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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  
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2. All the more fascinating, then, is Scotus Erigena's
attempt to clarify both the Unity of God and the
interrelated orders of existence (ca. ninth century). God
is the Being who creates but is not created. To Him
no categories of existence, even self-comprehension,
apply. He is Nothing, that is, nothing like anything
else. From this Nothing comes all else. Nevertheless,
the essence of this intrinsically invisible God is manifest
in creation. God without any world would be only a
possible Creator, hence this world is not accidental to
God's being. Just as the sun must shine, so the creative
eternal Goodness must create; there can be no chasm
between God's will, his thought, and his being. Yet God
and the world are not one.

The stress is clear: creation must not be a divine
fiat that is arbitrary, or unrelated to God's essential na-
ture. Hence God is not one being alongside of other be-
ings. As James Ward suggests (1935), words like “super-
essential, super-rational, super-personal, nay, super-
absolute unity” are intended to express the fullness
of “inexhaustible positivity” (p. 35). God does not know
himself (if to know is to know what some other is).

Erigena's problem is to link his full Nothing with


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the realms of immaterial and material beings and their
composites. The Logos, created and creating, is the
first manifestation of the Nothing of God. The Logos
lures the created and uncreated realms “below” it, thus
unifying the manyness of being with the One.

The traditional creationist will insist that such at-
tempts do nothing ultimately to bridge “the ugly broad
ditch” between the One and the many. Nor is the
distance between the Unity of God and the manyness
of the world decreased by introducing many grades
of being that are lured by the immaterial Logos (or
“Ideas”) without which they would be nonexistent.
Such juxtaposing of emanationism with creationism is
not in fact helpful. For if it helps to argue that man's
knowledge of Nature is possible because his mind
“participates” in the mediating primal Ideas, it does
not help us understand the existence of human freedom
and natural evil. For the many, including man, still
exist in the Absolute, Self-Determining, God. Nothing
that appears to be evil, including man's misuse of his
freedom, has reality apart from God. Thus, a high price
is to be paid for unifying all Being and Goodness, for
holding that evil is ultimate Harmony misunderstood.