SOURCE: Wohlman, Avital. “Introduction to the English Translation.” In Treatise on Divine Predestination, by John Scottus Eriugena, translated by Mary Brennan, pp. xv-xxix. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998.

[In the following excerpt, Wohlman discusses the controversy over the concept of predestination and explains why Eriugena's De Praedestinatione caused scandal.]

Jean Trouillard has contended that Scottus Eriugena or John the Scot was the only authentic Neoplatonist in whom the Latin world could take pride,¹ the only one who knew how to “recover, beyond Saint Augustine, the authentic spirit of Neoplatonism.”² Affirmations of this sort, however, may not prove the best argument to attract a large audience for this new translation of De praedestinatione, for Neoplatonism is often accused of failing to grasp the proper worth of the world in which we live, indeed to be estranged from full-blooded interplay.

As I have tried to show elsewhere, reservations of this sort with regard to Neoplatonism in general and Scottus Eriugena's thought in particular, are quite without foundation.³ It may be that by reflecting on the role which De praedestinatione played in the real debates of its time we could be liberated from such lack of appreciation.

When John the Scot was charged by Hincmar in 851 to refute the errors of Gottschalk, his reputation as a learned person had already been established. This was during the time when the bishop of Laon, Pardulus, in presenting him to the clergy of Lyons, had identified him as “the famous Irishman at the court.”⁴ Whatever his experience in Ireland may have been, it was on his arrival in Gaul around 847 that he displayed the depth and variety of his knowledge. He quickly gained the interest and respect of the king, Charles the Bald, by his study and in teaching at the cathedral school of Laon, then one of the intellectual centers of the kingdom.

The Gottschalk, whose writings he had been asked to assess, was a Saxon monk of a noble family, whose father, Count Bruno, had entrusted him as an oblate to the monastery of Fulda, where Hrabanus Maurus would soon be abbot and master of studies. In fact, the career of Gottschalk, both monastic and theological, was marked by controversy. He revolted against the authority of Hrabanus Maurus and sought to be dispensed from his vows. By a series of canonical maneuvers he managed to get himself transferred to Orbais and then to Corbie. This lack of monastic stability was surely a consequence of his doctrinal obstinacy. In an effort to justify his thesis on predestination, whose rigorous character upset many theologians of the time, he undertook long trips without ecclesiastical permission, even to Rome, but especially to the court of Count Eberhard of Friuli, during the years 845-46. As a result of these peregrinations he was finally interned as a prisoner in the monastery of Hautvillers, under the surveillance of Hincmar, at the explicit behest of Hrabanus Maurus, now archbishop of Mainz. His theology of predestination, which he keenly defended despite condemnations and warnings, elicited a passionate and confused debate in the ninth-century church, into which Scottus Eriugena was introduced, however imprudently, by Hincmar of Rheims. As we shall see, he took home more bitterness than renown from this controversy.

Let us note from the outset that the two protagonists in this debate, Gottschalk and John the Scot, were each, in their own way, outsiders to the established order. One was a rebellious monk and a controversial theologian, because he had suffered at the hands of that order. The other, an intellectual and humanist, considered himself beyond its grasp, protected as he was by King Charles. It should also be noted that both of them had access to libraries where they could study classical authors and the church fathers, particularly Augustine, who were by their own account their sole teachers.

Perhaps it was their status as outsiders to the established order which allowed these two thinkers to consider the question of predestination—one of those which elicited most passion in the third generation of the Carolingian Renaissance—in so highly personal a fashion. Indeed, the vehement reactions to their writings showed that they succeeded in disturbing the intellectual harmony Charles the Bald had sought to promote.

We shall begin this introduction by briefly recalling places and settings, as well as the principal personages and ideas which comprised the context of this period of the Carolingian Renaissance. Next we shall study the unfolding of the controversy on predestination and finally see how peace was restored among minds at the price of a compromise between two theologically opposed visions of the relationship between divine knowledge and human freedom.

