creation in wisdom. eriugena’s sophiology beyond ontology and meontology

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CREATION IN WISDOM : ERIUGENA’S 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 begin-ning of Periphyseon, two main problems are identified : the non-crea-tiveness 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 God’s self-creation in everything and God’s 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-that-are and things-that-are-not is understood in a unitary frame.

The concept of creation has been explored in several essays conse-crated to the thought of John Scottus Eriugena, yet the system-atic and extended analysis of the implications of this subject in the philosophy of the Irish master can still be developed in vari-ous 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 Eriu-gena 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 chal-lenged 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 para-

Proceedings of the International Conference on Eriugenian Studies in honor of E. Jeau-neau, ed. by W. Otten, M. I. Allen, IPM, 68 (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 183-222.© DOI 10.1484/M.IPM-EB.1.102061



ernesto sergio mainoldi184

digmatic concepts such as the ideas of próodos and epistrophè, by which scholars have indicated the dynamic relation between the transcendence of the One and the immanence of the Total-ity according to Neoplatonic thought. Another Eriugenian doc-trine, 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 neg-atively.2 We can graphically represent it in the following table :

NATURAPassive sense Negative : non creatur Affirmative : creatur

Active sense

Affirmative : creat 1st division of Nature : causa omnium, quae sunt et quae non sunt [God]

2nd division of Nature : causae primordiales

1 For an analysis of the reception of the classical doctrine of ideas in Eriu-gena, see below, and E.S. Mainoldi, Plato uero, philosophorum summus. Indag-ine sulla ricezione di Platone in Giovanni Scoto, in Princeps philosophorum, pater philosophiae. Platone nell’Occidente tardo-antico, medievale e umanistico. Conve-gno di Studi del dottorato FITMU, Fisciano (SA), 12-13 luglio 2010, in press.

2 N(utritor). Videtur mihi diuisio naturae per quattuor differentias quat-tuor 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).



185creation in wisdom: eriugena’s sophiology

Negative : non creat 4th division of Nature : impossibilitas [God]

3rd division of Nature : hae quae in generatione temporibusque et locis cognoscuntur

Our first concern here should be to understand how John Scot-tus 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 deriva-tives : 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 bibli-cal 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. Eriugena’s attempt to give life to a comprehen-sive description of the whole of natura cannot have moved other-wise 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 understand-ing 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, quae-que dicitur, non ab humanis machinationibus sit facta, sed in




exploited his scholarly acquaintance with the discipline of dialec-tics to introduce new and original applications to theology, differ-ent 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 Eriugena’s scholarly circle, as is shown by a definition that we can trace back to the teaching of Eriugena, written by the hand of theIrish scribe i2 and found on a flyleaf bound at the beginning of Ms 55 of the Bibliothèque 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 Eriugena’s 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 illus-tration 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 (Periphy-seon IV 749A, CCCM 164 : 12).

4 B. Bischoff – É. Jeauneau, Ein neuer Text aus der Gedankenwelt des Johan-nes Scottus, in Jean Scot Érigène et l’histoire 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 Octo-ber – 1 November 2005), Roma, 29 ottobre - 1 novembre 2005, ed. G. d’Ono-frio (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, Ambiguo-rum liber III [Eriugena’s translation], CCSG 18 : 28 ll. 209-212).




the traditional definitions of the Trinitarian persons, based on the past participles increatus, creatus, ingenitus and genitus, and com-bined 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 exist-ing 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 theol-ogy. 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 meaning-ful, but on the contrary, he exploited the tools of the art of dia-lectics 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 abso-lute 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-cre-ator establishes an inescapable limit for human knowledge. Conse-quently, the first problem that we meet in Eriugena’s understand-ing 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.7 Cf. G. d’Onofrio, “Cuius esse est non posse esse” : la quarta “species” della

natura eriugeniana tra logica, metafisica e gnoseologia, in History and Eschatol-ogy in Eriugena and his Time, eds. J. McEvoy – M. Dunne (Leuven : Leuven University Press, 2002), pp. 333-346.




activity of creation itself as natura quae non creat. It is impossi-ble 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 super na-turalis. 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 Periphyseon’s 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 (increa-tus Filius is genitus as omnis creatura is genita). A similar anal-ogy 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).




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 oper-ation 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 God–for 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 instru-ments of the senses, and the whole of its body–I 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. O’Meara (Washington : Dumbarton Oaks, 1987).

