Eriugena’s Theophanic Ontology:
Transcendence, Process, and the Problem of Evil in Periphyseon
John Scotus Eriugena’s Periphyseon (The Division of Nature) presents a profound departure from traditional substantival ontologies, which envision reality as a collection of independent, self-contained substances or “things.” Instead, Eriugena articulates a Neoplatonic-inspired process or manifestation ontology—often termed theophanic1 —wherein the cosmos is understood as an eternal divine activity of procession and return. Created being is not a static inventory of entities but God’s dynamic self-showing, a relational unfolding where all things emerge from and revert to the divine source. This framework, drawn from pages 307–312 of the text, emphasizes movement, expression, and transcendence, redefining creaturely existence as intrinsically referential and receptive.
To explain how God can be the reality of all things without being a mere “substance” among them, Eriugena employs the metaphor of the sun (representing the divine) and fire. He argues that this power contains all things within itself prior to their visible manifestation: it “…contains within itself and comprehends the nature of all sensible things, not that it contains within itself anything other than itself, but itself is substantially everything that it contains in itself. For the substance of all visible things is created in it” (p. 307).
Central to this vision is the naming of God as “superessential” (p. 307), a term that places the divine beyond all categories of essence and being. God exceeds every finite mode of existence and conceptual grasp. Eriugena elucidates this in accessible terms: “I should believe that by that name is signified the ineffable and incomprehensible and inaccessible brilliance of the Divine Goodness which is unknown to all intellects whether human or angelic — for it is superessential and supernatural —” (p. 307). Contemplated in itself, this divine Goodness evades temporal and spatial constraints: “which while it is contemplated in itself neither is nor was nor shall be, for it is understood to be in none of the things that exist because it surpasses all things” (p. 307).
This transcendence leads to the provocative designation of God as “Nothing,” not as negation but as an affirmation of excess. Eriugena argues that because God is beyond creaturely categories, “Therefore so long as it is understood to be incomprehensible by reason of its transcendence it is not unreasonably called “Nothing”” (p. 308). Here, “Nothing” signifies an excess of light that appears as darkness to finite minds: “…so great is the splendour of the Divine Goodness that, not unreasonably for those who desire to contemplate it and cannot, it shall be turned into darkness. For He alone, as the Apostle says “possesseth the inaccessible light”” (p. 308).
If God is superessential “Nothing,” a standard substantival picture becomes unsustainable. Creatures cannot be viewed as autonomous units in a separate ontological realm. Eriugena underscores creation’s total dependence, asserting that God is the “substantial source and origin of all visible things” (p. 307). To bolster this, he quotes Dionysius, arguing that God is the dynamic cause of all categories of being rather than a static entity within them: He “…is by virtue of His superessential power the substantiating Cause and Creator of all that exists, of existence, of subsistence, of substance, of essence, of nature, the principle and the measure of ages, and the essentiality of times and the eternity of things that exist, the time of things that are made, the being of whatever is made” (p. 309). For Eriugena, “Nothing” names not a lack of existence but the absolute, “superessential” transcendence of God above all created categories, characterizing the Divine Nature primarily as the hidden Source prior to manifestation (Division I: creating and uncreated) and as the ultimate consummative End (Division IV: not creating and uncreated).
A process-oriented framework illuminates this dynamic, revealing Eriugena’s famous fourfold division of nature not as a static classification of inert entities, but as the structural map of the divine life’s eternal rhythm. The divisions articulate the movement of the “fiery spirit” as it proceeds from its transcendent source (Division I: uncreated creating Nature), manifests through primordial causes into visible effects where it is “made all things in all things” (Divisions II & III: created Nature), and ultimately “returns into its own place” as the consummative end (Division IV: uncreated non-creating Nature). The language employed to describe this totality is vividly kinetic: “Hence it is not unwarrantably that Scripture says, “Gyrating in a gyre the spirit goes forth and returns into its own place.” For the fiery spirit because of the exceeding subtlety of its nature traverses all things and is made all things in all things, and returns into itself, since it is the substantial source and origin of all visible things…” (p. 307).
Manifestation lies at the core of this creaturely ontology. Creatures are “theophanies,” divine appearances that emerge when the transcendent “Nothing” moves into intelligibility: “…but when it begins to appear in its theophanies it is said to proceed, as it were, out of nothing into something, and that which is properly thought of as beyond all essence is also properly known in all essence, and therefore every visible and invisible creature can be called a theophany, that is, a divine apparition” (p. 308). Like a mirror’s reflection, a theophany derives its being from manifestation, lacking self-grounded independence. To exist as a creature is to disclose the hidden God.
