In spite of St. Augustine’s Platonism and the immense influence which he exercised, the Western Church was slow in developing a mystical theology.  The Greek Mysticism, based on emanation, was not congenial to the Western mind, and the time of the German, with its philosophy of immanence, was not yet.  The tendency of Eastern thinkers is to try to gain a view of reality as a whole, complete and entire:  the form under which it most readily pictures it is that of space.  The West seeks rather to discover the universal laws which in every part of the universe are working out their fulfilment.  The form under which it most readily pictures reality is that of time.[210] Thus Neoplatonism had to undergo certain modifications before it could enter deeply into the religious consciousness of the West.

The next great name is that of John Scotus Erigena,[211] an English or Irish monk, who in the ninth century translated Dionysius into Latin.  Erigena is unquestionably one of the most remarkable figures of the Middle Ages.  A bold and independent thinker, he made it his aim to elucidate the vague theories of Dionysius, and to present them as a consistent philosophical system worked out by the help of Aristotle and perhaps Boethius.[212] He intends, of course, to keep within the limits permitted to Christian speculation; but in reality he does not allow dogma to fetter him.  The Christian Alexandrians were, on the whole, more orthodox than their language; Erigena’s language partially veils the real audacity of his speculation.  He is a mystic only by his intellectual affinities;[213] the warmth of pious aspiration and love which makes Dionysius, amid all his extravagance, still a religious writer, has cooled entirely in Erigena.  He can pray with fervour and eloquence for intellectual enlightenment; but there was nothing of the prophet or saint about him, to judge from his writings.  Still, though one might dispute his title to be called either a Christian or a mystic, we must spare a few minutes to this last flower of Neoplatonism, which bloomed so late on our northern islands.

God, says Erigena, is called Essence or Being; but, strictly speaking, He is not “Being";[214] for Being arises in opposition to not-Being, and there is no opposition to the Absolute, or God.  Eternity, the abode or nature of God, is homogeneous and without parts, one, simple, and indivisible.  “God is the totality of all things which are and are not, which can and cannot be.  He is the similarity of the similar, the dissimilarity of the dissimilar, the opposition of opposites, and the contrariety of contraries.  All discords are resolved when they are considered as parts of the universal harmony.”  All things begin from unity and end in unity:  the Absolute can contain nothing self-contradictory.  And so God cannot be called Goodness, for Goodness is opposed to Badness, and God is above this distinction.  Goodness, however is a more comprehensive term than