Scotus Eriugena, John

SCOTUS ERIUGENA, JOHN. - Philosopher and theologian, b. in Ireland (in Celtic Eriu, also called Scotia Maior; whence presumably the double appellation) in the first decades of the 9th century. It is uncertain whether he was a cleric; but if he was, as would appear from the character of his culture, he held no ecclesiastical office. Nothing is known of his studies in his homeland. Certainly before 847 he was in France, received at the court of Charles the Bald « a quo magna dignatione susceptus, familiarium pars habebatur, transigebatque cum eo tam seria quam ioca... » (PL. 179, 1652). It is not improbable that for some time he was appointed by the Sovereign to direct the palace school. In 851 he intervened in the theological controversy against Gottschalk (v.) with the De praedestinatione. But the use of philosophical concepts and of a language unusual in the West produced disturbance and confusion among the conflicting parties that he had proposed to reconcile and provoked various condemnations of the work. It is not proven that he intervened in the dispute over the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, between Paschasius Radbertus (v.) and Ratramnus of Corbie (v.); since the Liber Joannis Scoti, from which Berengar later claimed to have drawn the symbolist doctrine, is the opuscule of Ratramnus attributed to St. E. by error or by artifice.

Between 851 and 862, on the King's commission, he translated the writings of pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (v.), which the abbot Hilduin (v.) had already begun some years earlier; the latter's incomplete version, moreover, had remained unpublished, on account of its imperfection. To 859 the commentary In Martianum Capellam is apparently to be assigned, of which the commentary on metre IX of book III of the De cons. philos. seems to be slightly later. To 862-64 it is agreed to assign the version of the Ambigua of Maximus the Confessor (v.); which was followed by that of the De imagine hominis of St. Gregory of Nyssa (v.). Perhaps he also translated the Ancoratus of Epiphanius (v.). The unusual speculative light that these writings projected, in which Christian thought seemed to have fused with Neoplatonic philosophy imbued with a spirit so profoundly religious, dazzled him; all the more so since he, like his contemporaries, considered authentic the works attributed to the Areopagite, a disciple of St. Paul, and therefore a participant in the secrets of the apostolic Revelation. Under the influence of this light he set about writing his major work, De divisione naturae, completed not later than 866, and then commenting on some of the writings of the pseudo-Areopagite, perhaps between 865 and 870, and on the Gospel of St. John.

Almost nothing is known of the last years of his life, nor when he died. An allusion to him as already deceased has been thought to be found in a letter of Anastasius the Librarian, a Roman, to Charles the Bald, of 875: «cum esset humilis spiritu, non praesumpati...» (PL 129, 740). But if he lived still some years after this date, as some hold, his was a life of recollection and silence, since the protection of the King, who died in the autumn of 877, had come to fail him.

The De divisione naturae is a great work of Christian philosophy, that is, of speculative theology, conceived in the spirit of the Neoplatonism of St. Augustine, of Pseudo-Dionysius, of St. Gregory of Nyssa and of St. Gregory of Nazianzus. Greek philosophy, elaborated earlier and in ignorance of Christianity, was bound to appear insufficient to justify the new historical reality created by the spread of the evangelical message. Faith in the Revelation of Christ and the birth of a new society with a new intuition of life and of the world: this is the new historical reality that the Christian thinker has the duty to justify to himself. The starting point and object of his philosophical reflection is the experience of this new reality, that is, his faith in the Revelation and his feeling himself a member of the body of Christ. Hence it is that for S. E., as already for Augustine and as later for Anselm, from faith springs the need to understand: «fides quaerens intellectum», according to the celebrated Anselmian expression at the head of the Proslogion, completed by the saying drawn from Is. 7, 9 (according to the ancient version prior to the Vulgate): «Et nisi credidero, non intelligam». The distinction between philosophy and Revelation, and their opposition, or the subordination of the first to the second, have no clear formulation before the 13th century, when by philosophy people began to understand the Aristotelian system of nature. There has been talk of «rationalism» with regard to Eriugenian speculation; but it is not possible to transfer this wholly modern concept into the interpretation of a thought that is indeed rational speculation and dialectical daring, but that moves from Revelation as from an unshaken principle of truth.

