In preparing this edition, we tried to preserve the author's style, spelling and punctuation as much as possible, bringing the text in line with modern norms of the Russian language only in the most necessary cases. Brilliantov's book abounds in quotations from the works of the Fathers and Teachers of the Church in ancient Greek and Latin, and there are especially many quotations from the works of Erigena, but we did not translate them into Russian, since the author retells the content of these quotations in sufficient detail in the text of the book.

However, some non-fundamental changes were also made to the book, making it easier for the reader to work with the text. First, typos noted at the end of the first edition were taken into account. Secondly, the additions that A. I. Brilliantov made after the book was typed and which were printed at the end of it, we have placed in the appropriate places, enclosing each such insertion in square brackets [] and marking it with the words "From the Addition". The index of references to the books of the Holy Scriptures, compiled by Brilliantov on all the works of Erigena, also placed in the Supplement, we have separated into a separate Index.

Introduction

John Scotus Erigena, a Western thinker of the ninth century, apparently misunderstood by his contemporaries, who even during his lifetime and repeatedly afterwards provoked a trial against himself by representatives of the church authorities in the West by disagreeing with the generally accepted teaching of the Western Church expressed by him, or only attributed to him, and then forgotten for a long time, has become the subject of rather careful study by Western scholars in the present century. It is possible to point out in Western literature a number of special studies about him and his teaching, which have appeared since the beginning of this century, not to mention various kinds of general courses in history, for example, philosophy, the history of dogmas, the history of mysticism, scholasticism, the history of literature, church history, etc., in which more or less space is given to information about his personality and views. The appearance of a new study, moreover, in the Russian language, about a Western thinker, about whom Western scholars had already written so much that in the 1960s it was considered difficult to say anything new about him that could be of more or less important importance, will not be superfluous.

Erigena belongs to the west proper. But the characteristic feature of this Western thinker is that, living in the Latin West and belonging to the West, he at the same time directed all his sympathies towards the Greek East and, nourishing the highest respect for Eastern theology and philosophy, set the goal of his scholarly activity precisely the assimilation of the results of the philosophical and theological speculation of the East. Turning himself to the "purest and most abundant" Greek sources, as he put it, he tried to make them accessible to others in the West, and was successful in doing so, to the extent that, at least, the translation of the Areopagite works that belonged to him was, as it were, a vulgate for medieval Western mystics and scholastics. His excessive sympathy for the Greeks from the Western point of view was no small reason for the suspicious and even hostile attitude towards him in the West, when the question of his views was raised there. From the Orthodox, Eastern point of view, so to speak, deserves more or less attention a Western scholar who treated the East with such high respect and interest, and partly for this reason did not enjoy favor in the West.

As regards the above-mentioned wealth of literature on Erigen, first of all, in view of the absence of special works on him in Russian literature, in this case it seems that such a work could already be of some importance, which would set itself the task of simply communicating the results to which Western science has arrived with regard to Erigena and his views. But if we pay attention to the actual results achieved by various Catholic and Protestant representatives of Western science, and to what position the solution of the most important questions raised by Erigena and his system has been in Western literature up to the present time, perhaps a new study on the same subject will not be considered superfluous from the point of view of purely scientific interests.

Erigena is of interest mainly, if not exclusively, as a thinker who created his own system. The task for the researcher in relation to one or another system is reduced to solving questions, on the one hand, about its meaning as a whole and in particular, and on the other, about its origin. Both these questions are in conflict with each other, and the solution of the first depends to a large extent on the clarification of the latter: it is possible to establish the true meaning of the thinker's views only by stepping on historical ground, bearing in mind his historical position and his special point of view, depending on the previous development of thought, as far as this dependence can be ascertained.

What does Western literature represent in this case? In spite of a considerable number of writings on Erigenus, it still offers different opinions on the meaning of his views. On the other hand, it still does not give a satisfactory solution to the question of the origin of the Erigena system, and the very appearance of him and his views in the ninth century remains a mystery.

