Chapter 42 Chapter 8 John Scott

John Scotus, or Johannes Scotus, sometimes referred to as Eliugena or Eligena, was the most astonishing figure of the ninth century AD.Had he been born in the fifth or fifteenth century A.D. he might not have been so surprising.He was an Irishman, a Neoplatonist, a distinguished Greek scholar, a Phelagius, and a Pantheist.He spent most of his career under the patronage of King Charles the Bald of France. He was admittedly far from orthodoxy, but escaped persecution so far as we know.He placed reason above faith, and cared nothing for the authority of the clergy; and they, in order to settle their disputes, called upon his arbitration.

In order to understand the emergence of such a figure, we must first look to Irish culture in the centuries after St. Patrick.Leaving aside the unpleasant fact that St. Patrick was English, there are two other almost equally unpleasant things: first, there were Christians in Ireland before St. Patrick arrived; Second, Irish culture did not originate with him (according to a Gallic writer), however much he contributed to Irish Christianity.When Attila and the Goths, Vandals, and Alaric invaded Gaul one after another: "All the learned men on this side of the sea fled abroad, especially Ireland, and wherever they fled, they Great academic advancement for the residents there."

Had any of these sought refuge in England, the Angles, Saxons, and Giots would have wiped them out; but those who had gone to Ireland combined with missionaries and succeeded in spreading the gradual spread of the A great deal of knowledge and civilization died out.We have every reason to believe that a knowledge of the Greek language survived among the Irish in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries A.D., and a considerable knowledge of the Latin classics.The Greek language has been known in England since the time of Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury.Theodore himself was a Greek who had been educated in Athens; in the north of England he was probably proficient in Greek through the teachings of Irish missionaries.Montag James said: "In the second half of the seventh century A.D. the thirst for knowledge was greatest and the teaching was most active in Ireland. In Ireland the study of Latin (and to a lesser extent Greek) was conducted from a scholarly point of view. Driven first by missionary zeal, then by the difficult circumstances at home in Ireland, they migrated to the Continent in great numbers, and thus contributed to the preservation of the fragmentary literature they had long revered." Herrike of Auxerre In describing the migration of Irish scholars in AD 876: "Ireland, with its philosophers, has migrated almost en masse to the shores of our country, regardless of the perils of the sea. It means that the recruit of the bald king Charlie, voluntarily embarked on the road of exile."

Scholars are often forced to live a life of nomadism.At the beginning of Greek philosophy, many philosophers were refugees from the Persians; at the end of philosophy, under Justinian, they became refugees to the Persians.In the fifth century A.D., as we have seen, some learned people fled from Gaul to the islands of Western Europe to escape the Germans; Flee back to Gaul. In modern times, German philosophers have even had to flee farther west in order to escape their fellow countrymen.I wonder if it would have taken them as long to return home. We know so little about the Irish who preserved their classical cultural traditions for Europe at the time.Their learning, as their penitential rule-books show, is monastic and full of religious devotion; but their learning does not seem to have much to do with the delicate questions of theology.As this learning was monastic rather than bishopric, it lacked that administrative outlook which, from Gregory the Great onwards, had characterized monks on the Continent.And because it mainly cut off effective ties with Rome, when considering the Pope, it still held the view of the Pope in St. Ambrose's time, so it was different from the view of the Pope in later generations.Philacius, though probably a Briton, is considered by some to be an Irishman.It is probable that his heresy survived in Ireland, where those in power failed to stamp it out as painstakingly as in Gaul.These circumstances suffice to explain the extraordinary freedom and freshness of John Scott's thought.

