Creation in Wisdom. Eriugena's Sophiology Beyond Ontology and Meontology

CREATION IN WISDOM : ERIUGENAS SOPHIOLOGY
BEYOND ONTOLOGY AND MEONTOLOGY

ernesto sergio mainoldi
The aim of this paper is to follow the Eriugenian pathways of thought
in one of his most topical arguments : the creation of everything in the
Word. Moving from the fourfold division of nature, set at the beginning of Periphyseon, two main problems are identified : the non-creativeness of God, and the creativeness of the primordial causes. An
attempt to reconstruct the play of ontology and meontology underlying
these themes is made, in search of what the Irish master means when
speaking of Gods self-creation in everything and Gods identity with
Creation. Eriugena uses the Wisdom argument to overcome the aporias
that lead rational thought, which follows the rules of dialectics, to its
limits. Moving from scientia to sapientia, the intellect passes from a
divisive knowledge to a unitive one, and by this step a harmonisation
of the four divisions of nature with the division between things-thatare and things-that-are-not is understood in a unitary frame.
The concept of creation has been explored in several essays consecrated to the thought of John Scottus Eriugena, yet the systematic and extended analysis of the implications of this subject in
the philosophy of the Irish master can still be developed in various directions.
Creation is a keyword and a key-concept of Christian thought,
in a way that allows us to see it as one of the paradigmatic bases
of the Christian vision of the world : because John Scottus Eriugena was a Christian author, it is often assumed that creation is
a default concept in Eriugenian philosophy, and not a distinctive
one, as it was envisaged at the beginning of the Christian era or
in Late Antiquity, when Christians thinkers were directly challenged by other philosophical systems concerning the origins of
all things.
Recent historiography claims that the notion of creation can
co-exist in Eriugenian thought side-by-side with other paraProceedings of the International Conference on Eriugenian Studies in honor of E. Jeauneau, ed. by W. Otten, M. I. Allen, IPM, 68 (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 183-222.
DOI 10.1484/M.IPM-EB.1.102061
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digmatic concepts such as the ideas of prodos and epistroph,

by which scholars have indicated the dynamic relation between
the transcendence of the One and the immanence of the Totality according to Neoplatonic thought. Another Eriugenian doctrine, that of the primordial causes, has often been assimilated
by default to platonic ideas, on the terminological basis adopted
by Eriugena himself, but it is symptomatic that, as far as I know,
no extended contribution dedicated specifically to the relation
between the Eriugenian theory of causality and the doctrine of
creation has yet been produced.1
At the core of Eriugenian speculation about creation we find
the theologoumenon of Divine Wisdom as pleromatic non-being. In
this essay I would like to approach the idea of creation in Wisdom
as a way to understand better the Eriugenian solutions to some
of the major aporias implied in the Christian doctrine of creation.
John Scottus speculation about creation lies at the foundation
of the fourfold division of nature, which is his most important and
well-known argument, and constitutes the general frame of his whole
reflection. This division is, technically speaking, a diuisio dialectica
deriving from the predication of the verb creare upon the subject
natura, conjugated in the active and passive, affirmatively and negatively.2 We can graphically represent it in the following table :
NATURA
Passive sense
Negative : non creatur
Affirmative : creatur
Active sense
Affirmative : creat
1st division of Nature : 2nd division of Nature :

causa omnium, quae sunt causae primordiales
et quae non sunt [God]
1 For an analysis of the reception of the classical doctrine of ideas in Eriugena, see below, and E.S. Mainoldi, Plato uero, philosophorum summus. Indagine sulla ricezione di Platone in Giovanni Scoto, in Princeps philosophorum, pater
philosophiae. Platone nellOccidente tardo-antico, medievale e umanistico. Convegno di Studi del dottorato FITMU, Fisciano (SA), 12-13 luglio 2010, in press.
2 N(utritor). Videtur mihi diuisio naturae per quattuor differentias quattuor species recipere, quarum prima est in eam quae creat et non creatur,
secunda in eam quae creatur et creat, tertia in eam quae creatur et non creat,
quarta quae nec creat nec creatur (Periphyseon I, 441B, CCCM 161 : 3-4).

creation in wisdom: eriugenas sophiology

Negative : non creat
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4th division of Nature : 3rd division of Nature :

impossibilitas [God]
hae quae in generatione
temporibusque et locis
cognoscuntur
Our first concern here should be to understand how John Scottus arrived at precisely this fourfold division of nature and why
he chose it to frame his description of the whole of reality. We
can explain it in two ways : the first is paradigmatic, the second
is methodological.
Paradigmatic is the choice of the verb creare (and not we
should notice the noun creatio), that implies the relationship
between the Creator and a created subject or object, or in other
words, the paradoxical relationship between a cause that is totally
independent and outside of all analogy and relation to his effect,
acting by his will, through his power, outside of any necessity. This
choice was not only allowed, but even required by the terminology
of patristic and Church tradition : if any word can be identified as
one of the very paradigmatic markers of Christian thought, this
word is indeed the verb creare, as well as its grammatical derivatives : in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, God the Father is
first of all defined as creator, and God the Son is distinguished
from the whole reality by the past participle uncreated. Patristic
speculation and Church apologetics eventually identified this biblical verb as the distinctive concept of Christian and biblical vision
after centuries marked by the polemics against all who manifested
the tendency to attenuate the distance between God the Son and
Creation in their theological reflection. The concept of creation
(that is, biblically, creation from nothingness) can consequently
be considered as one of the major watersheds between pagan and
Christian thought. Eriugenas attempt to give life to a comprehensive description of the whole of natura cannot have moved otherwise than from the paradigmatic concept of creation.
The methodological path that drove Eriugena to the fourfold
division can be envisaged as a consequence of his understanding of dialectica as the divine art, according to which Creation
is structured dialectically by the Creator himself.3 John Scottus
3 Ars illa, quae diuidit genera in species, et species in genera resoluit, quaeque dicitur, non ab humanis machinationibus sit facta, sed in

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exploited his scholarly acquaintance with the discipline of dialectics to introduce new and original applications to theology, different from those he could have found in the major dialectical Latin
Fathers Augustine and Boethius.
In Carolingian school teaching, the application of dialectics to
theology was current, and it would has been likewise known in
Eriugenas scholarly circle, as is shown by a definition that we can
trace back to the teaching of Eriugena, written by the hand of the
Irish scribe i2 and found on a flyleaf bound at the beginning of
Ms 55 of the Bibliothque Municipale of Laon :4
Increatus ingenitus pater ; increatus genitus filius ; creatum et
genitum omnis creatura, quae in primis causis creata et genita in
generatione et nascendo ; creatum et non genitum omnis creatura,
quae in primis causis creata et non adhuc genita, sed restat, ut
nascatur.
(Laon, BM, 55, fol. 1+ r-v, by i2 , IX sec. 3/4)
Textual correspondences for this definition can easily be found in

Eriugenas work, or in his main sources,5 but what is of primary
interest here is that this fragment constitutes one of the possible
examples of application of the dialecticae definitiones to the illustration of the dogmatic definitions of theology in their mutual
connections and distinctions. In Laon 55, Eriugena had in mind
natura rerum ab auctore omnium artium, quae uere artes sunt, condita, et a
sapientibus inuenta, et ad utilitatem sollertis rerum indagis usitata (Periphyseon IV 749A, CCCM 164 : 12).
4 B. Bischoff . Jeauneau, Ein neuer Text aus der Gedankenwelt des Johannes Scottus, in Jean Scot rigne et lhistoire de la philosophie (Laon, 7-12 Juillet
1975), ed. by R. Roques (Paris : CNRS, 1977), 109-116 ; for the discussion of
this fragment see E.S. Mainoldi, Il problema dei modelli storiografici applicati
allo studio della tradizione eriugeniana, in The Medieval Paradigm. Religious
Thought and Philosophy. Papers of the International Congress Rome, 29 October 1 November 2005), Roma, 29 ottobre - 1 novembre 2005, ed. G. dOnofrio (Turnhout : Brepols, 2012), pp. 275-279 ; about the Irish scribe indicated
as i2 see below n. 18.
5 Pater siquidem ingenitus est, filius uero genitus, spiritus neque ingenitus
neque genitus. Et innumerabilia exempla huiusmodi sunt (Periphyseon IV 756C,
CCCM 164 : 235, Versio IV) ; Per non factum, sed genitum, omnia facta, sed
non genita (Homilia VII, CCCM 166 : 14) ; in seipsum omnia recapitulans,
per quem et esse, et permanere, et ex quo, quae genita sunt, et ad quem genita
sunt, et manentia et mota participant deum (Maximus Confessor, Ambiguorum liber III [Eriugenas translation], CCSG 18 : 28 ll. 209-212).

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the traditional definitions of the Trinitarian persons, based on the

past participles increatus, creatus, ingenitus and genitus, and combined them in this fourfold division, which returns four definitions
that can be explained in a simple theological and philosophical
manner and can be traced back to well-known Trinitarian and
ontological concepts : the Father, the Son, the created and existing realities, the things created in primordial causes but still not
generated by them.
Nevertheless, it can also happen that a rigorous application of
a dialectical division would give life to definitions that are not so
plainly understandable in the traditional terms of dogmatic theology. The diuisio naturae, with which the Periphyseon opens, is one
of the innumerabilia exempla of such a case, and results in this
fourfold combination that is not properly in line with the usual
theological understanding : the Nutritor states in fact that quarta
[natura] inter impossibilia ponitur, cuius differentia est non posse
esse,6 that is to say that one of the four divisions is impossible.
Evidently John Scottus would not have written the Periphyseon
and developed his system beyond the boundaries of the theology
of his time just for the sake of filling this problematic cell of the
table of the fourfold division of natura with something meaningful, but on the contrary, he exploited the tools of the art of dialectics in order to introduce a place for the absolute and apophatic
transcendence of God in his description of the whole of reality.
The impossibilitas of the fourth nature is indeed the way in which
the division of nature can go beyond the concept of nature itself
and spread out to the highest theological conception of the absolute hypereitas of God.7
Since God is known from his acts, and first of all from the act
of creation, the statement that he could be understood as non-creator establishes an inescapable limit for human knowledge. Consequently, the first problem that we meet in Eriugenas understanding of the concept of creation does not concern the non-created
being of God (natura quae non creatur), but His being above the
6
Periphyseon I 442A.
Cf. G. dOnofrio, Cuius esse est non posse esse : la quarta species della
natura eriugeniana tra logica, metafisica e gnoseologia, in History and Eschatology in Eriugena and his Time, eds. J. McEvoy M. Dunne (Leuven : Leuven
University Press, 2002), pp. 333-346.
7

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activity of creation itself as natura quae non creat. It is impossible that God would not be creator, because there is no other way
to know Him other than by His creative operations, otherwise
the knowledge that intellectual creatures can have of Him would
be absolutely impossible and even the concept of God would be
impossible. God in His super-essentiality is not created and He is
not creator, and what is impossibilitas for intellectual knowledge
is indeed appropriate to Him, who is superessentialis and supernaturalis. In this sense the fourth division of nature is necessary to
open up the fourfold division to the real super-nature of God in
itself.
The activity of creation depicted in Periphyseons main fourfold
division provides the subject for another inquiry : in what sense
are the causae primordiales said to be creators ? According to the
Church Fathers, the power of creation is a prerogative of God
alone, who creates everything from nothingness.8 In the dialecticae
differentiae derived from the fourfold combination, affirmative and
negative, of creatus and genitus, found in Laon 55 quoted above,
the causae are said to be generators of all creatures, not creators.
increatus
creatus
ingenitus
Pater
omnis creatura in causis primis
genitus
Filius
omnis creatura genita a causis primis
This pattern evidences the similitude between uncreated and

created nature on the basis of the generative relationship (increatus Filius is genitus as omnis creatura is genita). A similar analogy between natura creata and natura increata is highlighted in
Periphyseon II, but this time under the perspective of the creative
power :
8 For example John Damascene, in Expositio fidei II, 3 :

,
, .
, ,
(Die
Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, ed. B. Kotter [Berlin, De Gruyter,
1973] ; Patristische Texte und Studien 12 ; Sect. 17).

