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  4. Steel (Carlos) 2014a

Steel, Carlos, “Maximus Confessor and John Scottus Eriugena on place and time”, in: Willemien Otten, and Michael I. Allen (eds), Eriugena and Creation: proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Eriugenian Studies, held in honor of Edouard Jeauneau, Chicago, 9–12 November 2011, Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. 291–318.

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“Maximus Confessor and John Scottus Eriugena on place and time”
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291–318
Year
2014
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Abstract (cited)
Maximus’ considerations on place in Ambigua ad Iohannem VI (X) PG 91, 1180B-1181A offered Eriugena the ‘starting point’ for his own views on place. This contribution presents first a close reading of Maximus’ argument and investigates in a second part how Eriugena transformed Maximus’ views to develop his own doctrine. Maximus’ argument is not primarily about place, but about the temporality of the universe. Whatever is in place, is limited and must have a beginning in time, as both time and place are inseparably connected. Eriugena learns from Maximus that place is the ‘natural definition of every creature’, but takes ‘definition’ in the sense of ‘the essential or quidditative definition’. Eriugena also uses ‘place’ in a more common sense as the ‘tridimensional containment of a corporeal quantity’. How the two notions of place/space are related remains unclear. The inseparable connection between time and place poses another difficulty. That the whole creation is characterized by temporality is easy to admit, but how could one understand that the whole creation is in place? What about incorporeal beings? Maximus insists that time and place characterize the very being or ousia of created things; it is what makes them finite beings and distinct from the creator. For Eriugena the ousia never becomes itself subjected to spatio-temporal conditions; only in its accidental appearance does it become spatial and temporal. Ultimately God and creation are the same reality, as will become evident at the return of all things when the conditions of time and space will cease to exist.
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Dennis Groenewegen
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May 2015, last updated: January 2019
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