SOURCE: Wohlman, Avital. “Introduction to the English Translation.” In Treatise on Divine Predestination, by John Scottus Eriugena, translated by Mary Brennan, pp. xv-xxix. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998.

In the following excerpt, Wohlman discusses the controversy over the concept of predestination and explains why Eriugena's De Praedestinatione caused scandal.

Jean Trouillard has contended that Scottus Eriugena or John the Scot was the only authentic Neoplatonist in whom the Latin world could take pride,¹ the only one who knew how to “recover, beyond Saint Augustine, the authentic spirit of Neoplatonism.”² Affirmations of this sort, however, may not prove the best argument to attract a large audience for this new translation of De praedestinatione, for Neoplatonism is often accused of failing to grasp the proper worth of the world in which we live, indeed to be estranged from full-blooded interplay.

As I have tried to show elsewhere...