## 1. Life and Writings


### 1.1 Eriugena as Liberal Arts Master



Nothing is known about Eriugena's place or date of birth or of
the circumstances of his early life, but, on the basis of
circumstantial evidence and some surviving *testimonia*
(helpfully gathered in Brennan 1986), it is conjectured that he was
born in Ireland around 800 or possibly slightly earlier (c. 790). His
Irish provenance is confirmed by the fact that he self-consciously
signed his translation of Pseudo-Dionysius' works with the
neologism "Eriugena" (*Patrologia Latina*,
hereafter PL, 122: 1236a) meaning "Irish born", a word
possibly modelled on the Virgilian "Graiugena"
(*Aeneid* 3.550, see Heyworth & Morwood, 2017: 223).
The word "Eriugena"
became corrupted to "Erigena" in twelfth century library
entries (e.g., the Cluny catalogue) and by the seventeenth century it
became common to refer to him as "John Scot(t)us Erigena"
(e.g., by Bishop Ussher and Thomas Gale). A scattering of Old Irish
words used to explain difficult or recondite Latin terms, in his
Biblical glosses (*Glossae*; see edition by Contreni &
O Neill, 1997), is further evidence of his Irish origin
and of the presence of Irish students in his audience (since the time
of Charlemagne Irish scholars had constituted a considerable presence
in the Frankish court, where they were renowned for their
learning).



Eriugena's first certain appearance in historical records occurs
around 850/1 where mention is made, in a letter by Bishop Pardulus of
Laon, of "a certain Irishman, named Johannes, who is at the
palace of the king" ("*Scotum illum qui est in palatio
regis, joannem nomine*", *Epistola ad ecclesiam
Lugdunensem*, in *De tribus epistolis*, PL 121: 1052a), who
was engaged in a theological controversy with Gottschalk of Fulda. It
is also certain that Johannes had been installed for some time at the
court of Charles the Bald, the West Frankish king, but he was also
associated with other ecclesiastical centers, including Rheims, Laon,
Soissons, and Compigne. There is no direct evidence that he was a monk
or cleric (he refers to his "*frater in Christo*"
["brother in Christ"], *Periphyseon*, PL 122:
1022a, Wulfad, who later became a bishop, but this appellation does
not definitively confirm Eriugena's own church status).



Eriugena had a justified reputation among his contemporaries as a man
of considerable learning. Florus calls him *scholasticus et
eruditus* (PL 119: 103a) and Anastasius the Librarian (c. 810-c.878), the Vatican librarian of
the day, marveled at the fact that this "barbarian"
(*vir barbarus*) from a remote land knew Greek. (Brennan, 1986)
Two partial commentaries (c.
840-c.850) on *De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii*
(*The Marriage of Philolology and Mercury*), the liberal arts
handbook of the late Latin author, Martianus Capella, survive from
Eriugena's period as royal master, as well as the Biblical
glosses, *Glossae Divinae Historiae*, all of which attest to
his skill as a *grammaticus*. Eriugena has a rich and eclectic
knowledge of the liberal arts tradition, including Isidore,
Cassiodorus, and Cicero. He had a reputation for dialectic, as his
opponents recognized when they criticized him for bringing his
dialectical skills to bear on theological discussion. Thus, his critic
Prudentius remarked: "Your Capella has led you into a labyrinth,
because you have tied yourself more to the meditation of his work than
to the truth of the Gospel" (PL 115: 1294a). Nevertheless, Eriugena continues the approach of Alcuin to make the arts more
than mere instruments but to connect them to wisdom and to point to
the unity of knowledge; thus he is both a contributor and a catalyst for the "new wave"
unleashed by the adoption of Priscian and Martianus Capella (see
Contreni, 1992) 




The Martianus commentary is most famous for its apparent espousal of a
non-Ptolemaic account of the movement of the planets in Book Seven on
astronomy. Pierre Duhem (1958) thought that Eriugena was offering a
version of the system later proposed by Tycho Brahe, and in fact
Eriugena is correctly reporting Martianus' account which seems
to be a version of Heraclides of Pontus' theory. Indeed,
Copernicus would later single out Martianus for praise for his theory
that Mercury and Venus orbit the sun instead of the earth. Eriugena
went further than Martianus in placing Mars and Jupiter in orbit
around the sun also.



The influence of Eriugena is difficult to gauge but the echoes are
unmistakable among his immediate posterity among the Carolingians such
as Heiric of Auxerre (841-c.880), Almann of Hautvillers (active
c.865-c.875), and perhaps Hucbald of Saint-Amand (c.
840/850-930) (see Contreni, 1992).


### 1.2 Theological Controversy over Predestination



Eriugena first came to historical notice when he was commissioned by
two French bishops--Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims and Bishop
Pardulus of Laon--to refute a treatise by a Saxon monk,
Gottschalk (806-68), a priest of Orbais in the diocese of
Soissons, who interpreted St. Augustine as teaching a
"twofold" or "twin predestination" (*gemina
praedestinatio*) of the elect to heaven and of the damned to hell,
based on the opinion of St. Isidore, *Sententiae* II, 6, I (PL
83: 606a). Gottschalk had already been condemned by a synod at Mainz
in 848 and another at Quierzy in 849 and had been imprisoned in the
abbey of Hautvillers (where he remained until his death in 868), but
Prudentius, the bishop of Troyes, appeared to side with him. Hincmar
was worried that Gottschalk's side was attracting powerful
supporters and he engaged Eriugena to write a strong rebuttal.
Eriugena's response, *De divina praedestinatione* (*On
Divine Predestination*, c. 851, see Madec edition, 1978), a
treatise of nineteen chapters, which survives in a single manuscript,
is a robust rebuttal of Gottschalk. Eriugena rejects any divine
predestination to evil by an appeal to God's unity,
transcendence, and goodness. While purporting merely to interpret
Augustinian texts, this early theological treatise is philosophically
significant for its rationalistic, dialectical analysis of key
theological concepts and its reliance on argument rather than
scriptural citation. In this treatise, Eriugena, citing
Augustine's *De uera religione* 5.8, PL 34: 126, claims
"that true philosophy is true religion and conversely that true
religion is true philosophy". As one gloss in the
*Annotationes in Marcianum* attests: "no one enters
heaven except through philosophy" (*nemo intrat in celum nisi
per philosophiam*, *Annotationes* 57.15, AM: 64). Eriugena
then argues that philosophy has four principal parts--division,
definition, demonstration, and resolution--and the pursuit of
this fourfold method of reasoning will lead to truth. This focus on
dialectic as the path to truth is a constant theme of Eriugena's
philosophy, one recognized by his contemporaries.



Eriugena argues in *De divina praedestinatione* that God, being
perfectly good, wants all humans to be saved, and does not predestine
souls to damnation. God's being is His willing and "no
necessity binds the will of God". On the contrary, humans damn
themselves through their own free choices: "Sin, death,
unhappiness are not from God". Since God is outside time, He
cannot be said to *fore*-know or to *pre*-destine, terms
that involve temporal predicates. Furthermore, if God's being is
His wisdom, God can be said to have but a single knowledge and hence a
"double" predestination cannot be ascribed to Him. Human
nature, on the other hand, was created rational, and rationality
requires freedom. Human nature is therefore essentially free:
"For God did not create in man a captive will but a free one,
and that freedom remained after sin"
(*De divina praedestinatione*, 4.6).




In the course of his diatribe against the "ravings" of
Gottschalk, Eriugena locates his opponent's heresy as midway
between the heresy of Pelagius, which rejects the power of grace, and
the opposing heresy, which denies the possibility of human freedom.
Ironically, Eriugena himself would in turn be accused of
"Origenism" and "Pelagianism" by
Gottschalk's advocate, Bishop Prudentius of Troyes (see the
latter's *De Praedestinatione*, PL 115: 1010c), due to
his perceived emphasis on human free-will in the salvific process.
Prudentius, an erstwhile admirer of Scottus, published an opposing
treatise, which, while acknowledging his "Irish eloquence"
(*Celtica eloquentia*, PL 115: 1194a), dismisses
Eriugena's reasoning as confused and not based on sound
knowledge of scripture. Florus too attacked Eriugena. Subsequently,
*On Divine Predestination* was condemned by the bishops in
France at the councils of Valence (855) and Langres (859), in part for
its over-use of logical method or dialectic (*dialectica*). The
phrase "Irish porridge" (*pultes scottorum*),
recalling Jerome's sneer against Pelagius, is used in these
official denunciations.