THE THIRD GENERATION OF THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

The term ‘renaissance’ has long been reserved for the explosion of arts and letters which characterized the sixteenth century. According to a tenacious prejudice, the Renaissance appeared as a sudden dawn putting an end to the prolonged darkness of the Middle Ages. Studies appearing in recent decades, however, have shown just how simplistic such a vision has been. We have discovered, with increasing amazement, that the Middle Ages were marked by successive renaissances which progressively shaped humanism in the West. Chronologically, the first of these renaissances is what we have called the Carolingian Renaissance, named after the emperor who initiated it in the ninth century. Under the authority and the stimulus of Charlemagne, western Europe experienced a renewal of thought and letters in the ninth century. During this time we find a concerted effort of appropriation and assimilation of literary sources, humanist and patristic, the outcome of which can be evaluated in the set of theological and political conceptions that became normative for Christian thought during these centuries.

The Carolingian Renaissance lasted from the final quarter of the eighth century to the first quarter of the tenth. It comprised four distinct literary generations, the third of which covers the period which interests us, that of Charles the Bald, who died in 877. This youngest son of Louis the Pious (who died in 840) became king of the western part of France, according to the treaty of Verdun. He displayed and executed superior military and diplomatic skill in protecting his kingdom against invasions from his own brothers from the east as well as incursions of Vikings from the west. Alongside these efforts, his lack of familial ties with the populace of his kingdom made him that much more attentive to encouraging literary activity on the part of his subjects and his clergy. Following the example of his grandfather Charlemagne, who availed himself of the spiritual and cultural assistance of Alcuin, Charles exercised care and discernment in selecting persons who could help him achieve his goals: Walafrid Strabo, the first director of his school; Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims, whose personality as well as doctrinal and theological position we shall discover later; Lupus of Ferrières, and others as well. Since he was able to act only with the support of the nobles and the church, Charles was very liberal in his treatment of the ecclesiastical community, making grants to monasteries as well as distributing monetary, financial, and commercial privileges to the church. He was himself interested, all the while, in mathematics and theology. Poems which were dedicated to him recognized him as much for his liberality as for his interest in studies. Among others, Eriugena, in his poem beginning with the words Auribus aebraicis, implores Christ to come to Charles's assistance against the barbarians and praises the king as patron of the church.⁵

The most salient fact for our consideration is the partisan and effective participation of King Charles in the theological disputes of his time. In that regard, he had been formed by the teaching and especially the spirit of his tutor, Lupus of Ferrières. Faithful to Alcuin, Lupus considered intellectual formation to be a journey whose goal was the study of the Bible and the truths of faith. He could have subscribed to what Alcuin wrote at the outset of his Grammar: “My dear children: may your youth develop each day along the path of the arts in such a way that an age more mature and a mind more robust will be able to attain the heights of the Holy Scriptures. In that way, fully armed, you will become invincible defenders and preachers of the true faith.”⁶ Reading and explication of the Scriptures were indeed the principal tasks one might accomplish in entrusting oneself to the teaching of the Fathers: mostly the Latin Fathers and those among the Greek Fathers cited by the Latins, excerpted in the canonical collections, or for whom traditional translations were extant.

We know the sources available in the private library of Charles the Bald, a library for his own use and probably not accessible to the Palatine School. Among other works it contained The Life of Charlemagne by Einhard, the treatise De tribus quaestionibus of Lupus of Ferrières, one by Hincmar on the soul, treatises on the Eucharist by Ratramnus of Corbie and Paschasius Radbertus, as well as the works of Augustine. The library of Wulfad, the friend of Eriugena to whom he dedicated the Periphyseon and abbot of Saint Médard at Soissons and later bishop of Bourges, was even more ample, including works by Bede, Isidore, Ambrose, and Augustine. To be sure, all these sources could not be said to be known with equal precision; those who cited them often did so at second or third hand. Moreover, no one employed a historical-critical method to decipher them, which could have cast light on the diverse and sometimes contradictory stages in the intellectual evolution of their authors. This is especially significant for reading the works of Augustine, where selected texts could just as well serve to justify gemina praedestinatio: the double predestination to punishment and to reward so dear to Gottschalk—indeed, he had braved two synods defending it—as the conviction, as Eriugena understood it, that human freedom of choice is the very heart of freedom.