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M(aster) : The second form is similar to the first in that it creates,

and is distinguished in that it is not created. For the first creates,
but is not created, whereas the second creates and is created.9
Elsewhere John speaks again of generation (and not of creation)

of things becoming through primordial causes :
(D)isciple : The question whether the substance of created things,
and their essences, and their reasons proceed and descend from
the Primordial Causes through generation in space and time, and
the acquisition of a variety of accidents.10
This problem returns in the same terms when Eriugena deals with
the creation of the fleshly body by the soul, when, after sin,
man loses his primordial spiritual body :
[...] but I do not yet see what difference there is between the operation of the creative and uncreated Trinity and the act of the
trinity (which is) created and creates. [I say creates] because we
do not doubt but that the trinity of our nature, which is not the
image of God but is made in the image of Godfor the only true
image of the invisible God, and in nothing dissimilar (from Him),
is the only begotten word of God (which is) co-essential with the
Father and the Spirit, is not only created out of nothing but
also creates the senses which are subjoined to it, and the instruments of the senses, and the whole of its bodyI mean this mortal
(body). For (the created trinity) is made from God in the image
of God out of nothing, but its body it creates [itself], though not
out of nothing but out of something. For, by the action of the
soul, which cements together the incorporeal qualities [and] takes
[from quantity] as it were a kind of substrate [for these qualities]
and places it under (them), it creates for itself a body in which she
may openly display her hidden actions (which) in themselves (are)
invisible, and bring (them) forth into sensible knowledge, as has
already been discussed in the first book and will be examined yet
9 Periphyseon II 525C, CCCM 162 : 4 : N(utritor). Secunda forma primae
similis est in eo quod creat, ab ea uero distat in eo quod creatur. Nam prima
creat et non creatur, secunda uero et creat et creatur. English translations of
the Periphyseon here and elsewhere from Periphyseon (The Division of Nature),
trans. by I.P. Sheldon Williams, revised by John J. OMeara (Washington :
Dumbarton Oaks, 1987).
10 Periphyseon V 885D, CCCM 165 : 38 : A(lumnus). Vtrum rerum conditarum substantiae et essentiae et rationes ex primordialibus causis per generationem in locis temporibusque diuersorumque accidentium capacitatem procedunt atque descendunt.

190

more closely when we have come to consider the activity of the
primordial causes.11
The human soul is referred to as creator, because man is creator,

having been created among the causae primordiales,12 which are
creative by definition, as natura quae creatur et quae creat. Eriugena seems to be aware of the theological misunderstanding to
which speaking about a creative power of the creatures could give
rise, since he specifies that this kind of creative power cannot be
compared with the divine creative power, and that God only creates from nothingness, while the soul creates de aliquo, that is,
from the incorporeal qualities of his being : the creation of the
human body is consequently understood as generation from the
invisible power of the soul, which is manifested sensibly in the
body. It should also be noticed, from this last quotation, that for
Eriugena, the question of the creation of the body by the soul is
also a matter of understanding the action (actio) of the primordial
causes, as we should interpret the proper understanding of the creative power of the natura quae creatur et quae creat as generation
from a preexisting potentia.
Pursuing in Periphyseon II the discourse about creatio ex nihilo,
Eriugena introduces the argument of the will as a central element for
the explication of the modalities of the creation from nothingness :
11 Periphyseon II 580B, CCCM 162 : 73-74 : [] quid distat inter operationem

creatricis trinitatis et non creatae et actum trinitatis creatae et creantis nondum perspicio. Creantis dico, non enim dubitamus trinitatem nostrae naturae, quae non imago dei est sed ad imaginem dei condita sola enim uera
imago inuisibilis dei est et in nullo dissimilis unigenitum dei uerbum patri et
spiritui coessentiale non solum de nihilo esse creatam, uerum etiam sub se
adhaerentes sibi sensus sensuumque officinas, totumque corpus suum, mortale hoc dico, creare. Ex deo siquidem ad imaginem dei de nihilo facta est,
corpus uero suum ipsa creat, non tamen de nihilo sed de aliquo. Anima nanque
incorporales qualitates in unum conglutinante et quasi quoddam subiectum
ipsis qualitatibus ex quantitate sumente et supponente corpus sibi creat, in
quo occultas suas actiones per se inuisibiles manifeste aperiat inque sensibilem
notionem producat, ut iam in priori libro disputatum est et adhuc dum ad
considerationem actionis primordialium causarum peruentum fuerit diligentius inuestigabitur.
12 inter primordiales rerum causas homo ad imaginem Dei factus est (Periphyseon II 536A-B, CCCM 162 : 17).

191
M. For the most high Trinity, creative of all things and by nothing created, made from nothing all that it made. For it is the prerogative of the Divine Goodness to call forth from non-existence
what it wishes to be made.13
If we go back to the problem of the creative power of the natura

creata, we can notice that in no way does Eriugena refer to the
will. Indeed, he said that the soul generates the body not by its
will, but throughout his uirtus creatiua, that is from the potentia
of his nature. Defining the primordial causes, also called ideas, as
diuinae uoluntates, Eriugena seems to accord a limited ontological
independence to the primordial causes and to their creative power :
The primordial causes, then [ as I had also said in what went
before ] are what the Greeks call , that is, the eternal species or forms and immutable reasons after which and in which the
visible and the invisible world is formed and governed ; and therefore they were appropriately named by the wise men of the Greeks
, that is, the principle exemplars which the Father
made in the Son and divides and multiplies into their effects
through the Holy Spirit.
They are also called , that is, predestinations. For in
them whatever is being and has been and shall be made by Divine
Providence is at one and the same time and immutably predestined. For nothing naturally arises in the visible and invisible creation except what is predefined and pre-ordained in them before
all times and places. They are also customarily called by the philosophers , that is, divine volitions, because everything
that God wished to make He made in them primordially and causally ; and the things that are to be made have been made in them
before the ages.14
13 Periphyseon II 580C, CCCM 162 : 74 : N. Summa siquidem trinitas
omnium rerum creatrix et a nullo creata omnia quae fecit de nihilo fecit.
Proprium enim diuinae bonitatis est ex non existentibus in existentia quae
uult fieri uocare.
14 Periphyseon II 615D-616A, CCCM 162 : 124 : N. Causae itaque primordiales sunt, [[quod et in praecedentibus dixeram]]15, quas Graeci C uocant
(hoc est species uel formas), aeternas et incommutabiles rationes, secundum
quas, et in quibus uisibilis et inuisibilis mundus formatur et regitur. Ideoque
a graecorum sapientibus appellari meruerunt (hoc est principalia exempla), quae pater in filio fecit et per spiritum sanctum in effectus
suos diuidit atque multiplicat. C quoque uocantur (id est praedestinationes). In ipsis enim quaecunque diuina prudentia et fiunt et facta
sunt et futura sunt simul et semel et incommutabiliter praedestinata sunt.

192
On the basis of this passage we can observe that for Eriugena,

the causae play a role of intermediate causality, and that their creative and causative power is no other than Gods action through
them.
Following the teaching of the Greek Fathers, Eriugena conceives that every nature is settled by the ontological triad defined
by the terms of essentia, potentia, operatio :
M. I would not easily believe that you are unaware of the trinity
in our own nature.
D. Please tell me what it is.
M. Do you remember the conclusion we reached in our discussion
in the preceding book ? Did we not decide that there is no nature
which is not understood to fall under these three terms which
by the Greeks, as we have often said, are called , ,
, [that is] essence, power, operation ?15
Human nature is a trinity created in the image of the summa

et diuina trinitas, and the relations among its essentia, potentia
and operatio can be understood by comparison with the relations
among the persons of the creatrix trinitas. Since the Father is associated with essentia, the Son with potentia, and the Holy Spirit
with operatio, Eriugena can assert that as the Son is generated
from the Father, so potentia is generated from essentia, and operation is a multiplication of what the essentia generates in potentia :
M. Nowhere else but that we may inquire as best we may how
the trinity of our nature expresses [in itself]16 the image and likeness of the creative Trinity, that is, what [in it]17 more appropriately applies to the Father, and what to the Son, (and) what to
Nil enim naturaliter in creatura uisibili et inuisibili oritur, praeter quod in eis
ante omnia tempora et loca praedefinitum et praeordinatum est. Item a philosophis (id est diuinae uoluntates) nominari solent, quoniam omnia quaecunque uoluit deus facere, in ipsis primordialiter et causaliter
fecit, et quae futura sunt, in eis ante saecula facta sunt.
15 Periphyseon II 567A, CCCM 162 : 55 : N. Trinitatem nostrae naturae te
latere non facile crediderim. A. Dic, quaeso, quae sit. N. Recordarisne quid
in prioris libri disputatione inter nos conuenerat ? Num nobis uisum est nullam naturam esse quae non in his tribus terminis intelligatur subsistere qui a
Graecis, ut saepe diximus, C, C, appellantur (hoc
est, essentia, uirtus, operatio) ?
16 sl Ri2 .
17 sl Ri2 .

