[Footnote 210:  See Lotze, Microcosmus, bk. viii. chap. 4, and other places.  We may perhaps compare the Johannine [Greek:  kosmos] with the Synoptic [Greek:  aion] as examples of the two modes of envisaging reality.]

[Footnote 211:  Eriugena is, no doubt, the more correct spelling, but I have preferred to keep the name by which he is best known.]

[Footnote 212:  Erigena quotes also Origen, the two Gregorys, Basil, Maximus, Ambrose, and Augustine.  Of pagan philosophers he puts Plato first, but holds Aristotle in high honour.]

[Footnote 213:  Stoeckl calls him “ein faelscher Mystiker,” because the Neoplatonic ("gnostic-rationalistic”) element takes, for him, the place of supernaturalism.  This, as will be shown later, is in accordance with the Roman Catholic view of Mysticism, which is not that adopted in these Lectures.  For us, Erigena’s defect as a mystic is rather to be sought in his extreme intellectualism.]

[Footnote 214:  “Dum vero (divina bonitas) incomprehensibilis intelligitur, per excellentiam non immerito nihilum vocitatur.”]

[Footnote 215:  This is really a revival of “modalism.”  The unorthodoxy of the doctrine becomes very apparent in some of Erigena’s successors.]

[Footnote 216:  De Div.  Nat. i. 36:  “Iamdudum inter nos est confectum omnia quae vel sensu corporeo vel intellectu vel ratione cognoscuntur de Deo merito creatore omnium, posse praedicari, dum nihil eorum quae de se praedicantur pura veritatis contemplatio eum approbat esse.”  All affirmations about God are made “non proprie sed translative”; all negations “non translative sed proprie.”  Cf. also ibid. i. 1. 66, “verius fideliusque negatur in omnibus quam affirmatur”; and especially ibid. i. 5. 26, “theophanias autem dico visibilium et invisibilium species, quarum ordine et pulcritudine cognoscitur Deus esse et invenitur non quid est, sed quia solummodo est.” Erigena tries to say (in his atrocious Latin) that the external world can teach us nothing about God, except the bare fact of His existence.  No passage could be found to illustrate more clearly the real tendencies of the negative road, and the purely subjective Mysticism connected with it.  Erigena will not allow us to infer, from the order and beauty of the world, that order and beauty are Divine attributes.]

[Footnote 217:  But it must be remembered that Erigena calls God “nihilum.”  His words about creation are, “Ac sic de nihilo facit omnia, de sua videlicet superessentialitate producit essentias, de supervitalitate vitas, de superintellectualitate intellectus, de negatione omnium quae sunt et quae non sunt, affirmationes omnium quae sunt et quae non sunt.”]

[Footnote 218:  So Kaulich shows in his monograph on the speculative system of Erigena.]

[Footnote 219:  Erigena was roused by a work on predestination, written by Gotteschalk, and advocating Calvinistic views, to protest against the doctrine that God, who is life, can possibly predestine anyone to eternal death.]