The starting point of Eriugenian speculation is the «simplicitas fidei» in the acceptance of the revealed word; from this moves the «intellectus», that is, reflection and the effort to understand: «Petrus siquidem fidei symbolum, Joannes significat intellectum. Ac per hoc, quoniam scriptum est: 'Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis', necessario praecedit fides in monumentum sanctae scripturae, deinde sequens intrat intellectus, cui per fidem praeparatur aditus» (Hom. in Ioh.: PL. 122, 284-85). Moving from the unshaken certainty of Scripture, reason claims its own freedom in the face of human interpretations of the word of God, and the right of criticism over them (De divisi. nat., I, 69), using dialectical procedures more suited to unveiling the spirit hidden by the letter. Of these procedures two are the principal ones: the one that consists in dividing and distinguishing, proceeding from the one to the many, and the one that, starting from the multiplicity of particular beings, tends to reconstitute their higher unity, toward which all things conspire. Thus there is a process of descent from the One to the many, and an inverse process of ascent of the many to the One, as in Neoplatonism (v.); with the difference that in the latter the process of descent of the many things from the One seems to consist in logically dividing the supreme genus into subaltern genera and into species down to the most special species and to the individual, in such a way that all things come to form part of a whole determined in its parts, whereas for S. E. it is a matter of establishing the causal nexus that binds the many to the One. Having divided nature into its many degrees, these are welded together by a dynamic process that S. E. expresses with the biblical verb «to create», taken in the broadest meaning that does not exclude, moreover, the particular one commonly used among theologians.

At the summit and center of the universal order stands the «natura quae creat et non creatur», that is, God insofar as he is «causa eorum quae sunt et quae non sunt» (ibid., I, 1) and insofar as in his absolute and infinite unity he is unknowable, because he is not a «quid» nor a being among the other beings of which the concepts of the human categories are predicated: «Deus itaque nescit se quid est, quia non est quid» (ibid., II, 28). But in this transcendent darkness shines the eternal light of the Word, and in the Word the «natura quae et creatur et creat», that is, the «primordiales causae» and the «primordialia exempla» of all things. The verb «to create» evidently is not taken here in the meaning of «to draw from nothing», but in the broader meaning of «to make, to give beginning» and the like. These eternal exemplars and primordial causes of all things are in substance the Platonic ideas, which Plotinus had gathered in the Nous and St. Augustine in the divine mind, that is, in the substance of the Word, as S. E. also does (ibid., III, 1, 9). And as Plato had said that the true being of things is in the eternal and immutable idea, and not in its projection into the γῶρα, that is, into space and time, so for S. E. the true reality of things is the eternal one of the «rationes primordiales». Multiple insofar as they are distinguished one from another, as concepts of our mind, they are not distinguished in the eternal Word, so that one and divine is the essence of all things in their eternal prototypes: «Ipse namque omnium essentia est qui solus vere est, ut ait Dionysius Areopagita» (ibid., I, 3; IV, 8; V, 3). By «creating» the primordial reasons, God «creates» himself, insofar as from the abyss of his unity he manifests himself in the multiplicity of the ideas that are the causes of contingent things: «Ipsius namque creatio hoc est in aliquo manifestatio, omnium existentium profecto est substitutio» (ibid., I, 13); «Creatur enim a seipsa in primordialibus causis, ac per hoc seipsam creat, hoc est in suis theophaniis incipit apparere» (ibid., III, 23).

