SOURCE: Carabine, Deirdre. “The Structure of Reality.” In John Scottus Eriugena, pp. 29-43. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

[In the following excerpt, Carabine discusses Eriugena's use of negative theology as part of his description of the nature of reality.]

Eriugena's overall view of reality, both human and divine, will be familiar to students of Neoplatonism, based as it is on the dual movement of procession and return: every effect remains in its cause, proceeds from it, and returns to it.¹ Although I have chosen to discuss Eriugena's ideas within the framework of divisoria and resolutiva (diairetike and analytike), both “ways” must be understood as intrinsically entwined and, strictly speaking, are not separate movements or processes. “For the procession of the creatures and the return of the same are so intimately associated in the reason which considers them that they appear to be inseparable the one from the other” (P. [Periphyseon] II 529A, 532A). As I will show, the link between the two is the Word: divisoria is through the Word, and the Word is also the first principle of resolutiva. Eriugena's method begins with the mind's dialectical process of breaking down a concept or problem into its constituent parts and then reassembling it. The science of dialectics, which had been outlined in the treatise On Predestination as division, definition, demonstration, and resolution, in the Periphyseon concentrates on division and resolution. Dialectic, as the “mother of the arts,” can descend from genus to species or ascend from species to genus (P. V 870B). According to Paul Rorem, Eriugena applied this method to the “macrocosm of metaphysics” in that he adapted the Neoplatonic theme of exitus and reditus “to the entire history of God and the world.”²

The dialectical method that Eriugena elaborates through exitus and reditus operates both on an epistemological level (the way the human mind operates) and on an ontological level (the way reality is structured). In fact, there is an interlocking relationship in Eriugena's thought between reality and how the human mind structures reality. The vast project of mapping out the contours of natura in the Periphyseon is based on the human mind's control of the linear or circular unfolding of natura and its ultimate resolution in its source. Human rationality and the limitations of the mind become the determinants of, and set the boundaries for, natura, as I will show in chapter 5. The starting point of the Periphyseon is natura (physis) taken in all its inclusiveness: “all things which are and which are not,” both being and non-being (P. I 441A). This initial division, quae sunt et quae non sunt, the source of which can be traced to Marius Victorinus, the famous Roman orator, Boethius, and the Pseudo-Dionysius, is a phrase Eriugena uses not only in the Periphyseon but also in the treatise On Predestination and the Homilia.³ According to reason, “nothing at all can come into our thought that would not fall under this term” (P. I 441A); indeed, as I will show, things both within and outside the mind's grasp are included in the genus natura. In this sense, the mind serves as the determination of natura, which comprises both the finite and the infinite—a bold step on Eriugena's part, given the existing philosophical and theological trends of his time. The basic difference between being and non-being, which is based solely on the capabilities of the human mind, means that Eriugena's cosmology is based on human insight, truly a daring and innovative thesis to defend.⁴ On Eriugena's part, the use of the all-inclusive term natura can be seen as an attempt to explain a totally rational, logically divided universe.⁵ However, despite Eriugena's efforts to find a comprehensive category through which to explain reality, human rationality itself, in the process of determining that which is and that which is not, is confronted with its own limitations, which, as I will show in chapter 6, stem from the fall. Natura, which includes non-being, necessarily escapes finite boundaries and cannot be defined fully. Nevertheless Eriugena, at the helm of the good ship Reason, enters into uncharted waters with a daring and fearless spirit. Whether or not he succeeds in this mammoth task will become clearer as I examine the structure of natura as it is presented in the Periphyseon.

DIVISION AND RESOLUTION

Book I of the Periphyseon finds the nutritor and the alumnus engaged in a discussion of how the genus natura can be understood. The four divisions or species that are derived from this genus through the process of diairetike show the Christian focus of universal nature: that which creates and is not created; that which is created and creates; that which is created and does not create; and that which is not created and does not create (P. I 441B). The first division denotes God as cause; the second division refers to the causes of all things created by God in the Word; the third division denotes all that is created by the causes; the fourth division refers to God as end. The source of this division of natura has been the topic of much scholarly discussion and Bede, Marius Victorinus, Boethius, Augustine, and Pythagorean number theory have been among the sources suggested.⁶ While scholarly detective work has uncovered a number of likely sources for Eriugena's divisions, I believe Pythagorean number theory to be the most likely because of a rather explicit passage in the writings of Philo of Alexandria that reflects the division of natura as outlined by Eriugena: some numbers beget without being begotten; some beget and are begotten; some are begotten without begetting; and one neither begets nor is begotten (On the Making of the World 99-100). While further investigation on this particular theme could perhaps be undertaken, the similarity between the text in Philo and the divisions as explained by Eriugena is such that it is likely that Eriugena's entire scheme may have derived from a Pythagorean source, whether or not from Philo through Origen. The fourth division, that which is not created and does not create, which is an important logical component in the jigsaw of natura as envisaged by Eriugena, has been the focus of some debate, not only in terms of its source but also because it can be “classed among the impossibles” (P. I 442A). If it neither creates nor is created, then logically it cannot be. However, Eriugena's way of thinking about and expressing the mystery at the heart of all reality is not confined to the logic of language, although it is constrained by the limits of rationality. As I will show, the concept of the non-being of God as the ground of being constantly puts a strain on all formulated concepts in the sense that meaning and knowledge are reassigned to a very precarious position. Otten's portrayal of human reason operating “on the verge of complete confusion” because its grasp of reality is slim as a result of the fall is an accurate description of the mind's position. In Otten's view, the principle of rationality is constantly under stress as reason attempts to clarify the totality of natura, which is necessarily beyond the mind's capabilities.⁷ The tension between the divisions of natura, between creator and created, serve to heighten further the difficulties involved in mapping out the details of natura. Despite the mind's division of natura into the four parts, they remain parts of one whole, although two create and two do not create. Eriugena explains that the first and third divisions are opposites and the second and fourth divisions are opposites (P. I 442A; II 525C-526A). The opposition is finally resolved, but only after Eriugena has fleshed out each aspect of this division with precision, and it must be said, with a great deal of ingenuity.

