768 FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
influence of the Holy Spirit they produce the external world of time and space.
6. Nature, which is created and does not create, or the phe nomenal world and its union in man. In the Logos all things existed from eternity. Creation is their appearance in time. The principle of the development of the primordial ideas is the Holy Spirit.1 The materiality of the world is only apparent, space and time only exist in the mind. The "nothing" from which God made the heavens and the earth was his own incom prehensible essence.2 The whole phenomenal world is but the shadow of the real existence.3 Man is the centre of the phenomena] world, uniting in himself all the contradictions and differences of creation.4 His intellect has the 'power to grasp the sensuous and intelligible, and is itself the substance of things.5 So all nature is created in man, and subsists in him, because the idea of all its parts is implanted in him.6 The divine thought is the primary, the human the secondary substance of things.7
Paradise is to be interpreted spiritually. Adam is not so much an historical personage as the human race in its preexistent condition. Man was never sinless, for sin, as a limitation and defect, is not accidental or temporal, but original in the creation and nature of man.8
c. The union of divinity and created existence, or the Godman. Scotus Erigena shows upon this point the duality of his system. On the one hand he presents Christ as an historical character, with body, mind, soul, spirit, in short the union of
II. 22 (col. 566).
III. 19 (col. 680).
I. 27, 56-58 (col. 474, 475; 498-501).
II. 9 (col. 536).
" Intellectus omnium est omm'o," III. 4 (col. 632, 1. 3 fr. bel.). " Intellect™ rerum veraciter ipsce res sunt," II. 8 (col. 535).
9 IV. 7 (cols. 762-772), e. g. "In homine omnis creatura substantialiter creata sit" (col. 772).
7 IV. 7 (col. 762-772). 8 IV. 14 (col. 807, 808).
\ 176. JOHANNES SCOTUS ERIGENA. 769
the entire sensible and intellectual qualities of the creature.1 But on the other hand he maintains that the Incarnation was an eternal and necessary fact,2 and that it came about through an ineffable and multiplex theophany in the consciousness of men and angels.3
3. The return to God, or the completion of the world in Nature, \vhich creates not and is not created, a. The return to God according to its pre-temporal idea, or the doctrine of pre destination. There is only one true predestination, vi/. to holiness. There is no foreknowledge of the bad. God has completest unity and simplicity; hence his being is not different from his knowledge and will ; and since he has full liberty, the organization of his nature is free. But this organization is at the same time to the world law and government, i. e. its predes tination ; and because God is himself goodness, the predestination can only be to good. The very character of wickedness, — it is op posed to God, not substantial in nature, a defect mixed up with the good, transitory, yet essential to the development of the world, — renders it unreal and therefore not an object of divine know ledge. God does not know the bad as such, but only as the negation of the good. " God's knowledge is the revelation of his essence, one and the same thing with his willing and his creating. As evil cannot be derived from the divine causality, neither can it be considered as an object of divine knowledge." 4 Nor is there any divine predestination or foreknowledge respecting the punishment of the bad, for this ensues in con sequence of their violation of law. They punish themselves.5
1 " ' Corpus quippe,' inquit, ' et sensum ft animnm aewndiim tin* habrns' Chri$tvx videlicet, (et intellectum.' His enim veluti quatuor partibus humana natura constituitur." IT. 13 (col. 541).
2 V. 25 (col. 912).
3 V. 25 (col. 912).
* Neander, /. c. TIL p. 465.
6 " Nullum pcccatum est quod non se iptum puriinf, nmilt? tamen in hoc vita, aperte vcro in altera, quse estfutura." De Divina Prsedestmatione, XVI. vi. (col. 4236).