193
the Holy Spirit. [I say more appropriately because although the

whole trinity of our nature is an appropriate image of the whole
Divine Trinity, the whole (of it) bearing the image of the Father,
the whole (of it) the image of the Son, the whole (of it) the image
of the Holy Spirit, yet there is in it (something) that as it were
in a more special sense seems, I think, capable of being connected with each Person severally. For even (considered) in itself
our trinity is present as a whole in each (of its members). For its
essence is both power and operation, its power both essence and
operation, its operation both essence and power, in the same way
as the Father is both in the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Son both
in the Father and in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit both in the
Father and in the Son]18.19
The distinction between creation and generation is plainly indicated in another place of the Periphyseon, where Eriugena describes
the steps of the diuisio naturae, following the fivefold division of
Maximus Ambigua :
Of these the first [he says]20 they declare to be that which
divides from the uncreated nature created nature in general,
which receives being through generation. For they say that God
by His goodness made the clear disposition of all existing things
at one and the same time. [And a little later :]21 But the second (is that) by which the universal and simultaneously (created) nature which receives its being from God through creation
is divided into intelligibles and sensibles. Then the third, by
which the sensible nature is divided into heaven and earth, and
again the fourth by which the earth is divided into paradise and
18
mg. Ri2 .
Periphyseon II 567C-568A, CCCM 162 : 57 : N. Non aliorsum, nisi ut
quaeramus pro uiribus quomodo trinitas nostrae naturae trinitatis creatricis
imaginem et similitudinem [[in seipsa]] exprimat, hoc est quid [[in ea]] conuenientius patri, quid filio, quid spiritui sancto adiungendum. [[Conuenientius
dico : Quamuis enim conuenienter nostrae naturae trinitas tota totius diuinae
trinitatis imago est tota enim patris, tota filii, tota spiritus sancti imaginem gerit in ea tamen est quod ueluti specialius singulis personis accommodari posse uidetur, ut arbitror. Nam et in se ipsa nostra trinitas tota in
singulis suis est. Sua enim essentia et uirtus et operatio est, sua uirtus et
essentia et operatio est, sua operatio et essentia est et uirtus, sicut et pater
in filio et in spiritu sancto, et filius in patre et in spiritu sancto, et spiritus
sanctus in patre et filio est]].
20 p. ras. Ri2 .
21 mg. Ri2 .
19

194

the inhabited globe, and the fifth by which man himself, who,
well and beautifully through generation superadded to the (sum
of) things that are as a most effective agent of the continuity of
all, in everything naturally establishing in himself a mediation
between all extremes effected by every difference, is divided into
male and female...22
The generation of the beings proceeds from the non-being of the

natura creata in the primordiales causae. Hence we can conclude
that only the natura increata, that is God, creates from nothingness ; natura creata, by contrast, creates from something pre-existing ; in other words, it generates in the same way as it happens
among the three terms of the ontological triad essentia-potentiaoperatio. Natura creata is creatrix, but it creates by its natural
power only, instead of creating from nothingness and by its will
as natura increata does.
We can finally recognize the difference between the creative
power of the natura increata and that of the natura creata in 1) the
argument of the will, and in 2) the creation from nothingness.
As far as the role of the divine will in generative and creative
operations of the Holy Trinity is concerned, we have to point out
that God the Father generates the Son and determines the procession of the Spirit not by his will, but by his love. God as Trinity
is said to create by his will, and we can understand His creative
will as the transposition of His generative love outside his superessential being.
In Periphyseon II Eriugena links the general causality of creation to the diuina bonitas, explaining this association with a
22
Periphyseon II 530A-B, CCCM 162 : 9-10 : Quarum primam [[inquit]] esse

aiunt eam quae a non creata natura creatam uniuersaliter naturam et per generationem esse accipientem diuidit. Dicunt nanque deum per bonitatem fecisse
existentium simul omnium claram dispositionem. [[Et paulo post :]] Secundam uero, per quam ipsa simul omnis natura a deo per creationem esse accipiens diuiditur in intelligibilia et sensibilia. Tertiam deinceps, per quam ipsa
sensibilis natura diuiditur in caelum ac terram. Quartam itidem, per quam
terra diuiditur in paradisum orbemque terrarum. Et quintam, per quam ipse
in omnibus, ueluti quaedam cunctorum continuatissima officina, omnibusque
per omnem differentiam extremitatibus per se ipsum naturaliter medietatem
faciens, bene ac pulchre secundum generationem his quae sunt superadditus
homo in masculum feminamque diuiditur Cf. Maximus Confessor, Ambigua
ad Iohannem XXXVII, 1-26, CCSG 18 : 179-180.

195
Greek etymology, which stresses again the role of the divine will
in the process of creation :
For the most high Trinity, creative of all things and by nothing
created, made from nothing all that it made. For it is the prerogative of the Divine Goodness to call forth from non-existence into
existence what it wishes to be made. For the name bonitas takes
its origin form the Greek verb [that is] I cry out. But
and [that is] I cry out and I call have the same meaning. For he who calls very often breaks out into a cry. So it is
not unreasonable that God should be called Bonus and Bonitas,
because with an intelligible cry He cries out that all things should
come from nothing into essence, and therefore God is called in
Greek, , that is, good, [that
is] for the reason that He calls all things into essence.23
Bonitas is the first of the primordial causes that are disposed

by the Father in his Son. We know already that these causae
are natura creata, but to explain their disposition in the Word,
Eriugena adopts a quite neutral word, fecit, probably to avoid
saying that something created is found in the Word :
Therefore the primordial causes which the divine sages call
the principles of all things are Goodness-through-itself, Beingthrough-itself, Wisdom-through-itself, [...] and all the powers and
reasons which once and for all the Father made in the Son [...].24
The affirmation that something created would be found in the

uncreated and only-begotten Son and Word would in fact not
23 Periphyseon II 580C-D, CCCM 162 : 74-75 : Summa siquidem trinitas

omnium rerum creatrix et a nullo creata omnia quae fecit de nihilo fecit.
Proprium enim diuinae bonitatis est ex non existentibus in existentia quae
uult fieri uocare. Nam et hoc nomen, quod est bonitas, non aliunde originem
ducit nisi a uerbo graeco quod est (hoc est clamo). autem et
(id est clamo et uoco) unum sensum possident. Etenim qui uocat saepissime
in clamorem erumpit. Deus ergo non inconuenienter bonus dicitur et bonitas,
quia omnia de nihilo in essentiam uenire intelligibili clamore clamat : ideoque
graece dicitur Deus C (id est bonus), C
C (hoc est : eo quod omnia uocat in essentiam).
24 Periphyseon II 616C, CCCM 162 : 125 : Sunt igitur primordiales causae,
quas rerum omnium principia diuini sapientes appellant, per se ipsam bonitas, per se ipsam essentia, per se ipsam uita, per se ipsam sapientia, [] et
omnes uirtutes et rationes, quas semel et simul pater fecit in filio []. Emphasis added.

196
have diminished the problem, because a thing, once created, has

already reached its ontological independence from divine creative
operation, being its effect : if we affirm the contrary, that is to say
that a created thing can have an independent ontological status
and at the same time be ungenerated in the Word, we would have
to infer that the causae constitute a created intermediary between
God and the Creation. If so, we would have proven that Eriugena
gave life to a sort of platonic system and the inveterate accusation
of pantheism against him would have a real basis.
Instead, the solution is to be found in third book of Periphyseon,
where we read, first of all, that the real causa creatrix is Goodness
(bonitas), that is God, who is in Himself beyond goodness ; this
divine and uncreated Goodness creates the goodness in itself (per
se ipsam bonitas), that comes before essentia in the order of creation, that is to say is superessential :
For the Cause of all things, the creative Goodness which is God,
created that cause which is called goodness-through-itself first of
all for this purpose : that through it all things that are should be
brought from non-existents to essences. For it is a property of the
Divine Goodness to call the things that were not into existence.
For the Divine Goodness and More-than-Goodness is both the
essential and superessential cause of the universe that it has established and brought to essence. Therefore if the Creator through
His goodness brought all things out of nothing so that they might
be (essences), the aspect of goodness-in-itself must necessarily
precede the aspect of being-through-itself. For goodness does not
come through essence but essence comes through goodness.... Not
only are the things that are good, but the things that are not are
also called good.25
25 Periphyseon III, 627C-D.628B, CCCM 163 : 15-16 : Causa nanque omnium

creatrix bonitas, quae deus est, ad hoc ipsam causam quae per seipsam bonitas dicitur primo omnium creauit, ut per eam omnia quae sunt in essentias
ex non existentibus adduceret. Diuinae siquidem bonitatis proprium est quae
non erant in essentiam uocare. Vniuersitatis etenim conditae in essentiamque
adductae diuina bonitas et plus quam bonitas et essentialis et superessentialis
causa est. Si igitur creator per suam bonitatem omnia de nihilo ut essent
deriuauit, necessario intellectus per se ipsam bonitatis intellectum per se
ipsam essentiae praecedit. Non enim per essentiam introducta est bonitas, sed per
bonitatem introducta est essentia. Non solum quae sunt, bona sunt ; uerum
etiam quae non sunt.

197
A further understanding of the doctrine of the causae primordiales

in light of the doctrine of creation may be developed by distinguishing between the causa increata, that is God, and the causa
creata, that is the set of primordial causes. If the first is to be
found in God only, since John stated that causa namque omnium
creatrix bonitas, quae deus est, we should try to understand which
is the status of the causae primordiales. Are these self-standing entities or essences belonging to a platonic hyperuranium ? We should
answer that they are not essences, since essentia is just one of the
primordial causes, but looking deeper into the formulation of the
problem given by Eriugena, we can deduce that the causae are to
be conceived as created non-beings in the creative power (dynamis
or uirtus) of the Word, and as created beings in the power of the
animus of the intellectual beings, namely angels and men, as it
follows for instance from the definition of the created sapientia as
a uirtus of contemplative intellect (animus) in Periphyseon III :
For the proper definition of wisdom [sapientia] is that power [uirtus] by which the contemplative mind, whether human or angelic,
contemplates the eternal and immutable things of God, whether
it concerns itself about the First Cause of all things or about the
primordial causes of nature which the Father created at once and
all together in His Word.26
In Periphyseon V Eriugena comes back to this problem and states

that the causae never leave the divine Wisdom, since they are virtues of the divine and uncreated Wisdom :
But that, just as the Primordial Causes do not separate themselves from Wisdom, so neither do the substances separate themselves from the Causes, but subsist in them forever. As the Causes
cannot exist apart from the substances, so the substances cannot
flow forth from the Causes.27
26 Periphyseon III, 629A, CCCM 163 : 17 : Sapientia nanque proprie dicitur

uirtus illa, qua contemplatiuus animus siue humanus siue angelicus diuina
aeterna et incommutabilia considerat, siue circa primam omnium causam
uersetur, siue circa primordiales rerum causas, quas pater in uerbo suo semel
simulque condidit.
27 Periphyseon V 886C, CCCM 165 : 39 : Vt enim ipsae causae primordiales
non deserunt sapientiam, sic ipsae substantiae non deserunt causas, sed in eis
semper subsistunt ; et quemadmodum causae extra substantias nesciunt esse,
ita substantiae extra causas non possunt fluere.