Eriugena anticipates a major objection to this process ontology: if God “…is made all things in all things, and returns into itself…” (p. 307) and will be “all in all” (p. 311), does this implicate God in baseness, corruption, and infamy? He voices the critic, particularly one mired in “carnal life”: “‘For how can the invisible, incorporeal, incorruptible God above all things descend from Himself and create Himself in all things so as to be all things in all things, and proceed as far as the lowest infamies and corruptions and the basest forms and species of this visible world so as to be Himself even in them…?’” (p. 311). The concern is that divine immanence taints God with evil.
Eriugena’s response hinges on ontology: evil and infamy lack substantial reality and cannot define the whole of creation, which is sustained in divine goodness. The objector’s error stems from ignorance of the “universe of the whole creature”: “not knowing… that there can be no infamy in the universe of the whole creature, that no evil can harm it, that by no error can it be deceived or led astray — for that which affects it in part God does not permit to happen in the whole, for of its totality neither is the infamy infamous nor the evil harmful nor the error erroneous” (pp. 311–312). While evils may appear in part, they hold no metaphysical ultimacy able to corrupt creation’s goodness as divine manifestation.
Evil thus emerges largely as distorted perception linked to fallen existence. To those estranged from truth, the honorable seems infamous and the good evil: “true, to those who live an infamous or wicked life and who stray from the truth the honourable seems infamous, the good evil, the straight ways crooked, the righteous wicked ;but when their infamy and evil and error are removed, they remain to those of pious understanding all that is pure, perfect, untarnished, truly good, free from all error” (p. 312). Eriugena situates moral evil cosmically: it is not a rival substance but a privation destined to dissolve in the return.
This metaphysical vision culminates in theological affirmation: all substance and virtue descend as gift and grace from God. Eriugena invokes Scripture ontologically: “‘Every good gift and every perfect grace comes down from the Father of Lights’, declaring by the word ‘gift’ the substantial constitutions of all things, and by ‘grace’ the virtues with which the universal nature is adorned ; and this whole, namely substance and virtue, descends from the Father of Lights, that is, from the spring of all good things, God… without Whom there can be nothing” (p. 312).
Eriugena supplants a static Creator-creation dichotomy with a vibrant, infinite Divine Reality eternally outflowing into forms and drawing them back to unity. The outcome is a theophanic metaphysics: created being as relational manifestation, anchored in the superessential “Nothing,” and directed toward the eschatological “all in all,” where distortions like evil cease to define reality.
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Citation:
Eriugena, John Scotus. Periphyseon (The Division of Nature). Translated by I. P. Sheldon-Williams, revised by John J. O’Meara. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1987, pp. 307–312.
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How, then, does this piece defend the idea of divine simplicity?
This essay addresses the common objection against Divine Simplicity in that, those who object to simplicity claim, a simple God cannot be the cause of a complex and diverse universe without undergoing change or division in Himself. Eriugena’s theophanic ontology addresses this by positing God not as a “thing” or a supreme substance among other substances, but as “superessential” (p. 307), beyond all categories of being. Because God is not a composite substance, His act of creation is not a process of taking parts of Himself and making other things. Instead, creation is a “theophany” (p. 308), a manifestation or showing-forth of the indivisible divine reality.
By using metaphors like the sun and fire, Eriugena illustrates how a single, simple power can contain and manifest “all things within itself” without being divided or changed. The “fiery spirit” (p. 307) that proceeds and returns is one eternal reality. The complexity exists in the manifested effects, the creaturely order, while the source, the “superessential” God, whom he also calls “Nothing” (p. 308) because of this transcendence, remains simple, indivisible, and unchanging throughout the entire cosmic process of procession and return.
Therefore, this essay argues that divine simplicity is not a hindrance to creation but its very foundation: only a God who is beyond all composite being can be the transcendent source who is simultaneously immanent in all things as their manifestation, without ever being reduced to them or divided by them.
(Transparency Note: This entry was prepared with assistance from an AI language model to help organize and draft the content. All quotations from primary a source ((scraped from a deep recess in the bowels of the internet where OCR’d editions of his work are stored)) are intended to be verbatim from said cited OCR’d edition, so readers can verify them against those sources. Let’s be real: Eriugena is impenetrable for most people; I know I’ve glazed over his words more than I’ve understood them over the years. AI makes a writer like Eriugena finally attainable. You’re welcome. But, if that’s not your thing, you don’t have to read the words above lol, and can just go back to doom scrolling or whatever it is you do on the internet.)