Johannis Scotus Erigena argues in De divina praedestinatione that God, being perfectly good, wants all humans to be saved, and does not predestine souls to damnation. God's being is His willing and ‘no necessity binds the will of God’. On the contrary, humans damn themselves through their own free choices: ‘Sin, death, unhappiness are not from God’. Since God is outside time, He cannot be said to fore-know or to pre-destine, terms that involve temporal predicates. Furthermore, if God's being is His wisdom, God can be said to have but a single knowledge and hence a ‘double’ predestination cannot be ascribed to Him. Human nature, on the other hand, was created rational, and rationality requires freedom. Human nature is therefore essentially free: ‘For God did not create in man a captive will but a free one, and that freedom remained after sin’.
Eriugena had a justified reputation among his contemporaries as a man of considerable learning. Florus calls him scholasticus et eruditus (PL CXIX 103a) and Anastasius, the Vatican librarian of the day, marveled at the fact that this ‘barbarian’ (vir barbarus) from a remote land knew Greek.
Nothing is known about Eriugena's place or date of birth or of the circumstances of his early life, but, on the basis of circumstantial evidence and some surviving testimonia (helpfully gathered in Brennan, 1986), it is conjectured that he was born in Ireland around 800 or possibly slightly earlier (c. 790). His Irish provenance is confirmed by the fact that he self-consciously signed his translation of Pseudo-Dionysius’ works with the neologism ‘Eriugena’ (Patrologia Latina, hereafter PL, CXXII 1236a) meaning ‘Irish born’, a word possibly modelled on the Virgilian ‘Graiugena’ found in one of his poems and also in Columbanus’ Ad Filiolum 119..
Eriugena's uniqueness lies in the fact that, quite remarkably for a scholar in Western Europe in the Carolingian era, he had considerable familiarity with the Greek language, affording him access to the Greek Christian theological tradition, from the Cappadocians to Gregory of Nyssa, hitherto almost entirely unknown in the Latin West. He also produced a complete, if somewhat imperfect, Latin translation of the Corpus Dionysii, the works of the obscure, possibly Syrian, Christian Neoplatonist, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, a follower of Proclus. In addition, Eriugena translated Gregory of Nyssa’s De hominis opificio and Maximus Confessor's Ambigua ad Iohannem, and possibly other works, such as Epiphanius' Anchoratus.
Eriugena's thought is best understood as a sustained attempt to create a consistent, systematic, Christian Neoplatonism from diverse but primarily Christian sources. Eriugena had a unique gift for identifying the underlying intellectual framework, broadly Neoplatonic but also deeply Christian, assumed by the writers of the Christian East. Drawing especially on Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus Confessor, as well as on the more familiar authorities (auctores) of the Latin West (e.g. Cicero, Martianus Capella, Augustine, Boethius), he developed a highly original cosmology, where the highest principle, the ‘the immovable self-identical one’ (unum et idipsum immobile, Periphyseon, Patrologia Latina CXXII I. 476b), engenders all things and retrieves them back into itself. Contrary to what some earlier commentators supposed, it is most unlikely that Eriugena had direct knowledge of the original texts of Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, or other pagan Neoplatonists, but he did have some direct knowledge of Plato (a portion of Timaeus in the translation of Calcidius) as well as familiarity with the pseudo-Augustinian Categoriae decem.
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OP, The words of a giant of the Orthodox church in the West was twisted to suit others needs and his words were taken out of context. The Orthodox say the following:
For the first thousand years of Christian history, when the Church was visibly one and undivided, the holy gifts of the Body and Blood of Christ were received as just that: His Body and Blood. The Church confessed this was a mystery: The bread is truly His Body, and that which is in the cup is truly His Blood, but one cannot say how they become so.
The eleventh and twelfth centuries brought on the scholastic era, the Age of Reason in the West. The Roman Church, which had become separated from the Orthodox Church in A.D. 1054, was pressed by the rationalists to define how the transformation takes place. They answered with the word transubstantiation, meaning a change of substance. The elements are no longer bread and wine; they are physically changed into flesh and blood. The sacrament, which only faith can comprehend, was subjected to a philosophical definition. This second view of the Eucharist was unknown to the ancient Church.