Neither the beginning nor the end of John Scotus' career can be traced; we know only an intermediate period when he was employed by the King of France.He was born around 800 AD and died around 877, but both dates are speculative.He was in France at the time of Pope Nicholas I.During his career we meet other figures associated with this Pope, such as Charles the Bald, Emperor Michael, and Pope Nicholas himself. Around AD 843, John traveled to France at the invitation of King Charles the Bald and was appointed by the king as headmaster of the court school.Concerning predestination and free will, a dispute arose between the monk Gottshalek and the archbishop of Remus, Sinkmal, a prominent monk.The monk Gotshalek is predestination, and the archbishop is libertarian.John supported the archbishop in a treatise "On Divine Predestination," but his support was too imprudent.This question is a very tricky one; Augustine had to deal with it in his essay against Philacius, and while it is dangerous to agree with Augustine, it is even more dangerous to speak out against him.John's support of free will may perhaps be excused without arousing any censure; but the purely philosophical character of his arguments has provoked resentment against him.This is not because he defies anything accepted in theology, but because he asserts that philosophy, independent of revelation, has equal authority, or even greater authority.He argues that both reason and revelation are sources of truth and therefore cannot contradict each other; but if a similar contradiction arises between the two, then we should resort to reason.True religion, he said, is true philosophy; conversely, true philosophy is also true religion.His writings were condemned by two synods, AD 855 and AD 859; the first synod denounced his writings as "Scotus' porridge."

Thanks to the support of the king, he was able to escape punishment.He and the king seem to have been friendly.If the account of William of Malmesbury is to be believed, the king asked John when John was lunching with the king: "What makes the difference between an Irishman (Scot) and a drunkard (Sot)?" Calthod replied: "Only the abbot before the eclipse." The king died in 877 AD, and since then people have never heard of John's whereabouts.It is believed that he also died that same year.But there are also legends that he was hired by Alfred the Great to England, and became the abbot of Malmesbury Abbey or Athelene Abbey, and was finally assassinated by monks.However, the unfortunate person seems to be another John with the same name.

John's other book is a translation of the Pseudo-Dionysian anthology in the original Greek. This is a book of great renown in the early Middle Ages.When St. Paul was preaching in Athens, "several people drew close to him and were converted, among them was Dionysus, an official of the Areopagus" (Acts 17:34).Apart from the above records, we have no way to know about this person at present, but in the Middle Ages people also knew many other things about him.He traveled to France, where he founded the Abbey of St. Denis; at least that is what Hildoin, the abbot of the abbey, said shortly before John's arrival in France.In addition Dionysius is the author of an important work reconciling Neo-Platonism and Christianity.The date of the writing of the book is unknown; but it was written before 500 A.D. and after Plotinus' time.This book was widely circulated in the East and was appreciated by the world;

However, in the West until AD 827, when the Greek Emperor Michael gave a copy to the pious King Louis (Louis the Pious), and King Louis gave the book to the above-mentioned abbot of the Hilduin Abbey, the book has not yet been published. known to the general public. Hilduin attributed the book to a disciple of St. Paul, the founder of the monastery where Hilduin lived.He was eager to know the contents of the book; but no one was competent to translate the Greek until John came.John did the translation, and he must have enjoyed it with great pleasure, for his views were very close to those of the Pseudo-Dionysius.Pseudo-Dionysius has since exerted a great influence on Western Catholic philosophy.

John's translation was sent to Pope Nicholas in AD 860.The pope, annoyed that his approval had not been sought before publication, ordered King Charles to send John to Rome—an order that fell on deaf ears.With regard to the substance of the book, and especially with regard to the virtuosity shown in the translation, the Pope cannot boast.The Pope had consulted his librarian, Anastasius, a distinguished Greek scholar, for his opinion on the book.Anastasius was amazed that such a profound knowledge of Greek could be possessed by an alien. John's greatest work (written in Greek) was The Treatise on Natural Differences.

This is a work which in the age of scholasticism might have been called "realistic"; that is to say, it maintains, like Plato's, that universals precede particulars.In "nature" he includes not only being; but also non-being.The whole of nature is divided into four categories: (1) creators but not created, (2) creators and created, (3) created but not creators, (4) neither creators The one who is not created.The first category is obviously God.The second category is the (Platonic) Ideas that exist in God.The third category is things in time and space.The fourth, surprisingly, is still God, not as the creator of the world, but as the ultimate and purpose of all things.All things that flow from God strive to return to God; therefore the end of all these things is the same as their beginning.The bridge between the one and the many is the logos.

