I 123. THE DOCTRINE OF SCOTUS ERIGENA. 541
and will are inseparable, and constitute his very being. The distinction arises from the limitation of the human mind and from ignorance of Greek; for npoopdw means both prcevideo and prccdestino. There is no such thing as predestination to sin and punishment; for sin is nothing real at all, but simply a negation, an abuse of free will;1 and punishment is simply the inner displeasure of the sinner at the failure of his bad aims. If several fathers call sinners prcedestinati, they mean the re verse, as Christ called Judas amice instead of mimice, and as lucus is called a non luccndo. Sin lies outside of God, and does not exist for him at all ; he does not even foreknow it, much less foreordain it; for knowing and being are identical with him.2 But God has ordered that sin punishes itself; he has established immutable laws, which the sinner cannot escape. Free will is the very essence of man, and was not lost by the fall ; only the power and energy of will are impaired. But Erigena vindicates to man freedom in the same sense in which he vindicates it to God, and identifies it with moral necessity. His pantheistic principles lead him logically to universal restoration.3
This appears more clearly from his remarkable work, De Divisione Naturcc, where he develops his system. The leading idea is the initial and final harmony of God and the universe,
1 Ncyatio, privatio, dcfcctus justiticc. absentia boni, corruptio boni. On the other hand, Scotus seems to regard sin as a necessary limitation of the creature. But this idea is inconsistent with the freedom of will, and runs into necessitarian ism and pantheism. As sin is the defect of justice, so death is simply the de fect of life, and pain the defect of bliss. See cap. 15 (col. 416).
2 God knows only what is, and sin has no real existence. " Sicut Dem mali audor non est. ita nee prczscivs mali, nee pradcstinans cst." Cap. 10 (col. 395). "Ratio pronunciare 'non i^iihifaf, pcccnta eornmque sitpplicia niliil esse, ac per hoc nee prcexciri nee prcedrst inari po*sc; quomodo enim vel prcesciuntur, vd prredestinantur, quce nonsunt?" Cap. 15. The same thought occurs in his work,. 7)« Divis. Nat. He refers to such passages of the Scriptures where it is said of God that he does not know the wicked.
8 The predestination theory of Scotus has some points of resemblance with that of Schleiermacher, who defended the Calvinistic particularism, but only as a preparatory stage to universal election and restoration.
542 FOUKTH PEKIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
as unfolding itself under four aspects : 1) Natura creatrix non vreata, i. e. God as the creative and uncreated beginning of all that exists ; 2) Natura creatrix creata, i. e. the ideal world or the divine prototypes of all things; 3) Natura creata non creans, i. e. the created, but uncreative world of time and sense, as the reflex and actualization of the ideal world ; 4) Natura nee cre ata nee creans, i. e. God as the end of all creation, which, after the defeat of all opposition, must return to him in an dxoxaTdaraatt; TCOV ndvrcov. "The first and the last form," he says, " are one, and can be understood only of God, who is the begin ning and the end of all things."
The tendency of this speculative and mystical pantheism of Erigena was cljecked by the practical influence of the Christian theism which entered into his education and personal experience, so that we may say with a historian who is always just and charitable: "We are unwilling to doubt, that he poured out many a devout and earnest prayer to a redeeming God for his inward illumination, and that he diligently sought for it in the sacred Scripture, though his conceptual apprehension of the divine Being seems to exclude such a relation of man to God, as prayer presupposes." 1
Hincmar had reason to disown such a dangerous champion, and complained of the Scotch "porridge."2 John Scotus was vio lently assailed by Archbishop Wenilo of Sens, who denounced nineteen propositions of his book (which consists of nineteen chapters) as heretical, and by Bishop Prudentins, who increased the number to seventy -seven. He was charged with Pelagian-
1 Neander, III. 462. The same may be said still more confidently of Schleiermacher, who leaned with his head to pantheism, but lovingly clung with his heart to Christ as his Lord and Saviour. He keenly felt the specu lative difficulty of confining the absolute being to the limitations of personality ("omnis definitio est negatio"), and yet sincerely prayed to a personal God. We cannot pray to an abstraction, but only to a personal being that is able to hear and to answer. Nor is personality necessarily a limitation. There may be an absolute personality as well as an absolute intelligence and an absolute will.
* " Pultcs Scotorum."