Eriugena e Origene. Una libertà assoluta

Eriugena considers Origen as the personification of reason, to which every authority must be subordinated, and his relation to him—mediated by Rufinus’ translations—is deep and strategic. One of the Origenian cornerstones in the speculative system of Periphyseon concerns the doctrine of free will. Origen rejects the (later Augustinian!) doctrine of God’s arbitrary and undue election as irrational and unjust and consequently refuses the Gnostic dualistic doctrine of predestination: God’s election is universal as manifestation of the indivisible oneness of his will. Certainly, the creature is free either towelcome the universally attractive action of divine Grace, or to direct elsewhere its loving desire: nevertheless, the Word naturally inhabiting it will always provoke and accompany its conversion. Drawing on this Origenian position, Eriugena conceives the freedom of both divine and human will as eternally converted and removed by the necessity of God’s absolute ontological perfection. The apocatastasis of all free creatures will therefore be the theological corollary of the postulate of the absolute identity of good and being. The necessity of divine perfection itself rules out every free act of non–universal discretion or election, as well as the unique really free act by the creature is its adhesion to God’s will.