Eriugena

1.     “In God, person means relation. Relation, being related, is not something superadded to the person, but is the person itself.” — Joseph Ratzinger, “On the Understanding of ‘Person’ in Theology” (1966).

2.     “Relation really existing in God is really the same as His essence.” — Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 28, a. 2 ad 3.

“The persons are the subsisting relations themselves; it is not against the simplicity of the divine persons for them to be distinguished by the relations.” — Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 40, a. 1 ad 1.

3.     “Three persons indeed but one essence, substance, or nature absolutely simple.” — Fourth Lateran Council (1215), constitution Firmiter credimus.

4.     “So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; and yet they are not three Gods, but one God.” — Athanasian Creed, lines 15–16.

5.     “Each of the Persons is wholly in the others.” — Council of Florence (1439), decree Laetentur caeli (to the Jacobites).

6.     “O my Three, my All!” — St Elizabeth of the Trinity, prayer “O my God, Trinity Whom I Adore” (21 November 1904).

7.     “Such primitives are what I call problem-solvers. A problem-solver is a primitive that is there to solve a problem.” — Jiri Benovsky, “Primitives,” in The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics (2020) (Robert Dryer)

8.     “The phenomenon shows itself only insofar as it gives itself (§§1, 6, and 12).” — Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, Book I “The Phenomenon Reduced” (Robert Dryer)

9.     “The divine act of giving surpasses all possible reception, yet it invites participation in its inexhaustible relational dynamism.” — Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology, p. 94.

10.  “The gift depends only on itself to give itself. It imposes itself alternatively in the lived experiences of the givee or the giver, but without ever resulting from their crossed causalities; in short, it does not depend on their efficiency.” — Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, Book III, “The Gift,” §11.

11.  “Relations are as fundamental as the things they relate; in some cases the relation is ontologically prior to its relata.” — Jiri Benovsky, “Metaphysics of Relations,” Metaphilosophy 42 (2011), p. 170.

Taken without qualification, Benovsky’s claim is controversial but defensible within several well-developed ontological frameworks. In classical Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, relations are accidents that depend upon substances; hence they cannot be more fundamental than their relata. However, even in that tradition one finds a crucial exception: the divine relations that constitute the Trinitarian Persons. Because each personal “relational mode” is identical with the one divine essence, relation there is not derived from independently subsisting relata but is itself constitutive of them. In that theological context the relation is ontologically prior to, or at least strictly coincident with, the “things” it relates.

A parallel intuition emerges in certain strands of contemporary analytic metaphysics and in physics. Structural realists maintain that at the deepest level reality is a web of relations, with individual objects emerging as nodes within that structure. Quantum entanglement likewise suggests that correlated states cannot be understood as the product of pre-given, independently identifiable particles; the relation of entanglement in a sense fixes what counts as the relata. In such contexts, asserting that “the relation is ontologically prior” captures the idea that relata gain their identity only within the relational network.

That said, the claim is not universally valid. Ordinary macroscopic objects—chairs, trees, people—retain their identity in virtue of intrinsic properties, and relations such as “being three meters apart” plainly supervene on the existence of those objects. So Benovsky’s thesis is true only “in some cases,” namely where a relation is either identical with or metaphysically determines the being of its relata. Whether one accepts those cases as fundamental depends on one’s broader metaphysical commitments, but the claim is at least plausible and even compelling within the relational ontologies I have been developing.

12.  “In the divine persons there is equality according to the essence, but order according to origin.” — Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 42, a. 4.

13.  “Every similarity between Creator and creature always already implies an even greater dissimilarity.” — Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis: Metaphysics, Original Structure, and Universal Rhythm (trans. John Betz and David Bentley Hart, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), Part I, ch. 3.

14.  “The analogia entis is the rhythm by which created being swings between its own finite essence and its ceaseless orientation to the divine plenitude.” — Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis: Metaphysics, Original Structure, and Universal Rhythm, Preface to the 1932 second edition (Eerdmans, 2014).

15.
“I believe that by this name is signified the ineffable and incomprehensible radiance of the divine goodness, inaccessible to every intellect, whether human or angelic—for it is super-essential and supernatural—which, when considered in itself, neither is, nor was, nor will be; for it is understood in none of the things that exist, since it surpasses all things … Therefore, when it is grasped as incomprehensible by reason of its excellence, it is not without cause called ‘nothing’.”

Explanation. Eriugena says that when the divine goodness is viewed in its own light it outstrips every category of being and so can only be named “nothing.” The term indicates supreme transcendence, not lack.

16.
“But if someone should say that by the word ‘nothing’ is meant neither the privation of disposition nor the absence of some essence, but rather the universal negation of every disposition and essence—of substance and accident alike, indeed of everything that can be spoken or understood—then the conclusion must be this: by that word God must be named, for He alone is properly indicated by the negation of all things that are, because He is exalted above everything that can be spoken or conceived, being none of the things that are or are not, and being better known through not-being-known.”

Explanation. Here Eriugena expands the earlier insight: “nothing” is a total negation of every finite mode. Precisely that radical negation best names God, who exceeds all that is and is best approached in holy unknowing.