### 1.3 Eriugena as Translator



Despite the official ecclesiastical condemnations of *On
Predestination*, for reasons that are not known but are presumed
to be political, Eriugena continued to have the protection and
patronage of King Charles the Bald, who, around 860, invited him to
translate the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, a
mysterious Christian Neoplatonist who purported to be Dionysius, the
first convert of St. Paul at Athens, but was more likely a late fifth
or early sixth-century Christian follower of Proclus. The *Corpus
Dionysii* had been given a gift to Charles the Bald's
father, Louis the Pious, from the Byzantine Emperor Michael the
Stammerer in 827, a gift thought appropriate possibly because of a
misidentification of Pseudo-Dionysius with the patron saint of France,
St. Denis. Hilduin had attempted an earlier translation in
832-5, but Eriugena's version was most successful and
remained in circulation until the thirteenth century when Jean
Sarrazin's translation replaced it. Indeed, Eriugena's
translation was utilized by the Vatican Librarian Anastasius, who
added scholia to it. Anastasius decried the word-for-word translation,
however he contributed to it, thereby indicating its importance
(Harrington, 2004).



Soon after completing his translation of Pseudo-Dionysius (c. 862), he
went on to translate other Greek Christian texts: he translates
Maximus Confessors' *Ambigua ad Ioannem* and then his
*Quaestiones ad Thalassium*; Gregory of Nyssa's *De
hominis opificio*, under the title of *De imagine* and
possibly Epiphanius' *Anchoratus de Fide*. Eriugena also
wrote a long commentary on Pseudo-Dionysius' *Celestial
Hierarchy* (*Expositiones in hierarchiam coelestem*). It is possible he made
other translations which have not survived or which cannot be
definitively attributed to him, e.g., Boethius' *De
musica*.


### 1.4 The Dialogue *Periphyseon* (*On the Division of Nature*)--The Manuscripts



Eriugena's major work, the *Periphyseon*, also titled in
some manuscripts, *De divisione naturae* (On the Division of
Nature), is a long dialogue between a "teacher" (*Nutritor*) and a "student"
(*Alumnus*), was probably begun in the early 860s, just after he had
completed the Pseudo-Dionysius translation, and finished around 867
(the date Wulfad, to whom the work is dedicated, became bishop, making
it unlikely that Eriugena would have referred to him as
*frater*, brother, after his consecration as bishop). The first
printed edition of this dialogue appeared in 1681 and subsequently an
edition by Floss appeared in 1853 which is now contained in PL 122.
Inglis Patrick Sheldon-Williams (1908-1973) began a new edition
of *Periphyseon* with the publication of his text and
translation of Book One in 1968 in the *Scriptores Latini
Hiberniae* series of the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies,
followed soon after by his edition of *Periphyseon* Book Two in
1970, and Book Three, published after Sheldon-Williams' death,
in the same series in 1981, seen through the press by the late John J.
O'Meara. Sheldon-Williams had assembled materials for the
edition of Books Four and Five and had completed a draft English
translation of these books, which was published separately in one
volume edited by John J. O'Meara. O'Meara and
Edouard Jeauneau continued the edition of Sheldon-Williams,
bringing out Book Four in the same series in 1995. However, due to some deficiencies in
Sheldon-Williams' manner of editing, and his mistaken conception
of the manuscript tree, Jeauneau has undertaken an entirely new
critical edition of the *Periphyseon* for the *Corpus
Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis* series. All five books of
the *Periphyseon* have appeared in this series.
Sheldon-Williams was of the opinion that *Periphyseon* Book One
had emerged from an earlier "essay in dialectic", but
offered no evidence for this interpretation, which takes an overly
restrictive view of the first book of the dialogue. The main weakness
of Sheldon-Williams' editing strategy was that it had conflated
various versions of the text drawn from several different manuscripts
into a single composite script, in a similar manner to the earlier
editors, Thomas Gale in 1681 and H.-J. Floss in 1853. Gale and Floss
had published editions that combined into a single text both the text
of the main body of the manuscript and the various marginal
annotations in different hands. This composite version disguised the
gradual evolution of the text and Jeauneau is of the opinion that this
mixed type of edition is inadequate to the needs of scholarship. The
new Jeauneau edition is based on six manuscripts, including two
manuscripts, Paris Bibl. nat. lat. 12965 and Bamberg Phil. 2/2, not
used by Sheldon-Williams since they contained only Books Four and
Five. Jeauneau has suggested that the extant manuscripts of the
*Periphyseon* show four distinct levels of development, that
is, four early "editions". One special difficulty in
editing the *Periphyseon* is that the earliest manuscripts
preserve only the first three books whereas the extant manuscripts for
Books Four and Five date from the twelfth century. Avranches and
Cambridge, both twelfth century manuscripts, are the sole witnesses
for the end of Book Four and the whole of Book Five in Stage Two
versions, with Avranches noticeably less accurate than Cambridge in
several places.


### 1.5 Other Writings



A fragmentary *Commentary on the Gospel of St. John*
(*Commentarius in Evangelium Iohannis*) and a sermon
(*Homilia in Johannem*) on the Prologue to St. John's
Gospel were also written probably in the late 860s or 870s. A number
of interesting poems (*Carmina*) survive which show the breadth of
Eriugena's learning; but also portray him as a courtier quite
well versed in political affairs. Some poems are written specifically
in praise of the king, including an important poem, *Aulae
sidereae* (Starry Halls) which appears to celebrate the dedication
of Charles the Bald's new church in Compigne on 1 May 875. The
poems show Eriugena's fascination with Greek and some poems are
actually written entirely in Greek; and the poems are probably the
most Maximean in character through their cosmic Christology. It is
probable that Eriugena died sometime around 877. An apocryphal tale,
dating from the twelfth century, records that Eriugena was stabbed to
death by his students with their pens!


## 2. Eriugena's Sources



Despite the claims of some nineteenth-century commentators, it is now
clear that Eriugena did not have direct knowledge of the writings of
Plotinus, Porphyry, or Proclus. He had almost no contact with pagan
Neoplatonism in general (apart possibly from Priscianus Lydus and
Calcidius' translation of the *Timaeus*). His familiarity
with Aristotle was also indirect--through the anonymous but
widely circulated compilation, *Categoriae decem*, the
Pseudo-Augustinian paraphrase of Aristotle's
*Categories*. He knew Boethius' trinitarian tracts
(*Opuscula sacra*) and possibly the *Consolation of
Philosophy*, since a set of glosses on this work may be in
Eriugena's hand (although this is disputed). His chief
authorities in the Latin Christian Tradition were the works of the
Fathers, chiefly Augustine (especially his *De Genesi ad
litteram*), Ambrose, Hilary of Poitiers, and Jerome. His
originality is largely due to the manner in which he assimilated
(often translating) the Neoplatonic thought of Eastern Christian
writers such as the Cappadocians, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa,
Gregory Nazianzus, as well as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and
Maximus Confessor. He also was familiar with Rufinus' Latin
translation of Origen's *On First Principles* and was
often linked with Origen in medieval times. Though he took the view
that the authorities of East and West were not in conflict,
nevertheless he usually expressed a preference for the Eastern Church
Fathers. An especially important authority was Maximus Confessor,
whose account of the return of all things Eriugena copiously
borrowed.



