Understanding the Universal Order from a Dynamic Ontology in Eriúgena

Abstract

This paper tries to understand the order in Eriugena’s universe, from an ontology that assumes the dynamic character of both the one and the multiple. It analyses the term processio, which is used: a) to express the creation, b) to understand the created world as a dynamic hierarchy, c) to explain the latter within an provision which is the good of the created world. The thesis is that processio (or explicatio, emanatio) is not simply passage form unity to multiplicity, but it reverts, by itself, to the misterious nature of creation; since the composition and alterity implied in creation (either manifest or not) represent nothing which was not already subsistent in God; at the same time, it will be shown that this subsistence is the origin of a dialectic dinamicity from which the finite world is constituted.