10 Periphyseon V 885D, CCCM 165 : 38 : A(lumnus). Vtrum rerum condita-rum substantiae et essentiae et rationes ex primordialibus causis per genera-tionem in locis temporibusque diuersorumque accidentium capacitatem proce-dunt atque descendunt….




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. Eriu-gena 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 cre-ates 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 cre-ative 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 non-dum perspicio. Creantis dico, non enim dubitamus trinitatem nostrae natu-rae, 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, mor-tale 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 diligen-tius inuestigabitur.

12 inter primordiales rerum causas homo ad imaginem Dei factus est (Peri-phy seon II 536A-B, CCCM 162 : 17).




M. For the most high Trinity, creative of all things and by noth-ing created, made from nothing all that it made. For it is the pre-rogative 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 spe-cies or forms and immutable reasons after which and in which the visible and the invisible world is formed and governed ; and there-fore 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 predes-tined. For nothing naturally arises in the visible and invisible cre-ation except what is predefined and pre-ordained in them before all times and places. They are also customarily called by the phi-losophers , that is, divine volitions, because everything that God wished to make He made in them primordially and caus-ally ; 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 primordia-les 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 princi-palia exempla), quae pater in filio fecit et per spiritum sanctum in effectus suos diuidit atque multiplicat. C quoque uocantur (id est prae-destinationes). In ipsis enim quaecunque diuina prudentia et fiunt et facta sunt et futura sunt simul et semel et incommutabiliter praedestinata sunt.




On the basis of this passage we can observe that for Eriugena, the causae play a role of intermediate causality, and that their cre-ative and causative power is no other than God’s action through them.

Following the teaching of the Greek Fathers, Eriugena con-ceives 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 asso-ciated 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 opera-tion 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 like-ness of the creative Trinity, that is, what [in it]17 more appropri-ately 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 phi-losophis (id est diuinae uoluntates) nominari solent, quo-niam 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 nul-lam 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.




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 con-nected 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 indi-cated 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 sec-ond (is that) by which the universal” and simultaneously (cre-ated) “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. 19 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]] conue-nientius 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 imagi-nem gerit – in ea tamen est quod ueluti specialius singulis personis accom-modari 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.




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 nothing-ness ; natura creata, by contrast, creates from something pre-ex-isting ; in other words, it generates in the same way as it happens among the three terms of the ontological triad essentia-potentia-operatio. 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 proces-sion 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 super-essential being.

In Periphyseon II Eriugena links the general causality of cre-ation 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 gene-rationem esse accipientem diuidit. Dicunt nanque deum per bonitatem fecisse existentium simul omnium claram dispositionem.” [[Et paulo post :]] “Secun-dam uero, per quam ipsa simul omnis natura a deo per creationem esse acci-piens 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.




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 prerog-ative 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 mean-ing. 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, Being-through-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 boni-tas, 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 […]. Empha-sis added.




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 cre-ation, 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 estab-lished 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 boni-tas 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.




A further understanding of the doctrine of the causae primordiales in light of the doctrine of creation may be developed by distin-guishing 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 enti-ties 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 [uir-tus] 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 vir-tues of the divine and uncreated Wisdom :

But that, just as the Primordial Causes do not separate them-selves from Wisdom, so neither do the substances separate them-selves 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.




These observations assure us that Eriugena doesn’t 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 Eriugena’s position as follows : the uniuersalia are ante rem as non-being in the Word, but they are in re as being generated in substantiis. Eriugena’s 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 cre-ated 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 doc-trine of creation in the Word implies that Eriugena’s 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 Eriu-gena’s 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 cannotbe understood otherwise than as nothingness. In the Word the causae primordiales as well as their effect, i.e. the whole of cre-ation, are understood as non-being (ea quae non sunt). Neverthe-less 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.




Specifying in Periphyseon III what nothingness is, Eriugena introduces his well-known argument that nihil should not be con-sidered 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 noth-ing [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, Bibliothèque Munici-pale, 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 under-stood 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 con-cesserim 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 – É. Jeauneau, The Autograph of Eriugena (Turnhout : Brepols, 1996) Autographa Medii Aeuii 3 and É. Jeauneau, “Nisi-fortinus : l’élève qui corrige le maître,” in Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages. A Festschrift for Peter Dronke, ed. J. Marenbon (Leiden, Brill, 2001), pp. 113-129.