Charles the Bald not only gave evidence of great interest in the theological controversies of his time, as we have noted, but even animated a few of them. A list of them can be found, albeit lacking relevant dates, which are far from easy to establish, in the treatise De praedestinatione composed by Hincmar of Rheims in 859-60.⁷ What is striking about the debates, as well as a measure of what one may call the humanism of the Carolingian Renaissance, is the linkage uniting theology, psychology, and anthropology for the intellectuals of this period. This is especially clear when it comes to the problems posed by the theory of double predestination, as it leaves no room for human freedom. But it is also true of the debate on the beatific vision, a question inextricably linked to problems articulating the relation of soul to body, and to the status of our natural capacities. That is why we must briefly call to mind the content and progress of these other two debates before focusing our attention on the controversy over predestination, since they display the same oppositions between the contrary positions. This comparison will allow us to better comprehend the reactions which Gottschalk's theology elicited, and especially the urgency with which Hincmar was impelled to have recourse to the judgment of Scottus Eriugena.

King Charles was particularly interested in the question of the relationship between soul and body. He had already asked Ratramnus of Corbie to delineate the teaching of different authors on the question of knowing whether the soul is circumscribed in place. Ratramnus had explained that, on account of the intellect, the soul transcended the limits of body. Charles the Bald then turned to Hincmar, who held a contrary position, namely that our souls are contained within our bodies. To justify his opinion, Hincmar appended to his response a florilegium of texts entitled “Quod anima sit in corpore.”⁸ He used this to counteract a position whose extreme consequence came in asserting a separation between our localized actions and our intellectual intentions, or so it seemed to him. We should note that both John the Scot and Gottschalk kept their distance from this discussion, yet the ideas at work in it were nonetheless present in their debate, however indirectly. Thus, in his pastoral letter “To the Simple Believers in His Diocese,” which mentioned the errors of Gottschalk, Hincmar recounted that since 849, in his discussions of the vision of God, the monk “was more concerned with the way in which one might see him than with the merit which the vision assumes.”⁹ We know the position of Gottschalk from a letter which he wrote to Ratramnus of Corbie on the subject. There he indicates his desire to open a consultation regarding a passage of Saint Augustine's De civitate Dei, where the bishop of Hippo raises the possibility that either “God will be visible to our bodily eyes”—a supposition difficult or even impossible to justify from Scripture, or that “God will be known and visible in that He will appear spiritually to each one of us,” a position easier to comprehend.¹⁰ Gottschalk had opted, despite Augustine's reservations, for a radical spiritualization of resurrected bodies. Lupus of Ferrières, one of Gottschalk's correspondents, laid out what could appear dangerous in his position: “The elucidations which I have just given … should make you understand, above all, that God will not be visible in any body, either properly or figuratively, to eyes which do not participate in intelligence: such a privilege is reserved to spirit alone.”¹¹ The position which Gottschalk was defending resulted in radically severing any organic connection between intentions, choice, and human actions on the one side, and the ultimate reward of the beatific vision on the other. For that vision was no longer an accomplishment which succeeded in crowning the intellectual and voluntary efforts of the blessed, but a decree of God most high which changed the condition of corporeal matter. We shall note this fundamental tendency in the thought of Gottschalk again in the controversy over predestination. This was certainly the most animated debate of the ninth century and the only one in which John the Scot participated, so far as we know.

THE CONTROVERSY OVER PREDESTINATION

It is crucial for understanding the thesis of double predestination, as Gottschalk defended it, to realize how intimately it is tied to his conception of time. The history of philosophy, as well as our own spiritual experience, shows us that there are two ways of perceiving and defining time, two intuitions which are given expression in two opposing images: the arrow which moves forward versus the indefinitely recurring cycle. The perception of time as an arrow is a principle of explication which puts the nonreversibility of history into relief, the unique and unforeseen character of each event, thereby underscoring the possibility of progress. The perception of time as a cycle considers history as a harmony planned out in advance. On this view of things, contingency in nature as well as the feeling harbored deep in the human heart according to which one might have done otherwise or might do better tomorrow, are utter illusions. The outcome of human history is as implacable as the revolution of the planets.

