Background
Johannes was born in 810 in Ireland.
Johannes was born in 810 in Ireland.
Johannes spent his active years as a scholar in France at the court of Charles the Bald, being placed in charge of the Palatine Academy. At the request of the Emperor he translated (c.858) into Latin the works of the Pseudo-Dionysius, and to this added a commentary. By failing to submit this work for the approval of the pope, he lost the sympathy of the Church, and in 1225 and in 1585 his great treatise, De Divisione natural (c.865-870) ("On the Division of Nature"), was condemned by it. In spite of the papal antagonism, Scotus Erigena must be considered the first great Schoolman. At his death, the fertile philosophical investigation ended within the framework of the Church, not to be resumed until the 11th century and the work of St. Anselm.
The work De Divisione Naturae, which is based chiefly on Pseudo-Dionysius, the Greek Fathers, and Augustine, but shows great individuality of thought, distinguishes four classes of nature. (1) The nature that creates and is not created is God himself, the superessential Godhead, conceived as the primary source of all things. (2) The nature that is created and creates is made up of the "forms," "species," or "prototypes" of all finite things. These are "created" in and through the eternal generation of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word of God, in whom they subsist eternally. The "forms," as "primordial causes" or exemplars, after the model of which all finite things are formed and in which they participate in various degrees, create all finite things. (3) The nature that is created and does not create is the finite world itself, created not by emanation from the "primordial causes," but by a free act of creation "out of nothing." (4) The nature that neither creates nor is created is once more God himself, now considered not as the source from which all things proceed, but as the end (final cause) into which the multiplicity of beings constituting the universe return to eternal rest.
Despite bold statements regarding the powers and prerogatives of human reason, Scotus Erigena is no rationalist or freethinker, but intends that all due deference be given to scriptural and ecclesiastical authority. The interpretation of his teaching in a pantheist sense is also fundamentally erroneous.
