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Precisely now, at the very edge of a new millennium, reflection inspired by all the sciences – astronomy, physics, archeology – suggests that a return to theological thinking is a possibility.  Our empirical methods are reaching their limits, and it’s remarkable how much the languages of the sciences, of literary criticism, and of certain branches of theoretical psychology, are beginning to move ever so slightly in the direction of masters like John Scotus Eriugena.  It will still take a while to catch up to him, if indeed we are ever able to shed the pseudo-theological categories of our secularism.

Christopher Bamford, whose translation of Eriugena offers a brilliant clarity and beauty, places this wonderfully daring and cautious theology in the context of the Irish sensibility, where the veil between the holy and the ordinary is thinner than elsewhere on earth.  Certainly Eriugena’s delicate hermeneutic of the gospel remains on a slender ledge, never falling into the merely human landscape, but teetering toward the side of the divine.  Reading this commentary is like listening to the tender and juicy words of a poet, like Rilke or Emily Dickinson, who sees the subtleties of human life with a refined eye.

This kind of theological writing will appear almost psychotic to the average modern person who has learned only how to be pragmatic, empirical and materialistic in all things – particularly with regard to the interpretation of experience.  After all, we live in a psychological era, in which we suppose that there is no meaning beyond emotion and the personal situation.  How can Eriugena go on and on about God without mentioning our existential anxieties, our problems with human love?  How can he prove any of his outrageous assertions?

A clue is to be found in the way Christopher Bamford, with equal and appropriate delicacy, unfolds the method and meaning of Eriugena.  He makes it clear that what is at work is a kind of theopoetics – not reducing theology to imagery and fiction, but, in the ancient way, noticing that there are many levels at which theological statements can be read.  And these various levels don’t cancel each other out.  Both the evangelist’s words and the commentary wind around each other in a resonance that reaches us polyphonically.  And the music moves more deeply because the book in our hands is a commentary on a commentary.  Christopher Bamford dreams Eriugena’s vision further, taken up in the Irish theologian’s own spirit and method.  The two writers are like twins, and it’s possible to read Christopher Bamford’s commentary as the primary statement, with Eriugena’s as a commentary on him.  In the end, of course, with St. John’s voice, it is a three-part counterpoint; with the reader’s, it makes a complete fugue.

Commentaries often seem to muddle the material on which they comment.  Certainly they often grow more dense and complicated than the original text.  But not here.  John the Evangelist is mystical and appropriately hazy, while Eriugena’s clarity comes through as a bright mystical light – indeed, like the very light discussed in the commentaries, a light that penetrates our habitual darkness.

Much is made in these commentaries of the deification or theosis of the human being – another idea unimaginable to even the pious believer of today.  Eriugena describes it as the saints passing into God.  One of my favorite Renaissance theologians, Nicolas of Cusa, writes about humanus deus, about the human being becoming divine.  This is not self-actualization or therapy or “happiness.”  It is a transformation in the fundamental attitude of a person, a development far beyond the capacity of psychology to grasp or appreciate.  It is an idea that lies at the heart of Eriugena’s theological vision.  For we are continually moving in two directions, passing from God into life and returning from life into God.

I don’t think that we appreciate either movement much today.  To put it in the most concrete terms, we don’t see the divinity of children, though we do seem to grasp that they are not altogether human.  Still, we tend to consider them as less, rather than more, than adult humans.  At life’s other end, we don’t appreciate the movement into death as passing into God, but see it merely as the failure of life.  In the ordinary view, there is only one movement and one direction: we are evolving, entering more and more into life, not from a divine origin but from ignorance.  Anything that contradicts that movement is a threat and an obstacle.  Eriugena’s theology could help us revise this fundamental short-sightedness.  If we could re-imagine our mortality with a sophisticated theological vision, I believe we would better accept our imperfections and mortifications.  We might slip more gracefully into God, rather than fight the process as a mistake on the part of creation or a failure in management on the part of society.

