Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/543

Rh E R I G E N A demned by two councils that of Valence in 855, and that of Langres in 859. Erigena s next work was a translation of Dionysius the Areopagite (see Droxvsius) undertaken at the request of the king. This also has been preserved, and fragments of a commentary by Scotus on Dionysius have been discovered in MS. A translation of the Areopagite s pantheistical writings was not likely to alter the opinion already formed as to Erigena s orthodoxy. Pope Nicholas I. was offended that the work had not been submitted for approval before being given to the world, and ordered Charles to send Scotus to Rome, or at least to dismiss him from his court. There is no evidence, however, that this order was attended to. Erigena appears still to have remained in favour. The latter part of his life is involved in total obscurity. The story that in 882 he was invited to Oxford by Alfred the Great, that he laboured there for many years, became abbot at Malmesbury, and was murdered by his scholars, is apparently without any satisfactory foundation, and doubtless refers to some other Johannes. Erigena in all probability never left France, and Haure&quot;au has advanced some reasons for fixing the date of his death about 877. The works of Erigena that have come down to us are the following: &quot;(1) the treatise on predestination, first published iu 1 650 ; (2) a commentary on Marcianus Cupella, published by Haureau in 18G1 ; (3) translation of Dionysius the Areopagite, published in Floss s edition of Erigena, vol. cxxii. of Migne s Patrologice Cursus Completus; (4) miscel laneous treatises, somestiil in MS., e.y., the work De Visione Dei, and the commentary on Dionysius, which has been published in Appendix ad Opera edita ab Ang. Maio, Rom., 1871; (5) translation of St Maximus s scholia on Gregory of Nazianzen, published in Gale s edition of (6) the great work, De Divisione Xaturce, Trepl (frwiuiv /j-epia/jLov. Of this last work three editions have appeared that of Gale, Oxford, 1631, that by Schliiter, 1838, and that by Floss, 1853, Erigena is without doubt the most interesting figure among the Middle Age writers. The freedom of his speculation, and the boldness with which he works out his logical or dialectical system of the universe, altogether prevent us from classing him along with the scholastics properly so called. He marks, indeed, a stage of transition from the older Platonizing philosophy to the later and more rigid scholasticism. In no sense whatever can it be affirmed that with Erigena philosophy is in the service of theology. The above-quoted assertion as to the substan tial identity between philosophy and religion i.s indeed repeated almost tolidem vet-bis by many of the later scholastic writers, but its significance altogether depends upon the selection of one or other term of the identity as fundamental or primary. Now there is no possibility of mistaking Erigena s position : to him philosophy or reason is first, is primitive ; authority or religion is secondary, derived. &quot; Auctoritas siquidem ex vera ratione processit, ratio vero nequaquam ex auctoritate. Omnis enim auc- toritas, quse vera ratione non approbatur, mfirma videtur esse. Vera autem ratio, quum virtutibus suis rata atque immutabilis munitur, nullius auctoritatis adstipulatione roborari indiget&quot; (De Div. Nat., i. 71). F. D. Maurice, the only historian of note who declines to ascribe a rationalizing tendency to Erigena, obscures the question by the manner in which he states it. He asks his readers, after weighing the evidence advanced, to determine &quot; whether he (Erigena) used his philosophy to explain away his theology, or to bring out what he conceived to be the fullest meaning of it.&quot; These alternatives seem to be wrongly put. &quot; Explaining away theology &quot; is something wholly foreign to the philosophy of that age ; and even if we accept the alternative, that Erigena endeavours specula- tively to bring out the full meaning of theology, we are by no means driven to the conclusion that he was primarily or principally a theologian. He does not start with the datum of theology as the completed body of truth, requiring only elucidation and interpretation; his fundamental thought is that of the universe, nature, TO irav, or God, as the ultimate unity which works itself out into the rational system of the world. Man and all that concerns man are but parts of this system, and are to be explained by refer ence to it ; for explanation or understanding of a thing is determination of its place in the universal or all. Religion or revelation is one element or factor in the divine process, a stage or phase of the ultimate rational life. The highest faculty of man, reason, intellectus, inteUectuahs w sio, is that which is not content with the individual or partial, but grasps the whole and thereby comprehends the parts. In this highest effort of reason, which is indeed God thinking in man, thought and being are at one, the opposition of being and thought is overcome. When Erigena starts with such propositions, it is clearly impossible to under stand his position and work if we insist on regarding him as a scholastic, accepting the dogmas of the church as ulti mate data, and endeavouring only to present them in due order and defend them by argument. Erigena s great work, De Divisione Nature, is arranged in five books. The form of exposition is that of dialogue; the method of reasoning is the syllogistic. The leading thoughts are the follow ing. Katura, &amp;lt;pi&amp;gt;7,$, is the name for the universal, the totality of all things, containing iu itself being and non-being. It is the unity of which all special phenomena are manifestations. But of this nature there are four distinct classes : (1) that which creates and is not created ; (2) that which is created and creates ; (3) that winch is created and does not create ; (4) that which neither is created nor creates. The first is God as the ground or origin of all things, the last is God as the final end or goal of all things, that into which the world of created things ultimately returns. The second and third together compose the created universe, which is the manifestation of God, God in proce&su, Thcophania. Thus we distinguish in the divine system beginning, middle, and end; but these three are in essence one the difference is only the conse quence of our finite comprehension. We are compelled to envisage this eternal process under the form of time, to apply temporal dis tinctions to that which is extra- or supra-temporal. The universe of created tilings, as we have seen, is twofold -.first, that which is created and creates, the primordial ideas, archetypes, immutable relations, divine acts of will, according to which individual things are formed; second, that which is created and does not create, the world of individuals, the effects of the primordial causes, with out which the causes have no true being. Created things have no individual or self-independent existence ; they are only in God ; and each thing is a manifestation of the divine, thcophania. divina apparitio. God alone, the uncreated creator of all, has true being. He is the true universal, all-containing and incomprehensible. The lower cannot comprehend the higher, and therefore we must say that the existence of God is above being, above essence: God is above goodness, above wisdom, above truth. No finite predi cates can be applied to him ; his mode of being cannot be deter mined by any category. True theology is negative. Nevertheless the world, as the tkeophania, the revelation of God, enables us so far to understand the divine essence. We recognize his being in the being of all things, his wisdom in their orderly arrangement, his life in their constant motion. Thus God is for us a Trinity the Father as substance or being (oixnj), the Son as wisdom (Suva uu), the Spirit as life (V^&amp;gt;*.) These three are realized in the universe the Father as the system of things, the Son as the word, i.e., the realm of ideas, the Spirit as the life or moving force which introduces individuality and which ultimately draws back all things into the divine unity. In man, as the noblest of created things, the Trinity is seen most perfectly reflected : intellects (vot?), ratio (*oyos), and scnsus (S.dto.o) make up the threefold thread of his being. Not in man alone, however, but iu all things, God is to be regarded as realizing himself, as becoming incarnate. The infinite essence of God, which may indeed he described as nihilum, nothing, is that from which all is created, from which all proceeds or emanates. The first procession or emanation, as above indicated, is the realm of ideas in the Platonic sense, the word or wisdom of God. These ideas compose a whole or insepa rable unity, but we are able in a dim way to think of them as a system logically arranged. Thus the highest idea is that of qood- ncss; things are, only if they are good; being without wellbeing