He includes various things, such as those corporeal things that do not belong to the intellectual world, and sin—for sin signifies the typical loss of divinity—into the realm of non-being.Only the Creator, not the created, has an essential being; it is the essence of all things.God is the beginning, middle, and end of things.The nature of God is unknown to humans, not even to angels.In a sense he does not even know himself: "God himself does not know what he is, because he is not a what; in a sense he is incomprehensible to himself and to every wise man." God's existence is seen in the being of things; His wisdom in the order of things; His life in the motion of things.His being is the Father, his wisdom is the Son, and his life is the Holy Spirit.Yet Dionysius is right when he says that there is no one name by which God can be identified.There is a so-called affirmative theology in which God is said to be truth, goodness, essence, etc., but these affirmations are only symbolic truths, since all these predicates have an opposite, And God has no opposites. The class of things in which the creator is at the same time the created includes the first causes, or the archetypes, or the ideas of Platonism.The sum total of these first causes is the logos.The world of ideas is eternal, and created.These first causes, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, produced the world of individual things, but illusory in their physicality.When referring to God creating everything out of "nothing", this "nothing" should be understood as God Himself in the sense that God is beyond all knowledge. Creation is an eternal process: the substance of all finite things is God. Creation is not a being distinct from God.Creation exists in God, and God reveals Himself in creation in an ineffable way. "The Holy Trinity loves itself in us and in itself; It looks at itself and pushes itself. " The root of sin is liberty: sin occurs because people turn to themselves and not to God.The origin of evil is not in God, because in God there is no concept of evil.Evil is right and wrong and it has no source, because if it had a source it would become necessary.Evil is the absence of good. The Logos is the principle that brings the many back to the one and brings man back to God; thus it is the Savior of the world.Through union with God that part of the human body which causes this union also becomes divine. John is at odds with the Aristotelians in denying the substance of individual things.He called Plato the master of philosophy.Yet the first three of his classifications of being are all indirectly derived from Aristotle's active rather than passive, active and passive, and passive rather than active.The fourth category in John's system, being both non-creator and non-created, comes from Dionysius' statement that all things return to God. From the above overview, John Scotus' unorthodox teaching is evident.His pantheism, which denies the substance of creation, is contrary to Christianity.Nor is his account of the creation of all things out of nothing acceptable to any prudent theologian.His theory of the Trinity is very similar to that of Plotinus. Although he tried to defend himself on this point, his statement failed to maintain the equality of the three.These heresies show John's spiritual independence, which is amazing in the ninth century AD.His neo-Platonist views were probably as common in Ireland at the time as they were among the Greek Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries AD.If we knew a little more about Irish Christianity between the fifth and ninth centuries AD, we might not find John so surprising.On the other hand, perhaps a large part of his heresy was due to the influence of pseudo-Dionysius.Dionysius was once thought to be associated with St. Paul and was mistaken for the orthodox sect. His view that the creation of the world has no time is of course also heresy, which compels him to say that the Genesis account is of an allegorical nature.The kingdom of heaven and Adam's fall should not be interpreted literally.Like all pantheists, he had difficulty explaining evil.He believed that human beings were originally without sin, and when man was without sin, he had no distinction of sex.This statement is of course consistent with what the Bible says: The statement that "God created male and female" contradicts it. According to John, human beings are divided into male and female only as a result of sin.Women embody the sensual and depraved nature of men.In the end, the distinction of sex will be reduced to repetition, and then we will have a purely spiritual body.Sin consists in a misguided will, in assuming that what is not good is good.The punishment of sin is natural; it consists in discovering the futility of sinful desires.However, the punishment is not eternal.Like Origen, John thinks that even devils will be saved in the end, but they will be saved later than others. The Pseudo-Dionysius translated by John had a great influence on medieval thought.However, his magnum opus, Theory of Natural Distinction, had little influence.The book was repeatedly denounced as heresy, and in 1225 AD Pope Honorius finally ordered the burning of all copies of the book.Fortunately, this order was not effectively implemented.