Anotyher key theme for me in these commentaries is the idea of theophany, the manifestation of God that is at the same time a concealment.  The old idea of deus absconditus, the hidden God, allows us to live, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, not as though God were given but in the very presence of God.  It allows us to be religious and secular at the same moment, and this saves us from the errors and tragedies both of secularism and spiritualism.  The lack of a living theology in our culture accounts for a dangerous split between the holy and the ordinary.  We try to deal with our problems and to be creative from a purely secular place, and then our problems become demonic and grow beyond our capacity.

We live always on the edge of self-destruction, which takes the form of depression, suicide, violence, and nuclear armaments, because we don’t have the divine life in us to offer hope.  Depression is not really a psychological malady; it is rather an extreme abundance of an otherwise natural withdrawal from life.  It is a theological issue, an existential melancholy, and it requires depth of thought far transcending the social scientific categories we usually rely on.

Aside from the many issues that come up in these commentaries, there is the fact of them in the first place.  I would hope that the reader temperamentally inclined to this kind of thinking would discover the beauty and the relevance of theological work, ancient and modern.  In one sense, all reflection and its expression is a kind of poetry, and we are challenged to enter various genres of poetry that may have been formerly closed off to us.

When we use the term theopoetics, which I first heard from Stanley Romains Hopper, we might concentrate not only on the God or theos aspect, but also on the poetic.  We have to read Eriugena as someone who had the imagination to grasp the resonances of experience that take us to the most refined levels.  We have to ascend on his layers of consideration to the point where ordinary logic begins to fail.

Theopoetics takes us to the very summit and the very bottom of experience.  Reading Eriugena, I feel a penetration into my thought and my very being, but it slips past my consciousness and reasoning.  The act of reading theology is not the same as the act of reading empirical material.  We don’t have to bother sorting it all out and going through the various phases of explanation and verification.  Either the ideas penetrate and make a difference, or they remain closed off to the an imagination too much affected by the density of the times.  Reading it, I feel my imagination being exercised in a way that doesn’t happen in any other kind of reflection, not even in the contemplation of art, although the arts come close.

Another gift of this duet between the two Johns is to offer a way of thinking about God that is sufficiently intelligent and sophisticated to help us live religiously in what Bonhoeffer called a secular society come of age.  In most cases, religion is presented in naïve, literalistic and anachronistic ways, which I believe account for its failure to be taken seriously and to be “a player” in the life of the culture today.  When God is imagined with the subtlety of Eriugena’s language, it suddenly becomes assimilable to a society raised on careful science.  This is not small point: it’s time for religion and theology, too, to come of age.

As important as it is for theological thinking to enter the mainstream of cultural life and thought, Eriugena’s theology also encourages a kind of devotion and worship that is also intelligent and refined.  Reading his passionate words about the Word become flesh, I, for one, am inspired to make a life around these ideas.  They can’t be left for mere theoretical discussion, but demand a personal response.  As in the East, where bhakti or devotion follows directly upon dharma, or teaching, here, too, solid and profound devotion can emerge from the inspiring reflections of the Irish theologian.  In fact, my commentary on Christopher Bamford’s commentary on Eriugena’s commentary, if extended, would explore specific ways in which the theology would unfold into a concrete spiritual practice and way of life.

Before reading Eriugena I never had thought of this chain of religious development – substantive theology leading to devotion leading to ethics – on such a smoothly integrated spectrum.  The realms of religion and secular life then are bound together seamlessly, or it might be better to say that they are indistinguishable.  Until we reach that point where the holy is recognized as the secular and the secular as the holy, both realms will be fundamentally weak, and anything we do in the spiritual sphere or in the ordinary life will not have the power it could have.

With genuine enthusiasm, then, I recommend a close reading of this extraordinary book.  Christopher Bamford has put it together with such care for detail that he and his Irish ancestor really mirror each other.  In this light, the book has a fascinating form, as intricate and as pleasing as a musical composition.  I don’t know anyone else in the world who could have done it, certainly no one who could have done it with such brilliance.  It has opened up worlds for me, and I recommend that the reader pick it up as one would approach the work of a true artist – for form as well as substance, and for inspiration as well as understanding.

