John Scotus Eriugena: De Praedestinatione

This treatise on divine predestination was written by John Scottus Eriugena at the request of Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, and Pardulus, bishop of Laon, to whom it is dedicated, against the monk Gottschalk of Orbais, who taught a twofold predestination, of the elect to life and of the reprobate to death. In the preface John describes the bishops’ work as partly contemplative and partly active in ruling the Church, while he himself is tossed like a small boat on the stormy sea of the empire of his lord, King Charles. The book argues that predestination is one, since God is one and simple.

Eriugena maintains that God predestines only to good, that sin and punishment are not positive realities but privations, and that evil therefore cannot be predestined, as in the sample’s argument that what consists in privation is known by not knowing. His approach, which made the question one of philosophy and dialectic, alarmed many contemporaries; the work was condemned at the councils of Valence in 855 and Langres in 859. It is the earliest of Eriugena’s original writings and a key text of the Carolingian predestination controversy.