Andrew Louth: Division of Being in Maximos and Eriugena

Eriugena’s principal work, Periphyseon, has as its subtitle: De Divisione Naturae. It is generally agreed that, in its first draft, Periphyseon, introduced two fundamental distinctions—uncreated and created, and creating and not creating—which produced a fourfold division: quae creat et non creatur, quae et creatur et creat, quae creatur et non creat, quae nec creat nec creatur. Originally this distinction prefaced a discussion of the categories, but in the final version of Periphyseonwhat had originally been a logical division became a metaphysical one. The reason is not far to seek, for Maximos, following Gregory of Nyssa, had made a metaphysical ‘division of natures’ (Amb. 41, also in his Mystagogia), beginning with uncreated–created, then dividing created into the intelligible and the sensible, the sensible into heaven and earth, earth into paradise and the inhabited world, in which there was finally a distinction between male and female among its inhabitants. Eriugena certainly knew this series of divisions, as it is part of Maximos’ early Ambigua, which he translated into Latin. The divisions of nature in Maximos and Eriugena are very different, though both of them serve to explicate an understanding of the created order as constituting a movement of procession and return. This paper will explore Eriugena’s radical rethinking of Maximos’ division of natures, which entails a very different metaphysical system.