Eriugena's exceptional learning would be sufficient to
distinguish him from contemporary Carolingian scholars, such as Alcuin
and Sedulius Scottus; but his true and lasting genius lay in his
ability to combine elements from these *auctores* into a new
cosmological framework which is rationally argued to the highest
degree. Eriugena enthusiastically incorporated many Greek Christian
theological concepts: God, the One, creates by self-emanation;
creation is a timeless, and hence on-going and always contemporary,
event; human nature is originally a Platonic Idea in the mind of God;
human nature is a certain intellectual concept formed eternally in the
mind of God, *Periphyseon*, IV.768b). Humans fail to understand
their true nature as image of God in God, because they are distracted
by created, fleeting temporal "appearances"
(*phantasiai*), which entrap the intellect in the clouded
spatio-temporal realm of sense. However, through intellectual
contemplation (*theoria, intellectus*) and divine illumination
(which is the receiving of a divine self-manifestation,
*theophania*), humans may achieve unification
(*henosis*) with God, and the select few will even undergo
"deification" (*deificatio, theosis*) which
Eriugena interprets as complete identity with God.



In his discussion of this cosmological saga, Eriugena always appeals
to dialectic and the order of reasons in order to mediate between the
various sources. For Eriugena, true philosophy is *vera ratio*
and indeed, all appeal to authority is nothing other than an appeal to
right reason (*Periphyseon*, I.511b). *Vera ratio*
underlies both the cosmos and reason. Eriugena is therefore a strongly
rationalistic (in the Medieval sense of the word) philosopher,
attempting to make sense of divine revelation in scripture and nature
in terms consistent with the evidence of reason based on the rules of
Dialectic. Dialectic, moreover, is not just about the organization of
words and thoughts but also describes the structure of reality itself.
Thus, in the *Periphyseon* IV.781c-d, he makes the bold
claim that one need only introduce the "opinions of the holy
Fathers" where 



> 
> 
> the gravest necessity requires that human reason be supported for the
> sake of those who, being untrained in it, are more amenable to
> authority than reason.
> 
> 
> 



The encounter with the Greek fathers and especially with Maximus
Confessor has proven crucial for Eriugena's own thinking but
also for the development of intellectual history in Western Europe;
Eriugena was not only a translator or synthesizer but someone who
appropriates creatively and constructively. The only other comparable
precedent is Anicius Boethius' grand project of translating the
corpus of Aristotle and of Plato; the only difference is that Eriugena
actually carries out his translation project from the Greek: besides the *Corpus
Dionysiacum*, he translates Gregory of Nyssa's *De
Opificio Hominis* (which he calls *De Imagine*) and parts,
if not the entire, homilies on the *Hexaemeron* of Basil the
Great; above all, Eriugena translates a great part of the Maximian
corpus: the entire *Questiones ad Thalassium* and great parts
of the *Ambigua ad Iohannem*.



These translations and the ideas about creation and nature,
anthropology, philosophy and theology encountered in Eriugena's
writings will constitute an important undercurrent which will inform
and influence many thinkers in Western thought (see below
 Section 4 on Influence).


### 2.1 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite



Dionysius is the formative influence on Eriugena; it is through him
that he first drinks from the "sacred nectar of the
Greeks". The discovery of Dionysius had a profound effect on
Eriugena's thinking. He enthusiastically adopted the
Areopagite's main ideas (many of which appear to be drawn from
Proclus' *Commentary on the Parmenides*),
e.g., the distinction between
affirmative (kataphatic) and negative theology (apophatic), according
to which denials concerning God (e.g., "God is not good [in the
way we know goodness]") are "more true",
(*verior*) "better", "more apt", than
affirmations ("God is good"), as well as the analysis of
the divine names as applying only *metaphorically*
(*metaphorice*, *transferre*, *per metaphoram*)
and not *literally* (*proprie*) to God, who is
"beyond all that is". For Pseudo-Dionysius, we do not know
God directly but know Him only through his *theophaniai*, or
divine appearances (Pseudo-Dionysius, *Divine Names*, ch. 7, PG
3: 869c-d). We could, through affirmative theology, ascribe
attributes to God, because He is the "cause of all"
(*aitia panton*, *Mystical Theology*, ch. 2, PG 3:
1000b), but in fact God in His nature is transcendent and
"unknowable", he is the "more-than-divine
divinity", which Eriugena renders as *superdeus deitas*
in his translation (PL 122: 1121c). Pseudo-Dionysius claims that God
is the affirmation of all things, the negation of all things, and
beyond all affirmation and denial (in Eriugena's translation:
God is *omnium positio, omnium ablatio, super omnem positionem et
ablationem inter se invicem*, PL 122: 1121c-d).



Eriugena's view of the cosmos as holy order (*hierarchia*) where
mediation (*medietas*) is realized through theophanies (*theophaniai*) is mostly derived from Dionysius; by
contemplating (*theoria*) this order, the human being can
return to its divine source through the mediation of these theophanies; Eriugena expands this idea by finding a correlation between theophanies and
Maximus' *logoi* (as the reasons and principles of all created beings) and Augustine's seminal reasons; he then brings all these aspects together into the framework of cosmic Christology, inspired by Maximus, in which the human being is
co-participant in the redemption of creation.


### 2.2 Maximus Confessor



Although he has recourse to Maximus Confessor hoping that he might offer some
clarifications for understanding Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus will offer
Eriugena much more: a trove of ideas, methods, and philosophical
vocabulary. Thus, Maximus allows him to expand and clarify the
insights received from Dionysius and provides him with an eclectic
philosophical and theological vocabulary: the Maximian oeuvre offers a
palimpsest of Neo-Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophical terms and
concepts along with a rich theological vocabulary which is mostly a
synthesis of terms and concepts derived from Pseudo-Dionysius and the
Cappadocian Fathers (Gregory Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Basil
the Great).



The very method of the *Periphyseon,* which employs natural
philosophy and exegesis of the Bible interchangeably, in order to contemplate and
"read" the two "books" (creation and
Scripture) in which the divine signs (theophanies) are manifested, can be
traced back to Maximus' notion of knowledge as contemplation of
nature (*theoria physike*). If contemplated and read
from the right perspective, scripture and creation become transparent
to divine presence.



Eriugena adopts the cosmological framework of Maximus' 
Christian Neoplatonism: the cosmic movement of *exitus* becomes
the incarnation, the mystery of Christ becoming man; *reditus*,
the return of all beings to their source, coincides with deification,
humans ascending to God through deification
(*theosis*). Eriugena will go
further and correlate these cosmic movements with the two main
operations of dialectic: division and analysis; this allows him to
construct a deep correspondence between epistemology and ontology.
Thus, Maximus' cosmic Christology based on the Logos-logoi ontology, offers Eriugena a framework
which allows him to expand the use of dialectic from mere method 
to a cosmic framework which underlies both epistemology and
ontology.



Maximus' understanding of the incarnation as a cosmic event
informs Eriugena's ontology and his notion of theophanic
creation; although the notion of theophany is first derived from
Dionysius, it is enhanced through Maximus' understanding of the
incarnation of Christ as a cosmic mediation and unification of all
aspects and levels of reality. Through the ideas of Pseudo-Dionysius
and Maximus, Eriugena overcomes the distrust of visible and material
nature found in Neoplatonism; rather he believes contemplating the theophanies encountered in nature (which has been redeemed through the incarnation of the Logos) is necessary for the return of creation to its divine source.



