SCOTO ERIUGENA, GIOVANNI. - Philosopher and theologian, born in Ireland (in Celtic Ériu, also called Scotia Maior; whence probably the double appellation) in the early decades of the 9th century. It is uncertain whether he was a cleric; but if he was, as seems likely from the character of his learning, he held no ecclesiastical office. Nothing is known of his studies in his native land. By 847 at the latest he was in France, welcomed 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 unlikely that for some time he was placed by the sovereign in charge of directing the palace school. In 851 he intervened in the theological controversy against Godescalc (v.) with his De praedestinatione. However, the use of philosophical concepts and a language unusual in the West caused disturbance and confusion among the parties he had sought to reconcile and provoked various condemnations of the work. It is not proven that he took part in the dispute over the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist between Paschasius Radbertus (v.) Corbie (v.); for the Liber Joannis Scoti, from which later Berengar claimed to have drawn his symbolist doctrine, is the pamphlet by Rabanus Maurus wrongly attributed to St. J. E. either by error or design.
Between 851 and 862, at the king’s request, he translated the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (v.), a task already begun by Abbot Hilduin (v.) some years earlier; Hilduin’s incomplete version, however, had remained unpublished because of its imperfections. The commentary In Martianum Capellam is probably to be dated to 859, and the commentary on Metre IX of Book III of De consolatione philosophiae seems to be slightly later. The translation of the Ambigua of Maximus the Confessor (v.) is generally assigned to 862-64, followed by that of De imagine hominis by St. Gregory of Nyssa (v.). He may also have translated Epiphanius’ Ancoratus (v.). The unusual speculative light cast by these writings, in which Christian thought seemed to have fused with Neoplatonic philosophy imbued with such a deeply religious spirit, dazzled him; especially since, like his contemporaries, he accepted as authentic the works attributed to the Areopagite, Paul’s disciple, and thus a participant in the secrets of apostolic revelation. Under the influence of this light he set himself to write his major work, De divisione naturae, completed by 866 at the latest, and then to comment on some of the writings of the Pseudo-Areopagite, perhaps between 865 and 870, and on the Gospel of St. John.
In his interpretation, thought is both rational speculation and daring dialectic, yet it proceeds from Revelation as an unshakable principle of truth.
The starting point of Eriugenian speculation is the «simplicitas fidei» in accepting the revealed word; from this springs «intellectus», i.e., 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). Proceeding from the unshakable certainty of Scripture, reason vindicates its own freedom in the face of human interpretations of the word of God and the right to criticize them (De divinis nat., I, 69), using dialectical methods better suited to revealing the spirit hidden beneath the letter. Of these methods two are principal: one consists in dividing and distinguishing, proceeding from the one to the many, and the other, starting from the multiplicity of particular beings, tends to restore their higher unity toward which all things strive. Thus there is a process of descent from the One to the many, and an inverse process of ascent from the many to the One, as in Neoplatonism (v.); with the difference that in the latter the process of the descent of the many from the One seems to consist in logically dividing the supreme genus into subordinate genera and species down to the lowest species and the individual, so that all things become part of a whole determined in its parts, whereas for St. J. E. it is a matter of establishing the causal bond that links the many to the One. Once nature is divided into its manifold degrees, these are joined together by a dynamic process which St. J. E. expresses with the biblical verb «to create», taken in the broadest sense, which does not, however, exclude the more particular meaning commonly used by theologians.
At the summit and center of the universal order stands the nature quae creat et non creatur, i.e., 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 other beings of which the concepts of 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 nature quae et creatur et creatur, i.e., the «primordial causes» and «primordial exemplars» of all things. The verb «to create» is evidently not taken here in the sense of «to bring forth from nothing», but in the broader sense of «to make, to give origin» 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, i.e., in the substance of the Word, as St. J. E. also does (ibid., III, 1, 9). And just as Plato had said that the true being of things is in the eternal and unchanging Idea, and not in its projection into γνώμη, i.e., into space and time, so for St. J. E. the true reality of things is that eternal reality of the «rationes primordiales». Multiple insofar as distinct from one another, as concepts of our mind, they are not distinct 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, inasmuch as from the abyss of His unity He manifests Himself in the multiplicity of Ideas which 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).
Following the nature that creates and is not created comes the «nature quae creatur et non creatur», i.e., the whole of contingent things that exist in space and time. This is a new theophany, quite different from the first, and even the verb «to create» takes on a meaning quite different from that which it had in the preceding «procession»: «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). The true and substantial reality is that which things have in God; outside the divine essence, «sub Deo», they are fleeting 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 nature that is created and does not create belong all visible and invisible beings «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 inferior nature, the process of the manifold’s descent from the One is complete. It is precisely this process that is indicated by the title of the work *De divisione naturae* and that corresponds to the dialectical moment of *διαχείριση*. To this process and moment corresponds that of ascent or return or *ἀναλυτική*, which the title of the work implies and suggests (ibid., II, 1-6). This process, by which all things tend to return to the One, is signified by Eriugena with the expression “nature which neither creates nor is created.” At the end of this “return” or “reversio” is “deification” (*διανομία*), which corresponds to the *ἕννοια* of the Neoplatonists. The principle of “deification” is the incarnation of the Word, in substantial unity, as St. Eriugena loves to express himself, following the example of the Greeks, in terms of the twofold nature, human and divine (ibid., II, 32; IV, 3; V, 26-27). The incarnation constitutes a new theophany, from which angels as well as men derive benefit (ibid., V, 23). From the union of all the saved (men and angels) arises the Church, the mystical body of Christ (ibid., IV, 1; V, 24, 38), which will reach its fulfillment in heavenly glory. Once the return to God is accomplished, the material world, a product of sin, will vanish, 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 will enjoy the final theophany, which is precisely deification (ibid., V, 23).
As is easy to perceive, in all this essentially theological doctrine speculative daring draws its impetus from Alexandrian Gnosticism, from 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 St. Eriugena, taken in their proper sense and clarified within their context, seem capable of being reconciled with theological thought. If some affirmations and expressions shocked his contemporaries, this was due in large measure 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 unaccustomed, and which they were led to regard as dangerous novelties. And indeed dangerous novelties they were for those who failed to understand St. Eriugena’s thought and distorted it into meanings alien to II. This occurred not only at Bène (v.)—which may explain the condemnations by the Council of Paris in 1210 and by Honorius III on 25 January 1225—but even more at the hands of certain modern historians of post-Kantian philosophy (M. Saint-René Taillandier).
With St. Eriugena the veil of the barbarism of the two preceding centuries is torn away by a vivid speculative light that is refracted into seductive iridescences. Among the modest thinkers of his time, he stands as a solitary, lofty peak. Speculative ardor, far from quenching, nourishes the faith from which it springs and concludes in a burning desire for vision that is the supreme aspiration of the mystic.
Better than any other writer of the ninth century, this Irishman who settled in Gaul represents the revival of ancient culture in the West during the so-called Carolingian Renaissance. In him we find even the first hint of the revival of ancient astronomical doctrines, learned from the reading of the *Timaeus* as commented on by Calcidius and from that of Macrobius. But Eriugena goes beyond his sources, attributing a circular motion around the sun not only to Venus and Mercury, as Heraclides of Pontus had maintained, but also to Mars and Jupiter, thus anticipating Tycho Brahe.