Talk:John Scotus Eriugena

Copyvio?

It looks like there's a lot of similarity between the content of this article and the content of the same article on NNDB. Several sentences are copied word for word. That page doesn't mention Wikipedia at all; that material is "copyright 2006 Soylent Communications". This article doesn't mention them. The articles on Thomas Dempster are also very similar (even more so than these two). Seems like a problem but I have no idea how to sort it out... help? Jaeger5432 12:57, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Can you mark out the problematic passages? I find the Soylent article quite good and superior to wikipedia (more thorough). The similar passages may stem from common root (ie Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition).-- Aethralis 08:55, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

The biggest passage is in the "Works" section, beginning with the second paragraph ("The first of the works known to have been written...") and extending to the end of the third (the "Translation of Ps. Dionysius"). The second passage is the third paragraph of the section "Life" ("The latter part of his life ... some reason for fixing the date of his death at 877"). The third passage is in the section "Influence". Some effort has been made to paraphrase, but some is left completely intact ("the boldness with which he works out his logical or dialetical system of the universe", etc.

I compared both to the Britannica... looks like the NNDB version is a direct copy and the WP version is condensed and mostly paraphrased from that. I hadn't thought to check for that, thanks for the suggestion... Even though... the 1911 tag was already there? OK, I'm just gonna shut up now. I must've been more tired than I thought when I "discovered" this. Jaeger5432 13:14, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

link?

I wrote an essay on this topic about 10 years ago which can be seen [1] does anyone think this is this a suitable link to add here? Peter morrell 15:29, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Even Then!

I can't believe that even in the ninth century, alcoholism was associated with the Gaelic tribe. "What separates a Scot (Irish) from a sot?" 1,125 years later we have the same pairing.Lestrade 17:44, 26 July 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

...perhaps it's genetic? --78.16.53.60 23:26, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

...perhaps this is racism--John Bessa (talk) 19:32, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Or perhaps it was vandalism? If any of you are still alive, that line's been edited. Jonathan f1 (talk) 16:16, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Scholastic?

I have put him in the Category:Scholastic philosophers. Not sure if he really counts, but other sources suggest he is. So. Dbuckner 18:43, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

He is a scholastic philosopher only when decided that all medieval philosophers should be labelled scholastic. Please have a look at scholasticism. --Aethralis 21:28, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Someone should add that Scotus' Christian pantheism was a huge liberating influence on the poetry and life of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins found his vision of God being manifest in nature a way of reconciling his love of the created world with his faith as a Jesuit. To be frank I really don't understand why the Church has traditionally been so opposed to the idea that God might be immanent in his Creation. What's frightening about that? Its in the Bible after all! Paul says 'Christ is all in all things' and Isaiah talks about God's glory being everywhere. Strange. ThePeg 21:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Scholem

One might also mention Gershom Scholem's controversial arguments about Eriugena's influence on the early Kabbalah (see e.g. [2] and the references therein). Beside that, I can't grasp how Eriugena can be regarded as low-importance by anyone even vaguely acquainted with Medieval philosophy. L'omo del batocio (talk) 12:46, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Influence

The article says: "St. Peter Damian agreed with Tertullian that it is not necessary for men to think because God has spoken for them."

It seems as the opposite of Johannes Scotus' teachings. Then, why is St. Peter Damian mentioned as influenced by Eriugenea? It would be appreciated if someone explains. --Giordano1507 (talk) 15:03, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Scot's "Evil as an absence of Good"

The Nothing article gives an excellent description of him that attracted me to this page, but I get an entirely different impression of him from the Nothing article.

What was most interesting in the Nothing article was his idea that evil is "deprived good," which supports the very latest material describing good and bad in humanity based on healthy or defective (or missing) key neurons.

Dangerous malignant narcissism, a common cognition of evil as seen in Hilter, Stalin, etc, whom I have seen described as anti-Christs, would, in a sense, not be something that a person (or other organism) has, such as the common cold, but something that is missing, specifically an empathic facility[3].

"His beliefs are essentially pantheist and he classifies evil, amongst many other things, into not-being. This is done on the grounds that evil is the opposite of good, a quality of God, but God can have no opposite, since God is everything in the pantheist view of the world."

His pantheism, then, also parallels the recent material: both are rooted in nature. His God is all that is good in the world in its natural wholeness (hard to think of as heretical!), and modern psycho- and sociology shows our social abilities evolving from nature: Darwin's natural affection.