It was the second of these two intuitions which struck Gottschalk, and which he succeeded in reducing into his extreme interpretation. For him, the circle of time contracts into a point, into the very instant in which God most high decrees the end of the history of each of His creatures. From that point on our acts lose all relevance; everything has been determined, “fixed,” one might say, from the beginning. In one way, we might say that this vision finds its source in fascination with the perfection of God. In effect, what relevance could history have, with its run of contingencies, of successes and failures, in the face of the program of the Most High, a program foreseen from the beginning and one which He accomplishes in the details which He has fixed from eternity?

What characterized history conceived according to the arrow of time, namely the possibility of improvement or of deterioration, emerged in this vision as contrary to the perfection of God. In effect, if men could improve themselves with time, they would not have been created perfect; if they could deteriorate, that would mean that the program would not unfold according to a perfect law. What fascinated Gottschalk was the fullness of divine wisdom, from which he concluded that we must find therein the necessary strength to undertake what we will necessarily become, according to the divine plan: bodies either glorified or damned. Pastors and teachers of the faith could not help but be disturbed by so drastic a theological thesis, particularly one which concerned a question as fundamental as that of the connection between human freedom and our final beatitude. Hrabanus Maurus expressed his misgivings in a letter to Hincmar of Rheims in 848, requesting that he restrict Gottschalk to his diocese: “May your lordship know that an itinerant monk, who says that he is incardinated in your diocese, has arrived among us in Italy, and is spreading a pernicious doctrine of divine predestination, leading people into error. He supposes that the predestination of God extends to evil as well as good, and that there are men in this world who cannot correct their erroneous ways nor turn from sin, because the predestination of God impels them to [everlasting] death.”¹²

The scrutiny to which ecclesiastical and teaching authorities submitted this thesis elicited a long and sharp controversy. We should not be surprised to find King Charles the Bald directly interested in this debate, exercising his authority in selecting theologians whose opinion he solicited, or in convoking councils where these theological questions would be debated. Gottschalk had in effect disseminated a doctrine which threatened to undermine the authentic Christian humanism of the Carolingian kingdom by upsetting the delicate balance between divine wisdom and the possibility for men to follow the path of justice. The authority to which all sides had recourse during the debate was clearly that of Saint Augustine. But Gottschalk compromised the goal and the program which Augustine had proposed in the City of God. Let us recall briefly the general structure of this great work, as Augustine himself conveyed it to his friend Firmus, the publicist. He made clear in his letter that we are faced with a composition in two distinct parts: one part refuting the vanities of the impious, the other clarifying our religion. From the initial pages, in effect, the City of God was directed not only to Christians exercising their desire to deepen their faith, but also to unbelievers curious to know something about this religion. At the end of his exposition, Augustine directed himself to his pagan interlocutor and challenged him one last time to make the “passage to the city of God” by acknowledging the universal mediation of the man-God, Jesus Christ. As for Christians, they must prepare themselves for eternal beatitude which will be theirs after the judgment, by entrusting themselves to the divine promises. The vision of God, adapted to the capacities of each, yet fully satisfying the hopes and capacities of all, must be their only goal, giving direction to their earthly existence: “for what other aim could be ours but to arrive at the kingdom which has no end?”¹³

In this way Saint Augustine had succeeded in holding together the two perceptions of time which we have just opposed. History is governed by the immutable wisdom of God, but it has a direction and admits of improvement. The goal of history, restoring all things in Christ, will comprise the time of a yet more exalted state than that of the first creation. Contemplating all the images and traces of Himself which God has left in creation, even after the fall, anchors our experience in a state which transcends infinitely anything we could imagine.¹⁴ The doctor of Hippo succeeded in this way to ground the delicate balance between the omnipotence of God's wisdom and the hope inscribed in human freedom. This was the very thesis which threatened the theory of Gottschalk. Hincmar, who with Hrabanus Maurus had negotiated at this time the reconciliation of Charles the Bald with the emperor Lothar, asked counsel as to how to proceed while Gottschalk waited at Orbais. A synod of bishops was to take place at the royal residence of Quierzy in February-March 849. Hincmar arraigned the condemned man in the presence of King Charles. He was condemned again, and the sentence read: “We decree, by our episcopal authority, that you shall be flogged and confined, according to the regulations, to prison. And lest you continue to presume to teach your doctrines, we impose an eternal silence on your mouth, by virtue of the eternal Word.”¹⁵ Hincmar had chosen as his place of confinement the monastery of Hautvillers which was within his own jurisdiction.