Eriugena's anthropology is based on Maximus' insight that
the human being is a synthesis of all aspects of creation, as he says,
the "workshop of creation" (*officina omnium*) and as such plays
a crucial role in unifying creation through proper knowledge; the
entire dialogue of the *Periphyseon* could be seen as a
spiritual exercise (*exercitatio animi*) of training through
the liberal arts in order to attain the level of intellectual
knowledge; the goal of *exercitatio* is to contemplate nature
in the right way in order to repair the fragmentation of creation by
achieving a unified vision and thus realize the return of all things
to their divine source. The human being as *officina omnium*
plays a central role in the process of return (*reditus*) because as a primordial idea in the divine mind,
it can mediate between the primordial causes and the created effects.
However, only through the incarnation (in which Christ assumes human
nature in its totality), can the full, cosmic scope of this process of mediation and unification through the human being as *officina omnium* be realized: through the incarnation of Christ the Logos, the universal human nature and through it the
rest of creation is unified, redeemed and ultimately divinized. [see
also
 section 3.9 Human Nature]


### 2.3 Augustine



The *Periphyseon* as a grand dialogue on physiology
(*physiologia* is Eriugena's hybrid science of physics-theology-philosophy)
stands in continuity with the *exercitatio animi* and the liberal arts tradition of
Augustine's early philosophical dialogues. Eriugena appropriates
and expands on Augustine's trust that reason (*ratio*)
can be trained by the liberal arts and can thus contemplate creation.
Augustine's intellectualism is crucial for Eriugena's
philosophical anthropology although Eriugena seems to be much more
trusting than Augustine in the ability of the human to refashion
itself through *paideia*.



Informed by Dionysius notion of theophanic cosmic order, Eriugena is
more comfortable with the complexities of Neoplatonic cosmology and
with mediation (*medietas*) and less preoccupied with the issue
of divine simplicity. Nevertheless, the Augustinian strain is not lost
in Eriugena: both the human being and the creation have a Trinitarian
structure. Along with Basil the Great, it is Augustine (through his great commentary on Genesis, *De Genesi ad litteram*) who teaches Eriugena to read and interpret the *Hexaemeron* (the creation account in Genesis 1) in a more literal and realistic manner and thus to counter-balance the more allegorical reading of Gregory of Nyssa; Augustine constitutes both a foil and a catalyst for
Eriugena's thinking; his great challenge in the
*Periphyseon* is trying to reconcile the Augustinian perspective with
that of the Eastern thinkers.



Augustine's concept of the primordial causes (*primordiales
causae* ) along with Maximus' concept of *logoi*
allow Eriugena to forge a realistic ontology based on intelligible
species of visible things which are immanent in created beings (see
Erismann, 2011).


### 2.4 Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil the Great



Eriugena cites almost 25% of Gregory of Nyssa's *De
Imagine*--as he refers to the *De hominis
opificio*--in the *Periphyseon*. Gregory of Nyssa's and
Basil the Great's accounts of creation provide the missing pieces, and
complements the cosmology Eriugena derives from the partial Latin
translation of the *Timaeus*. Basil's
*Homilies on the Hexaemeron* provide him with a model for
reading Genesis literally.



Gregory of Nyssa's *imago dei* anthropology provides the
scaffolding for Maximus' understanding of the role and status of
the human being. Eriugena extrapolates from both Gregory of
Nazianzus' view that the essence of God is ineffable and
ultimately beyond definition and from Gregory of Nyssa's
apophatic anthropology; therefore, both the divine and the human are
ultimately unfathomable and ineffable: as the image of God (*imago
dei*), the human being in its essence is as incomprehensible and
undefinable as God.



The idea that the human being is uncircumscribed and indefinable is
derived from Gregory of Nyssa, and Eriugena connects it with
Maximus' *officina omnium* view of the human being and
with Augustine's Trinitarian theology.


## 3. The Philosophical System of the *Periphyseon*



Eriugena's masterpiece is undoubtedly the *Periphyseon*
(written c.862-c.867), a long dialogue in five
books--between an anonymous "teacher"
(*Nutritor*) and his "student"
(*Alumnus*)--that attempts to be a compendium of all
knowledge presented within a Neoplatonic cosmology of the procession
and return of all things from the divine One.



The *Periphyseon*, deeply influenced by Eriugena's
engagement with Greek Christian authors, is a work of astonishing
scope, a veritable Christian Neoplatonic *summa*. At the
beginning of Book Four, Eriugena labels his enterprise a
*physiologia*, a "study of nature", and indeed one
manuscript of the *Periphyseon* in the British Library in
London calls the whole dialogue "*Liber Phisiologiae Iohannis
Scottigenae*". The term "*physiologia*"
is apt in that the term "nature" for Eriugena spans the
whole cosmological domain, including not just created nature but also
the Divine Creator, and treats of the essentially dialectical relation
between Creator and created, where God expresses Himself in creation
and creation culminates in return to the divine. Nature is to be
understood as what is real in the widest sense, the totality of all
things that are and are not. Nature includes both God and creation and
has four divisions: nature which creates and is not created (God),
nature which creates and is created (the Primordial Causes), nature
which is created and does not create (the Created Temporal Effects),
and nature which is neither created nor creates (Non-Being). The
original intention (expressed at III.619d-620b) was to devote
one book to each of the four divisions; thus Book One deals with the
divine nature and the procession or *exitus* of all things from
God, Book Two treats of the Primordial Causes, and Book Three of their
Created Effects, including the nature of *ex nihilo* creation
and the stages of the creation of the world. The topic of creation
requires Eriugena to address issues related to the Biblical
account of creation, and thus, in Book Three, he embarks on his own
version of a *Hexaemeron*. The momentous event of the emergence
of human nature on the Sixth Day of creation requires extended
treatment, and Eriugena is forced to devote a fourth book to this
topic, thus relegating the return of all things to God to a fifth
book. Thus, Eriugena was forced to depart from his original plan of
four books and add a fifth. This change of plan is particularly
important in that it helps to identify different stages of composition
of the text.



One of the most fascinating aspects of the Periphyseon is
Eriugena's ability to bring together into a symphony of ideas
such a variety of thinkers and sources: the liberal arts and the philosophical dialogue traditions, the *officina omnium* anthropology of Maximus Confessor, the
theophanic ontology of Dionysius the Areopagite, Augustine's Trinitarian
theology, Basil the Great's realistic hermeneutics of the *Hexaemeron*, and Gregory
of Nyssa's *imago dei* anthropology and his account of creation; however, we may say
that the grand tapestry of the *Periphyseon* is woven from many
threads but the fabric is Maximian. Maximus Confessor's vision
provides the impetus that drives the argument of the dialogue and also
the framework in which the encounter and conversation among the
various sources takes place.


### 3.1 The Four Divisions of Nature



Book One opens abruptly with the claim that "nature"
(*natura*), "the general term for all things that are and
all things that are not", (I.441a), including both God and
creation, is divided into four species. Echoing similar divisions in
Augustine (*De civitate Dei* Bk. V. 9, PL 41: 151) and Marius
Victorinus (*Ad Candidum*), nature's four
"divisions" or "species" are: that which
creates and is not created (i.e., God); that which creates and is
created (i.e., Primary Causes or Ideas); that which is created and
does not create (i.e., Temporal Effects, created things); that which
is neither created nor creates (i.e., non-being, nothingness). The
first species of nature is God, "the cause of all things that
are and that are not" (I.442b). There are several remarkable
aspects of this division. First of all, division is defined by
Eriugena in *De praedestinatione* as a branch of dialectic.
Secondly, the four divisions are not strictly a hierarchy in the usual
Neoplatonic sense where there are higher and lower orders, rather, as
Eriugena will explain, the first and fourth divisions both refer to
God as the Beginning and End of all things, and the second and third
divisions may also be thought to express the unity of the cause-effect
relation. Finally, the division is an attempt to show that nature is a
dialectical coming together of being and non-being. Creation is
normally understood as coming into being from non-being. God as
creator is then a kind of transcendent non-being above the being of
creation. These themes are rigorously discussed and disentangled
throughout the dialogue.


### 3.2 The Five Modes of Being and Non-Being



Immediately following on his abrupt announcement of the four divisions
of nature, Eriugena proceeds to list "five ways of
interpreting" (*quinque modi interpretationis*) the
manner in which things may be said to be or not to be
(*Periphyseon*, I.443c-446a). According to the first
mode, things accessible to the senses and the intellect are said to
be, whereas anything which, "through the excellence of its
nature" (*per excellentiam suae naturae*), transcends our
faculties are said not to be. According to this classification, God,
because of his transcendence is said not to be. He is
"nothingness through excellence" (*nihil per
excellentiam*).



