ERIGENA, JOHANNES SCOTUS (c. 877), medi aeval philosopher and theologian, was known to his contemporaries as Johannes Scotus (Scottus) or John the Scot, but in his versions of Dionysius the Areopagite he styles himself Johannes Ierugena. Eleventh century manuscripts have Johannes lerugina, Erugena and Eriugena, formed apparently on the analogy of Graiugena ("Greek-born"), and seemingly connected with Erin, the name for Ireland. Ierugena suggests the Greek iEpos, lean vi oos be ing a common name for Ireland. (Prudentius, bishop of Troyes, definitely states that he was of Irish extraction.) The form Erigena is late and was not combined with Johannes Scotus until the i6th century.
Of Erigena's early life nothing is known. Bale quotes the story that he travelled in Greece, Italy and Gaul, and studied not only Greek, but also Arabic and Chaldaean, but Erigena's knowl edge of Greek, though competent, is not such as to compel us to conclude that he actually visited Greece. It is certain, however, that Charles the Bald invited him to France shortly before 847 and made him head of the court school. The latter part of his life is involved in obscurity, and the story that he was invited to Oxford by Alfred the Great and that he afterwards taught at the abbey of Malmesbury has only the minimum of possibility.
Erigena marks the transition from the older Platonizing philoso phy to the more rigid scholasticism, and is one of the most inter esting of mediaeval writers. Utilizing especially Origen, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Boethius and Maximas, he trans forms them with the monistic colouring of the pseudo-Dionysius, and elaborates the first complete synthesis of the Middle Ages. Logically, but not intentionally, he is a pantheist, following in the wake of the pseudo-Dionysius whom he regards as the convert of St. Paul. Although he believes that authority and reason cannot be contradictory, he boldly asserts that reason must be the cri terion. He does not start with the datum of theology as the com pleted body of truth requiring only interpretation ; his funda mental thought is that of the universe, nature, or God, as the ultimate unity which works itself out into the rational system of the world. All things, including man, are parts of the system and are to be explained by reference to it ; for explanation of a thing is determination of its place in the universal or all. Religion or revelation is one factor in the divine process, a stage of the ulti mate rational life.
Erigena's first work was a treatise on the eucharist, no longer extant, and often wrongly identified with the De corpore et san guine Domini of Ratramnus. But from the fragments on St. John's Gospel and from his contemporaries, it would appear that Erigena advanced the doctrine that the eucharist was merely symbolical or commemorative. His orthodoxy was not suspected at the time, and a few years later he was selected by Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, to defend the doctrine of liberty of will against the extreme predestinarianism of the monk Gottschalk. The extant treatise, De Divina Praedestinatione, composed on this occasion (c. 851) was at once suspected. It was assailed by Dre panius Florus, canon of Lyons, and Prudentius of Troyes, and was condemned by two Councils—of Valence (855) and Langres (8S9). It starts with the bold affirmation that philosophy, and religion are fundamentally one and the same, and goes on to assert that because God is independent of time, predestination can only be asserted of Him inasmuch as by His free-will he allows the activities of creatures. It cannot involve any notion of necessity either in God or in man. In any case, predestination could only be to grace and happiness, for evil is merely negation of good; and moreover, if God knew evil, He would cause it because His know ledge and His will are identical.
Erigena's next work (c. 858) was a Latin translation of the works of the pseudo-Dionysius (see DIONYSIUS AREOPAGITICUS) undertaken at the request of Charles the Bald from the manu scripts of the abbey of St. Denys, Paris, which Dionysius was said to have founded. It has been preserved and fragments of Erigena's commentary on the original have been discovered. His great work, De divisione naturae, written c. 865-87o, was con demned by a council at Sens, by Honorius III. (1225), and by Gregory XIII. in 1585. In it he maintains that Natura is the name for the totality of all things, containing in itself being and non-being, and covering (I) that which creates and is not cre ated; (2) that which is created and creates; (3) that which is created and does not create; (4) that which neither is created nor creates. The first is God as the source of all things, the last is God as the final end of all things. The second and third to gether compose the created universe, which is the manifestation of God, God in processu, Theophania. The second covers the pri mordial ideas, archetypes, immutable relations, divine acts of will, according to which individual things are formed. The third is the world of individuals, the effects of the primordial causes, without which the causes have no true being. Neither the ideas nor indi vidual creatures have any self-independent existence; they are only in God; and each thing is a manifestation of the divine. God alone, the uncreated creator of all, has true being. He is the true universal, all-containing, infinite and incomprehensible. True the ology must be negative, for God is above truth, wisdom, goodness, etc. (In this sense, He is nothing, and hence the nothing out of which things are created is identifiable with the divine nature.) Nevertheless the world, as the revelation of God, tells us some thing of the divine essence. We recognize His being in the being of things, His wisdom in their order, His life in their constant mo tion. Thus God is for us a Trinity—the Father as substance of being, the Son as wisdom, the Spirit as life. In man, the noblest of creatures, this Trinity is reflected in intellectus, ratio and sensus.
From the infinite essence of God emanates the realm of ideas in the Platonic sense. These ideas, which constitute a divine self determination, are eternally created and are maintained in unity by the divine Logos. The highest idea is that of goodness; things are, only if they are good ; being without well-being is naught. Essence participates in goodness—that which is good has being, and is therefore to be regarded as a species of good. Life, again, is a species of essence, wisdom a species of life, and so on, always descending from genus to species in logical fashion.
Under the moving influence of the spirit, the ideas manifest themselves in created things. Manifestation is part of the essence of the causes; as the causes are eternal, timeless, so creation is eternal, timeless. The Mosaic account, then, is allegorical. Para dise and the Fall have no spatial or temporal being. Only after the introduction of sin did man lose his spiritual body and acquire the animal nature with its distinction of sex.
The most remarkable and at the same time the most obscure portion of the work is that in which the final return to God is handled. Naturally, sin is a preliminary to this redemption, but Erigena has great difficulty in accounting for it. If God is true being, then sin can have no substantive existence; it cannot be said that God knows of sin, for to God, knowing and being are one. In the universe of things, as a universe, there can be no sin ; there must be perfect harmony. Sin, in fact, results from the will of the individual who falsely represents something as good which is not so. This misdirected will is punished by finding that the desired objects are vain, and hell is the inner state of the sin ful will. The result of punishment is the final purification and redemption of all, even animals and devils. The ultimate goal is deificatio or resumption into the Divine Being, when the individual soul is raised to a full knowledge of God, and where knowing and being are one. Erigena's doctrines seem to have influenced such divers thinkers as Heric and Remigius of Auxerre, Gerbert, Beren gerius, Gilbert de la Poree, Abelard, Alan of Lille, the Chartres men, Amalric of Bene and Nicholas of Cusa. Hugh of St. Victor utilized his translation of the pseudo-Dionysius.