John Scotus Eriugena Quotes on Knowledge
John Scotus Eriugena (c.815–c.877) — the Irish-born philosopher who taught at the court of Charles the Bald and translated the Greek patristic corpus of Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus the Confessor into Latin — gave the Carolingian Renaissance its most ambitious philosophical synthesis in the four-book Periphyseon (On the Division of Nature, c.867). The central project is the systematic articulation of the four divisions of nature — that which creates and is not created (God as cause), that which is created and creates (the primary causes or eternal reasons), that which is created and does not create (the temporal world), and that which neither creates nor is created (God as final cause) — within a Neoplatonic framework that integrates the Greek patristic apophatic tradition with the Latin Augustinian inheritance. The framework, condemned in 1225 but circulating quietly through the medieval period, shaped subsequent Christian Neoplatonism through Eckhart, Cusa, and the broader recovery of Greek patristic theology in the Latin West.
Quotes
-
Attributed to John Scotus Eriugena:
“We do not know what God is. God himself does not know what he is because he is not anything.”
-
Attributed to John Scotus Eriugena:
“Authority is the source of knowledge, but our own reason remains the norm by which all authority must be judged.”
-
“True philosophy is true religion, and true religion is true philosophy.”
Quid est aliud de philosophia tractare, nisi verae religionis, qua summa et principalis omnium rerum causa, Deus, et humiliter colitur, et rationabiliter investigatur, regulas exponere? Conficitur inde, veram esse philosophiam veram religionem, conversimque veram religionem esse veram philosophiam. -
“No one enters heaven except through philosophy.”
Nemo intrat in caelum nisi per philosophiam. -
“Cum ergo audimus, Deum omnia facere, nil aliud debemus intelligere, quam Deum in omnibus esse, hoc est, essentiam omnium subsistere.”
When we are told that God is the maker of all things, we are simply to understand that God is in all things – that He is the substantial essence of all things. | De Divisione Naturae , Bk. 1, ch. 72; translation from Hugh Fraser Stewart Boethius: An Essay (London: William Blackwood, 1891) p. 255. -
“De Divisione Naturae , Bk. 1, ch. 72; translation from Hugh Fraser Stewart Boethius: An Essay (London: William Blackwood, 1891) p. 255.”
Cum ergo audimus, Deum omnia facere, nil aliud debemus intelligere, quam Deum in omnibus esse, hoc est, essentiam omnium subsistere. -
“Auctoritas siquidem ex vera ratione processit, ratio vero nequaquam ex auctoritate. Omnis enim auctoritas, quae vera ratione non approbatur, infirma videtur esse. Vera autem ratio, quum virtutibus suis rata atque immutabilis munitur, nullius auctoritatis adstipulatione roborari indigent.”
For authority proceeds from true reason, but reason certainly does not proceed from authority. For every authority which is not upheld by true reason is seen to be weak, whereas true reason is kept firm and immutable by her own powers and does not require to be confirmed by the assent of any authority. | De Divisione Naturae , Bk. 1, ch. 69; translation by I. P. Sheldon-Williams, cited from Peter -
“Sed fortasse quis dixerit: Quomodo omnia, quae sunt, lumina sunt?”
Yet someone may ask: how is it that all things which are, are lights? | Expositiones super Ierarchiam Caelestem S. Dionysii , vol. 122, col. 128 in Jacques Paul Migne Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series Latina ; translation from Walter Baumann "In Principio Verbum" : Seminar on Canto 74, Lines 76-145 , p. 250 -
“Yet someone may ask: how is it that all things which are, are lights?”
Sed fortasse quis dixerit: Quomodo omnia, quae sunt, lumina sunt? -
“Quid est aliud de philosophia tractare, nisi verae religionis, qua summa et principalis omnium rerum causa, Deus, et humiliter colitur, et rationabiliter investigatur, regulas exponere? Conficitur inde, veram esse philosophiam veram religionem, conversimque veram religionem esse veram philosophiam.”
What, then, is it to treat of philosophy, unless to lay down the rules of the true religion by which we seek rationally and adore humbly God, who is the first and sovereign cause of all things? Hence it follows that the true philosophy is the true religion, and reciprocally that the true religion is the true philosophy. | De Divina Praedestinatione , ch. 1; translation from Kenelm Henry Digby More