Not surprisingly, one of the points of disagreement between Rome and the sixteenth-century reformers was the issue of transubstantiation. Unable to accept this explanation of the sacrament, the radical reformers, who were rationalists themselves, took up the opposite point of view: the gifts are nothing but bread and wine, period. They only represent Christ's Body and Blood; they have no spiritual reality. This third, symbol-only view helps explain the infrequency with which some Protestants partake of the Eucharist.
the Orthodox tradition does use the term "symbols" for the eucharistic gifts. It calls, the service a "mystery" and the sacrifice of the liturgy a "spiritual and bloodless sacrifice." These terms are used by the holy fathers and the liturgy itself.
The Orthodox Church uses such expressions because in Orthodoxy what is real is not opposed to what is symbolical or mystical or spiritual. On the contrary! In the Orthodox view, all of reality -- the world and man himself -- is real to the extent that it is symbolical and mystical, to the extent that reality itself must reveal and manifest God to us. Thus, the eucharist in the Orthodox Church is understood to be the genuine Body and Blood of Christ precisely because bread and wine are the mysteries and symbols of God's true and genuine presence and manifestation to us in Christ. Thus, by eating and drinking the bread and wine which are mystically consecrated by the Holy Spirit, we have genuine communion with God through Christ who is himself "the bread of life" (Jn 6:34, 41).
The mystery of the holy eucharist defies analysis and explanation in purely rational and logical terms. For the eucharist -- and Christ himself -- is indeed a mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven which, as Jesus has told us, is "not of this world." The eucharist -- because it belongs to God's Kingdom -- is truly free from the earth-born "logic" of fallen humanity.
-------------- That is what Johannis Scotus Erigena was saying in Greek and in Latin but the Protestants removed from the original tradition can no longer comprehend that what Johannis Scotus Erigena was talking about was as explained above - they took the richly textured words and made them flat.
At your scholarly service always.
Who twists what?
With respect, Destro -- your fine Philosophy Editor hasn't given us nearly enough to go on to even determine that. Most of the above quotation is what he says Erigina says. Surely we can't use that as a standard, when I've at least tried to occupy the majority of my Celtic quotations with... well, actual Celtic quotations. The above Philosophy paragraph includes only three actual snippets of Erigina -- none of which can even be shown to conclusively divide him from Gottschalk (his own debate opponent!), let alone John Calvin (whose views were far better developed than Gottschalk's -- no mere boast; Erigina thought of Gottschalk's writings as "ravings" and he was somewhat correct). To wit:
"For we know that He who is obviously eternal can by no means be predestined" – Gottschalk
"But in God’s double predestination, where His ways are contained, concerning which it is said: “All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth,” (Ps. 25:10) singularity has rightly remained and duly remains. And so since “He has spoken once, and that [is],” (cf. Ps. 62:11) which Saint Augustine explained so, that He immutably arranged all His future works, there are by no means two predestinations, but only one. That is why the psalmist just as in logical consequence says: “Twice I have heard that power belongs to God; and to you, O Lord, belongs mercy, for You render to each one according to his works,” (Ps. 62:12) and on account of these two predestination is understood as double; namely, in a general sense it is one because it was eternally set up forever and at the same time; neither of them is unjust but both just; and in a special sense it is double, because one is owed and the other is gratuitous." -- Gottschalk
"Therefore also Prosper in that same chapter says: “The Redeemer of the world gave His blood for the world, but the world did not want to be redeemed, because darkness did not accept light but [other] darkness did accept light, [that darkness,] to which the Apostle says: ‘You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord’ (Eph. 5:8).—And those will walk, who will be freed and redeemed by the Lord" –- Gottschalk
Regrettably, it seems that our Philosophy Editor friend has arbitrarily torn three snippets at random from Erigina’s library, merely to cast his own gloss upon them – for there is nothing in these three brief, vague scraps which would allow us even to conclusively divide Erigina from his own debate opponent Gottschalk, let alone from the better-refined work of John Calvin.