Nevertheless, Gottschalk managed to continue his theological reflection and propagate his thesis. This is the point where he proposed the consultation regarding the beatific vision, to which we have already alluded. Hincmar, fearing that the heresy was spreading, composed a long pastoral letter entitled “To Simple Believers,” addressed to the faithful of his diocese. As we shall see, the wording was not very propitious, for it left the impression that Hincmar had put water in the wine of pure doctrine, either from weakness or from following an exaggerated concern not to ask too much from the weak and the childlike. Moreover, once having decided, with Pardulus of Laon, to solicit opinions from many theologians, Hincmar discovered that he was doctrinally quite alone. The first of the masters consulted, Prudentius of Troyes, responded that predestination to death and to life was in fact a cardinal principle of true doctrine. Ratramnus of Corbie attacked Hincmar's pastoral letter in a communication addressed to Gottschalk himself.¹⁶ Hrabanus Maurus, tired and aging, confined himself to concurring with the opposition to Hincmar, and stated that he would henceforth decline to participate in debate. Finally, Lupus de Ferrières was solicited by King Charles himself to write a treatise, De tribus quaestionibus,¹⁷ in which he joined in with the position of the other theologians, criticizing the pastoral letter “To Simple Believers.”

Hincmar received these documents from Charles the Bald himself, so one can imagine his consternation. He had, he believed, the right to expect support from such a theologian in defending the thesis which allowed one to uphold the omnipotence of God together with the fullness of God's knowledge, on the one hand, and the unique character of the human creature, capax boni et mali, on the other. How could it diminish the perfection of God if one saw God as creator of human beings endowed with reason and will, and so be able to meet the questions which life poses them in a creative fashion? Taking counsel from Pardulus, Hincmar decided to solicit the help of a master of the palatine court hitherto removed from the debate: one whose knowledge and authority was all the more esteemed in that he enjoyed the favor of the king, the learned John the Scot.

THE TEXT

The De praedestinatione of Eriugena comes to us in one manuscript only, originating from Corbie. It consists of a preface, nineteen chapters and an epilogue.¹⁸ The nineteen summaries which he himself placed at the head of each chapter give an adequate idea of its structure and content. The work is abundantly documented: besides numerous texts from Scripture, Scottus Eriugena cites Augustine as his principal source, Gregory the Great, Isidore, and among pagan authors, Cicero, as well as Boethius, and closer to hand, Alcuin. Nonetheless, this veritable arsenal of Carolingian culture was made to serve and support a thesis which appeared quite revolutionary. Scottus Eriugena appealed to the tribunal of reason to show that it condemned, along with the entire tradition judiciously interpreted, any idea of predestination. His thesis is clear, radical, and straightforward: Gottschalk was wrong; no one can hold double predestination. Given that God is eternal, we cannot say that He foresees or predetermines. Beyond that, to think that God foresees sin and punishment is silly: evil does not exist, being a pure absence, so one cannot know it. To think that God has prepared hell from the beginning of time for human beings is a pitiful anthropomorphism. God is the Good above all goods and the source of all good. The only punishment is immanent to sin itself, confining sinners in the prison of their own conscience.

Scottus Eriugena bases his reasoning here on the young Augustine, disciple of Plotinus, and especially on his treatise De vera religione. In doing so he managed to propose a vision of human beings which could hardly satisfy Hincmar: a vital and dynamic correlation between will, memory, and knowledge. The concept of freedom is constitutive of human willing. God could not, at the price of contradiction, will human beings to be what they are, while at the same time removing their freedom. Of the two images of time—arrow or cycle—which we have contrasted, Eriugena opts for the arrow: in their very essence, human beings have this possibility to resist whatever limits their intellectual inquiry or restricts their will. After the redaction of De praedestinatione, the theologians engaged in the controversy surrounding Gottschalk found themselves facing two diametrically opposed visions of the relationship between man and God, inspired by two contrary conceptions of history: one for which progress was only apparent, as in Gottschalk; the other according to which progress was the very law of history. As for the reality of time, there is either the creating “now” in which all has been decreed, for Gottschalk, or a pure élan giving each instant a novelty which escapes any foreseeing, for Scottus.

