He is generally recognized to be both the outstanding philosopher (in terms of originality) of the Carolingian era and of the whole period of Latin philosophy stretching from Boethius to Anselm".

[9] The principal concern of De Divisione Naturae is to unfold from φύσις (physis), which John defines as "all things which are and which are not",[10] the entire integrated structure of reality.

Eriugena achieves this through a dialectical method elaborated through exitus and reditus, that interweaves the structure of the human mind and reality as produced by the λόγος (logos) of God.

He also translated and made commentaries upon the work of Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite and was one of the few Western European philosophers of his day who knew Greek, having studied it in Ireland.

He viewed the totality of reality as a "graded hierarchy" cosmology of gradual declensions from the Godhead, similar to Proclus,[24] and likewise saw in all things a dual movement of procession and reversion: that every effect remains in its cause or constitutive principle, proceeds from it, and returns to it.

Pittenger argues that, too often, those who have written about him seem to have pictured John as one who spent his life in the endeavor to dress up his own personal Neoplatonism in a thin Christian garb, but who never quite succeeded in disguising his real tendency.

In the middle of long and some what arid metaphysical discussions, one comes across occasional passages such as the following, surely the cry of a passionately Christian soul: O Domine Jesu, nullum aliud praemium, nullam aliam beatitudinem, nullum aliud gaudium a te postulo, nisi ut ad purum absque ullo errore fallacis theoriae verba tua, quae per tuum sanctum Spiritum inspirata sunt, intelligam (Migne ed., ioioB).

Eriugena was considered orthodox by his authorities and a few years later was selected by Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, to defend the doctrine of liberty of will against the extreme predestinarianism of the monk Gottschalk (Gotteschalchus),[19] whose view of predestination pre-figured the Calvinist position.

[30] "In addition to the arguments based on the dialectical understanding of being and non-being and the unity of God's nature, Eriugena also invokes the principles of negative theology in his answer to Gottschalk's heresy.

But since Eriugena had denied the possibility of the predestination of the elect to eternal bliss, he had contradicted Augustine; for this reason, Hincmar ultimately rejected the treatise.

Pope Nicholas I was offended that the work had not been submitted for approval before being given to the world, and ordered Charles to send Eriugena to Rome, or at least to dismiss him from his court.

[19] Nature (Natura in Latin or physis [φύσις] in Greek) is the name of the most comprehensive of all unities, that which contains within itself the most primary division of all things, that which is (being) and that which is not (nonbeing).

"[37] The first and fourth divisions are to be understood of God, regarded alternately as the efficient and sustaining cause of all as dependent upon Him, and the teleological end of all: Let us then make an “analytical” or regressive collection of each of the two pairs of the four forms we have mentioned so as to bring them into a unity.

For those things which in the processions of natures appear to be divided and partitioned into many are in the primordial causes unified and one, and to this unity they will return and in it they will eternally and immutably remain.

But this fourth aspect of the universe, which, like the first also, is understood to exist in God alone, will receive a more detailed treatment in its proper place, as far as the Light of Minds shall grant (us).

[67] While Eriugena does rely on the Greeks even more so than the Western Fathers, and at times does show sympathy to Constantinople, he is a staunch defender of the theology of the filioque clause.

According to Wayne J. Hankey, the ambiguity that was in Boethius is absent from Eriugena, who is far more confident in his trinitarianism: οὐσία names the One, the Godhead shared between persons.

For just as God is comprehensible in the sense that it can be deduced from His creation that he is, and incomprehensible because it cannot be comprehended by any intellect whether human or angelic nor even by Himself what He is, seeing that He is not a thing but is superessential: so to the human mind it is given to know one thing only, that it is – but as to what it is, no sort of notion is permitted; and, a fact which is stranger still and, to those who study God and man, more fair to contemplate, the human mind is more honoured in its ignorance than in its knowledge; for the ignorance in it of what it is is more praiseworthy than the knowledge that it is, just as the negation of God accords better with the praise of His Nature than the affirmation, and it shows greater wisdom not to know than to know that Nature of Which ignorance is the true wisdom and Which is known all the better for not being known.

[87]De Divisione Naturae was condemned by a council at Sens by Honorius III (1225), for appearing to promote the identity of God and creation, and by Gregory XIII in 1585.

"[94] Historian of philosophy Frederick Copleston summarized the matter thus: If one takes a particular set of isolated statements of John Scotus one would have to say that he was either a pantheist or a theist.

It might seem that we should opt for one or the other set in an unqualified manner, and it is this attitude which has given rise to the notion that John Scotus was a conscious pantheist who made verbal concessions to orthodoxy with his tongue in his cheek.

[19] Eriugena's influence was greater with mystics, especially Benedictines, than with logicians, but he was responsible for a revival of philosophical thought which had remained largely dormant in western Europe after the death of Boethius.

"[101] Within the twelfth-century Cistercian Order, alongside William of Saint-Thierry, St. Bernard of Clairvaux's mystical theology was greatly influenced by the work of Eriugena.

Following in the Irish theologian's footsteps, Hildegard boldly admits the possibility of an individual who is raised above the angel, implying an intersubjective contact within the Godhead.

In this unique medieval interpretation of the ontological scale, the Platonic mean serves not as a lower reflection but as a type of interface linking divine and sublunary worlds within the mind of its user.

The networked centricities in the Ordo allow distant tonalities to be drawn close, collapsing linear progressions into folded, synoptic structures.

[105]As Catà argues, the philosophical relationship between John Eriugena and dialectician Nicholas of Cusa, connecting directly two different thinkers through six centuries, is a fundamental moment in the history of Christian Neoplatonism.

"[106] On the whole, one might be surprised that even in the seventeenth-century pantheism did not gain a complete victory over theism; for the most original, finest, and most thorough European expositions of it (none of them, of course, will bear comparison with the Upanishads of the Vedas) all came to light at that period, namely through Bruno, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Scotus Erigena.

On the other hand, in our day (1851) pantheism, although presented only in Schelling's eclectic and confused revival thereof, has become the dominant mode of thought of scholars and even of educated people.

He is generally recognized to be both the outstanding philosopher (in terms of originality) of the Carolingian era and of the whole period of Latin philosophy stretching from Boethius to Anselm".