One very important question, perhaps the most important question in relation to this particular issue, raised by the alumnus early in book III of the Periphyseon, concerns the reason why God, who is unbounded and infinite, is included as the first part of the universe, which is necessarily bounded by limit and finitude (620B-621A). The nutritor answers that God is not placed among the divisions of the created universe but among the divisions of that universe which is denoted by the term natura. This understanding of natura includes not only the created universe but also its creator; both together signify universal nature. However, there is some ambiguity in the Periphyseon with regard to the use of the term natura, and Eriugena is not consistent in using it to denote both the finite and the infinite; sometimes it is used to refer only to created realities.⁸

A further articulation of the divisions of reality, and a frequently repeated formula in the Periphyseon, is that God is the beginning, middle, and end of the created universe. God is that from which all things originate, that in which all things participate, and that to which all things will eventually return (P. III 621A-622A). As beginning and end, God can be understood in terms of the first and fourth divisions; as middle, we are to understand all created nature: the causes and the effects of those causes. Eriugena illustrates this conception of God as the source of all division and the end of all resolution using the example of the monad (the number one) as the source of all numbers; the center of the circle, the sign of the figure, and the point of the line can be understood in similar fashion (P. III 621C-D). The fact that God can be understood as all three is, Eriugena explains, the result of the triple movement of theological theoria (P. III 688B-C); these three cannot, of course, be distinguished in God. Human minds understand God according to different perspectives because of their finite, human-bound understanding. Similarly, the apparent duality of all natura is the result of deficient human understanding. The dual aspect observed in the first and last species of natura is a human construction in the mind, while the second and third divisions are to be understood both in the mind and in reality (P. II 528A). Division (and ultimate resolution) is simply an attempt of the human mind to impose some degree of comprehensibility on the concept natura. Our “double contemplation” sees God only in relation to created reality, which has a beginning and an end, and thus it makes a distinction in relation to God's nature. In contemplating natura in its comprehensiveness, the human mind, through divisoria and resolutiva, echoes the rhythm of creation itself, which is in eternal movement from unity back to unity.

With the process of divisoria explained to the satisfaction of the alumnus, the nutritor takes up the important themes of the nature of divine manifestation (theophany) and negative theology, and the remainder of book I is taken up with an examination of the categories as they relate to the divine essence. This exercise is not simply a logical one but provides the key to an understanding of how to interpret all that will be said about God in the books to follow. In book II, which opens with a summary of the divisions of natura, the nutritor finally explains how all division can ultimately be resolved. In God, there can be no duality; beginning and end have no temporal reality but are simultaneous and can, therefore, be reduced to a unity (P. II 527B). In the same way, the second and third divisions can be understood simply as created reality. Thus, four become two: God and creation. Eriugena makes one further bold step in relation to the process of resolutiva: “[b]ut suppose you join the creature to the creator so as to understand that there is nothing in the former save Him who alone truly is … will you deny that Creator and creature are one?” (P. II 528B). The alumnus answers quite comfortably in the negative and admits that all natura can be reduced to “an indivisible One, being Principle as well as Cause and End” (P. II 528B). Surely this idea must be the reason why the Periphyseon was associated with pantheism? According to Eriugena's mind, the rationale for this assertion is that nothing apart from God truly is, for all things participate in God, indeed do not have being apart from God. The whole of reality, then, is God since God is source, sustainer, and end. This discussion, the far-reaching conclusion of which almost sneaks up on the alumnus without causing alarm or protestation, is almost rudely abandoned as the alumnus changes the subject to a discussion of the second division of natura; the nutritor develops the idea that God is all things later in books II and III.

