History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [231]
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;7 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 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 St 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.8 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.
John's translation of the