If the Nothing page is correct, then I think that this should be shown to be a part of Scot's thinking here, in that I think it not only defines him, but also shows a connection between rare, but significant, sensible thought during the Dark Ages and the very latest research, such as de Waal's.

I also see this kind of thinking as a way to massage the differences between religious and scientific thought with the the scope of present-day society.

If the Nothing page is is wrong, then this is interesting anyway ;) --John Bessa (talk) 19:45, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Apparent inconsistency

The following sentences have been tagged with because they appear to be mutually inconsistent (the links to the sections of the main article are indicated in parentheses):

• "Authority is the source of knowledge, but the reason of mankind is the norm by which all authority is judged." (Peri physeon)
• For Eriugena, philosophy or reason is first, primitive; authority or religion is secondary, derived. (Influence)

Miguel de Servet (talk) 19:07, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

"Eriugena was a believer in apocatastasis or universal reconciliation,[citation needed]"

Suggested citation: "Universalism: a historical survey" found at http://www.theologicalstudies.org.uk/article_universalism_bauckham.html

Richard Bauckham, a Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of St. Andrews, states in this article: "During the Middle Ages universalism is found only in the strongly Platonic system of John Scotus Erigena (dc 877) and in a few of the more pantheistic thinkers in the mystical tradition, for whore [sic - whom] the divine spark in every man must return to its source in God.[14]"

A recent study on the subject: Ilaria Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis. A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena, Leiden: Brill, 2013 (Chapter 4. From Augustine to Eriugena. Latin, Greek and Syriac Receptions of Origen;s Apokatastasis Theory, pp. 659-816). --Raul Corazzon (talk) 06:59, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 17 December 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. No need to do anything with the target history as it wasn't merged anywhere. Jenks24 (talk) 06:20, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

---

Johannes Scotus Eriugena → John Scotus Eriugena – The vast majority of English academic and popular sources, including those cited within the article, refer to him primarily as "John" and not "Johannes." Per WP:COMMONNAME, the article should be redirected. schetm (talk) 04:33, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

• Support, ngram --JFH (talk) 13:56, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
• Support, tho reluctantly. But it is a shame, as Johannes has so much more elegance!! Pandeist (talk) 21:44, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. No one's actually given evidence of the most common academic usage. A search of Google Books for "Johannes Scotus Eriugena" -wikipedia gives 16,500 hits (10,700 in the last century), whilst "John Scotus Eriugena" -wikipedia gives 7,700 hits (7,450 in the last century). This is a radically different picture than that painted by the nominator. I'd say either name is acceptable.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 01:13, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Your results were confounded by foreign-language sources. John (7,220) and Johannes (2,800) in English books only. --JFH (talk) 05:16, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Yep, that's a more useful result. I've scratched my oppose.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 02:01, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

• Note to closer there is history in both the current and proposed page. Tiggerjay (talk) 01:39, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

"Universalism"

Given that the controversy over apokatastasis has typically centered on the question of eternal torment, it seems odd to call Eriugena a universalist. He did believe that all things will (objectively) be in the end what and where God has ordained them to be. This is so because Eriugena calls creation "God's art," and conceives each and every created thing as an artifact wherein God is engaged in some form of self-revelation. The final return is an objective recontexualization of all things so that each and every thing can be seen as what it is: an artifact that bears witness to God.

At the same time, Eriugena also believed that the human mind is fundamentally interpretive. Eriugena saw the interpretive act as constitutive of the human person. For this reason, it is entirely possible for the human person to experience (subjectively) the end of all things as torment. The soul that sees God and resents God's lordship is tormented with the futility of its own egocentrism, and can take this suffering as further reason to deny God's goodness, a vicious cycle that can be carried on forever.

With this being recognized, it makes little sense to call Eriugena a universalist. His view affirms that Hell is real and eternal (though non-punitive). Although objectively all things are restored, it is the subjective that distinguishes between Heaven and Hell, and Eriugena never claims that repentance is inevitable. 2600:1700:7F00:8200:617A:9F43:15AC:53A8 (talk) 16:51, 10 March 2022 (UTC) --Controversial!

 In the theological history Eriugena continues to be controversial, even at wikipedia. If you cite the page, remember that Bernard of Clairvaux is not that controversial and would be highly surprised if he knew Eriugena was his source. Israel the grammarian was Eriugenas "diciple" according to wikipedias article on Israel the grammarian even though Eriugena had been dead for more than a decade before Israel was born. Its a man with many talents!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.138.98.88 (talk) 20:45, 6 October 2022 (UTC)