However, I should point out here that despite the reduction of two divisions to one, Eriugena always retains a basic distinction between the self-manifestation of God (theophany) and God (in God's self). Even in final theophany, when all things will have returned to God and God shall be “all in all,” Eriugena never “conflates” God and creature. The resolution of four divisions to two and two divisions to one accounts for the relationship between the divisions of universal natura, but does not explain away the uncreated aspect of God's nature, which has its source in divine reality, not in human conceptions of divine reality. Although the term “uncreated” is an integral part of the whole of natura as expressed in the Periphyseon, we cannot think that natura, however universal, somehow encapsulates the whole of God's infinite nature. Uncreated reality, which Eriugena expresses as “not being,” is beyond both being and non-being, and no verbal account, no matter how well constructed, can take account of the infinite, which necessarily escapes the “whatness” of definition and limit. The final resolution of the four divisions of natura to one can indeed be said to “unite” the finite and the infinite but only in so far as that which is infinite refers to God's self-manifestation in theophany. The final dialectic operative in Eriugena's thought is that while God can be understood as part of universal natura, the infinite nature of the divine essence can only be hinted at, never grasped. God remains transcendently above all things.

There is no one of those who devoutly believe and understand the truth who would not persistently and without any hesitation declare that the creative Cause of the whole universe is beyond nature and beyond being and beyond life and wisdom and power and beyond all things which are said and understood and perceived by any sense.

(P. III 621D-622A)

Therefore, the concept of natura is not defined by Eriugena: it escapes the realm of definition precisely because the mind cannot grasp that which is designated non-being. As I will show, for Eriugena, non-being has primacy over being because non-being means more than being: “for being is from Him but He is not Himself being. For above this being after some manner there is More-than-being, and absolute Being beyond language and understanding” (P. I 482B; V 898A-C). In the same way we can argue that the transcendence of God has primacy over natura, and a correct interpretation of the resolution of the divisions discovered in natura must be understood in terms of the dialectical method Eriugena employs in the Periphyseon.

A THEOCENTRIC UNIVERSE: UNITY IN DIVERSITY

Eriugena's dialectical approach to the terms “creator” and “created” provides the focus for some interesting discussion in relation to causality in the Periphyseon. According to our commonly accepted understanding, we understand “creator” and “created” as two separate entities. Eriugena presents us with a wonderfully different slant on this familiar understanding. Strictly speaking, God is uncreated, yet in the act of creating, God creates God's self (a se ipso creatur). This means that God, as cause, is the essence of all things (P. I 454A); outside of God there is nothing (P. I 452C). Therefore, the second and third divisions of nature are eternal, since they are God, and they are made, since they are not God. But how can that which is one thing be another different thing? Such a contradiction cannot be reconciled unless we do away with temporal categories. How does Eriugena arrive at this conclusion?

The simultaneous timeless and time-bound character of creation depends on the fact that all things were created in the Word (as I will show in chapter 4) by God at the same time because God could not have existed before God created, a dim hint of Eckhart's audacious statement: “without me God would not be God” (see the vernacular sermon Beati pauperes spiritu). The procession of God into created effects means that all things have the one primordial cause, all things have the same beginning, and ultimately, all will have the same end. All things are, therefore, bound together in the unity of their cause: “the beauty of the whole established universe consists of a marvellous harmony of like and unlike … an ineffable unity” (P. III 638A). This unity is not a synthesis resulting from strict logical thought processes whereby Eriugena can “resolve” the four divisions of nature into one, but is a unity that already pervades all diversity and difference. What does Eriugena mean by these strange statements that, as the alumnus notes, have the power to bewilder and strike us dumb with wonder? (P. III 646C). What Eriugena means can be said to sum up the central metaphysical foundation of the Periphyseon, which can be painted in very broad strokes as follows. God can be understood as darkness because of God's transcendence, yet this darkness is really lux excellentiam, an ineffable light that simply appears dark precisely because of its transcendent intensity (Hom. XIV 291B).⁹ However, Eriugena's use of this Dionysian theme is not consistent in the Periphyseon, and as I have argued elsewhere, his employment of “la métaphysique nocturne” displays a certain ambiguity.¹⁰ In the process of the going forth from God, the nothingness from which all things are created is actually God's self because there can be nothing coeternal and coexisting with God. This nothing becomes something through the creative process in that the unknowable reveals itself through creation and in so doing becomes something that both itself and created effects can know. The paradox of creation is that the original darkness of God, which is no thing, becomes light, becomes some thing. God's fullness above being is the “nothing” that is the negation of something, but through its becoming, it becomes the negation of the negation: the divine nature becomes “other” than itself: God becomes not-God through the process of ex-stasis, literally, God's going out from God.