It is hardly surprising that the De praedestinatione was a scandal and succeeded in arraying against Scottus Eriugena all the argumentation of those defending Gottschalk, while compromising the adversaries of the monk, who had opposed Gottschalk as champions of orthodoxy yet were now suspected of sharing and favoring the errors of Scottus. Hincmar regretted having solicited his collaboration: such a protagonist was most dangerous to those whose cause he proposed to serve! The other side published vigorous refutations. Wenilo, archbishop of Sens, selected parts of each chapter and sent them to Prudentius of Troyes, who composed a substantial work on predestination: De praedestinatione contra Joannem Scotum, published in 852 with a preface by Wenilon.¹⁹ It is a compact discussion, taking chapter by chapter as a dialectician would. Although Prudentius knew Scottus, he treated him harshly, accusing him of having revived the heresies of Pelagianism and of Origen and of being another Julian of Eclanum. He had recourse to an irony which, with regard to Eriugena's display of learning, could only be called biting.

Scottus had given his detractors a field day: seventy-seven propositions taken from his book were refuted in this manner. As a final blow, a group which could boast of the best names of theology in the kingdom of Charles the Bald—Ratramnus, Lupus of Ferrières, and Prudentius—mobilized to defend the authentic Augustinianism which they felt to be threatened by the condemnation of Gottschalk. Deemed responsible, however indirectly, for the book of John the Scot, Hincmar was forced to defend his prestige and authority. Having received from Charles the Bald the dossier compiled against Scottus, and against his specific capitula, Hincmar responded by way of an immense work (presently lost), in which he confirmed his hostility to the thesis of Gottschalk while awkwardly repudiating the pultes scotticae. But this was hardly enough to calm the waters. For the theologians of Lyons and of Sens, Hincmar would always be the enemy of augustinianism and the ally of Eriugena. So he composed a new volume of modest proportions, De praedestinatione, and dedicated it (as he had the earlier one) to Charles the Bald. But the defenders of double predestination did not lay down their arms but rather worked to win the favor of Pope Nicholas I. According to Prudentius, the Pope confirmed the doctrine of double predestination and that of redemption “for all believers” before the end of 859. This pontifical stance was doubtless the cause of Hincmar's loss of heart, as he ceased to pursue the debate. He no longer sought to impose his theology, looking rather for ways to end the battle and save his honor. He composed a synodal letter which we still possess, a masterpiece of political conciliation, whose formulae are sufficiently vague to be adopted by all the protagonists in the debate as well as the faithful at large, while carefully disguising what was at issue in the debate. He treated Christian dogmas and attacks on church property in one breath, elucidating in no particular order the doctrine of God, the Trinity, angels, human beings, the fall, redemption, and the sacraments. He included a sentence which could please everyone without compromising the truth: “qui vult omnes homines salvos fieri … quique corporis morte in cruce pro omnibus debitoribus … omnes qui salvandi sunt, id est omnes praedestinati.”²⁰ In this way peace was restored and each party could retain its positions. Prudentius of Troyes and Florus of Lyons were free to interpret omnes and omnibus in a restricted sense, and vult in the sense of a decree fixed once and for all.

Of all those involved, Gottschalk alone profited nothing from the armistice, whose tepid outcome could hardly satisfy him. He tried his luck again in turning to Pope Nicholas I and in soliciting a response from the council of Metz (863). Hincmar absented himself from the council, and the pope died in 867. Deprived of communion and ecclesiastical burial, the itinerant monk died soon after. As for John the Scot, the incident of his intervention had no further unpleasant consequences for him, beyond the sharp and ironic replies of Prudentius and Florus, and the criticisms of the councils of Valence and Langres. We have already seen how Hincmar, aware of his misstep, had little by little disassociated his theology from the master to whom he had appealed. He did his best to suppress the entire affair. The only time he ever again mentioned the name of John the Scot was to deny any connection to his own part in the debate. Perhaps he hoped to drown his own zeal in forgetfulness.