198
These observations assure us that Eriugena doesnt think of the

causae as independent metaphysical entities, even if superessential,
but as virtues that have their origins in the uncreated Word and
find their meontological comprehension as ea quae non sunt in the
created intellect, and rational comprehension in their effects as ea
quae sunt. This result should be held in relation to what we have
already observed about the creative power of the causes, that is
not other than the creative power of the Word itself.
If we refer to the terminology of the medieval debate on the
uniuersalia, we can recapitulate Eriugenas position as follows : the
uniuersalia are ante rem as non-being in the Word, but they are
in re as being generated in substantiis. Eriugenas realism cannot
then be understood apart from his meontology and this implies a
double comprehension of the whole of reality as non-being foreseen
by the Father in His uncreated Son and Word, and as being created in his own ontological subsistence.
But what can we say about the primordial cause of essentia ? Is
this an archetype of all beings, a sort of summum ens ? Evidently
not, since essentia is created among the causae primordales in the
Word as non-being. The meontological side of the Eriugenian doctrine of creation in the Word implies that Eriugenas ontology does
not allow one to postulate Being as an independent principle, but
it should rather be understood as rooted in the divine nothingness,
as Eriugena often likes to call to mind by quoting Ps.-Dionysius :
esse omnium est super esse diuinitas.28
We should now attempt to understand the implications of Eriugenas doctrine by which the Father is said to have disposed the
primordial causes in his Son. Since the Word is God, and God is
perfectly simple, the pre-existence of creation in the Word cannot
be understood otherwise than as nothingness. In the Word the
causae primordiales as well as their effect, i.e. the whole of creation, are understood as non-being (ea quae non sunt). Nevertheless this nothingness partakes in the division of nature as natura
creata. We consequently have to look more closely at the meaning
of nothingness in relation to the problem of creation according to
the Irish master.
28 Dionysius Areopagita, De coelesti hierarchia IV, 1, PL 122 :1046B-C ;

quoted by Eriugena in Periphyseon I 443B ; III 644AB and V 903B.

199
Specifying in Periphyseon III what nothingness is, Eriugena

introduces his well-known argument that nihil should not be considered in a privative sense, but in the sense of excellence :
D. But when I hear or say that the Divine Goodness created all
things out of nothing I do not understand what is signified by that
name, Nothing, whether the privation of all essence or substance
or accident, or the excellence of the divine superessentiality.
M. I would not easily concede that the superessentiality was nothing [or could be called by so privative a name]. For although it
is said by the theologians not to be, they do not mean that it is
nothing but that it is more than being.29
Eriugena then specifies that the divine nature is beyond ea quae

sunt et ea quae non sunt, and that non-existing realities became
existent by the power of divine goodness according to the divine
will. In a passage where Eriugena tries to explain how everything
has been created from nothingness, the early manuscript tradition
of the Periphyseon allows us to follow the work of redaction as a
way to clarify this difficult matter : both the hands of i1, i2 and
another Carolingian scribe (Rc) in Reims, Bibliothque Municipale, Ms 875 have added marginal and interlinear specifications :30
M. For how could the Cause of all things that are be understood
to be no essence when all things that are show that it truly is
although by no demonstration of the things that are is it understood what it is ? Therefore, if it is on account of its ineffable
excellence and incomprehensible infinity that the Divine Nature
is said not to be, does it follow that it is nothing at all, when
29
Periphyseon III 634A-B, CCCM 163 : 23-24 : A. Sed cum audio uel dico
diuinam bonitatem omnia de nihilo creasse, non intelligo quid eo nomine,
quod est nihil, significatur : Vtrum priuatio totius essentiae uel substantiae
uel accidentis, an diuinae superessentialitatis excellentia ? N. Non facile concesserim diuinam superessentialitatem nihil esse, uel tali nomine priuationis
posse uocari. Quamuis enim a theologis dicatur non esse, non eam tamen
nihil esse suadent, sed plusquam esse.
30 Current scholarship tends to recognize the calligraphy of Eriugena
behind the hand indicated as i1, and see i2 as an adiuvans who is not always
reliable ; on this topic see P. Dutton . Jeauneau, The Autograph of Eriugena
(Turnhout : Brepols, 1996) Autographa Medii Aeuii 3 and . Jeauneau, Nisifortinus : llve qui corrige le matre, in Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle
Ages. A Festschrift for Peter Dronke, ed. J. Marenbon (Leiden, Brill, 2001), pp.
113-129.

200

not-being is predicated of the superessential31 for no other reason
than that true reason does not allow it to be numbered among the
things that are because it is understood to be beyond all things
that are and that are not ?
D. What then [pray] am I to understand when I hear that God
made all things that are from nothing ?
M. Understand that the things that exist have been made from
the things that do not exist by the power of the Divine Goodness ;
for the things that were not received being. For they were made
from nothing because they were not before they came into being.
[For that word Nothing is taken to mean not some matter, not a
certain cause of existing things, not anything that went before or
occurred of which the establishment of things was a consequence,
not something coessential or coeternal with God, nor something
apart from God subsisting on its own or on another from which
God took as it were a kind of material from which to construct
the world ; but it is the name for the total privation of the whole
of essence and, to speak more accurately, it is the word for the
absence of the whole of essence ; for privation means the removal
of possession. But how <perhaps someone may ask> could there
be privation before there was possession ? For32 there was no possession before all things that are received the possession of subsistence.]33
D. By the name, Nothing, then, is meant the negation and
absence of all essence or substance, indeed, of all things which are
created in nature ?34
31
superessentialis, p. ras. Ri1.

enim p. ras. Ri1.
33 mg. Rc.
34 Periphyseon III 634B-635A, CCCM 163 : 24 : Quomodo enim causa
omnium quae sunt nulla essentia intelligeretur esse, cum omnia quae sunt
eam uere esse doceant, nullo uero argumento eorum quae sunt intelligitur
quid sit ? Si igitur propter ineffabilem excellentiam et incomprehensibilem
infinitatem diuina natura dicitur non esse, nunquid sequitur omnino nihil
esse, dum non aliam ob causam praedicetur non esse superessentialis, nisi
quod in numero eorum quae sunt numerari uera non sinit ratio, dum super
omnia quae sunt et quae non sunt esse intelligatur ? A. Quid ergo intelligam,
quaeso te, audiens deum de nihilo omnia quae sunt fecisse ? N. Intellige ex
non existentibus existentia per uirtutem bonitatis diuinae facta fuisse. Ea
enim quae non erant acceperunt esse. De nihilo namque facta sunt, quia non
erant priusquam fierent. [[Eo namque uocabulo, quod est nihilum, non aliqua
materies existimatur, non causa quaedam existentium, non ulla processio seu
occasio quam sequeretur eorum quae sunt conditio, non aliquid deo coessentiale et coaeternum, neque extra deum per se subsistens seu ab aliquo unde
32

201
These passages attempt to explain that privative nothingness is

logically and theologically not the same as nothingness due to
excellence, that is, non-being as super-being, in the sense that
nothingness conceived as external and opposed to Gods nature
is not conceivable. Everything has its cause in the nihil that is the
supereminence of the superessential Word :
For it must be asked why they are called causes if they do not
proceed into their effects. For if all bodies (come) from the elements but the elements from nothing, their cause will seem to be
nothing and not those primordial causes which God the Father
made in His Word : and if so, nothing will not be nothing, but
it will be a cause. But if it is a cause it will be better than the
things of which it is the cause, and it will necessarily follow either
that the Word of God, in which the Father made all things, is
nothingwhich, in the sense of privation, will seem an impious
thing to say [for negation of the Word in the sense of transcendence of nature, though not in the sense of privation, is found in
Scripture]35 , or that some cause other than the Word be supposed which is called Nothing, from which God made all things
and in which He established all things before they were made. For
otherwise it is not a cause. And if this is so, I do not see why it
is called Nothing. For I would sooner say that [it] is all things
than nothing. For in the cause all things of which it is the cause
causally and primordially subsist.36
deus ueluti materiem quandam fabricationis mundi susceperit, sed omnino
totius essentiae priuationis nomen erat, et, ut uerius dicam, uocabulum est
absentia totius essentiae. Priuatio enim habitudinis est ablatio. Quomodo
autem, poterat fieri priuatio, priusquam fieret habitus ? Nullus enim habitus
erat, antequam omnia, quae sunt, habitudinem subsistentiae acciperent]].
A. Eo igitur nomine, quod est nihilum, negatio atque absentia totius essentiae uel substantiae, immo etiam cunctorum, quae in natura rerum creata
sunt, insinuantur.
35 mg. Rc.
36 Periphyseon III 663C-D, CCCM 163 : 64 : Siquidem si omnia corpora ex
elementis, elementa uero de nihilo, illorum causa uidebitur esse nihil, non
autem ipsae, quas deus pater in uerbo suo fecit. Et si ita, non nihil erit nihil,
sed erit causa. At si fuerit causa, melior erit his quorum causa est. Et necessario sequetur ut aut uerbum dei nihil sit, in quo pater omnia fecit quod per
priuationem impium dicere uidebitur [[negatio enim uerbi per excellentiam
naturae, non autem per priuationem substantiae in theologia reperitur]] aut
extra uerbum causa quaedam ponetur, quae nihil dicitur, de qua deus omnia
fecit, et in qua omnia priusquam fierent constituit. Aliter enim causa non est.
Et si ita est, qua ratione dicitur nihil non uideo. Prius siquidem dixerim eam

202
Nihil as negation is the logical negative concept that refers to the

meontological status of all things before coming into being : conceived as negation it cannot refer to the original divine non-being
because it is not possible to speak of privation of what has not yet
received being. By contrast, the divine superessence can only be
predicated as nihil if we do not understand it as the contrarium to
creaturely being, but as a concept that refers to divine transcendence, since uncreated nature is beyond ea quae sunt and ea quae
non sunt.
Commenting in Periphyseon II on the problem of creation in
the Word, Eriugena poses the problem of the status of creation as
non-being in the Word :
M. What is it that the theologian says, In the Beginning God
made ? Do you understand that the Father first brought forth His
Word and then made heaven and earth in Him ? Or perhaps that
He brought forth His Word in eternity and in eternity made all
things in Him, so that the procession of the Word from the Father
through generation in no way precedes the procession of all things
from nothing in the Word through creation ? [And to put it more
clearly : Were the primordial causes not always in the Word of
God in Whom they are made, and was there the Word when the
causes were not ? Or are they co-eternal with Him and was the
Word never without the causes created in Him, and does (the fact
that) the Word precedes the causes created [in Him] mean nothing
else than that the Word creates the causes, while the causes are
created by the Word and in the Word ?]37
D. I should hesitate to agree with the former alternative, for I do
not see how the generation of the Word from the Father can in a
temporal sense precede the creation of all things by the Father in
the Word and through the Word ; but I think these to be co-eternal with each other, I mean the generation of the Word and the
creation of all things in the Word. For one rightly understands
that there is no accident or temporal motion or temporal process in God. But I see nothing inconvenient in granting the second proposition, that is, that the generation of the Word by the
Father does not in any temporal sense 38 precede the creation of all
things in the Word by the Father, but is co-eternal with it. For
esse omnia quam nihil. In causa namque omnia, quorum causa est, causaliter
et primordialiter subsistent.
37 mg. Ri2 .
38 temporaliter mg. Ri2 .