Creation, then, according to the ideas elucidated primarily in the Periphyseon, simply means God's movement from nothing into being: from God into God. The transition from nothingness into something, indeed into all things, is “self-negation,” but there is, paradoxically, no “self” to negate until the movement into the causes begins: “for as yet there is no essence” (P. III 683A). “For if the understanding of all things is all things and It alone understands all things, then It alone is all things. … For It encircles all things and there is nothing within It but what, in so far as it is, is not Itself, for It alone truly is” (P. III 632D-633A). Creation, therefore, does not refer to the making of things that exist outside of God, because in the very act of creating, the divine essence actually creates itself. “So it is from Himself that God takes the occasions of His theophanies, that is, of the divine apparitions, since all things are from Him and through Him and in Him and for Him” (P. III 679A). Thus it is that Eriugena can assert, quite confidently, that outside of God there is nothing (P. I 452C). “And while it is eternal it does not cease to be made, and made it does not cease to be eternal, and out of itself it makes itself, for it does not require some other matter which is not itself in which to make itself” (P. III 678D-679A). The act of creation is coeternal with God and coessential because Eriugena, in correct theological fashion, cannot compromise God's simplicity and infinity by acknowledging that God existed before God created.

The processio into created effects can be understood as an increasing lightening or brightening of being. A simple analogy can be helpful in explaining this point. When I walk into a dark room with which I am familiar (that is, I know that there are objects in the room) and turn on a dimmer switch, the room becomes progressively brighter and its contents can clearly be seen. Similarly, the emergence of God from transcendent darkness means that God can be seen, signified by the fiat lux of Genesis, in created effects. It is in this sense that the lux trina, in becoming brighter, in becoming “other” than itself, is the dialectical self-revelation of God. The darkness that is ineffable light becomes light in the darkness so that the light can return once again to the darkness. Thus, the process of creation is theophany—the appearance of God as other than God, the brightening of God—while at the same time God remains other than not God. God goes out to become not God, to become creature while remaining God, that is, God-in-otherness.¹¹ In the return, the complementary movement occurs: the creature goes out to become not creature, to become God while still remaining creature. Paradoxically, in the descent of God as other, God remains not other, and God is known both by God's self through what God has become and also by what God has become:

the Divine Nature … allows itself to appear in its theophanies, willing to emerge from the most hidden recesses of its nature in which it is unknown even to itself, that is, knows itself in nothing because it is infinite and supernatural and superessential and beyond everything that can and cannot be understood; but by descending into the principles of things and, as it were, creating itself, it begins to know itself in something.

(P. III 689B)

All being, therefore, is from God and in God and is God, while God remains transcendently not being or more than being (P. I 482B).

Therefore descending first from the superessentiality of His Nature, in which He is said not to be, He is created by Himself in the primordial causes and becomes the beginning of all essence, of all life, of all intelligence … and thus going forth into all things in order He makes all things and is made in all things, and returns into Himself.

(P. III 683A-B and Hom. XI 289B)

Circles have traditionally been an important image for a very practical understanding of much Neoplatonist thought, not least because a circle has neither definite beginning nor end. In a very basic sense, the movement from God and the return to God, both at the individual and cosmic levels, is neatly illustrated as circular movement. In similar terms, the creative activity of God can be described as follows. Imagine a series of circles, one behind the other, getting progressively smaller until only a point remains. No matter how small the point is, it can still be conceived of as the smallest possible circle, yet it remains a point to the naked eye. The converse movement can also be described as a point or infinitely small circle magnified or widening out into a series of circles increasing in size. The circular movement of exitus and reditus can be imagined as a spiraling process through creation (to the largest circle) and back again to its source. In this sense, Eriugena's thought shows its real Neoplatonic character: while remaining above all things or apart from all things (the center of the circle or the point), God moves into all things and truly becomes the essence of all things.

While one aspect of Eriugena's thought can be understood as an elucidation of the process of resolutiva when God shall be “all in all,” the fact that things exist means that God is, in an ineffable way, already “all in all,” although this is more difficult to appreciate from an earth-bound perspective. God cannot be understood as either “this” or “that,” yet God is precisely “this and that” (P. I 468B). God is both the maker of all things and is made in all things (P. I 454C; III 650C-D), a very definite confusion of the laws of causality. “But if the creature [is] from God, God will be the Cause, but the creature the effect. But if an effect is nothing else but a made cause, it follows that God the Cause is made in His effects” (P. III 687C). According to Otten, this passage represents an inversion of the hierarchical order of cause and effect. “Instead of God creating the world in his capacity of being its eternal cause, it is God who becomes created through his effects. Eriugena thus appears completely to overturn the logical order of events as he comes to make creation almost responsible for God's unfolding as its cause.”¹² Thus, it is the notion of theophany (the appearance of God) that guides Eriugena's confident and repeated assertion that God is all things.

The continuous dialectic in Eriugena's thought must be understood not only in the context of his understanding of divine reality from the viewpoint of negative theology, but also in terms of the metaphysical foundations of his thought. That God is all things is a very basic Neoplatonic, specifically Plotinian, assertion (to hen panta), which sees all multiplicity as an underlying unity, and yet the One is not all things simply because it is the One (Enn. VI 7, 32, 12-40). That God is all things and yet is not all things, is both transcendent and immanent, is the theological equivalent of the philosophical assertion of unity in diversity. The whole of natura is a basic unity characterized by diversity and difference. In the act of creation, which Eriugena often describes as a flowing out from or diffusion from God, things remain in their cause and will ultimately return to it.