1.      In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God

2.      The same was in the beginning with God.

3.      All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

4.      In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

5.      And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

6.      There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

7.      The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.

8.      He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

9.      That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

10.  He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

11.  He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

12.  But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:

13.  Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

14.  And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

15.  John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.

16.  And of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace.

17.  For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

1.The Voice of the Eagle

The voice of the spiritual eagle strikes in the hearing of the church. May our outer senses grasp its transient sounds and our inner spirit penetrate its enduring meaning.

This is the voice of the bird of high flight — not of the bird who soars above the material air or over the aether, orbiting the entire sensible world — but the voice of that spiritual bird who, on swiftest wings of innermost theology and intuitions of most brilliant and high contemplation, transcends all vision and flies beyond all things that are and are not

By the things that are, I mean the things that do not wholly escape perception, either angelic or human, since they come after God and because of their numbers do not transcend what has been fashioned by the single cause of all. And by the things that truly are not, I mean those that actually surpass the powers of all understanding.

 The blessed theologian John therefore flies beyond not only what may be thought and spoken, but also beyond all mind and meaning. Exalted by the ineffable flight of his spirit beyond all things, he enters into the very arcanum of the one principle of all. There he clearly distinguishes the superessential unity and the supersubstantial difference of the beginning and the Word — that is, of the Father and the Son — both incomprehensible, and begins his Gospel saying: “In the beginning was the Word.”

Part One: The Way

1. The New Song

It is the darkest night of the year, the dead of winter. Earth has breathed in her soul. Cut off from the sun's light, she lies silent and closed. Human beings, left to their own resources, are at their lowest ebb. Tempted by matter, deprived of the gods, they yearn for warmth and consolation. Then, suddenly, the new world of Christmas Morning breaks forth and the Sun of Righteousness rises, sounding in the ears of the universe, the hearing of the church, once and for always.

The days grow longer. Light returns, the air grows warm with love. The heavenly hosts, the first to know, say to themselves (in the words of Origen), “If he has put on mortal flesh, how can we remain doing nothing? Come, angels, let us descend from heaven.” And so they come down to the shepherds, the angels of nations, and, praising God, announce the coming of Christ, the true Shepherd. On earth, too, in the stable, all creation rejoices in the moment of redemption, the turn so long awaited and so ardently desired.

Such is the divine cosmic event which Eriugena celebrates in his Homily in the belief that everyone else does also. Indeed, if the Incarnation is not for everyone and everything, it is for no one and nothing.

“Behold the might of the New Song!” cries Clement of Alexandria. “It has made human beings out of stones, human beings out of beasts. Those, moreover, that were as dead, not being partakers of the true life, have come to life again, simply by listening to this Song.” For Clement, the ineffable virtue of the Incarnation is that it is the universal medicine and elixir of life. By it, matter and spirit are made one. For all things first sounded into form in the Word; and now the Word, that melodious, holy instrument of God, made flesh in time, sounds out again, recalling all things to their wholeness and their home-ground.

 Truly, in the history of the universe regarded as the meaningful speech of human beings and gods, the Incarnation of God's Word marks the turning point. Speech having become flesh, flesh can become speech. Full, living meaning is restored. What God spoke outside time — in eternity — is now spoken, lives, and may be heard in time. No wonder, then, that human beings who felt so destitute can suddenly feel joy and certitude. Clement's emotion is not hard to understand. The savior of creation, the creator, has come. The king of the world, the teacher of humanity, the Word of God, has given himself. The cause of being has become the cause of well-being. Why? So that the supernatural, having become natural, can become supernatural once more and God, according to the primordial desire never deviated from, can become all in all. This is the meaning of resurrection, the meaning of meaning. What a task for human beings! What a prospect! God has spoken and it is for humanity to listen and respond, to hear God’s word and return God’s speech.

