Erigena Sentence Examples

According to John Scotus Erigena, the nothing out of which the world is created is the divine essence.

Erigena translated Dionysius into Latin along with the commentaries of Maximus, and his system is, essentially based upon theirs.

Erigena teaches the restitution of all things under the form of the Dionysian adunatio or deificatio.

In Erigena mysticism has not yet separated itself in any way from the dogma of the Church.

But what was matter of immanent assumption with Erigena is in them an equating of two things which have been dealt with on the hypothesis that they are separate, and which, therefore, still retain that external relation to one another.

Amalric's teaching was condemned by the Church, and his heresies led to the public burning of Erigena's De divisione naturae in 1225.

In this book he tries to prove that Bernard (Sapiens), Alcuin, Boniface and Joannes Scotus Erigena were all Scots, and even Boadicea becomes a Scottish author.

Scholasticism in the widest sense thus extends from the 9th to the end of the 14th or the beginning of the 15th century - from Erigena to Occam and his followers.

In Scotus Erigena, at the beginning of the Scholastic era, there is no such subordination contemplated, because philosophy and theology in his work are in implicit unity.

Reason in its own strength and with its own instruments evolves a system of the universe which coincides, according to Erigena, with the teaching of Scripture.

For Erigena, therefore, the speculative reason is the supreme arbiter; and in accordance with its results the utterances of Scripture and of the church have not infrequently to be subjected to an allegorical or mystical interpretation.

But this is only to say again that Erigena is more of a Neoplatonist than a Scholastic. Hence Cousin suggested in respect of this point a threefold chronological division - at the outset the absolute subordination of philosophy to theology, then the period of their alliance, and finally the beginning of their separation.

Erigena pronounces no express opinion upon the question which was even then beginning to occupy men's minds; but his Platonico-Christian theory of the Eternal Word as containing in Himself the exemplars of created things is equivalent to the assertion of universalia His whole system, indeed, is based upon the idea of the divine as the exclusively real, of which the world of individual existence is but the theophany; the special and the individual are immanent, therefore, in the general.

Erigena does not separate his Platonic theory of pre-existent exemplars from the Aristotelian doctrine of the universal as in the individuals.

Hence it may be said that the universals are in the individuals, constituting their essential reality (and it is an express part of Erigena's system that the created but creative Word, the second division of Nature, should pass into the third stage of created and non-creating things); or rather, perhaps, we ought to say that the individuals exist in the bosom of their universal.

At all events, while Erigena's Realism is pronounced, the Platonic and Aristotelian forms of the doctrine are not distinguished in his writings.

Prantl has professed to find the headstream of Nominalism also in Scotus Erigena; but beyond the fact that he discusses at considerable length the categories of thought and their mutual relations, occasionally using the term voces to express his meaning, Prantl appears to adduce no reasons for an assertion which directly contradicts Erigena's most fundamental doctrines.

The immediate influence of Erigena's system cannot have been great, and his works seem soon to have dropped out of notice in the centuries that followed.

So long as the Neoplatonic influence remained strong, attempts were still made to demonstrate the doctrine of the Trinity, chiefly in a mystical sense as in Erigena, but also by orthodox churchmen like Anselm.

They belong indeed (Gerson in particular) to the history of mysticism rather than of Scholasticism, and the same may be said of another cardinal, Nicolaus of Cusa (1401-1464), who is sometimes reckoned among the last of the Scholastics, but who has more affinity with Erigena than with any intervening teacher.

His works had considerable influence in shaping the system of John Scotus Erigena.

The combination Johannes Scotus Erigena has not been traced earlier than Ussher and Gale; even Gale uses it only in the heading of the version of St Maximus.

The date of Erigena's birth is very uncertain, and there is no evidence to show definitely where he was born.

Some early writers thought there were two persons, John Scotus and John Erigena.

Of Erigena's early life nothing is known.

The knowledge of Greek displayed in Erigena's works is not such as to compel us to conclude that he had actually visited Greece.

Roger Bacon, in his severe criticism on the ignorance of Greek displayed by the most eminent scholastic writers, expressly exempts Erigena, and ascribes to him a knowledge of Aristotle in the original.

Among other legends which have at various timesbeen attached to Erigena are that he was invited to France by Charlemagne, and that he was one of the founders of the university of Paris.

The only portion of Erigena's life as to which we possess accurate information was that spent at the court of Charles the Bald.

The reputation of this school seems to have increased greatly under Erigena's leadership, and the philosopher himself was treated with indulgence by the king.

