Naturae''*''Periphyseon (The Division of Nature)'', tr. I. P. Sheldon-Williams and JJ O'Meara, (Montreal: Bellarmin, 1987) he Latin text is published in É. Jeauneau, ed, CCCM 161–165.*''The Voice of the Eagle. The Heart of Celtic Christianity: John Scotus Eriugena's Homily on the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John'', translated and introduced by Christopher Bamford, (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne; Edinburgh: Floris, 1990) eprinted Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne, 2000 ranslation of ''Homilia in prologum Sancti Evangelii secundum Joannem''*''Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae Periphyseon (De divisione naturae)'', edited by Édouard A. Jeauneau; translated into English by John J. O'Meara and I.P. Sheldon-Williams, (Dublin: School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1995) he Latin and English text of Book 4 of ''De divisione naturae''*''Glossae divinae historiae: the Biblical glosses of John Scottus Eriugena'', edited by John J. Contreni and Pádraig P. Ó Néill, (Firenze: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 1997)
*''Treatise on divine predestination'', translated by Mary Brennan, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998) ranslation of ''De divina praedestinatione liber.''*''A Thirteenth-Century Textbook of Mystical Theology at the University of Paris: the Mystical Theology of Dionysius the Areopagite in Eriugena's Latin Translation, with the Scholia translated by Anastasius the Librarian, and Excerpts from Eriugena's Periphyseon'', translated and introduced by L. Michael Harrington, Dallas medieval texts and translations 4, (Paris; Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2004)
*Paul Rorem, ''Eriugena's Commentary on the Dionysian Celestial Hierarchy'', (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2005). he Latin text is published in ''Expositiones in Ierarchiam coelestem Iohannis Scoti Eriugenae'', ed J. Barbet, CCCM 31, (1975).*''Iohannis Scotti Erivgenae: Carmina'', edited by Michael W. Herren, (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1993)
See also
* Ignatian spirituality Ignatian spirituality, also known as Jesuit spirituality, is a Catholic spirituality founded on the experiences of the 16th-century Spanish saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order. The main idea of this form of spirituality comes from ...
* Mystical Theology
Mystical theology is the branch of theology in the Christian tradition ...
*Neoplatonism
Neoplatonism is a strand of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a chain of thinkers. But there are some i ...
* Neoplatonism and Christianity
Neoplatonism was a major influence on Christian theology throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages in the West. This was due to St. Augustine of Hippo, who was influenced by the early neoplatonists Plotinus and Porphyry, as well as the works ...
*Pseudo-Dionysius
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (or Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite) was a Greek author, Christian theologian and Neoplatonic philosopher of the late 5th to early 6th century, who wrote a set of works known as the ''Corpus Areopagiticum' ...
*Dialectical theology
In Christianity, Neo-orthodoxy or Neoorthodoxy, also known as theology of crisis and dialectical theology, was a theological movement developed in the aftermath of the First World War. The movement was largely a reaction against doctrines of ...
Notes
References
Sources
*
*
Further reading
* . * Paul Rorem. "The Early Latin Dionysius: Eriugena and Hugh of St Victor." ''Modern Theology'' 24:4, (2008).
* John MacInnis. "'The Harmony of All Things': Music, Soul, and Cosmos in the Writings of John Scottus Eriugena." PhD diss., Florida State University, 2014.
*Carabine, Deirdre (2000). ''John Scottus Eriugena''. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 10. ISBN
The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier that is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency.
An ISBN is assigned to each separate edition an ...
1-4237-5969-9. OCLC (identifier), OCLC 64712052.
*Carabine, Deirdre (1995). ''The Unknown God, Negative Theology in the Platonic Tradition: Plato to Eriugena''. Louvain: Peeters Press.
*Moran, Dermot (1989). ''The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena; A Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*O'Meara, John (2002). ''Eriugena''. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
*Sushkov, Sergei N (2015). ''Being and creation in the Theology of John Scottus Eriugena: an approach to a new way of thinking.'' University of Glasgow.
*Gersh, Stephen (1978). ''From Iamblichus to Eriugena: An Investigation of the Prehistory and Evolution of the Pseudo-Dionysian Tradition''. Leiden: Brill.
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Eriugena, John Scotus
800 births
877 deaths
9th-century Christian mystics
9th-century Christian theologians
9th-century Irish writers
9th-century Latin writers
9th-century philosophers
9th-century translators
Augustinian philosophers
Carolingian dynasty, John Scotus
Catholic philosophers
Greek–Latin translators
Irish biblical scholars
Irish expatriates in France
Irish Latinists
Irish male poets
Irish philosophers
Neoplatonists
Scholastic philosophers
Writers from the Carolingian Empire