And at any rate, even should we suppose that Erigina were to fall on the “soft” side of Celtic Predestination (and even Calvinists have a “softer predestinarian” school in the Amyrauldians), it cannot be forgotten that there are a number of other Celtic Fathers who have spoken on Predestination also – and more clearly than this Philosophy Editor has allowed Erigina to speak for himself.
"God is the author of all that is good in man; that is to say, both of good-nature and goodwill, which, unless God do work in him, man cannot do, because this good-will is prepared by the Lord in man, that, by the gift of God he may do that which by himself he could not do of his own free-will." -- Claudius Scotus
It is Gallus who speaks, the fellow-labourer of Columbanus, and the founder of the monastery of St. Gall. "The apostle says, 'God has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world," that is, by his eternal predestination, his free calling, and his grace which was due to none.'' They teach the sovereignty not less than the eternity of God's purposes. "God," says Sedulius, " Hath mercy with great goodness, and hardeneth without any iniquity; so that neither can he who is saved glory of his own merits, nor he that is lost complain but of his own merits.
That being kept in mind, then, let’s move on to the Eucharist.
In response to this you say:
One of the most unfortunate developments took place when men began to debate the reality of Christ's Body and Blood in the eucharist. While some said that the eucharistic gifts of bread and wine were the real Body and Blood of Christ, others said that the gifts were not real, but merely the symbolic or mystical presence of the Body and Blood. The tragedy in both of these approaches is that what is real came to be opposed to what is symbolic or mystical.
Well, if the “tragedy in both of these approaches is that what is real came to be opposed to what is symbolic or mystical”, it is a “tragedy” in which Erigina himself participated. For he said in his own words:
But if we shall suppose, that by “only the commemoration” Erigina actually meant “the symbolic or mystical presence of the Body and Blood”, then you have just made of Erigina every bit the Presbyterian which I have claimed him to be!!
For to the Calvinist Presbyterian, the importance of the matter is the denial of the carnal doctrine of gross transubstantiation – which to us, denies the particular Humanity of the unique Body of Flesh prepared from Him of Mary, which we believe is now always locally present in whole at the right hand of the Father in Heaven, without ever any fleshly dispersion whatsoever into nuggets of bread upon earthly altars.
Thus we say with our Scottish forebear, the Celtic Father Erigina, "The Sacraments of the Altar are not the real Body and Blood of Christ, but only the commemoration of his Body and Blood."; but our Presbyterian “Commemoration” is no mere celebration of the “Real Absence” of Zwinglian theology, but a celebration of the "Spiritual Presence" Doctrine declared by John Calvin, as set forth in the Institutes of the Christian Religion:
For if we see that the sun, in sending forth its rays upon the earth, to generate, cherish, and invigorate its offspring, in a manner transfuses its substance into it, why should the radiance of the Spirit be less in conveying to us the communion of His flesh and blood? Wherefore, the Scripture, when it speaks of our participation with Christ, refers its whole efficacy to the Spirit.
This kingdom is not limited by any intervals of space, nor circumscribed by any dimensions. Christ can exert His energy wherever he pleases, in earth and heaven, can manifest His presence by the exercise of His power, can always be present with His people, breathing into them His own life, can live in them, sustain, confirm, and invigorate them, and preserve them safe, just as if he were with them in the body; in fine, can feed them with His own body, communion with which he transfuses into them.
After this manner, the body and blood of Christ are exhibited to us in the sacrament.... The covenant, ratified by the sacrifice of death, would not avail us without the addition of that secret communication, by which we are made one with Christ.
And if THIS is the Righteous and Mystical and Spiritually-communicative and Symbolic Celebration of which Erigina speaks, when he says ”The Sacraments of the Altar are not the real Body and Blood of Christ, but only the commemoration of his Body and Blood” – then this is the very same Supper which is Celebrated among the Calvinists….
…and Geneva shakes hand with Iona across the gulf of a thousand years.
Best, OP