The second mode of being and non-being is seen in the "orders
and differences of created natures" (I.444a), whereby, if one
level of nature is said to be, those orders above or below it, are
said not to be:



> 
> 
> For an affirmation concerning the lower (order) is a negation
> concerning the higher, and so too a negation concerning the lower
> (order) is an affirmation concerning the higher.
> (*Periphyseon*, I.444a)
> 
> 
> 



According to this mode, the affirmation of man is the negation of
angel and vice versa (*affirmatio enim hominis negatio est angeli,
negatio vero hominis affirmatio est angeli*, I.444b). This mode
illustrates Eriugena's original way of dissolving the
traditional Neoplatonic hierarchy of being into a dialectic of
affirmation and negation: to assert one level is to deny the others.
In other words, a particular level may be affirmed to be real by those
on a lower or on the same level, but the one above it is thought not
to be real in the same way. If humans are thought to exist in a
certain way, then angels do not exist in that way.



The third mode (I.444c-445b) contrasts the being of
*actual* things with the "non-being" of
*potential* or *possible* things still contained, in
Eriugena's memorable phrase, "in the most secret folds of
nature" (*in secretissimis naturae sinibus*). This mode
contrasts things which have come into effect with those things which
are still contained in their causes. According to this mode, actual
things, which are the effects of the causes, have being, whereas those
things which are still virtual in the Primary Causes (e.g., the souls
of those as yet unborn) are said not to be.



The fourth mode (I.445b-c) offers a roughly Platonic criterion
for being: those things contemplated by the intellect alone (*ea
solummodo quae solo comprehenduntur intellectu*) may be considered
to be, whereas things caught up in generation and corruption, viz.
matter, place and time, do not truly exist. The assumption is that
things graspable by intellect alone belong to a realm above the
material, corporeal world and hence are timeless.



The fifth mode offered by Eriugena is essentially theological and
applies solely to humans: those sanctified by grace are said to be,
whereas sinners who have renounced the divine image are said not to
be.



One of the striking features of this complex--and certainly, in
this form, original--account is that being and non-being are
treated as correlative categories: something may be said to be under
one mode and not to be under another. Attribution of being is subject
to the dialectic of affirmation and negation. Eriugena returns in Book
Three to give a very complex discussion of the meaning of
"*ex nihilo*" in the concept of *creatio ex
nihilo*, which makes use of some of these modes of being and
non-being, and, in general, these modes should be borne in mind when
interpreting Eriugena's more overt metaphysical statements. Thus
when Eriugena calls God "nothing", he means that God
*transcends* all created being, God is *nihil per
excellentiam* ("nothingness on account of excellence")
or, as he puts it, *nihil per infinitatem* ("nothingness
on account of infinity"). Matter, on the other hand, is also
called "nothing" but it is "nothing through
privation" (*nihil per privationem*). Similarly, created
things are called "nothing" because they do not contain in
themselves their principles of subsistence (Eriugena is here repeating
St. Augustine's view that the creature, considered apart from
God, is mere nothing).


### 3.3 The Attributes of God



*Periphyseon* Book One examines the first division, God
understood as a transcendent One above, and yet cause of, all
creation. God transcends everything; He is, following
Pseudo-Dionysius, the "negation of all things"
(*negatio omnium*, III.686d). According to Eriugena--who
in this respect is following a tradition which includes Augustine and
Boethius as well as Dionysius and other Greek authors--the
Aristotelian categories are considered to describe only the created
world and do not *properly* apply to God (I.463d). God cannot
"literally" (*proprie*) be said to be substance or
essence (*ousia, essentia*), nor can He be described in terms
of quantity, quality, relation, place or time. He is
"*superessentialis*" (I.459d), a term which, for
Eriugena, belongs more to negative theology than to affirmative. His
"being" is "beyond being". Eriugena
particularly admires a Dionysian saying from the *Celestial
Hierarchy* (CH iv 1; PG 3: 177d1-2): *to gar einai panton
estin he hyper to einai theotes* ("for the being of all
things is the Divinity above being", III.686d) which he
translates as *esse omnium est superesse divinitatis*,
("the being of all things is the super-being of divinity",
III.686d, I.443b; see also I.516c; III.644b, V.903c). This is perhaps
Eriugena's favorite phrase from Dionysius. (Indeed, Maximus
Confessor had also commented on it in I *Ambigua* xiii, PG 91:
1225d, a passage well known to Eriugena who translated the
*Ambigua*.) Sometimes, instead of invoking the Dionysian
formula *superesse divinitatis*, Eriugena speaks of the
"divine superessentiality" (*divina
superessentialitas*, III.634b), or--quoting *Divine
Names* I 1-2 (PG 3: 588b-cb)--of the
"superessential and hidden divinity" (*superessentialis
et occulta divinitas*, I.510b).



God is a "nothingness" (*nihilum*) whose real
essence is unknown to all created beings, including the angels (447c).
Indeed, Eriugena argues in a radical manner, following Maximus
Confessor, that God's nature is infinite and uncircumscribable,
such that He is unknown even to Himself, since He is the
"infinity of infinities" and beyond all comprehension and
circumscription. In the *Periphyseon*, Eriugena repeats the
position of the *De Praedestinatione* that God does not know
evil, and, in a genuine sense, God may be said not to know anything;
his ignorance is the highest wisdom.


### 3.4 Creation as Divine Self-Manifestation



Eriugena conceives of the act of creation as a kind of
self-manifestation wherein the hidden transcendent God creates himself
by manifesting himself in divine outpourings or theophanies (I.446d).
He moves from darkness into the light, from self-ignorance into
self-knowledge. The divine self-creation or self-manifestation
(I.455b) is, at the same time (or rather timelessly), the expression
of the Word (Logos) and hence the creation of all other things, since all
things are contained in the Word. The Word enfolds in itself the Ideas
or Primary Causes of all things and in that sense all things are
always already in God:



> 
> 
> ...the Creative nature permits nothing outside itself because
> outside it nothing can be, yet everything which it has created and
> creates it contains within itself, but in such a way that it itself is
> other, because it is superessential, than what it creates within
> itself. (*Periphyseon*, III.675c)
> 
> 
> 



God's transcendent otherness above creatures is precisely that
which allows creatures to be within God and yet other than God.
Eriugena stresses both the divine transcendence above and immanence in
creation. The immanence of God in the world is at the same time the
immanence of creatures within God. Creatures however, as fallen, do
not yet know that they reside in God. In cosmological terms, however,
God and the creature are one and the same:



> 
> 
> It follows that we ought not to understand God and the creature as two
> things distinct from one another, but as one and the same. For both
> the creature, by subsisting, is in God; and God, by manifesting
> himself, in a marvelous and ineffable manner creates himself in the
> creature.... (*Periphyseon*, III.678c)
> 
> 
> 



Elsewhere Eriugena's asserts that God is the "essence of
all things" (*essentia omnium*) and the "form of
all things" (*forma omnium*). In the thirteenth century,
expressions such as these led to the accusation of heresy, i.e., that
Eriugena is collapsing the difference between God and creation. It
must be noted, however, that although Eriugena asserts the identity of
God and creation, he explicitly rejects the view that God is the
"genus" or "whole" (*totum*) of which
the creatures are "species" or "parts". Only
metaphorically (*metaforice*, *translative*) can it be
said that God is a "genus" or a "whole".
Assertions concerning the immanence of God in creation are always
balanced in Eriugena's writings by assertions of God's
transcendence above all things. God is both "form of all
things" and also is without form, formless. Since God cannot be
said to be anything, God cannot be simply identified with any or every
creature either.


### 3.5 The Primordial Causes



The main focus of the Second Book of the *Periphyseon* is an
analysis of what Eriugena terms "the Primary Causes"
(*causae primordiales*) which are the patterns of all things
located in the mind of God and function as the timeless and unchanging
causes of all created things. This doctrine represents an eclectic
combination of various earlier doctrines, including the Platonic
theory of Forms or *ideai*, Dionysius' discussion of the
divine names, and Augustine's revival of the Stoic notion of
eternal reasons (*rationes aeternae*).