For the whole river first flows forth from its source, and through its channel the water which first wells up in the source continues to flow always without any break to whatever distance it extends. So the Divine Goodness and Essence … first flow down into the primordial causes … flowing forth continuously through the higher to the lower; and return back again to their source.

(P. III 632B-C)

However, the basic concept that Eriugena describes in the Periphyseon, God is all things (God appears in created effects), is constantly thwarted by the affirmation of the dialectical truth of God's concealment in God's self in the darkness of inaccessible light. In this sense Eriugena's elucidation of the interplay and relationship between being and non-being assumes a fundamental importance in terms of a negative ontology and a negative theology.

BEING AND NON-BEING

As already shown, the fourfold division of nature expressed through the movement of exitus and reditus provides the basic framework for a broad explanation of Eriugena's ideas. However, one further framework outlined at the beginning of the Periphyseon clarifies, indeed precedes, the four divisions of natura and shows clearly the double aspect of each of them: the five modes of being and non-being. The dialectical tension between being and non-being is one of the great innovative themes of the Periphyseon, and indeed it can be regarded as the primary framework against which Eriugena's metaphysical scheme can be examined. It is because of the constant tension between the concepts of being and non-being, in the sense that non-being becomes being while remaining non-being, that we can conclude that Eriugena's understanding of these concepts is more differentiated than that of other authors before him; indeed it is not until the fourteenth century that a similar account of the relationship between being and non-being appears in Meister Eckhart's thought.¹³ Eriugena's understanding of the divine essence, the ultimate ground of reality, as nihil, or non-being, which itself lies beyond being and non-being, will guide him in developing a negative ontology, which was profoundly influenced by his reading of Gregory of Nyssa.¹⁴

In the Periphyseon we find that Eriugena rejects the interpretation of non-being in the privative sense (an interpretation that will be familiar to readers of Augustine on evil and a theme discussed by Eriugena in the treatise On Predestination).¹⁵ There is no doubt that Eriugena was strongly influenced by Greek thought in this regard, especially the Pseudo-Dionysius and Gregory of Nyssa, but it is also likely that a Western source, the treatise by Fredegisus, successor of Alcuin, Letter on Nothing and Darkness, where Fredegisus argues that nihil refers to something (that from which God created), would also have steered Eriugena's interpretation in the transcendent direction.¹⁶

The five modes of interpretation of the relationship between being and non-being, although not exhaustive, apply to all of natura: that which can be said to be and that which can be said not to be. The first mode asserts that all things that can be sensed or understood are said to be, but those things that, because of the excellence of their nature, elude both sense and intellect, can be said not to be (P. I 443A-D). “Not to be” refers not to what is absolutely not in the privative sense—“for how can that which absolutely is not, and cannot be … be included in the division of things?”—but refers to it in the transcendent sense and refers to God (and matter) and the reasons or essences of all things created by God.¹⁷ The illustrations used to clarify this important point are taken from the Pseudo-Dionysius and Gregory of Nyssa: God, the being above being, is the essence of all things, and no essence can be understood as to what it is.¹⁸ Here Eriugena stresses the idea that what can be sensed or understood is really an “accident” added to an essence that makes it known that the essence is, not what it is, a theme I discuss hereafter. This first mode of being and non-being has important consequences for many of the ideas outlined in the Periphyseon and is not simply a reformulation of the Dionysian understanding of God's being as non-being in the transcendent sense. Because the divine essence is unknowable to the human mind, it can be truly said not to be. The following four modes of being and non-being are based on the first and can be understood as different elaborations of it.

The second mode, which relates to created natures, assumes a vertical hierarchy in reality and is based on the general Neoplatonic principle that the negation of a lower order involves the affirmation of a higher order; the affirmation of a lower order is the negation of a higher order; the affirmation of a higher order is the negation of a lower order; and the negation of a higher order is the affirmation of a lower order (P. I 444A-C). Eriugena illustrates this point by noting that the affirmation of “man,” as a rational mortal animal, means that an angel is not a rational, mortal animal. What “man” is, angel is not, and what angel is, “man” is not. The same rule can be applied to all the orders of natura within two limits. On proceeding downward, the last order confirms or denies the order above it since there is nothing below it; on proceeding upward one reaches a halt at the highest negation,”for its negation confirms the existence of no higher creature.”¹⁹ According to Eriugena, the negation of the first of the three orders of angels (there are three orders and three groups of angels in each order) ends in pure negation since it cannot affirm a higher order. A second aspect of the second mode assumes a fundamental importance in terms of the unknowability of God. Every rational or intellectual order can be said to be in so far as it is known by the orders above it and by itself, but can be said not to be as it does not permit itself to be known by the orders below it. This idea of the hierarchy of being and non-being, therefore, does not depend on a strict Neoplatonic progression whereby each order is somehow contained in the order above it but rather has a more precise focus on the definitions of things. The example Eriugena gives makes this point clearly: what a human being is, an angel is not. In similar fashion, we can say that what God is, a human being is not and thereby affirm God's being and the non-being of human beings. Eriugena will later argue that only God truly is, while created nature exists through participation in God (P. III 646B). This mode of being and non-being, when regarded from the perspective of negative theology, adds a further dimension to the understanding of non-being. When human being is affirmed, God is understood to be non-being, and when God's “being” is affirmed, human beings can be understood as non-being. Thus, both senses of non-being operate on the same level within this particular mode.

