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[ 80 ] the rise and fall of soul and self
In Eriugena’s own view, reality, which emanates from God, first flows through
the Platonic Ideas, then through various logical categories, and finally into the
realms of number, space, and time, where the Ideas multiply and become subject
to change, imperfection, and decay. In the realm of number, the Ideas become pure
incorporeal spirits—angels. In that of space and time, they take on the burden of
matter, which is the source of suffering, sickness, and sin. Once contaminated by
matter, the Ideas are no longer reality but merely its appearance. In human beings,
the Idea is the soul, the matter the body. Humans culminate the process of things
emanating from God and begin that of things returning to God. They are also a
reflection of the Trinity in that in them, being, wisdom, and love are joined.
According to Eriugena, before the Fall, humans were perfect in body and
soul. Adam and Eve had been without bodily needs or sexual differentiation,
both of which Eriugena took to be a consequence of Original Sin. Human
nature,
thus, needed to be redeemed. When Christ became human, he took upon
himself body, soul, senses, and intellect, and he retained them even when he
ascended into heaven, thereby redeeming human nature. Thus began the final
return of all things to God.
Building on Origen but going beyond him in the direction of Neoplatonic mys-
ticism, Eriugena claimed that at resurrection the deceased do not exchange their
fleshy bodies for spiritual bodies but rather pass completely into pure spirit. In this
transformation, ultimately all human individuality, and perhaps individuality
altogether, is lost, and differences among humans due to social rank, gender, and
even religious accomplishment are dissolved in mystic union with the source.
Two centuries later, Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), famous today pri-
marily for his “ontological” proof of the existence of God, also made significant
contributions to theology, as well as to the problem of universals. In his theology,
he claimed that before the creation of the world from nothing, God possessed in
his infinite nature the exemplars of all things that were to be rather than, as in
Eriugena’s account, creating Ideas after the fact. Anselm also had things to say
about what it is to be human. For instance, in his view, since created things,
including human beings, subsist more truly as Ideas in God than they do in
themselves, humans are participations in, or reflections of, divine reality.
Even so, human psychology was not a topic to which Anselm gave much
attention. When he did discuss it, his concern was not so much to illuminate it
for its own sake but for the light that it could shed on theology. For instance, he
claimed that one must first understand how several men are in species but a
single man in order to understand how several persons can be one God and that
human nature reflects the Trinity inasmuch as the soul recollects, understands,
and loves itself.
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