jan 1, 865 - John Scotus Eriugena (810 – 877 CE)

Description:

History: John Scotus Eriugena was an Irish-born philosopher and theologian who worked at the court of Charles the Bald, a Frankish king in the Carolingian Empire. This was a period of intellectual revival in Western Europe, often called the Carolingian Renaissance — a time when classical texts were being rediscovered and studied under the patronage of learned rulers.

Ideas: Eriugena’s magnum opus is Periphyseon (also known as On the Division of Nature), a complex philosophical-theological work that attempts to explain all reality as flowing from and returning to God.

-Fourfold division of nature:

1)That which creates and is not created (God as source)

2)That which is created and creates (the divine ideas or causes)

3)That which is created and does not create (the physical world)

4)That which neither creates nor is created (God as final end)

-Creation is not a one-time event, but an eternal process, where God manifests Himself through all things. All being is, in a sense, God expressing Himself.

-Human beings are the central mirror of creation, uniquely able to reflect and return to God through knowledge and love.

-He emphasized apophatic theology — the idea that God is beyond all understanding and language, and can only be approached through negation and mystical ascent.

-Eriugena also taught universal return (apokatastasis): all creation will ultimately return to divine unity.

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