 Realizing this, Rosenstock-Huessy wrote, “A Christian is a person to whom Christ speaks. The body of Christ are those who listen to Him.” But more than that: through us, through cognition and consciousness, everyone and everything can and must listen, for all of creation groaned and travailed in pain for this, and all speech, like all love, is a single unity. Therefore Rosenstock- Huessy continues, “As speakers as well as lovers, we need assurance that we move in a continuum, that our discovery of real life and our words make sense for ever and ever. Otherwise we go mad and all spirit leaves us. It is impossible to assume that when we speak we do something different from the peoples of all times. Our speech would be up in the air, a meaningless stammering, unless we have the right to believe that all speech is legitimate and authorized as one and the same life process from the first day on which man has spoken to the last.”

 It is this tradition of those who listen before they speak that we must try to recover and make our own. The Word was spoken in the beginning and made all things; then, at the turning point of time, the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. St. John beheld his glory. He heard and saw and touched him, and wrote down some of what he saw and learned. Some eight centuries later, John Scotus Eriugena, a holy Celtic sage, theologian, and philosopher — a Christian gnostic, Neoplatonist, and heir to untold written and unwritten teachings — meditated and transmitted the essence (as he could grasp it) of what St. John had taught.

Now it is our turn — at the turn of the ages, when Christendom is has disappeared and Christian teaching has practically been forgotten, and the wisdom of the past, Eastern and Western, echoes around us in fragments — to connect with this tradition and set down for our time and way whatever we can find to know and tell. There are other traditions — monastic, liturgical, mystical, social — each having its authentic place as a legitimate consequence of the Word's Incarnation, but Eriugena's gnostic and Platonic path, his Word-centered cosmological path of cognition, cries out above all of these to be heard today. For without understanding the Word in consciousness, the Word in the cosmos, all other traditions fall short of their full meaning. Natural theology (the theology of nature) and theological anthropology (the theology of human beings) are out of fashion, yet, without these, without a holistic understanding of nature's and humanity’s place in God, all the rest are ungrounded, and it is pointless, even dangerous, to speak of “social” or “ecological” Gospels.

 To recover this unheard tradition is a task of intuition, interpretation, meditation: of understanding and transformation. We shall not seek to project ourselves but, laying ourselves down, attempt to reflect the worlds of faith that St. John and Eriugena open up to us. We shall approach the field of Christianity through these two human gates, patiently waiting until entrance is granted. Thereby we shall hope to know ourselves anew, in a new way, and be reborn. All understanding is self-understanding — understanding how we understand — but if we wish to understand newly — if the New Testament is to remain truly new and true — we must forget ourselves, our present understanding, and give ourselves up to meanings and ways of knowing and unknowing that we are ignorant of and alienated from. We must make them so much our own that they remake us. Then our knowing will cease to be merely information and will itself become a way of being.

These reflections, then, are not a commentary but a search for life. The Word calls us because we seek the Word that is able to call us. Meeting this Word, we meet the living God, and interpretation becomes encounter.

None of this means much today because we have lost Christianity. Yet it is the thesis of Eriugena's Homily, which we must lay down to begin with, that it is only in and through the Word, the primordial singing principle of relation and expression — that is, meaning — that the true religion is to be found that binds together Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and Humanity-the-Universe in a single, indivisible yet distinguishable unity. Certainly, it is not easy to find this Logos-Spirit and ourselves again. There is much that we have forgotten and more that we have yet to learn. We shall have to start from the beginning, and the way will often appear obscure and alien, but, trusting in what we seek, we shall strive patiently in the certainty of finding the one who opens and makes wise all who open to him.

It is this omnipresent, spiritual principle of finding and knowing — “the spiritual Eagle” — that we have forgotten today. That is why the “voice of the Eagle” must always strike in the hearing of the church, that is, in the consciousness of the universe as mediated by human beings.

The Word is always with us — even to the end of the world — continuously begotten in an everlasting begetting, as brightness is begotten of light. As the life and truth of all things, this New Song warms and lights creation through a continuous act of love. To know this is to come to inhabit the limitless field of creativity outside time and nature but ever forming and creating it. It is to die to oneself and to find one's true other, one's true place and origin in the cause, essence, and source of all. It is to meet the bridegroom secretly: to dwell in paradise by the tree of life planted in every soul.

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