203
the prophet also says, addressing the Father, Thou has made all
things in Thy Wisdom. For in one act the Father brought forth
His Wisdom and made all things in it (Ps. 103 :24 Vg.).39
The marginal note of i2 about the question of the eternity of

the causae in the Word testifies again to the work of redaction
that surrounds this complex subject. But what does co-eternity
between the generation of the Word by the Father and the creation of everything in the Word mean, when Eriugena states
that : coaeterna sibi esse arbitror, generationem dico Verbi, et creationem omnium in uerbo ? Does it mean, finally, that what is created
is coeternal with the Trinitarian generation ? In Periphyseon III
the question is set forth as he searches for a solution : primordial
causes are created together, once and for all (simul et semel), and
are eternal in the Word, but not coeternal with Him :
For concerning the primordial causes of all things it was agreed
between us that they were made by the Father in His only-begotten
Word, that is, in His Wisdom, all together and once for all and
eternally, so that as that Wisdom of the Father is eternal, and
coeternal with the Father, so also all things which are made in
it are eternal, except that they are all made in that which is not
made but is begotten and is their maker ; for in the establishing of
the universal creature, as the will of the Father and the Son is one
39 Periphyseon II 556B-557A, CCCM 162 : 41-42 : Quid est quod theologus
ait : In principio fecit deus ? Vtrum intelligis patrem uerbum suum primo
genuisse, ac deinde caelum et terram in eo fecisse ? An forte suum verbum
aeternaliter genuit et in ipso aeternaliter omnia fecit, ita ut nullo modo processio uerbi a patre per generationem praecedat processionem omnium de
nihilo in uerbo per creationem ? [[Et ut manifestius dicam : Vtrum primordiales causae in uerbo dei, in quo factae sunt, non semper fuerunt, et erat
uerbum quando non erant causae ? An coaeternae ei sunt, et nunquam erat
uerbum sine causis in se conditis, et nullo alio modo intelligitur uerbum causas in se conditas praecedere, nisi quod uerbum creat causas, causae uero
creantur a uerbo et in uerbo ?]] A. Illud primum non temere concesserim.
Non enim uideo quomodo possit temporaliter praecedere generatio uerbi ex
patre creationem omnium a patre in uerbo et per uerbum ; sed haec coaeterna
sibi esse arbitror, generationem dico uerbi et creationem omnium in uerbo.
Nullum enim in deo accidens aut temporalis motus aut temporalis praecessio recte quis intelligit. Hoc autem quod posterius propositum est non incongrue concesserim, hoc est, generationem uerbi a patre nullo modo creationem
omnium in uerbo a patre temporaliter praecedere, sed coaeterna sibi esse.
Nam et propheta dicit patrem alloquens : Omnia in sapientia fecisti. Simul
enim pater et sapientiam suam genuit et in ipsa omnia fecit.

204

and the same, so is the operation one and the same. Therefore in
their primordial causes all things are eternal in the Wisdom of the
Father but not coeternal with it.40
In light of this formulation and what he will say coming back to

the problem later in the third book, Eriugena appears to approach
and solve the problem of creation from nothingness by the following argumentation : 1) elements proceed from the primordial
causes ; 2) primordial causes are eternal in the Word ; but in which
way ? If they are said to be in the Word, we cannot say that they
are nothing, and so we must conclude that they are something
(aliquid). But if they were to be conceived as proceeding from a
nothingness opposite to the Word, one would fall into the same
error as the Manicheans, who suppose a dualism of principles, or
in the error of pagan philosophers, who think of primordial matter
as a nothingness coeternal with God :
Again I admit that the elements are not made from nothing but
come from the primordial causes, and none of the faithful doubts
but that these primordial causes are made at once and all together
in the Word of God when he hears the Prophet saying to God,
Thou madest all things in Thy Wisdom (Ps. 103 :24), and when
he looks at the beginning of Holy Scripture where it is written, In
the Beginning God made [heaven and] earth (Gen. 1 :1).
M. It remains for us, then, to inquire about the primordial causes
themselves, whether they are made out of nothing in the Word of
God, or were always in it. And if they were always in it there was
not (a time) when they were not, just as there was not (a time)
when the Word in which they were was not. And if they were
always in that Word, how were they made in it out of nothing ?
For it does not accord with reason that those things which always
were began to be made out of nothing. And if one should say that
that nothing out of which they were made always was and that
they were always made from it, it will be asked of him where
40 Periphyseon III 635B-C, CCCM 163 : 25 : Confectum est enim inter nos
de primordialibus rerum omnium causis a patre in uerbo suo unigenito (hoc
est in sua sapientia) simul et semel et aeternaliter facta esse, ita ut, quemadmodum ipsa sapientia patris aeterna est suoque patri coaeterna, ita etiam
cuncta quae in ea facta sunt aeterna sint, eo excepto quod in ipso omnia facta
sunt, quae non est facta sed genita et factrix. Siquidem in condenda uniuersali creatura sicut una eademque est patris et filii uoluntas, ita una eademque
est operatio. In primordialibus itaque suis causis omnia in sapientia patris
aeterna sunt, non tamen ei coaeterna.

205
[that] nothing always was out of which they were made : whether
in the Word of God in which all things subsist, or in itself, apart
from the Word. If he answers, It was always in the Word, it will
be objected to him : Then it was not nothing but very much somethingfor all things which subsist in the Word of God subsist
truly and naturallyand there will be included in the order of
the primordial causes that which was thought nothing, and from
which all things are believed to be made. But if he thinks that the
Nothing is in itself other than the Word, he will be understood to
be fabricating, like one of the Manichaeans, two mutually adverse
principles. For many of the pagan philosophers have thought that
formless matter is co-eternal with God, and that out of it He
made all His works, and this matter they called nothing because
before it received from God forms and species it was manifested
in no thing, and it was as it were nothing. For whatever entirely
lacks form and species can not unreasonably be called nothing.
But the light of truth has banished all these delusions, asserting
that all things come from one principle, and that nothing is found
in the nature of things visible and invisible, by whatever kind of
generation it breaks out into its proper form, which is not generally agreed to subsist eternally in the only begotten Word of God,
in Whom all things are one, and proclaiming that God did not
receive from any external source any matter or cause for the creation of the universe in His wisdom, for external to Himself there
is nothing ; nor find internal to Himself anything not coessential
with Himself from which to make in His wisdom the things that
He wished to be made.41
41 Periphyseon III 664A-665A, CCCM 163 : 65-66 : Iterum elementa non de

nihilo facta, sed ex primordialibus causis procedere fateor. Quas primordiales causas simul et semel in uerbo dei factas nullus fidelium dubitat, audiens
prophetam dicentem deo : Omnia in sapientia fecisti, frontemque sanctae
scripturae aspiciens, qua scriptum est : In principio fecit deus caelum et terram. N. Restat ergo ut quaeramus de ipsis primordialibus causis utrum in
uerbo dei de nihilo sunt factae, an semper in eo erant ? Et si semper in eo
erant, non erat quando non erant ; sicut illud uerbum, in quo erant, non erat
quando non erat. Et si semper in eo erant, quomodo in ipso de nihilo factae
sunt ? Non enim rationi conuenit ea quae semper erant de nihilo fieri inchoasse. Et si quis dixerit Illud nihil, de quo factae sunt, semper erat, et semper
de eo factae sunt, quaeretur ab illo ubi semper erat illud nihil, utrum in
uerbo dei in quo omnia subsistunt, an per se extra uerbum. Si responderit In
uerbo semper erat, opponetur ei : Non ergo nihil, sed magnum aliquid erat.
Omnia siquidem quae in uerbo dei subsistunt uere et naturaliter subsistunt.
Et in ordine primordialium causarum connumerabitur quod nihil putabatur,
et de quo omnia facta creduntur. Si uero extra uerbum per se putauerit nihil,

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The solution of the aporia resulting from the affirmation that

everything has been created eternally in the Word, and that in
the Word there is nothing that is not coessential with Him is destined to find a clarification not in the logic of meontology, but in
the logic of hyper-ontology that allows to conceive the validity of
opposite predicates, such as the being of everything in the power
of the Word as non-being, and the non-being of everything prior
to coming into being per generationem :
Therefore no place is provided for nothing either external or
internal to God ; and yet the belief that He made all things out
of nothing is not vain. And therefore there is nothing else to be
understood, when we hear that all things are created out of nothing, but that there was (a time) when they were not, and therefore we are not unreasonable in saying : They were always ; they
were not always, and there was not (a time) when they were not,
and there was (a time) when they were not. For they were always
as causes in the Word of God potentially, beyond all places and
times, beyond all generation <made> in place and time, beyond
all form and species known to sense and intellect, beyond all quality and quantity and the other accidents by means of which it is
understood of the substance of any creature that it is, though not
what it is ; and they were not always, because before they flowed
forth through generation into forms and species, places and times,
and into all the accidents that accrue to their eternal substance
which is immutably substantiated in the Word of God, they were
not in generation, they were not in place and time nor in their
proper forms and species to which accidents occur. And therefore
it is not unreasonably predicated of them, There was not (a time)
when they were not, because they subsist always in the Word of
God, in Whom they do not have a beginning of their beingfor
duo principia sibi inuicem aduersa, sicut unus Manachiorum, aestimabitur
fingere. Multi siquidem secularium philosophorum informem materiem coaeternam deo esse putauerunt, de qua omnia opera sua fecit. Quam materiem
propterea nihil dicebant, quia, priusquam formas et species a deo acciperet,
in nullo apparebat ac ueluti penitus nihil. Quicquid enim omnino caret forma
et specie non immerito potest uocari nihil. Quas omnes delusiones lux ueritatis expulit, ab uno principio omnia esse praedicans et nil in natura rerum
uisibilium et inuisibium inueniri, quoquo modo generationis in speciem propriam erumpat, quod in uerbo dei unigenito aeternaliter non constat substitui, in quo omnia unum sunt ; ipsumque deum pronuntians nullam materiam
seu causam uniuersitatis a se conditae in sua sapientia extrinsecus accepisse,
quia extra illum nihil est, uel intra se non coessentiale sibi reperisse, de quo
faceret in sapientia sua quae fieri uoluit.

207
eternity is infinite ; and there was (a time) when they were not
because in time they began through generation to be that which
they were not, that is, to become manifest in forms and species.
Therefore anyone who looks carefully at the nature of things will
find no creature susceptible to senses or intellects about which it
cannot be truly said : It always was and is and shall be, and it
was not always nor is nor shall be.42
This long and complex path is synthesized in John Scottus Homily, where he comments on the verse Omnia per ipsum facta sunt of
Johns Gospel prologue :
All things were made by Him (John 1 :3) For his generation
from the Father is itself the creation of all causes and the working and making of all things that proceed from the causes into
the genera and species. All things were made by the generation of
the God-Word from the God-Principle. [] By Him who was not
made, but generated, all things were made, but not generated.43
42 Periphyseon III 665A-C, CCCM 163 : 66-67 : Proinde non datur locus
nihilo nec extra nec intra deum, et tamen de nihilo omnia fecisse, non in
uanum creditur. Ac per hoc, nil aliud datur intelligi dum audimus omnia de
nihilo creari, nisi quia erat quando non erant. Ideoque non incongrue dicimus :
Semper erant, semper non erant, et non erat quando non erant, et quando non
erant erat. Siquidem semper erant in uerbo dei causaliter ui et potestate ultra
omnia loca et tempora, ultra omnem generationem localiter et temporaliter
factam, ultra omnem formam et speciem sensu et intellectu cognitam, ultra
omnem qualitatem et quantitatem ceteraque accidentia, per quae substantia
uniuscuiusque creaturae intelligitur esse, non autem, quid sit. Et semper non
erant ; priusquam enim per generationem in formas et species, loca et tempora, inque omnia accidentia, quae aeternae eorum subsistentiae in uerbo dei
incommutabiliter substitutae accidunt, profluerent, non erant in generatione,
non erant localiter nec temporaliter nec in propriis formis speciebusque, quibus accidentia contingunt. Ac per hoc, non irrationabiliter de eis praedicatur
Non erat quando non erant ; temporaliter enim inchoauerunt per generationem esse quod non erant, quia semper in uerbo dei subsistunt, in quo nec
esse incipiunt infinita est enim aeternitas et Erat quando non erant ;
temporaliter enim inchoauerunt per generationem esse quod non erant, hoc
est in formis et speciebus apparere. Proinde si quis naturam rerum intentus
perspexerit, nulla creatura sensibus seu intellectibus succumbens reperietur,
de qua ueraciter dici non possit : Semper erat, et est, et erit, et semper non
erat, nec est, nec erit.
43 Homilia VII 287A, CCCM 166 : 13-14 : Omnia per ipsum facta sunt : Nam
ipsius ex Patre generatio ipsa est causarum omnium conditio omniumque
quae ex causis in genera et species procedunt operatio et effectus. Per generationem quippe dei uerbi ex deo principio facta sunt omnia. [] Per non
factum, sed genitum, omnia facta, sed non genita.

