Is this (please see below) one of the greatest descriptions of the mysterious process of continual “Creation” by way of an ongoing process of Emanation ever composed by a Christian? I would say it is.
I have been reading and analyzing John Scotus Eriugena’s magnum opus, the dialogue that is his Periphyseon, on and off for about two years now, in an effort to produce a summary of his thought I may include in my historical overview of the changing conceptions of the supposed suprarational human mental faculty or power, and this certainly strikes me as one of the most admirably executed summaries of the process of «Going Forth» that is Emanation:
«Therefore, descending first from the superessentiality of His Nature, in which He is said not to be, He is created by Himself in the primordial causes and becomes the beginning of all essence, of all life, of all intelligence, and of all things which the gnostic contemplation considers in the primordial causes ; then, descending from the primordial causes which occupy a kind of intermediate position between God and the creature, that is, between that ineffable superessentiality which surpasses all understanding and the substantially manifest nature which is visible to pure minds, He is made in their effects and is openly revealed in His theophanies ; then He proceeds through the manifold forms of the effects to the lowest order of the whole of nature, in which bodies are contained ; and thus going forth into all things in order He makes all things and is made all in all things, and returns into Himself, calling all things back into Himself, and while He is made in all things. He does not cease to be above all things and thus makes all things from nothing, that is, He produces from His Superessentiality essences, from His Supervitality lives, from His Superintellectuality intellects (…)». (683a–683b)
A draft version of my historical overview will soon be published on my profile page. I think I can promise you that it will be another feather- and scales-ruffling treatise (to those who actually read it) — an honest and clarifying work (insofar as it is in my power to make one), as opposed to an clever and obscuring one.
E.S.
Tracing the Changing Conceptions of Nous (Νοῦς) through the Ages: A Survey of Vestiges of the Ancient Idea of the Third or Inner Eye, Commencing with Ancient Egypt and Culminating in John Scotus Eriugena
This post was originally published on my profile at Academia.edu back in October 2024. It received 333 views and five likes.
Edmund Schilvold: Skribent, fotograf, filosof, friluftsentusiast 