In fact, however, the debate continued from one council to another, and from synod to synod, until the end of the century. Indeed, has it ever ceased in the history of Christian theology or in the inner experience of Christian holiness? The benefit—if the word applies and benefit there be—of the Gottschalk affair is to have clearly shown that the Carolingian Renaissance had hardly achieved unanimity regarding these questions touching the personal life of the faithful as much as the cultural balance of the City of God. The extended controversy of the ninth century featuring Gottschalk proved but one episode in the everlasting struggle between two tendencies which divided the human spirit; indeed one might add, between two ways of appealing to the theology of Augustine. For some, like Ratramnus, Lupus of Ferrières, Remigius, or Florus, who had recourse to the writings of his anti-Pelagian period, it was always a matter of affirming unequivocally the primacy of the divine will. For others, like Hrabanus Maurus or Hincmar, who based their ideas on the writings of the period when Augustine was combating the Manichees, the issue was safeguarding the goodness of God and the free interplay of human action in the drama of salvation. What is certain is that Scottus Eriugena could not but feel alien to that division of minds. What is more, as much because of his culture and his dialectical skill as well as the originality of his insights, he was unable not to appear a stranger to the discussion, even to those who had recourse to him. Men of power and of action, like Hincmar and Hrabanus Maurus, would have preferred to understand predestination as a foreknowledge of the merits of good works, while keeping God in the role of a simple witness to the struggle for which he crowned the victors.

It is clear that John the Scot had no further role in the debate. Removed from the controversy, he continued to enjoy the protection of Charles the Bald, developing in his Periphyseon the metaphysics of the return to God which undergirded his thesis. In this work, he elucidates the relation between God and the world, so explicating all that is required of human beings who adopt this vision of the world. It is, in a word, courage: “the courage, above all, to engage in philosophy, that is, to pose the question of being and nonbeing. The courage to continue the never-ending task of breaking every idol, exposing every false identification, to return to the place of one's true identity, the ‘nonbeing’ par excellence, to live in an ‘unknowing’ analogous to the ‘unknowing’ of God.”²¹ For John the Scot, human freedom and beatitude come only at this price.

Notes

1. J. Trouillard, “Rencontre du néoplatonisme,” Revue de théologie et philosophie 22 (1972): 9.

2. J. Trouillard, “La virtus gnostica selon Jean Scot Erigène,” Revue de théologie et philosophie 33 (1983): 331.

3. A. Wohlman, L'homme, le monde sensible et le péché dans la philosophie de Jean Scot Erigène (Paris, 1987).

4. Pardulus, “Epistola ad ecclesiam Lugdunensem” inserted in “De tribus epistolis,” PL 121.1052A.

5. See also D. Moran, The Philosophy of John Scotus Erigena (Cambridge, 1989), 17.

6. Alcuin, “Grammatica,” PL 125.296D.

7. Hincmar, “De praedestinatione,” PL 125.296D.

8. PL 125.948A-52D.

9. Hincmar, “Ad simplices” edited by W. Gundlach in “Zwei Schriften des Erzbischofs Hinkmar von Reims,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 10 (1889): 258-309.

10. Augustine, “De civitate Dei,” XXII.29 (PL 41.800-801); Gottschalk, “Carmen ad Ratramnum,” PL 121.367-72.

11. Lupus of Ferrières, “Epistola ad Godescalcum,” PL 119.491-92 (ed. E. Dümmler, 38).

12. Hrabanus Maurus, “Epistola synodialis,” PL 112.1574-76.

13. “De civitate Dei,” 22.309.5 (PL 41.804G).

14. “De civitate Dei,” 22.12.24.

15. Hincmar, “Ad simplices” (ed. W. Gundlach, 308-9).

16. Hrabanus Maurus, “Epistola ad Hincmarum,” PL 119.621-46.

17. Lupus of Ferrières, “De tribus quaestionibus,” PL 119.621-48.

18. PL 122.355-440.

19. Prudentius of Troyes, “De praedestinatione contra Joannem Scotum,” PL 115. 1109-1366.

20. Hincmar, “Epistola concilii Tusiacensis ad rerum ecclesiaticarum pervasores et ad pauperum praedatores,” PL 126.123C, 124D, 126B; see also “De praedestinatione,” PL 125.55-474.

21. Wohlman, L'homme, le monde sensible et le péché, 606.