The third mode of being and non-being refers to visible realities in existence and potential realities that still exist in their causes (P. I 444D-445A). Created effects in generation can be said to be, while that which is not yet manifest in matter, form, time, and place (that which is still held in the “most secret folds of nature”) can be said not to be. The example Eriugena uses to explain this point is the original creation of human beings. In creating Adam, God established all human beings at the same time, yet not all were brought into being at the same time. From the general nature (Adam), human beings are brought into visible essences at certain predetermined times and places. Thus, those who are visibly manifest in the world are said to be, while those who are destined to be in the future can be said not to be. The important difference, as Eriugena himself notes, between the first and third modes is that the first refers to all things once and for all made in their causes, while the third refers to those that are partly hidden in their causes and partly manifest. A further example is taken from the physical world. Seeds that are not yet manifest as that which they will become can be said not to be; when they have become a tree or plant, they can be said to be.

The fourth mode, in true Platonic fashion, asserts that only those things that can be contemplated by the intellect can be said to be, while those things that are in generation, that come into being and pass away, are said not to be truly (P. I 445B-445C). An important consequence of this mode of being and non-being is that all things can be said to be since they are known by the divine intellect, an important point, which I discuss in chapter 4.

The fifth mode concerns human nature itself, which, through the fall from paradise, lost its divine image, its true being, and can, therefore, be said not to be. When human nature is restored through the grace of God, it is reestablished in its image and begins to be. This mode also refers to those whom God calls daily to be from the secret folds of nature.

The interpretation of these modes and their place in the overall scheme of the Periphyseon is perplexing. Eriugena appears to be setting the scene for future discussion in that many of the fundamental themes of the Periphyseon are derived from these basic principles, but the modes themselves are not explicitly invoked in relation to the further development of certain themes. However, the first mode assumes the greatest importance in terms of the understanding of divine reality as non-being in the transcendent sense. One further important point is that through the elucidation of these five modes Eriugena clearly shows that being and non-being, while contradictory, are in a sense resolved, not only in God who is above both being and non-being and at the same time is being and non-being, but also at every level of reality, depending on one's starting point. Eriugena's exposition of these modes can be regarded as a perspectival approach, as Dermot Moran notes: “sometimes being comes out as greater than non-being, and sometimes it is the other way round.”²⁰ The lengthy discussion of nihil in book III of the Periphyseon, which I treat in chapter 4 in relation to the creative activity of God, elaborates Eriugena's basic understanding of non-being as the transcendent being of God from which God created all things. While we could argue that Eriugena's interpretation of the concepts of being and non-being is, as Moran suggests, “deeply subversive of the metaphysical tenet of the primacy of being,” a reading of Eriugena in his historical context would question this conclusion.²¹ Given the fact that the “primacy of being” would really only be established in the Western tradition by Aquinas in the thirteenth century, and that the Greek fathers (and some Western thinkers) had already engaged in a form of speculation that stressed the importance of non-being in the transcendent sense, it would be misleading to suggest that Eriugena was consciously attempting to formulate an alternative metaphysics. However, when Eriugena's speculations on the dialectical interplay between being and non-being are viewed in terms of the later development of philosophy, it is certain that his contribution to this particular theme, although unfortunately neglected for the most part, was innovative and can be read as an alternative to a metaphysics based on Exodus 3:14.

NEGATIVE ONTOLOGY

It is clear that Eriugena gives a privileged place to non-being in terms of an understanding of all reality. In fact, while it can be argued, as Moran does, that Eriugena constructs a radical meontology, it can also be said that he constructs a more “open” metaphysical system in line with the authorities of the Greek tradition. Otten, on the other hand, does not believe that Eriugena's use of non-being can be said to constitute a negative ontology; her view is that non-being reflects a problem of language.²² However, given Eriugena's views on the unknowability of all ousia, I believe that we can describe his ontology as negative. How? Eriugena's negative understanding of ousia (essence) was inspired by Gregory of Nyssa, who developed the notion that ousia is unknowable in response to the Eunomian belief that the father's ousia could be known through the appellation “ungenerate.” For Gregory, no ousia could be known in any sense. Eriugena's approach to all realities that can be understood within the overall concept of natura begins with a systematic examination of the constitution of things: a precise examination of the ten categories.²³ The discussion of negative and positive theology in Periphyseon book I concludes with the statement that God's essence, God's “whatness,” cannot be defined. This leads directly to a discussion of the categories where Eriugena notes at the outset, following Augustine, that these cannot be applied to God (P. I 463B-C). If any of the categories were applied to God, God could be understood to be a genus. In the same way that God is understood to be more than being, God is also understood to be more than each of the categories, although categories are often attributed to God by analogy precisely because God is cause. Therefore, while Eriugena is clear that the categories cannot be attributed to God according to the rules of negative theology, the fact that they are often applied metaphorically is consequent upon God's causal activity; they provide, as John Marenbon notes, “a sourcebook of cataphatic theology.”²⁴