God's mind, understood as the *logos* or *verbum*,
contains in one undivided Form all the reasons for every individual
thing. These reasons (*rationes*, *logoi*) are
productive of the things of which they are the reasons. Their number
is infinite and none has priority over the other, e.g., Being is not
prior to Goodness, or vice-versa. Each is a divine theophany, a way in
which the divine nature is manifested. The very nature of these Causes
is to flow out from themselves, bringing about their Effects. This
"outflowing"
(*proodos*,
*proodos*; *processio*, *exitus*) creates the
whole universe from the highest genus to the lowest species and
"individuals" (*atoma*). In his understanding of
this causal procession, Eriugena accepts Neoplatonic principles: like
produces like; incorporeal causes produce incorporeal effects; an
eternal cause produces an eternal effect. Since the causes are
immaterial, intellectual and eternal, so their created effects are
essentially incorporeal, immaterial, intellectual, and eternal.
Eriugena, however, thinks of cause and effect as mutually dependent,
relative terms (*Periphyseon*, V. 910d-912b): a cause is not a cause unless it
produces an effect, an effect is always the effect of a cause.


### 3.6 The Created Effects



What is the ontological status of the created effects? By nature, they
are eternal and incorruptible, but Eriugena also thinks of individual
created things as located spatially and temporally. He seems to think
there are two kinds of time: an unchanging time (a reason or
*ratio* in the divine mind,*Periphyseon*, V.906a) and a corrupting time.
Place and time are definitions in that they situate or locate the
things they define, and since definitions are in the mind, then place
and time are in the mind (*Periphyseon*, I.485b). Following Gregory of Nyssa,
Eriugena holds that the sensible, corporeal, spatio-temporal
appearances of things are produced by the qualities or
"circumstances" of place, time, position, and so on, which
surround the incorporeal, eternal essence. The whole spatio-temporal
world and our corporeal bodies are a consequence of the Fall, an
emanation of the mind. Eriugena is somewhat ambiguous about this. His
considered position appears to be that God, foreseeing that man would
fall, created a body and a corporeal world for him. But this corporeal
body is not essential to human nature and in the return of all things
to God, the body will be absorbed back into the spiritual body
(*spirituale corpus*) and the spiritual body back to the mind
(*mens, intellectus,* nous). The
corporeal world will return to its incorporeal essence, and place
understood as the extension will return back into its cause or reason
as a definition in the mind (*Periphyseon*, V.889d).


### 3.7 Creation from Nothing



Book Three discusses the nature of created effects and the meaning of
"creation from nothing" (*creatio ex nihilo*). The
term "nothing" has two meanings: it can mean
"nothing through privation" (*nihil per
privationem*), or "nothing on account of excellence"
(*nihil per excellentiam*). The lowest rung in the hierarchy of
being, unformed matter, is "almost nothing" (*prope
nihil*), or "nothing through privation". In contrast,
God is non-being through the excellence of His nature which transcends
all being. Since there is nothing outside God, "creation from
nothing" cannot mean creation from some principle outside God,
rather it means: creation out of God's superabundant
nothingness. God creates out of himself (*a se*) and all
creation remains within him.


### 3.8 The Return of All Things



Books Four and Five, originally planned as one book, discuss the
return (*epistrophe*,
*epistrophe*, *reditus*, *reversio*) of all
things to God. According to the cosmic cycle Eriugena accepts, drawing
heavily on Maximus Confessor and his interpretation of
Gregory of Nyssa, it is in the nature of things for effects to return
to their causes. There is a general return of all things to God.
Corporeal things will return to their incorporeal causes, the temporal
to the eternal, the finite will be absorbed in the infinite. The human
mind will achieve reunification with the divine, and then the
corporeal, temporal, material world will become essentially
incorporeal, timeless, and intellectual. Human nature will return to
its "Idea" or "*notio*" in the mind of
God. According to Eriugena's interpretation of scripture,
"paradise" is the scriptural name for this perfect human
nature in the mind of God. Humans who refuse to let go of the
"circumstances" remain trapped in their own phantasies,
and it is to this mental state that the scriptural term
"hell" applies. Eriugena maintains that the real hell is
deprivation of the vision of God: "whoever is without Christ is
in darkness, for Christ is the inner light"
(*Periphyseon*, V.936b-937a). Eriugena continues:
"Take Christ from me, and no good is left for me, nor is there
any torment left to terrify me" (*Periphyseon*, V.989a). Eriugena thinks the
Greek word for "hell", *ades*, is
less misleading than the Latin *infernus*: "But the
Greeks, displaying as usual a greater intelligence and a subtler
accuracy, called the nether regions *ades*,
that is, "sorrow"" (*Periphyseon*, V.955a).
The Latin *infernu*s, in effect suggests an inferior place. On
the contrary, the Greek equivalent of *infernus*, i.e.,
*ades*, designates not a place, but a state:
sorrow or unpleasantness: a
privative--*edus*.



Aside from the general return of all things to God, Eriugena claims
there is a special return whereby the elect achieve
"deification" (*deificatio*, *theosis*,
*theosis*) whereby they will
merge with God completely, as lights blend into the one light, as
voices blend in the choir, as a droplet of water merges with the
stream. God shall be all in all (*omnia in omnibus*, *Periphyseon*, V
935c).


### 3.9 Human Nature



Eriugena's account of human nature is complex and fascinating
because it is woven of several threads derived from a variety of
sources: Maximus Confessor, Pseudo-Dionysius, Gregory of Nyssa, and
last but not least, Augustine. Books Four and Five contain
Eriugena's anthropology, explicated as part of his commentary on
the six days of creation (the *Hexaemeron*); this aspect has recently been the focus of much
philosophical interest (Stock, Otten, Moran). Eriugena's account
ranges widely, treating of the creation of human nature, the Fall and
the consequent division of the sexes, the meaning of human nature as
made in the image and likeness of God (*in imaginem et
similitudinem dei*), the nature of paradise to which perfected
human nature will return, the nature of evil and how it relates to human will. He
draws heavily on Augustine's commentaries on Genesis, especially
*De Genesi ad litteram*, as well as Ambrose's *De
Paradiso*, Basil the Great's *Homilies on the Hexaemeron* and extensively on Gregory of Nyssa's *De hominis
opificio*. But Eriugena is never a slavish follower--he
departs from Augustine on several points, including on the question of
the purely spiritual nature of paradise: whether Adam's body was
animal or spiritual, and whether humans *ante peccatum* ever
actually spent time in paradise. Eriugena adopts Gregory of
Nyssa's view that sexual difference is a result of the Fall,
that the real Fall is the fall from intellect into sense, intellect
distracted by the voluptuousness of sense. So, sexual difference
really makes no difference for humans, or as Eriugena boldly puts it:
"Man is better than sex" (*homo melior est quam
sexus*, *Periphyseon*, II.534a). This, Eriugena believes, agrees with Scripture:
"in Christ there is neither male nor female" (*Periphyseon*, IV.795a).
Thus, Eriugena's radical Scriptural exegesis, in part building
on Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus, supports original philosophical
claims about the sexless nature of true, undivided, human nature.



Just as the transcendent nature of God allows us to legitimately apply
contradictory predicates to Him ("*Deus est*; *deus
non est*"), so too we may apply contradictory predicates to
human nature. Though Book IV of the *Periphyseon* has the
appearance of a Biblical commentary, dialectic also plays a privileged
role. Eriugena employs dialectic to highlight the contradictions
inherent in human nature: man is an animal and man is not an animal;
man is spiritual and not spiritual. For Eriugena, these contradictions
are really indications of man's exalted status; his essence
cannot be circumscribed. 
Human nature in this respect resembles the divine nature which too is
"both beyond all things and in all things"
(*Periphyseon*, IV.759a-b). 