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Eriugena is manifestly preoccupied with avoiding a radical dualism between God and creation, wishing to bring everything back
to the oneness of Gods nature, but at the same time, he carefully
avoids lapsing into cosmic monism or pantheism, that is the confusion between created realities and God :
And lest, perhaps, you should think that of the things that are,
some indeed were made through the Word of God himself, but
others were either made apart from Him or existed through themselves, so that not all the things that are and are not refer to the
one Principle, he adds a conclusion of the whole of the preceding theology : And without Him nothing was made (John 1 :3)
that is, nothing was made outside of Him, for he embraces all
things within Himself, containing all ; and there is nothing that
can be conceived to be coeternal with Him or consubstantial or
coessential except his Father and his Spirit that proceeds from the
Father through Him.44
Eriugena does not think of the causae as independent entities,

even if superessential, but as virtues that can have their proper
causal origins nowhere else than in the intelligible power of God.
Eriugena calls the power of divine intellect gnostica uirtus,45
after Gregory of Nyssa, for whom the word uirtus refers to the
knowledge of a thing not yet in existence :
For the motion of the supreme and threefold and only true Goodness, which in Itself is immutable, and the multiplication of its
simplicity, and Its unexhausted diffusion from Itself in Itself back
to Itself, is the cause of all things, indeed is all things. For if the
understanding of all things is all things and It alone understands
all things, then It alone is all things ; for that alone is the gnostic
power which knows all things before they are, and does not know
all things outside Itself because outside It there is nothing, but It
44 Homilia VIII 287C-D, CCCM 166 : 15-16 : Et ne forte existimares eorum
quae sunt quaedam quidem per ipsum dei uerbum facta esse, quaedam uero
extra ipsum aut facta esse aut existentia per semet ipsa, ita ut non omnia
quae sunt et quae non sunt ad unum principium referantur, conclusionem
totius theologiae subdidit : Et sine ipso factum est nihil, hoc est, nihil extra
ipsum est factum, quia ipse ambit intra se comprehendens omnia, et nihil
ei coaeternum uel consubstantiale intelligitur uel coessentiale, praeter suum
Patrem et suum Spiritum a Patre per ipsum procedentem.
45 Cf. Gregorius Nyssenus, Sermo de imagine (Eriugenas translation), ed.
M. Cappuyns, Recherches de thologie et philosophie mdivales, 32 (1965) : 235,
rr. 13, 34, 36 ; cf. Periphyseon IV 796D ; 797B.

209
possesses all things within Itself.46 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.47
By these arguments, Eriugena succeeds in his task of arguing

the superessential unity of God and creation, and of maintaining
the irreducibility of their nature at the same time. We can also
look at Eriugenas doctrine of creation as a bold answer to the
question posed by Augustine in Confessions XI : What was God
doing before he created the world ?48 and then failed to answer
himself, perhaps because he regarded speaking of before and
after in God as nonsense. Augustine in fact answered ironically
that God was preparing hell for people who were too curious.49
But Eriugenas development of the doctrine of creation results
in even more extreme statements, such as the following, where the
unity of the Creator and the creature is affirmed alongside the
self-creation of the Creator in everything :
M. It follows that we ought not to understand God and the creature as two things distinct from one another, but as one and the
same. For both the creature, by subsisting, is in God ; and God, by
manifesting Himself, in a marvellous and ineffable manner creates
Himself in the creature, the invisible making Himself visible and
the incomprehensible comprehensible and the hidden revealed and
the unknown known and being without form and species formed
and specific and the superessential essential and the supernatural natural and the simple composite and the accident-free subject
to accident [and accident] and the infinite finite and the uncircumscribed circumscribed and the supratemporal temporal and
the Creator of all things created in all things and the Maker of
46
Versio IV.
Periphyseon III 632D-633A, CCCM 163 : 22 : Summae siquidem ac trinae
soliusque uerae bonitatis in se ipsa immutabilis motus et simplex multiplicatio et inexhausta a se ipsa in se ipsa ad se ipsam diffusio causa omnium,
immo omnia sunt. Si enim intellectus omnium est omnia et ipsa sola intelligit
omnia, ipsa igitur sola est omnia, quoniam sola gnostica uirtus est ipsa quae,
priusquam essent omnia, cognouit omnia. Et extra se non cognouit omnia,
quia extra eam nihil est, sed intra se [[habet omnia]]. Ambit enim omnia et
nihil intra se est, in quantum uere est, nisi ipsa, quia sola uere est.
48 Augustinus Hipponensis, Confessiones XI, 12 : Quid faciebat deus, antequam faceret caelum et terram ?
49 Ibid. : alta scrutantibus gehennas parabat.
47

210

all things made in all things, and eternal He begins to be, and
immobile He moves into all things and becomes in all things all
things.50
These conclusions proceed as a strict consequence of the Dionysian hyperontological principle esse omnium est super esse diuinitas : once a thing is created it is outside the divine essence, and
although factor is not the same as factus, under the point of view
of superessential contemplation they are the same. Radical and
absolute unity is possible as natura quae non creatur et non creat,
but if we try to understand this unity from the perspective of the
division we have to conclude that such a unity is impossible, as
Eriugena stated from the very beginning about the fourth nature.
Division is opposed to unity, but the division of nature, which is
an effect of the divine creative will, cannot disturb the eternal
and super-essential unity of the divine super-esse, because this is
more than unity.
At the same time the argument of Gods self-creation has nothing to do with the divine superessentiality in itself, which is and
remains by all means uncreated ; instead divine self-creation concerns the process of creation, which proceeds from Gods power
only and not from a nothingness outside of Gods super-nature : in
this sense God creates everything from His uncreated super-being,
and in this sense He is said to create Himself.
What Eriugena means by speaking of the Creators self-creation
is best understood in reference to the doctrine of theophanies :
although God remains unknowable in Himself, He can make Him-
50 Periphyseon III 678C-D, CCCM 163 : 85 : N. Proinde non duo a se ipsis

distantia debemus intelligere deum et creaturam, sed unum et id ipsum.
Nam et creatura in deo est subsistens, et deus in creatura mirabili et ineffabili modo creatur, se ipsum manifestans, inuisibilis uisibilem se faciens,
et incomprehensibilis comprehensibilem, et occultus apertum, et incognitus
cognitum, et forma ac specie carens formosum ac speciosum, et superessentialis essentialem, et supernaturalis naturalem, et simplex compositum, et
accidentibus liber accidentibus subiectum et accidens, et infinitus finitum, et
incircumscriptus circumscriptum, et supertemporalis temporalem, et superlocalis localem, et omnia creans in omnibus creatum, et factor omnium factus
in omnibus, et aeternus cepit esse, et immobilis mouetur in omnia et fit in
omnibus omnia.

211
self knowable in natura creata in the measure to which this is an

effect of His causal and creative power :
M. I think there remains only the relation of the Middle, which
appears to its observers under a double mode, first when the Divine
Nature is seen to be created and to createfor it is created by
itself in the primordial causes, and therefore creates itself, that is,
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, it knows itself in nothing because it is infinite
and supernatural and superessential and beyond everything that
can and cannot be understood ; but, descending into the principles
of things and, as it were, creating itself, it begins to know itself
in something ; secondly when it is seen in the lowest effects of
the primordial causes, in which it is correctly said of it that it is
created only, but does not create. For it is created by descending
into the lowest effects, beyond which it creates nothing, and is
therefore said only to be created, and not to create. For it does
not descend beyond the lowest effects by which it would be seen
both to be created and to create. So it is created and creates in
the primordial causes, but in their effects it is created and does
not create. 51
This last quotation confirms that, according to Eriugena, Gods

creative power acts only in the primordial causes and not in their
effects : this assures us once more that the creative power of the
primordial causes is nothing other than Gods creative power. God
creates in primordial causes and nec ultra : there is no creative
power that proceeds from God through the different levels of crea51 Periphyseon III, 689A-C, CCCM 163 : 99-100 : N. Rationem medietatis
restare solummodo arbitror, quae duplici modo contemplatoribus suis arridet. Primo quidem, quando et creari et creare conspicitur diuina natura.
Creatur enim a se ipsa in primordialibus causis, ac per hoc se ipsam creat,
hoc est, in suis theophaniis accipit apparere ex occultissimis naturae suae
sinibus uolens emergere, in quibus et sibi ipsi incognita, hoc est, in nullo se
cognoscit, quia infinita est et supernaturalis et superessentialis et super omne
quod potest intelligi et non potest ; descendens uero in principiis rerum, ac
ueluti se ipsam creans, se ipsam in aliquo inchoat nosse. Secundo uero, dum
in extremis effectibus primordialium causarum perspicitur, in quibus creari
tantummodo, non autem creare recte praedicatur. Creatur enim descendens
in extremos effectus, ultra quos nil creat ; ideoque dicitur creari solummodo
et non creare. Non enim ultra extremos effectus descendit, quo et creari et
creare uideretur. Creatur ergo et creat in primordialibus causis ; in earum
uero effectibus creatur et non creat.