Erigena replied, "Mensa tantum."

The first of the works known to have been written by Erigena during this period was a treatise on the eucharist, which has not come down to us (by some it has been identified with a treatise by Ratramnus, De corpore et sanguine Domini).

As a part of his penance Berengarius is said to have been compelled to burn publicly Erigena's treatise.

So far as we can learn, however, Erigena's orthodoxy was not at the time suspected, and a few years later he was selected by Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, to defend the doctrine of liberty of will against the extreme predestinarianism of the monk Gottschalk (Gotteschalchus).

Erigena argues the question entirely on speculative grounds, and starts with the bold affirmation that philosophy and religion are fundamentally one and the same- "Conficitur inde veram esse philosophiam veram religionem, conversimque veram religionem esse veram philosophiam."

This also has been preserved, and fragments of a commentary by Erigena on Dionysius have been discovered in MS. A translation of theAreopagite's pantheistical writings was not likely to alter the opinion already formed as to Erigena's orthodoxy.

Erigena in all probability never left France, and Haureau has advanced some reasons for fixing the date of his death about 877.

Erigena is the most interesting figure among the middle-age writers.

In no sense whatever can it be affirmed that with Erigena philosophy is in the service of theology.

Maurice, the only historian of note who declines to ascribe a rationalizing tendency to Erigena, obscures the question by the manner in which he states it.

He asks his readers, after weighing the evidence advanced, to determine "whether he (Erigena) used his philosophy to explain away his theology, or to bring out what he conceived to be the fullest meaning of it."

When Erigena starts with such propositions, it is clearly impossible to understand his position and work if we insist on regarding him as a scholastic, accepting the dogmas of the church as ultimate data, and endeavouring only to present them in due order and defend them by argument.

Erigena's great work, De divisione naturae, which was condemned by a council at Sens, by Honorius III.

Naturally sin is a necessary preliminary to this redemption, and Erigena has the greatest difficulty in accounting for the fact of sin.

Schluter (Munster, 1838); and in Floss's Opera omnia; there is a German translation by Ludwig Noack, Johannes Scotus Erigena fiber die Eintheilung der Natur (3 vols., 1874-1876).

Philosophy had attempted to free itself from the trammels of theological orthodoxy in the hardy speculations of some schoolmen, notably of Scotus Erigena and Abelard.

This dispute would have little interest now, had not Hincmar appealed to John Scotus Erigena, who attempted to solve the theological problem by philosophical conceptions.

Ratramnus's views failed to find acceptance; their author was soon forgotten, and, when the book was condemned at the synod of Vercelli in 1050, it was described as having been written by Johannes Scotus Erigena at the command of Charlemagne.

Of a third work, De differentiis et societatibus graeci latinique verbi, we only possess an abstract by a certain Johannes, identified with Johannes Scotus Erigena (9th century).

Amalric appears to have derived his philosophical system from Erigena, whose principles he developed in a one-sided and strongly pantheistic form.

Erigena's contemporaries, and was certainly unorthodox enough to justify the condemnation which it subsequently received from Honorius III.; but its influence, together with that of the Pseudo-Dionysius, had a considerable share in developing the more emotional orthodox mysticism of the 12th and 13th centuries; and Neoplatonism (or Platonism received through a Neoplatonic tradition) remained a distinct element in medieval thought, though obscured in the period of mature scholasticism by the predominant influence of Aristotle.

His only great predecessor, Scotus Erigena, had more of the speculative and mystical element than is consistent with a schoolman; but in Anselm are found that recognition of the relation of reason to revealed truth, and that attempt to elaborate a rational system of faith, which form the special characteristics of scholastic thought.

This was probably due to their unsystematic character, for they are generally tracts or dialogues on detached questions, not elaborate treatises like the great works of Albert, Aquinas, and Erigena.

A more liberal estimate might include John Scotus Erigena or even Anselm or Bernard of Clairvaux in the West and Photius in the East.

Erigena is really of the spiritual kindred of the Neoplatonists and Christian mystics rather than of the typical Scholastic doctors, and, in fact, the activity of Scholasticism is mainly confined within the limits of the 11th and the 14th centuries.

The grandly conceived system of Erigena (see Erigena and Mysticism) stands by itself in the 9th century like the product of another age.

Erigena's next work was a Latin translation of Dionysius the Areopagite (see Dionysius Areopagiticus) undertaken at the request of Charles the Bald.

No distinction is drawn, indeed, between what is reached by reason and what is given by authority; the two are immediately identical for Erigena.