Nevertheless, humanity is a mirror of all things, and therefore Eriugena can offer
the definition of humanity as "a certain intellectual concept
formed eternally (*aeternaliter facta*) in the divine
mind" (*Periphyseon*, IV.768b). But of course, since everything is an Idea in
the divine mind, this definition applies not only to human nature but
to all other things too. Eriugena believes he has articulated the
universality and comprehensive nature of humanity but not its
uniqueness in this definition. Following Gregory of Nyssa, Eriugena
therefore rejects the traditional account of human nature as a
"microcosm", made up of all parts of the world. He uses
the Greek term "*microcosmos*" only once in the
*Periphyseon*, at IV.793c, where he is quoting Gregory of
Nyssa, *De imagine* Chapter 17 (Cappuyns, 1965: 232) and glosses
the word: "*id est paruum mundum*": "that is,
a small world". Gregory says those who try to glorify human
nature by saying it is a microcosm actually do not glorify human
nature at all. For all creatures, even a mouse, are made up of the
four elements, and will pass away. Gregory continues:



> 
> 
> But, according to the Church's reasoning, the greatness of man
> lies not in his likeness to the created world but in the fact that he
> is created according to the image of the Creator of nature.
> (*Periphyseon*, IV.794a)
> 
> 
> 



Eriugena, however, recognizes the crucial role of human nature in mediating
between the divine and created things. Human nature is the
"workshop of all things" (*officina omnium*,
II.530d; IV.755b). Human nature is a *medium* between animal
and angel, a *medietas* between the earthly and the
intelligible worlds. Human nature contains not only elements from the
corporeal world but also belongs to the intelligible world:



> 
> 
> I declare that man consists of one and the same rational soul
> conjoined to the body in a mysterious manner, and that it is by a
> certain wonderful and intelligible division that man himself is
> divided into two parts, in one of which he is created in the image and
> likeness of the Creator, and participates in no animality ...
> while in the other he communicates with the animal nature and was
> produced out of the earth, that is to say, out of the common nature of
> all things, and is included in the universal genus of animals.
> (*Periphyseon*, IV.754a-b)
> 
> 
> 



The highest dignity for human nature is that it uniquely mirrors
transcendent divine nature. Only of human nature can it be said that
it is made in the image and likeness of God. Not even the angels are
accorded that honor, so in a sense man is greater than the angels.
Human nature may even require the application of affirmative and
negative propositions: Man is an animal and man is not an animal
(IV.758b).


 Although, for Eriugena, "rational animal"
does not completely define human nature,
this mirroring of God in man occurs especially in the cognitive
domain. Like Maximus, Eriugena argues that God knows that He is
(*quia est*), but not what He is (*quid est*). God has
existential knowledge, but no circumscribing knowledge of His essence,
since, as infinite, He is uncircumscribable:



> 
> 
> So God does not know of Himself what He is because He is not a
> "what", being in everything incomprehensible both to
> Himself and to every intellect ... But He does not recognize
> Himself as being something (*Se ipsum autem non cognoscit aliquid
> esse*) ... For if He were to recognize Himself in something,
> He would show that He is not in every respect infinite and
> incomprehensible. (*Periphyseon*, II.589b-c)
> 
> 
> 



Following Maximus Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine, Eriugena
takes the *imago dei* idea to its ultimate consequence by
forging an apophatic-negative anthropology: the human being, as the image of God, knows
*that* it is, but it cannot comprehend or
circumscribe its own essence or nature, since, in its deepest core, as *imago dei*, it too is infinite as God is infinite. All that can be done is to specify the
"circumstances" (*circumstantiae*) which surround
his essence, e.g., place, time, rest, motion, condition, etc.,
(*Periphyseon*, II.586d). The human being in this sense is an
image of the infinite and uncircumscribable God, and an image is
identical to its archetype in all respects "except in respect of
subject" (*praeter rationem subiecti*,
*Periphyseon* II.598b). Any difference between God and human
nature is the result not of essence but of "an accident produced
by sin" (*sed ex delicto accidit*, II.598b). Human
self-ignorance mirrors the divine self-ignorance; human
incomprehensibility mirrors divine incomprehensibility. This makes
human nature share in infinity. 



Eriugena elaborates on the parallels
between human and divine nature. Perfect human nature would have
possessed the fullest knowledge of its Creator, of itself, and of
everything else, had it not sinned (*Periphyseon*, IV.778c). Man would have ruled the
whole of the universe as a king rules his subjects (*Periphyseon*, IV.782c). Man,
like God, is the *plenitudo bonorum* (*Periphyseon*, IV.796a). Just as God is
unbounded by any category and ultimately indefinable, human nature is
ineffable and incomprehensible and open to infinite possibility and
perfectibility (*Periphyseon*, V.919c). God's transcendence and immanence are
reflected in human transcendence and immanence with regard to its
world. Consider the following remarkable passage from Book Four which
is a typical example of Eriugena's dialectical thinking and of
the close parallelism between human and divine:



> 
> 
> For just as God is both beyond all things and in all things--for
> He Who only truly is, is the essence of all things, and while He is
> whole in all things He does not cease to be whole beyond all things,
> whole in the world, whole around the world, whole in the sensible
> creature, whole in the intelligible creature, whole creating the
> universe, whole created in the universe, whole in the whole of the
> universe and whole in its parts, since He is both the whole and the
> part, just as He is neither the whole nor the part--in the same
> way human nature in its own world (in its own subsistence) in its own
> universe and in its invisible and visible parts is whole in itself,
> and whole in its whole, and whole in its parts, and its parts are
> whole in themselves and whole in the whole. (*Periphyseon*,
> IV.759a-b)
> 
> 
> 



Eriugena concludes that human nature is 



> 
> 
> wholly in the wholeness of the whole created nature (*in
> universitate totius conditae naturae tota est*), seeing that in it
> every creature is fashioned, and in it all are linked together (*in
> ipsa copulata*), and into it all shall return, and through it must
> all be saved. (*Periphyseon*, IV.760a)
> 
> 
> 



Eriugena's cosmological account has been criticized for
collapsing the differences between God and creation, leading to a
heresy later labeled as pantheism. There is no doubt that
Eriugena's theological intentions are orthodox, but he is a
bold, speculative thinker, who believes that philosophy uncovers the
true meaning of faith. Eriugena (as does Nicholas of Cusa) gives a
unique place to Christ in the outgoing and return of all things. In
Christ, the hypostatic union of the divine and the created orders is
realized. Christ possesses all the perfections of human nature, since
*vir autem perfectus est Christus* (*Periphyseon*,
IV.743b), and Christ is also one in substance with God. Eriugena
recognizes that Christ is unique and that the individual is not
collapsed into the universal, even in the return. Humans will always
be different from God in that they have been created and God is
Creator (*Periphyseon*, IV.796b). However, a case can also be
made for saying that Eriugena really intends his perfected human
nature to possess divine attributes in a genuine way. The argument
turns on an answer to the following question: To what extent is man
made in the image and likeness of God? Eriugena has two answers: an
image is not an image unless it is identical to its exemplar in all
respects "except number" or "subject"
(*excepta subiecti ratione*, *Periphyseon*, IV.778a).
From this we may conclude that the human being differs from God *in
subiecto*, that is, there is solely a difference in number. But
difference in number does not mean that God and man stand apart from
each other as two identical billiard balls would occupy different
places. Neither God nor man is in space or time; both are incorporeal,
and hence numerical difference, or difference in subject, can only
have the Neoplatonic meaning that the first will always differ from
what comes after the first. God is first, and hence man comes after.
But "after" (*post*) here has no temporal meaning,
as Eriugena emphasizes (*Periphyseon*, IV.808a). A second
answer he gives is that God is creator and man is created, but since
creation is self-manifestation, that amounts to saying no more than
that God manifests himself fully in man. Eriugena sometimes qualifies
this by saying that man is by grace (*per gratiam*) what God is
by nature, quoting Maximus Confessor (e.g., *Periphyseon*,
V.879c-880a), but elsewhere, especially in the concept of
theophany or divine manifestation, he fuses the notion of nature with
that of grace: all natures are theophanies, divine manifestations, so
God is the source of both *dona* (gifts of grace)
and *data* (what are given in nature), both are revelations of
the divine nature. Indeed, there are many places where Eriugena cites
texts (e.g., Maximus) to suggest that God and man mirror each
other. His translation of Maximus includes the proposition: "For
they say that man and God are paradigms of each other"
(*Dicunt enim inter se invicem paradigmata Deum et hominem*, PL
122: 1220a). One is at the heart of the other. Similarly, human nature
and the angelic nature are mutually mirroring. This notion of the
intertwining and merging of minds is at the very core of
Eriugena's mysticism and of his understanding of the relation
between human and divine natures and their coming together in the
person of Christ. Christ is actually what all human beings can become
and that is precisely the promise of salvation for Eriugena. Consider
the following passage from Book Two:



> 
> 
> For if Christ Who understands of all things, (Who) indeed is the
> understanding of all things, really unified all that He assumed, who
> doubts then that what first took place in the Head and principal
> Exemplar of the whole of human nature will eventually happen in the
> whole? (*Periphyseon*, II.545a)
> 
> 
> 



Eriugena articulates the view that God's becoming human (His
incarnation or inhumanisation) is balanced cosmologically by the human being
becoming divinized in deification (*deificatio*, Greek:
*theosis*). The phrase "God was made man so that man
could be made God" (Latin: *factus est Deus homo, ut homo
fieret Deus*) is a commonplace among the Christian Fathers,
especially in the Eastern tradition. It is to be found in Greek in St.
Irenaeus, in St. Athanasius (298-373) in his treatise *De
incarnatione* 54, 3 (PG 25: 192B); and, in Latin, in St.
Augustine, (e.g., his sermon *In natali Domini, VIII*, PL 38:
1009 footnote; and *In natali Domini, XII*, PL 39: 1997) and
elsewhere. There are several passages where Eriugena (following St.
Augustine and Maximus Confessor) balances the humanization/incarnation
of God with the deification of man (see for instance his
*Homilia* XXIII, PL 122: 296a-c; *Commentarius in
Evangelium Iohannis* I, xxiv, PL 122: 300a). It is often expressed
in terms of man becoming "by grace" (*per gratiam*)
what God is "by nature" (*per naturam*). Eriugena
follows the Greek formulation of the Council of Nicaea (NB: not the
Latin version) and the Greek Christian tradition (specifically Maximus
Confessor) in occasionally distinguishing between *inhumanatio*
(Greek: *enanthropesis*)--the relation between the Second
Person of the Trinity and human nature)--and *incarnatio*
(Greek: *ensarkose*)--the temporal becoming flesh of the
Verbum in Jesus (see for instance *Periphyseon* I.449b; and
*Homilia* XIX, PL 122: 294c). Eriugena refers to the
*theosis* or deification of human nature at
*Periphyseon* I.449b (and elsewhere, see *Periphyseon*,
IV.743a, IV.760d) and draws extensively on Maximus for the view that
there will be a reunification of human nature with the divine (see
*Periphyseon*, II.536d ff). In his *Homilia* Eriugena
writes: "Of deification, however, I say, that man and God are
united in the unity of the one substance" (*Deificationis
autem, dico, qua homo et deus in unitatem unius substantiae adunati
sunt*, PL 122: 296c).



This clearly implies that humanity as a whole, that is, resurrected
human nature in its perfected state, will be truly illuminated and
merged with the divine, for human nature itself in its true essence is
the *intellectus omnium*. Furthermore, the use of the future
tense here is somewhat misleading, since time itself is a function of
our fallen state and the perfected state is timeless so there is a
sense in which perfected human nature already is one with God and
always has been one with God. Eriugena, then, has a dialectical
understanding of the relation of God and man which can be viewed as
orthodox from one point of view, but which is always transgressing the
boundaries of orthodoxy in the direction of a view which has God and
man mutually contemplating themselves and each other, in an endless,
eternal play of theophanies. Thus, a kind of mystical humanism is
celebrated in *Periphyseon* Book Four, a humanism unfolded
through the dialectic of self-knowledge and ignorance.



In Eriugena's conceptions of God, the cosmos and human nature,
there is an extraordinarily bold emphasis on infinity. God is infinite
and manifests Himself infinitely in His theophanies; the causes
themselves are infinite; the created cosmos too would be infinite were
it not for the Fall; finally, human nature is essentially unbounded
and infinite. The Holy Scriptures too have a kind of infinite
richness: *Sacrae scripturae interpretatio infinita est*,
II.560a. Employing an original simile, Eriugena claims that the number
of interpretations of Holy Scripture is like the innumerable colors in
a peacock's tail (IV.749c). Human understanding and learning are
also endless. Eriugena emphasizes the lack of limit and inherent
transcendence not just of human nature but also of the whole of
nature. Nature as a whole is an infinite series of theophanies. This
conception of God as "more than infinite" and as the
"infinity of infinities" is Eriugena's most
significant contribution to philosophy, one that attracted both the
attention of medieval mystics and later of German Idealists.


## 4. Influence



Eriugena's *Periphyseon* had immediate influence in
France, notably at the schools of Laon, Auxerre, and Corbie. His
translations of Pseudo-Dionysius were widely used from the time of
Anastasius until they were gradually replaced in the thirteenth
century by those of Johannes Sarracenus. His *Homily on the
Prologue to John* (albeit often attributed to Origen) circulated
widely through the Middle Ages. The *Periphyseon* became
particularly popular in the twelfth century, especially when
circulated in the "edition" of William of Malmsebury or in
the paraphrase by Honorius Augustodunensis known as *Clavis
physicae*. Hugh of Saint Victor, Alanus of Lille, and Suger of
Saint-Denis were among those influenced by Eriugena. In the thirteenth
century, however, the *Periphyseon* was linked with the
writings of David of Dinant and Amaury of Bene, two theologians
at the University of Paris, and was condemned with them in 1210 and
1225. According to Thomas Aquinas (ST I.3.8; SCG I.17; I.26), Amaury
of Bene was condemned for saying that God is the formal principle of
all things, an accusation of pantheism, which recalled
Eriugena's statement that God is the "form of all
things" (*forma omnium*). David of Dinant (*fl*.
1210), on the other hand, was supposed to have identified God with
prime matter and proclaimed that God was the *materia omnium*.
It is likely that Eriugena's discussion of God and matter as
"nothing", and as both transcending sense and intellect
according to the first mode of being and non-being, contributed to
this accusation.



In the later Middle Ages both Meister Eckhart of Hochheim
(c.1260-c.1328) and Nicholas of Cusa (1401-64) were
sympathetic to Eriugena and familiar with his *Periphyseon*.
Cusanus owned a copy of the *Periphyseon*. Interest in Eriugena
was revived by Thomas Gale's first printed edition of 1687.
However, soon afterwards, Thomas Gale's first printed edition,
the *Periphyseon*, was listed in the first edition of the
*Index Librorum Prohibitorum*, and remained on it, until the
Index itself was abolished in the 1960s. In the nineteenth century,
Hegel and his followers, interested in the history of philosophy from
a systematic point of view, read Eriugena rather uncritically as an
absolute idealist and as the father of German idealism. The first
critical editions of his major works were not produced until the
twentieth century (Lutz, Jeauneau, Barbet). A conference organized by
John O'Meara and Ludwig Bieler in the Royal Irish Academy,
Dublin, in 1970 led to the founding of the Society for the Promotion
of Eriugenian Studies (SPES) which has been active in developing
Eriugena studies at a high scholarly level by hosting international
colloquia and publishing the proceedings. The most recent meeting of
SPES, "Eriugena and Creation" took place at the University
of Chicago in 2011 (Otten &Allen 2014).



Eriugena is an original philosopher who articulates the relation
between God and creation in a manner which preserves both divine
transcendence and omnipresence. His theory of human nature is
rationalist and intellectualist but also apophatic. His theory of
place and time as defining structures of the mind anticipates Kant,
his dialectical reasoning prefigures Hegel. But above all, Eriugena is
a mystic who emphasizes the ultimate unity of human nature and through it of the entire creation with God.