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 pos-session before all things that are received the possession of sub-sistence.]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. 32 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 coessen-tiale et coaeternum, neque extra deum per se subsistens seu ab aliquo unde




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 God’s 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 ele-ments 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 nothing which, in the sense of privation, will seem an impious thing to say [for negation of the Word in the sense of transcen-dence of nature, though not in the sense of privation, is found in Scripture]35 , or that some cause other than the Word be sup-posed 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 essen-tiae 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 neces-sario 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




Nihil as negation is the logical negative concept that refers to the meontological status of all things before coming into being : con-ceived 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 transcen-dence, 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-eter-nal 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 pro-cess in God. But I see nothing inconvenient in granting the sec-ond proposition, that is, that the generation of the Word by the Father does not in any temporal sense38 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.




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 cre-ation of everything in the Word mean, when Eriugena states that : coaeterna sibi esse arbitror, generationem dico Verbi, et creatio-nem 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 pro-cessio uerbi a patre per generationem praecedat processionem omnium de nihilo in uerbo per creationem ? [[Et ut manifestius dicam : Vtrum primor-diales 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 cau-sas 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 praeces-sio recte quis intelligit. Hoc autem quod posterius propositum est non incon-grue 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.




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 fol-lowing 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, quemad-modum 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 uniuer-sali 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.




[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 some-thing for all things which subsist in the Word of God subsist truly and naturally and 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 gener-ally 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 cre-ation 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 primordia-les 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 ter-ram.” 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 incho-asse. 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,




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 des-tined 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 noth-ing, but that there was (a time) when they were not, and there-fore 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 qual-ity 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 being for

duo principia sibi inuicem aduersa, sicut unus Manachiorum, aestimabitur fingere. Multi siquidem secularium philosophorum informem materiem coae-ternam 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 ueri-tatis expulit, ab uno principio omnia esse praedicans et nil in natura rerum uisibilium et inuisibium inueniri, quoquo modo generationis in speciem pro-priam erumpat, quod in uerbo dei unigenito aeternaliter non constat substi-tui, 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.




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’ Hom-ily, where he comments on the verse Omnia per ipsum facta sunt of John’s 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 work-ing 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 tem-pora, 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, qui-bus accidentia contingunt. Ac per hoc, non irrationabiliter de eis praedicatur ‘Non erat quando non erant’ ; temporaliter enim inchoauerunt per generatio-nem 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 gene-rationem quippe dei uerbi ex deo principio facta sunt omnia. […] Per non factum, sed genitum, omnia facta, sed non genita.




Eriugena is manifestly preoccupied with avoiding a radical dual-ism between God and creation, wishing to bring everything back to the oneness of God’s nature, but at the same time, he carefully avoids lapsing into cosmic monism or pantheism, that is the con-fusion 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 them-selves, 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 preced-ing ‘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 Good-ness, 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 (Eriugena’s translation), ed. M. Cappuyns, Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales, 32 (1965) : 235, rr. 13, 34, 36 ; cf. Periphyseon IV 796D ; 797B.




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 Eriugena’s 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 Eriugena’s 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 crea-ture 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 supernatu-ral natural and the simple composite and the accident-free subject to accident [and accident] and the infinite finite and the uncir-cumscribed circumscribed and the supratemporal temporal and the Creator of all things created in all things and the Maker of

46 Versio IV.47 Periphyseon III 632D-633A, CCCM 163 : 22 : Summae siquidem ac trinae

soliusque uerae bonitatis in se ipsa immutabilis motus et simplex multipli-catio 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, ante-quam faceret caelum et terram ?

49 Ibid. : …alta scrutantibus gehennas parabat.




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 Diony-sian hyperontological principle esse omnium est super esse diuini-tas : 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 God’s self-creation has noth-ing to do with the divine superessentiality in itself, which is and remains by all means uncreated ; instead divine self-creation con-cerns the process of creation, which proceeds from God’s power only and not from a nothingness outside of God’s 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 Creator’s 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 inef-fabili 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 superessen-tialis essentialem, et supernaturalis naturalem, et simplex compositum, et accidentibus liber accidentibus subiectum et accidens, et infinitus finitum, et incircumscriptus circumscriptum, et supertemporalis temporalem, et superlo-calis 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.




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 create for 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, God’s 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 God’s creative power. God creates in primordial causes and nec ultra : there is no creative power that proceeds from God through the different levels of crea-

51 Periphyseon III, 689A-C, CCCM 163 : 99-100 : N. Rationem medietatis restare solummodo arbitror, quae duplici modo contemplatoribus suis arri-det. 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.




tion. Furthermore the division between ea quae sunt and ea quae non sunt implies the co-existence of ea quae non sunt as not-be-ing 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 onto-logical 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-cre-ator. He is conceived as creator in consideration of the things that are created by Him ; He is conceived as non-creator when consid-ering 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 Him-self, 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 cre-ated 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 Sub-stance, or Goodness, or Virtue, or Wisdom, or whatever else may be predicated of God, was created by none, for nothing greater is




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 genera-tion 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 care-fully 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 Prov-idence 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 Begin-ning 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 uni-uersalis naturae, quae in deo et creatura intelligitur, fecimus diuisionem.