212
tion. Furthermore the division between ea quae sunt and ea quae

non sunt implies the co-existence of ea quae non sunt as not-being in the Word as C (praedestinationes) with their
existence as ea quae sunt, that is as being in the genera and species
that are generated from primordial causes. Ea quae sunt proceed
from ea quae non sunt, and this procession implies neither an ontological confusion nor a separation in the order of created things.
Eriugena is stretching the possibilities of theological language
to their extreme bounds, with the intent of underlining that even
the dogmatic language of theology is conventional and can only
catch the mystery implicated by the verb creare in an improper
sense. In Periphyseon V, Eriugena states clearly that among the
divisions of nature, the first and the fourth are only predicated of
God : they must be distinguished, not because their referent, that
is God, lacks absolute simplicity and unity, but because they are
considered through a duplex theoria : God is creator and non-creator. He is conceived as creator in consideration of the things that
are created by Him ; He is conceived as non-creator when considering that the creation is eternally in Him as uncreated and this
uncreated status cannot admit its negation, that is to say creation.
Creation is then impossible because God is natura quae non creatur
et non creat, but creation is at the same time possible because God
is creator as well. In the same manner God is uncreated in Himself, but is created in His creation, which is uncreated in God but
is eternally foreseen by the divine uirtus gnostica as otherness with
respect to God Himself : this otherness is impossible as uncreated,
but possible as creation. As we can see the duplex theoria implicates
all these contradictions, but it cannot solve their logical conflicts :
We have divided Nature, which comprises God and His creature,
into four parts. The first species consists of and may be defined
as the nature which creates and is not created, the second as the
nature which is created and creates, the third as that which is created but does not itself create, the fourth as that which neither is
created nor creates. The first and fourth natures can be predicated
of God alone : not that His nature can be divided, for it is simple
and more-than-simple : but it can be approached by two modes of
contemplation : when I consider Him as the Principle and Cause of
all things, reason convinces me that the Divine Essence, or Substance, or Goodness, or Virtue, or Wisdom, or whatever else may
be predicated of God, was created by none, for nothing greater is

213
prior to the Divine Nature, but all things, both the things that
are and the things that are not, are created by It and through It
and in It and for It. On the other hand when I consider that same
Nature as the End of all things and the ultimate Consummation
to which all things tend and in which the limit of their natural
motion is set, I find that It is neither created nor creating. For
just as the Nature Which is from Itself can be created of none,
so neither does It create anything. When all things which have
proceeded from It either through intelligible or sensible generation shall by a miraculous and ineffable rebirth return to It again,
when all things have found their rest in It, when nothing more
shall flow forth from It into generation, it can no longer be said of
It that It creates anything. For what should it be creating when It
Itself shall be all in all, and shall manifest Itself in nothing save
Itself ? Concerning the two intermediate species enough has been
said in the preceding books, and by any who study them carefully they can be clearly understood. The one is recognised in the
Primordial Causes, the other in their effects. That which consists
in the Causes is, on the one hand, created in the Only begotten
Son of God, in Whom and through Whom all things are made ;
and, on the other hand, creates all things which emanate from
it, that is to say, all its effects, whether intelligible or sensible.
But that nature which is constituted in the effects of the causes is
only created by its own causes, but does not itself create, for there
is nothing in nature which comes after it. And therefore it is for
the most part to be found among the sensibles. It is no objection
to this that angels and men, whether good or evil, are sometimes
thought to create some new thing unknown in this world before
to human experience, for in fact they create nothing but produce
something out of the material creature which has already been
created by God in its effects through its Causes ; if good, they do
this in accordance with the laws and precepts of God, if evil under
the deceitful inducement and the crafty plottings of the subtlety
of the devil. But all things are so ordered by the Divine Providence that no evil exists substantially in nature, nor anything
which could disturb the City of God and its polity. And after we
had undertaken this fourfold contemplation of Nature under these
four species, of which two belong to the Divine Nature as Beginning and End, and two to the created nature as Cause and Effect,
we thought good to adjoin some theories concerning the Return of
the effects into their Causes, that is, into the reasons in which
they subsist.52
52 Periphyseon V 1019A-1020A, CCCM 165 : 222-224 : Quadriformem uniuersalis naturae, quae in deo et creatura intelligitur, fecimus diuisionem.

214
The daring and extreme affirmation of the unity of God and

the Creation is not intended to contradict the main assumption
of Christian theology, that is the radical divergence between the
uncreated nature and the created one, but rests on the assumption
that several points of view (theoriae), even opposites, can coexist
Cuius prima species est quae naturam creatricem et non creatam, secunda
quae naturam et creatam et creatricem, tertia quae creatam et non creantem,
quarta quae neque creatam neque creatricem considerat atque discernit. Et
prima quidem et quarta forma de deo solummodo praedicatur. Non quod
ipsius natura, quae simplex et plus quam simplex est, diuidua sit, sed quod
duplicis theoriae modum recipit. Dum enim ipsam esse rerum omnium principium et causam intueor, occurrit mihi uera ratio, quae fiducialiter suggerit
diuinam essentiam uel substantiam, bonitatem, uirtutem, sapientiam, ceteraque quae de deo praedicantur a nullo creari, quia diuinam naturam nihil
superius praecedit, omnia autem, quae sunt et quae non sunt, ab ea et per
eam et in ea et ad eam creari. Dum uero eandem esse finem omnium intransgressibilemque terminum, quem omnia appetunt et in quo limitem motus
sui naturalis constituunt, conspicor, inuenio eam neque creatam esse neque
creantem. A nullo siquidem creari potest natura quae a seipsa est. Neque
aliquid creat. Cum enim omnia, quae ab ipsa per generationem intelligibilem seu sensibilem processerunt, mirabili quadam et ineffabili regeneratione reuersura sint ad eam et in ea omnia erunt quieta, quoniam ulterius
nihil ab ea per generationem profluit nihil dicitur creare. Quid enim creabit, dum ipsa omnia in omnibus fuerit, et in nullo nisi ipsa apparebit ? De
duabus autem mediis formis in superioribus satis est actum, prompteque eas
quaerentibus claro lumine circumfusae occurrunt. Vna enim in causis perspicitur primordialibus, altera in causarum effectibus. Et ea quidem, quae
in causis constituitur, in unigenito dei filio (in quo et per quem omnia facta
sunt) creatur, et omnia quae ab ea profluunt (hoc est omnes effectus suos siue
intelligibiles siue sensibiles) creat. Ea uero, quae in effectibus causarum substituta est, solummodo a causis suis creatur, nihil autem creat, quia nihil in
natura rerum inferius est ipsa ; ideoque maxime in rebus sensibilibus ordinata
est. Nec obstat, quod angeli uel homines, siue boni sint siue mali, aliquod
nouum humanisque usibus incognitum in hoc mundo saepe putantur creare,
dum nihil creant, sed de creatura materiali a deo facta [[in effectibus per causas]] aliquid efficiunt, diuinis legibus oboedientes et iussionibus si boni sunt,
fallacibus uero diabolicae astutiae machinamentis commoti atque decepti si
mali sunt. Omnia tamen diuina prouidentia ordinantur, ut nullum malum
in natura rerum substantialiter inueniatur, nec aliquid quod rem publicam
ciuilemque rerum omnium dispositionem perturbet. Et post quadrifariam
uniuersalis naturae theoriam in praedictis quattuor speciebus, quarum duas
quidem in diuina natura propter rationem principii et finis, duas in natura
condita ratione uidelicet causarum et effectuum contemplati sumus, uisum
est nobis quasdam theorias de reditu effectuum in causas (hoc est in rationes
in quibus subsistunt) subiungere.

215
in theological knowledge. In this passage, Eriugena also underlines the metaphorical usage of the verb creare, by which one can
speak of creation by human and angels whilst in reality they do
not create ; even the affirmation that things are created in the Son
does not imply the presence of created things in the uncreated
Verb, but it previews through the fatherly gnostica uirtus what will
take existence from the Word, in quo et per quem omnia facta sunt.
Hence, we can recognize four logical levels in the understanding of Creation : 1) uncreated, as possible insofar as the whole creation is foreseen by God through His gnostica uirtus, 2) creation
as non-being (creatio in the power of the Word : ea quae non sunt),
3) creation as being generated in the effects of the divine creative
power through the primordial causes : ea quae sunt, 4) uncreated :
creation as impossible, since there can be no division in God Himself. These four points are to be linked to the four divisions of nature
and show their relation with the binomial ea quae sunt ea quae
non sunt. Non-being can be uncreated or created, and meontological non-being has to be distinguished from uncreated non-being.
Eriugenas doctrine of creation, which we have tried to reconstruct up to this point, follows the logical principle of the division
according to the science of dialectics, which is based on the rational power of the intellect. This application drives at the result of
the double theory (duplex theoria) that poses a logical contradiction that reason cannot resolve. The solution for Eriugena has to
be found in the eschatological passage from science to wisdom,
which constitutes the second of the three degrees of the ascension
of knowledge :
First the transformation of mind into the knowledge of all things
which come after God : secondly, of that knowledge into wisdom,
that is into the innermost contemplation of the Truth, in so far as
that is possible to a creature ; thirdly, and lastly, the supernatural merging of the perfectly purified souls into God Himself, and
their entry into the darkness of the incomprehensible and inaccessible Light which conceals the Causes of all things. Then shall the
night shine as the day, that is to say, the most secret Mysteries of
God shall in a manner which we cannot describe be revealed to
the blessed and enlightened intelligences.53
53 Periphyseon V 1020D-1021A, CCCM 165 : 225 : Quorum unus transitus

animi in scientiam omnium quae post Deum sunt, secundus scientiae in sapi-

216
In these three degrees, we read that the divisive knowledge of dialectics (scientia) is surpassed by the unitive knowledge of wisdom,
and concludes its path in the divine un-knowledge, which is neither divisive nor unitive.
This statement turns Eriugenas enquiry toward a sophiological
understanding of gnoseology, stepping over the divisions of dialectics and the limits of rationality toward a unitive contemplation
of creation in Wisdom. The gnoseological implications of Eriugenas doctrine of creation lead us to deepen our analysis in the
direction of the identification of the Word with Wisdom.
Eriugena had the chance to recover a doctrine of the divine
Wisdom from his main sources, namely Augustine, Dionysius and
Maximus the Confessor, but the premises of these developments
are to be found in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, in
the concept of created wisdom, as the superessential and eternal
pleroma of all created things :54
The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way, before
His works of old. (
). I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning (
), or ever the earth was. When
there were no depths I was brought forth (
). (Proverbs 8 : 22-24).
The Lords works in creation existed from the beginning, and he
defined their exact stations when he made them (
,
). He set their works in order forever, and arranged
their spheres of authority for as long as they last (
).
(Sirach 16 : 26-27).
Patristic sophiology an expression by which we mean the discourse about the divine Wisdom following the Pauline identi-
entiam, hoc est contemplationem intimam ueritatis quantum creaturae conceditur, tercius (qui et summus) purgatissimorum animorum in ipsum Deum
supernaturaliter occasus ac ueluti incomprehensibilis et inaccessibilis lucis
tenebras, in quibus causae omnium absconduntur : et tunc nox sicut dies illuminabitur, hoc est, secretissima diuina mysteria beatis et illuminatis intellectibus ineffabili quodam modo aperientur.
54 The Bible, here and below, is quoted according to the King James Version.

