John’s greatest work was called (in Greek) On the Division of Nature. This book was what, in scholastic times, would have been termed “realist”; that is to say, it maintained, with Plato, that universals are anterior to particulars. He includes in “Nature” not only what is, but also what is not. The whole of Nature is divided into four classes: (1) what creates and is not created, (2) what creates and is created, (3) what is created but does not create, (4) what neither creates nor is created. The first, obviously, is God. The second is the (Platonic) ideas, which subsist in God. The third is things in space and time. The fourth, surprisingly, is again God, not as Creator, but as the End and Purpose of all things. Everything that emanates from God strives to return to Him; thus the end of all such things is the same as their beginning. The bridge between the One and the many is the Logos.
In the realm of not-being he includes various things, for example, physical objects, which do not belong to the intelligible world, and sin, since it means loss of the divine pattern. That which creates and
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is not created alone has essential subsistence; it is the essence of all things. God is the beginning, middle, and end of things. God’s essence is unknowable to men, and even to angels. Even to Himself He is, in a sense, unknowable: “God does not know Himself, what He is, because He is not a what; in a certain respect He is incomprehensible to Himself and to every intellect.” * In the being of things God’s being can be seen; in their order, His wisdom; in their movement, His life. His being is the Father, His wisdom the Son, His life the Holy Ghost. But Dionysius is right in saying that no name can be truly asserted of God. There is an affirmative theology, in which He is said to be truth, goodness, essence, etc., but such affirmations are only symbolically true, for all such predicates have an opposite, but God has no opposite.
The class of things that both create and are created embraces the whole of the prime causes, or prototypes, or Platonic ideas. The total of these prime causes is the Logos. The world of ideas is eternal, and yet created. Under the influence of the Holy Ghost, these prime causes give rise to the world of particular things, the materiality of which is illusory. When it is said that God created things out of “nothing,” this “nothing” is to be understood as God Himself, in the sense in which He transcends all knowledge.
Creation is an eternal process: the substance of all finite things is God. The creature is not a being distinct from God. The creature subsists in God, and God manifests Himself in the creature in an ineffable manner. “The Holy Trinity loves Itself in us and in Itself; †It sees and moves Itself.”
Sin has its source in freedom: it arose because man turned towards himself instead of towards God. Evil does not have its ground in God, for in God there is no idea of evil. Evil is not-being and has no ground, for if it had a ground it would be necessary. Evil is a privation of good.
The Logos is the principle that brings the many back to the One, and man back to God; it is thus the Saviour of the world. By union with God, the part of man that effects union becomes divine.
John disagrees with the Aristotelians in refusing substantiality to particular things. He calls Plato the summit of philosophers. But the
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* Cf. Bradley on the inadequacy of all cognition. He holds that no truth is quite true, but the best available truth is not intellectually corrigeable.
€ Cf. Spinoza.
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first three of his kinds of being are derived indirectly from Aristotle’s moving-not-moved, moving-and-moved, moved-but-not-moving. The fourth kind of being in John’s system, that which neither creates nor is created, is derived from the doctrine of Dionysius, that all things return into God.
The unorthodoxy of John the Scot is evident from the above summary. His pantheism, which refuses substantial reality to creatures, is contrary to Christian doctrine. His interpretation of the creation out of “nothing” is not such as any prudent theologian could accept. His Trinity, which closely resembles that of Plotinus, fails to preserve the equality of the Three Persons, although he tries to safeguard himself on this point. His independence of mind is shown by these heresies, and is astonishing in the ninth century. His Neoplatonic outlook may perhaps have been common in Ireland, as it was among the Greek Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries. It may be that, if we knew more about Irish Christianity from the fifth to the ninth century, we should find him less surprising. On the other hand, it may be that most of what is heretical in him is to be attributed to the influence of the pseudo-Dionysius, who, because of his supposed connection with Saint Paul, was mistakenly believed to be orthodox.
His view of creation as timeless is, of course, also heretical, and compels him to say that the account in Genesis is allegorical. Paradise and the fall are not to be taken literally. Like all pantheists, he has difficulties about sin. He holds that man was originally without sin, and when he was without sin he was without distinction of sex. This, of course, contradicts the statement “male and female created he them.” According to John, it was only as the result of sin that human beings were divided into male and female. Woman embodies man’s sensuous and fallen nature. In the end, distinction of sex will again disappear, and we shall have a purely spiritual body. * Sin consists in misdirected will, in falsely supposing something good which is not so. Its punishment is natural; it consists in discovering the vanity of sinful desires. But punishment is not eternal. Like Origen, John holds that even the devils will be saved at last, though later than other people.
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* Contrast Saint Augustine.
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John’s translation of the pseudo-Dionysius had a great influence on medieval thought, but his magnum opus on the division of Nature had very little. It was repeatedly condemned as heretical, and at last, in 1225, Pope Honorius III ordered all copies of it to be burnt. Fortunately this order was not efficiently carried out.
CHAPTER IX Ecclesiastical Reform in the Eleventh Century
FOR the first time since the fall of the Western Empire, Europe, during the eleventh century, made rapid progress not subsequently lost. There had been progress of a sort during the Carolingian renaissance, but it proved to be not solid. In the eleventh century, the improvement was lasting and many-sided. It began with monastic reform; it then extended to the papacy and Church government; towards the end of the century it produced the first scholastic philosophers. The Saracens were expelled from Sicily by the Normans; the Hungarians, having become Christians, ceased to be marauders; the conquests of the Normans in France and England saved those countries from further Scandinavian incursions. Architecture, which had been barbaric except where Byzantine influence prevailed, attained sudden sublimity. The level of education rose enormously among the clergy, and considerably in the lay aristocracy.
The reform movement, in its earlier stages, was, in the minds of its promoters, actuated exclusively by moral motives. The clergy, both regular and secular, had fallen into bad ways, and earnest men set to work to make them live more in accordance with their principles. But behind this purely moral motive there was another, at first perhaps unconscious, but gradually becoming more and more open. This motive was to complete the separation between clergy and laity, and, in so doing, to increase the power of the former. It
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was therefore natural that the victory of reform in the Church should lead straight on to a violent conflict between Emperor and Pope.
Priests had formed a separate and powerful caste in Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia, but not in Greece or Rome. In the primitive Christian Church, the distinction between clergy and laity arose gradually; when we read of “bishops” in the New Testament, the word does not mean what it has come to mean to us. The separation of the clergy from the rest of the population had two aspects, one doctrinal, the other political; the political aspect depended upon the doctrinal. The clergy possessed certain miraculous powers, especially in connection with the sacraments–except baptism, which could be performed by laymen. Without the help of the clergy, marriage, absolution, and extreme unction were impossible. Even more important, in the Middle Ages, was transubstantiation: only a priest could perform the miracle of the mass. It was not until the eleventh century, in 1079, that the doctrine of transubstantiation became an article of faith, though it had been generally believed for a long time.
Owing to their miraculous powers, priests could determine whether a man should spend eternity in heaven or in hell. If he died while excommunicate, he went to hell; if he died after priests had performed all the proper ceremonies, he would ultimately go to heaven provided he had duly repented and confessed. Before going to heaven, however, he would have to spend some time–perhaps a very long time–suffering the pains of purgatory. Priests could shorten this time by saying masses for his soul, which they were willing to do for a suitable money payment.
All this, it must be understood, was genuinely and firmly believed both by priests and by laity; it was