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 prin-cipium et causam intueor, occurrit mihi uera ratio, quae fiducialiter suggerit diuinam essentiam uel substantiam, bonitatem, uirtutem, sapientiam, ceter-aque 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 intrans-gressibilemque 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 intelligi-bilem seu sensibilem processerunt, mirabili quadam et ineffabili regenerati-one reuersura sint ad eam – et in ea omnia erunt quieta, quoniam ulterius nihil ab ea per generationem profluit – nihil dicitur creare. Quid enim crea-bit, 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 per-spicitur 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 sub-stituta 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 cau-sas]] 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.




in theological knowledge. In this passage, Eriugena also under-lines 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 understand-ing of Creation : 1) uncreated, as possible insofar as the whole cre-ation 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 Him-self. 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 meontolog-ical non-being has to be distinguished from uncreated non-being.

Eriugena’s doctrine of creation, which we have tried to recon-struct up to this point, follows the logical principle of the division according to the science of dialectics, which is based on the ratio-nal power of the intellect. This application drives at the result of the double theory (duplex theoria) that poses a logical contradic-tion 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 supernatu-ral merging of the perfectly purified souls into God Himself, and their entry into the darkness of the incomprehensible and inacces-sible 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-




In these three degrees, we read that the divisive knowledge of dia-lectics (scientia) is surpassed by the unitive knowledge of wisdom, and concludes its path in the divine un-knowledge, which is nei-ther divisive nor unitive.

This statement turns Eriugena’s enquiry toward a sophiological understanding of gnoseology, stepping over the divisions of dialec-tics and the limits of rationality toward a unitive contemplation of creation in Wisdom. The gnoseological implications of Eriu-gena’s 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 Lord’s 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 dis-course about the divine Wisdom – following the Pauline identi-

entiam, hoc est contemplationem intimam ueritatis quantum creaturae con-ceditur, 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 illu-minabitur, hoc est, secretissima diuina mysteria beatis et illuminatis intel-lectibus ineffabili quodam modo aperientur.

54 The Bible, here and below, is quoted according to the King James Ver-sion.




fication of the biblical Wisdom of God with the Christ-Word,55 maintained the distinction between uncreated Wisdom and cre-ated 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 dec-laration, “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 pro-duces 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 Eriugena’s sophiology, but the Irish master also takes into account the interpretation of Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram, which he quoted in Periphy-seon IV :

55 (1 Cor 1 :24).56 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 wis-dom, 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 : Pseudo–Dionysius 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.




This is what St. Augustine means when he says in his Hexæmeron :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 under-standing 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 igno-rance, 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 inexplica-ble knowledge of God”60

In these three patristic quotations we can recognize the founda-tions of Eriugena’s 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).59 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 adunationi-bus, 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, gnos-tica scientia, per quam ipsa uerae sophiae infinita donorum effusio superue-niens, quantum fas est, pure de cetero ipsam circa Deum et immediate dignis praestat incognitam et ininterpretabilem notitiam.”




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 cre-ated 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 was for everything that God sees is true and eternal there 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 alterna-tives [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 sub-sequently made in themselves, but that the same things are eter-nally 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 nan-que 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 intellec-tus : Vnus quidem considerat aeternitatem ipsius in diuina cognitione, in




John Scottus built his discourse about creation in Wisdom follow-ing 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 Augus-tine, 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 reali-ties, 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 Eriugena’s 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 com-pellet 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 con-dita 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, catholi-cae 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.




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 rev-elation as recta fides. After the conclusion of the great dogma-de-fining 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 (escha-tology, 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 salva-tion 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-Wis-dom. 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 cre-ation in the uncreated Word-Wisdom, passing beyond the ontology of created and uncreative things into an hypostasiological under-standing.

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 Eriugena’s works informs us that the Irish master was aware that the patris-tic navigation was not achieved, and a new task awaited the Chris-tian 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




of the world and the ontological independence of the universal causes. The doctrine of natura that the Periphyseon described can be seen as Eriugena’s answer to this challenge, and his understand-ing 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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