According to Eriugena's understanding, what the human mind can know about things stems from the fact that they are differentiated and can be defined: they possess quality, quantity, and relations, are limited, are in place and time, and so on. In other words, we can define things according to the circumstances or accidents that differentiate them one from the other (P. I 471C). Relying on Gregory of Nyssa, Eriugena explains that “matter is nothing else but a certain composition of accidents which proceeds from invisible causes to visible matter” (P. I 479B). Form is the measurement imposed on unformed matter that places it within the realm of limitation and definition: “whether one call it place or limit or term or definition or circumscription, one and the same thing is denoted, namely the confine of a finite creature” (P. I 483C). “Whatness,” then, is concerned with limitation and pertains only to finite realities that are limited by “where?” and “when?” (P. I 482C). “There is no creature, whether visible or invisible, which is not confined in something within the limits of its proper nature by measure and number and weight” (P. II 590A-B). It is precisely the limitation of finitude that enables definition to take place. Because God is infinite, it follows that God cannot be defined. “But God understands that He is in none of those things but recognises that He [is] above all the orders of nature by reason of the excellence of His wisdom, and below all things by reason of the depth of His power. … He alone is the measure without measure, the number without number, and the weight without weight” (P. II 590B).

Ousia, the most important of the categories as treated by Eriugena, is incorporeal in itself, just as are all the categories when considered in themselves; it is only when some of them come together (quantity, quality, situation, and condition) that they become accessible to the bodily senses (P. I 479A).²⁵ Ousia is indefinable, but the things associated with it enable one to say that something is, not what it is (P. I 487A-B). Thus, the logic of negative theology becomes clear: God, as the essence of all, is known only from created things, but this is knowledge not of what God is but simply that God is. Given the primary understanding that the ousia of any thing is unknowable, it stands to reason that the essence of all things is unknowable since that very essence is God. Indeed, the substance of all things is the reason by which they subsist in the primordial causes in the Word (P. IV 772B). This idea will assume greater significance in terms of human nature's understanding of itself: as I show in chapter 6, the incomprehensibility of ousia extends also to the ousia of human being (P. IV 772B).

Eriugena's negative ontology provides the framework for an understanding of all that can be said of God's self-creative process. While it is certain that he took much from Gregory of Nyssa and the Pseudo-Dionysius, Eriugena's own unique perspective can be seen in his continual straining toward that which is truly no thing. All that can be said of the creative manifestation of God must be regulated by the understanding that while God is the essence of all things, God's ousia remains above all things in transcendent unknowability. The tension that is set up between the unknowability of ousia and theophany, as the appearance of the God who is the essence of all things, will become an important principle in relation to a correct interpretation of created reality. The importance of understanding the very building blocks of reality in terms of being and non-being is that it does not present the reader with a static concept or one final way of interpreting reality. Just when we think that we have understood something, Eriugena loosens our grip on what has been understood by introducing another perspective, and what has been grasped slips away into the unbounded territory of negative theology where all concepts are fluid and nothing is final. If we read the Periphyseon with the basic principles of negative theology in mind, then we will not stray far from a correct interpretation of some of the more difficult concepts examined by the nutritor and his inquisitive yet extremely astute alumnus.

Notes

1. Proclus, Elements of Theology prop. 35: Celestial Hierarchy I 1, XV 1.

2. “The Uplifting Spirituality of Pseudo-Dionysius,” in Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth Century, ed. B. McGinn, J. Meyendorff, and J. Leclercq, World Spirituality 16 (New York: Crossroad, 1988), p. 147.

3. See D. Moran, The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena: A Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 214-18, and G. Piemonte, “L'expression ‘quae sunt et quae non sunt’: Jean Scot Érigène et Marius Victorinus,” in Jean Scot écrivain, ed. G.-H. Allard (Montréal: Bellarmin, 1986), pp. 81-113; on the modification of the Boethian and Dionysian understanding of all that is and all that is not, see D. J. O'Meara, “The Concept of Natura in John Scottus Eriugena (De divisione naturae Book I),” Vivarium 19:2 (1981), especially pp. 126-33.