To the created and creating nature follows the «natura quae creatur et non creat», that is, the whole of contingent things that are in space and time. This is a new theophany, quite different from the first, and the verb «to create» also assumes in this second «procession» a meaning quite different from that which it had in the preceding: « aliter... consideratur creatura in rationibus suis aeternis in Deo, secundum quas condita est, et aliter in se ipsa sub Deo inquantum creatura est » (ibid., III, 24; cf. III, 8). True and substantial reality is that which things have in God; outside the divine essence, « sub Deo », they are ephemeral shadows and images of it: « Omnia siquidem quae locis temporibusque variantur, ... non ipsae res substantiales vereque existentes, sed ipsarum rerum vere existentium quaedam transitoriae imagines et resultationes intelligenda sunt » (ibid., III, 3). To the created and non-creating nature belong all beings visible and invisible, « sub Deo », and first of all the angel and man endowed with a spiritual body. The lower material nature is the fruit of original sin (ibid., IV, 20).

With the creation of man and of lower nature, the process of the descent of the manifold from the One is complete. And this process is precisely the one indicated by the title of the work De divisione naturae and which corresponds to the dialectical moment of διαιρετική. To this process and moment corresponds that of the ascent or return or ἀναλυτική, which the title of the work implies and involves (ibid., II, 1-6). This process, by which all things tend to return to the One, is signified by E. with the expression "natura quae nec creat nec creatur." At the end of this "reditio" or "reversio" is the "deificatio" (θέωσις) which corresponds to the ἕνωσις of the Neoplatonists. The principle of "deificatio" is the incarnation of the Word, in the substantial unity, as St. E. likes to express it following the example of the Greeks, of the twofold human and divine nature (ibid., II, 32; IV, 3; V, 26-27). The incarnation constitutes a new theophany, from which the angels profit no less than men (ibid., V, 25). From the union of all the saved (men and angels) results the Church, the mystical body of Christ (ibid., IV, 1; V, 24, 38), which will have its fulfillment in heavenly glory. Once the return into God is complete, the material world, the fruit of sin, will disappear and all sensible things will be spiritualized in their union with the primordial causes (ibid., V, 37). After the resurrection and the end of the world, all things will be reabsorbed into God, without losing anything of the integrity of their nature (ibid., I, 10), and they will enjoy the final theophany which is precisely deification (ibid., V, 23).

As is easy to notice, throughout this essentially theological doctrine the speculative boldness draws its impulse from Alexandrian gnosis, from the Christian Platonism or Neoplatonism of the three Cappadocians, and above all from the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus the Confessor. In substance (and this is also the opinion of Gilson) the affirmations of S. E., taken in their own sense and clarified in context, seem able to accord with theological thought. If certain affirmations and expressions offended his contemporaries, this is due for the most part to his having introduced into the theological language of the West terms, modes of expression and concepts to which Latin theologians and interpreters of the Bible were not accustomed, and which these were led to regard as dangerous novelties. And dangerous novelties they indeed were for those who did not understand the thought of S. E. and swept it toward meanings alien to it. This occurred not only on the part of Amalric of Bena (v.) — and this can explain the condemnations by the Council of Paris in 1210 and by Honorius III on 25 January 1225 — but even more through the work of certain modern historians of philosophy of the post-Kantian period (M. Saint-René Taillandier).

With S. E. the veil of the barbarism of the two preceding centuries is torn apart by a vivid speculative light that is refracted in seductive iridescences. Among the modest thinkers of his time, he stands out like a lofty, solitary peak. Speculative ardor, far from extinguishing it, feeds the faith from which it takes its start and concludes with an ardent desire for divinization, which is the supreme aspiration of the mystic.

Better than any other writer of the 9th century, this Irishman who came to settle in Gaul represents the reflowering of ancient culture in the West, in the period of the so-called Carolingian renaissance. In him he even finds the first hint of the reawakening of ancient astronomical doctrines, learned from reading the Timaeus commented on by Calcidius and from that of Macrobius. But S. E. goes further than his sources, attributing a circular motion around the sun not only to Venus and Mercury, as Heraclides Ponticus held, but also to Mars and Jupiter, so as to anticipate Tycho Brahe.

Bruno Nardi