217
fication of the biblical Wisdom of God with the Christ-Word,55

maintained the distinction between uncreated Wisdom and created wisdom, a distinction that finds a correspondence among the
meanings that Paul attributed to the word .56
A considerable development of the sophiological doctrine of
creation as beginning in the divine Word was elaborated by
Dionysius :
The divine Mind ( ), therefore, takes in all things
() in a total knowledge which is transcendent. Because it is
the Cause of all things it has a foreknowledge of everything. Before
there are angels He has knowledge of angels and He brings them
into being. He knows everything else and, if I may put it so, He
knows them from the very beginning and therefore brings them
into being. This, I think, is what scripture means with the declaration, He knows all things before their birth. (Daniel 13 :42 ;
Susanna 42). The divine Mind does not acquire the knowledge of
things from things. Rather, of itself and in itself it precontains
and comprehends the awareness and understanding and being of
everything in terms of their cause. []. So too the divine Wisdom
knows all things by knowing itself. Uniquely it knows and produces all things by its oneness []. If with one causal gesture God
bestows being on everything, in that one same act of causation He
will know everything through derivation from Him and through
their pre-existence in Him ( ). 57
Pseudo-Dionysius is the basic source of Eriugenas sophiology,

but the Irish master also takes into account the interpretation
of Augustines De Genesi ad litteram, which he quoted in Periphyseon IV :
55
(1 Cor 1 :24).
Both wisdoms appear in Pauline theology, the uncreated one in 1 Cor.
1 :30 : But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption ; and the created
one in Col. 2 :3 : In whom [Christ] are hid all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge.
57 Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names VII, 2 ; Greek text in
Corpus Dionysiacum I : PseudoDionysius Areopagita. De divinis nominibus, ed.
B.R. Suchla (Berlin : De Gruyter, 1990) Patristische Texte und Studien 33,
pp. 196-7. Translation from Pseudo-Dionysius. The Complete Works, transl. C.
Luibheid, P. Rorem (Mahwah, NY : Paulist, 1987), 107-08.
56

218

This is what St. Augustine means when he says in his Hexmeron :58
In one way the things which are made through It are subordinate
to It, in another the things which It is are in It. For the understanding of all things in the Wisdom of God is the substance of
all things, nay, it is all things. But the knowledge by which the
intelligible and sensible creature has intelligence of itself as it is in
itself stands, as it were, for a kind of secondary substance in it, by
which it has only the notion that it knows and is.59
Another major Eriugenian source is again Maximus Ambigua

XXXVII, quoted in Periphyseon II :
Then, he says, by joining the intelligibles and the sensibles
in addition to these that is, to the unifications of natures that
have been mentioned through the equality of his knowledge
with (that of) the angels, he will make all creatures one single
creature, not separated in him in respect of knowledge and ignorance, for he will have a gnostic science of reasons in the things
that are, equal to that of the angels without any difference, by
means of which the infinite outpouring from above of the gifts
of the true sophia, as much as is meet, supplies henceforth purely
and directly to those who are worthy the unknown and inexplicable knowledge of God60
In these three patristic quotations we can recognize the foundations of Eriugenas sophiological argument, such as the disposition
of everything in the divine intellect, the identification of diuina
sapientia with the substantia omnium, the gnostica scientia etc.
58
Augustine, De genesi ad litteram II.vi.12 (CSEL 28, 1 : 41, ll. 6-8).

Periphyseon IV 770C, CCCM 164 : 43 : Hinc sanctus Augustinus in
Exemero suo : Aliter, inquit, sub ipso sunt ea quae per ipsum facta sunt,
aliter in ipso sunt ea quae ipse est. Siquidem intellectus omnium in diuina
sapientia substantia est omnium, imo omnia ; cognitio uero, qua seipsam in
se ipsa intelligit, intellectualis et rationalis creatura, ueluti secunda quaedam
substantia eius est, qua se nouit solummodo se nosse et esse.
60 Periphyseon II 535A-B, CCCM 162 : 15 : Deinde, inquit, intelligibilia
et sensibilia cum his copulans, hoc est, cum praedictis naturarum adunationibus, per ipsam ad angelos scientiae aequalitatem unificabit creaturam, simul
omnem creaturam non separatam in eo secundum scientiam et ignorantiam,
aequali sibi ad angelos indifferenter futura, rationum in his, quae sunt, gnostica scientia, per quam ipsa uerae sophiae infinita donorum effusio superueniens, quantum fas est, pure de cetero ipsam circa Deum et immediate dignis
praestat incognitam et ininterpretabilem notitiam.
59

219
Explaining creation in Wisdom, Eriugena affirms the identity

of what is foreseen by God and what is eternally disposed in the
Word-Wisdom. The Wisdom of God is the explanation that created reality has its root in the uncreated :
And if God saw the creature in Himself before it was made He has
always seen what He saw ; for it is not an accident in Him to see
what He sees, since it is not one thing for Him to be and another
to see ; for His is a simple nature. But if He has always seen what
He saw, what He has seen always was, and therefore [what He has
seen] must be eternal, and if He saw the creature which as yet
was not, and what He saw wasfor everything that God sees is
true and eternalthere is nothing else left for us to understand
but that the creature was in God before it was made in Him, and
that creature can be understood in two ways, the one relating
to its eternity in the Divine Knowledge, in which all things truly
and substantially abide, the other to its temporal establishment
which was, as it were, subsequent in itself. And if this is so, the
logical consequence will compel the choice of one of two alternatives [so that] either we say that the same creature is better than
itself and inferior : better in so far as it is created in itself and
its creation will be thought not in God but as though external to
God in itself, and it will contradict Scripture which says, Thou
madest all things in Thy Wisdom (Ps. 103 :24 Vg.) ; or that it is
not the same nature that was eternally in the knowledge of God,
and that was established so to speak subsequently, as it were, in
itself, and therefore it was not those things that were made that
He saw before they were made but only the things that are eternal
that He saw in Himself ; and anyone who has admitted that will
be seen to be resisting the catholic profession of the faithful ; for
Holy Wisdom declares that the things that God saw in Himself
before they were made are not other than the things that He subsequently made in themselves, but that the same things are eternally seen and eternally made, and all this in God and nothing
external to God.61
61 Periphyseon III 676D-677C, CCCM 163 : 82-83 : Et si deus in se ipso uidit
creaturam priusquam fieret, semper uidit quod uidit. Non enim accidit ei
uidere quod uidet, quando non aliud est ei esse et aliud uidere ; ipsius nanque simplex natura est. Si autem semper uidit quod uidit, semper erat quod
uidit ; ac per hoc, aeternum esse necesse est quod uidit. Et si creaturam uidit
quae adhuc non erat, et erat quod uidit omne enim quod deus uidet uerum
et aeternum est nil aliud relinquitur, nisi ut intelligamus creaturam fuisse
in deo, priusquam fieret in se ipsa. Duplexque de creatura dabitur intellectus : Vnus quidem considerat aeternitatem ipsius in diuina cognitione, in

220
John Scottus built his discourse about creation in Wisdom following both principal branches of the theological method : authority
and argumentation. As far as authority is concerned, Eriugena
followed the biblical wisdom literature and the exegesis of Augustine, moving into the exegetical frame derived from Maximus
and Gregory of Nyssa ; as for argumentation, we can suppose
that Eriugena points to the concept of sapientia because this has
a primary gnoseological implication, but is not identifiable with
intellection (noesis) : while intellection concerns ontological realities, wisdom is not limited to ontologically based knowledge, but
extends itself to meontological realities. On this assumption, the
Wisdom argument is revealed as central to Eriugenas ontological
freedom by which he conceives creation as an eternal relationship
between the creator and created realities.
Since the divine Wisdom is not identified by Eriugena with the
divine causative power of creation this causative power being the
divine goodness (bonitas) the sophiological argument relates to the
understanding of the eternal creation in the Word-principium and
transcends the domain of the ontological-dialectical generation
of genres and species, on which the fourfold division of Nature is
also based.
The Seventh Ecumenical Council of Nicea II (787CE), which
defined the dogma of the veneration of holy images, concluded
the era of the dogmatic definition of Christian doctrine, a path
first ventured upon four centuries before with the Council of Nicea
(325CE). The Church had reached the goal of defining the words
qua omnia uere et substantialiter permanent, alter temporalem conditionem

ipsius ueluti postmodum in se ipsa. Et si ita est, rationis consequentia compellet unum e duobus eligere, ut aut eandem creaturam meliorem se ipsa et
inferiorem dicamus, meliorem quidem quantum in deo aeternaliter substetit,
inferiorem uero quantum in se ipsa creata est, et creatio illius non in deo
sed ueluti extra deum in se ipsa aestimabitur, et erit contrarium scripturae
quae dicit : Omnia in sapientia fecisti ; aut non eandem naturam esse quae
aeternaliter in cognitione dei erat et quae ueluti postmodum in se ipsa condita est. Ac per hoc, non ea quae facta sunt antequam fierent uidit, sed ea
solummodo quae aeterna sunt in se ipso uidit. Et si quis hoc dederit, catholicae fidelium professioni uidebitur resistere. Sancta siquidem sophia non alia
profitetur deum in se ipso priusquam fierent uidisse, et alia postmodum in se
ipsis fecisse, sed eadem aeternaliter uisa et aeternaliter facta, et hoc totum in
deo, et nihil extra deum.

221
and the concepts by which the nature of God should be rightly

conceived, as well as formulated the difference between essence
and hypostasis, the union of natures in the hypostasis of the
incarnate logos and so on. Until that period the Church had built
its theology, or in other words, had defined its conception of revelation as recta fides. After the conclusion of the great dogma-defining epoch of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, during which the
doctrine of the salvation of man was gradually understood and
defined in its theological principles (Trinity, divine-human nature
of the incarnate Word, etc.) and soteriological implications (eschatology, doctrine of deification, etc.), a new challenge awaited
Christian authors, this time concerning the problem of creation,
not only in its ontological meaning, but in relation to the salvation of the cosmos.
Since in the Old Testament, the concept of Wisdom was not yet
linked to the theological notion of Logos as mediator and saviour,
the Christian theological task was to improve the sophiological
theory within the theology of the Logos, and should have given
life to a reflection about the relationships between the world and
God in the new light of the doctrine of creation in the Word-Wisdom. The doctrine of the Logos should have been the axis of this
speculative path, and the main intention of philosophy should
have moved from an understanding of the to sophiology, that
is, to the understanding of reality through the doctrine of creation in the uncreated Word-Wisdom, passing beyond the ontology
of created and uncreative things into an hypostasiological understanding.
As far as I can see, Christian theology did not undertake this
path, and the lack of an understanding of creation as a theophanic
and sophiological fact meant the return to Platonic cosmology and
Aristotelian ontology and epistemology throughout the Middle
Ages in both East and West. The investigation of the problem of
the eternal creation in the Word-Wisdom exposed in Eriugenas
works informs us that the Irish master was aware that the patristic navigation was not achieved, and a new task awaited the Christian seekers of truth, that is, to arrive at a contemplative theory
whereby God and creation are comprehended in a unitary rather
than a contrasting view, but at the same time neither confused nor
equated as in non-biblical philosophy, that affirmed the eternity

222
of the world and the ontological independence of the universal

causes. The doctrine of natura that the Periphyseon described can
be seen as Eriugenas answer to this challenge, and his understanding of the relationship in Wisdom between created and uncreated
nature as its core.


Creation in Wisdom. Eriugena's Sophiology Beyond Ontology and Meontology

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CREATION IN WISDOM : ERIUGENAS SOPHIOLOGY

BEYOND ONTOLOGY AND MEONTOLOGY

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ernesto sergio mainoldi

digmatic concepts such as the ideas of prodos and epistroph,

Negative : non creatur

1st division of Nature : 2nd division of Nature :

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