The disagreement on the question of the meaning of Erigena's views does not concern any particular and unimportant points, but the very essence of his views. The question is whether his system can be recognized as Christian, or at least theistic, or whether it is a system not only full of errors alien to Christianity, but also downright anti-religious, pantheistic. Especially characteristic in this case is the mutual disagreement of Catholic scientists.

The official representatives of the Western Church, as noted above, have long pronounced a judgment on the nature of Erigena's views. The solution to the question of predestination proposed by him was recognized as heretical even during his lifetime, in the ninth century, at the councils of the Frankish Church. In the eleventh century, in Rome, the work on the Eucharist attributed to him was consigned to the fire. In the thirteenth century, the bull of Honorius III finally sentenced his main work, On the Division of Nature, to destruction; when it was printed for the first time by the Protestant Gael in 1681, it was soon added to the index in 1685. In accordance with the judgment of the church authorities, the philosopher was treated as a heretic, rationalist and pantheist by Catholic scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Mabillon, Rivet in his History of French Literature, and Natalis Alexander. But in modern times this judgment is no longer sufficient for all Catholic scientists when they want to stand on scientific ground.

Already Baader, whose teaching was similar in some points to the teaching of Erigena, in the 20s of the present century drew attention in his writings to the ideas of Erigena, however, not completely acquitting him from the accusation of pantheism and not agreeing with his concept of evil, therefore recognizing the condemnation of him by the Church as just. Somewhat later, Creutzgage, author of "Reports on the Influence of Philosophy on the Development of Inner Life" (1831)

Creutzhage admits that Erigena, it is true, comes close to pantheism, but does not cross the boundary line between it and the Christian teaching on creation.

But the first Catholic, who in modern times paid special attention to Erigena and wanted to give it a special significance in the history of Christian thought, was Staudenmaier, professor of theology at Giessen and then at Freiburg, known for his "brilliant and informative" work in the history of modern Catholic theology. While Möhler pointed to Anselm of Canterbury as the exponent of the principles of scholasticism, or, in his opinion, of Christian philosophy, Staudenmaier saw in Erigen the true founder of speculative theology and Christian philosophy, the father of scholasticism and mysticism. Proclaiming Erigena in his work "I. Sk. Erigen and the Science of His Time" (1834)[9] a miracle of history, a genius "containing whole worlds", whose ideas "have the most intrinsic affinity with the ideas of the most outstanding philosophers and theologians of all times", who "reproduced from himself all the Middle Ages"[10], he recognizes the reproaches made to his system of rationalism and pantheism as unfounded, he wants to explain the condemnation of the Church by misunderstandings[11]. although he accepts the possibility of encountering deviations from the truth in him and declares that he does not want to write apologies for Erigena[12]. In view of the special importance of the Erigena system, Staudenmaier wanted to give his work, which, according to him, he had been lovingly engaged in for a long time, a more general character than monographs usually have, placing the philosophical-theological system of Erigena in connection with European-Christian education in general. This explains why in the first part of his work he introduces extensive discussions on subjects that are not always in fact directly related to the main subject of study (on the significance of the monograph in general, on the origin of Western literature and its development up to the time of Erigena, on the origin and development of speculative theology and its essence, on scholasticism and mysticism); Only one chapter is devoted directly to Erigena, setting forth information about his life[13]. The author intended to give an exposition of the philosopher's system in the second part, which, as stated in the note to the preface, was to appear soon. In fact, however, this part was not published, not without the influence, presumably, of circumstances beyond the control of the author. Staudenmaier later touched upon the teachings of Erigena only in a journal article[14] and in the work "The Philosophy of Christianity" (1840)[15]. In the latter, he significantly moderates his praise of the philosopher, points out the "obviously erroneous and unecclesiastical sections" in his teaching (on the nature of evil, on predestination, on the first man, on the Eucharist)[16] and recognizes not only its beneficial, but also harmful influence on subsequent times[17]. But as to the basic meaning of his system, he continues to firmly adhere to the previous opinion, considering the accusation of pantheism to be incorrect, since the pantheistic-sounding passages in his opinion, in his opinion, should be understood in an improper sense, and refuting various kinds of objections to the teaching of Erigena by Protestant scholars (Neander, Dorner, Baur)[18].