4. See W. Otten, The Anthropology of Johannes Scottus Eriugena, Brill's Studies in Intellectual History 20 (Leiden: Brill, 1991), p. 4.

5. R. Roques, “Remarques sur la signification de Jean Scot Érigène,” Divinitas 11 (1967), p. 270.

6. See D. Moran, Philosophy, pp. 250-51, and I. P. Sheldon-Williams, “The Greek Christian Platonist Tradition from the Cappadocians to Maximus and Eriugena,” in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 521-23; Sheldon-Williams suggested that the fourth division of nature is derived from Pythagorean number theory, which Eriugena would have known from Philo through Origen; on the relationship between Philo's division of numbers and Eriugena's division of nature; see É. Jeauneau, “Le thème du retour,” in Études érigéniennes (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1987), especially pp. 367-68.

7. Anthropology, p. 35.

8. On Eriugena's approach to the concept of natura as an open system that is approached by division rather than definition, see Otten, Anthropology, pp. 16-7, and “The Universe of Nature and the Universe of Man: Difference and Identity,” in Begriff und Metapher: Sprachform des Denkens bei Eriugena, ed. W. Beierwaltes (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1990), especially pp. 202-5; see also O'Meara, “The Concept of Natura in John Scottus Eriugena,” pp. 126-45.

9. Eriugena frequently uses the texts 1 Tim. 6:16 and Ps. 139:12 in support of the Dionysian idea that the darkness of God is truly light; see Mystical Theology I 1. H.-Ch. Puech's seminal article on divine darkness gives an excellent background to this theme; see “La ténèbre mystique chez le Pseudo-Denys et dans la tradition patristique,” Études carmélitaines 23 (1938), pp. 33-53.

10. See “Eriugena's Use of the Symbolism of Light, Cloud, and Darkness in the Periphyseon,” in Eriugena East and West, ed. B. McGinn and W. Otten (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp. 141-52; on the themes of light and the manifestation of God and the metaphysics of light, see W. Beierwaltes, “Negati Affirmatio: Welt als Metapher,” in Jean Scot Érigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, ed. R. Roques (Paris: CNRS, 1977), pp. 127-59, and J. J. McEvoy, “Metaphors of Light and Metaphysics of Light in Eriugena,” in W. Beierwaltes, Begriff und Metapher, pp. 149-67.

11. In relation to the theocentric conception of reality, see E. Perl, “Metaphysics and Christology in Maximus the Confessor and Eriugena,” in McGinn and Otten, Eriugena East and West, especially pp. 253-61.

12. Otten, Anthropology, p. 71.

13. On God's being as non-being or intellect in Eckhart's thought, see the Parisian Questions and Prologues, especially question 1.

14. The concepts non-being and beyond being in relation to the transcendence of God derive from Neoplatonic interpretations of some Platonic texts, primarily the Republic (509B) and Parmenides (142A); see the chapters on Plotinus and Proclus in D. Carabine, The Unknown God: Negative Theology in the Platonic Tradition: Plato to Eriugena (Louvain, Belgium: Peeters, 1995).

15. See D. Moran's explanation of this point in Philosophy, pp. 212-17.

16. See M. L. Colish, “Carolingian Debates over Nihil and Tenebrae: A Study in Theological Method,” Speculum 59 (1984), pp. 757-95; see also E. Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, pp. 111-12, and D. Moran, Philosophy, p. 11.

17. On the rather dubious origin of the inclusion of materia with God and the primordial causes, which is found in one manuscript only, see A. Wohlman, “L'ontologie du sensible dans la philosophie de Scot Érigène,” Revue Thomiste 83 (1983), pp. 558-82; reprinted in A. Wohlman, L'homme, le monde sensible et le péché dans la philosophie de Jean Scot Érigène (Paris: Vrin, 1987), pp. 42-66.

18. See Celestial Hierarchy IV 1 and Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius II 259-60, where Gregory argues that if we take accidents from a body (shape, weight, color, and so on), there is nothing left to perceive.

19. An interesting passage in Augustine's Confessions applies the same kind of reasoning to created reality: things are in so far as they are from God, but are not in so far as they are not God; see VII 11.

20. See Philosophy, p. 218.

21. Ibid.

22. Anthropology, p. 44.

23. The Pseudo-Augustinian Categoriae decem, a Latin summary of Aristotle's Categories, was an important source for Eriugena's development of the idea that the categories cannot be attributed to God. Eriugena's own commentary was also significant in terms of the development of later Medieval thought; see J. Marenbon, “John Scottus and the ‘Categoriae Decem,’” in Eriugena: Studien zu seinen Quellen, ed. W. Beierwaltes (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1980), pp. 117-34.

24. Ibid., p. 120.

25. A useful elucidation of the category of ousia can be found in D. Moran, “Time, Space and Matter in the Periphyseon: An Examination of Eriugena's Understanding of the Physical World,” in At the Heart of the Real, ed. F. O'Rourke (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1992), pp. 68-89.