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From Mystification to Procedure John
Scotus Erigena and Finn on Monism By the Druid Finn Monism, the claim that all things are ultimately one,
has appeared in many guises. In the ninth century, John Scotus Erigena dared
to proclaim that “all is God,” a (pantheistic)
vision of unity so sweeping it alarmed both pope and bishops. He saw the
world as a fourfold play of divine creation and return: what creates but is
not created (God), what creates and is created (primordial causes), what is
created but does not create (the world), and finally what neither creates nor
is created (God as end). The circle was neat: all proceeds from God and all
returns to God. Continuity, eternal flow, divine reassurance. Even so, the
Erigena was condemned. But what did Erigena actually provide? A metaphysical
comfort system. Human beings, through reason, are placed at the privileged
hinge of this circle. The world is not alien or meaningless; it is a
theophany, a manifestation destined to be reabsorbed. Erigena’s monism is
essentially a theology of continuity, designed to mystify momentum into
destiny, process into salvation. Here enters Finn, the modern druid, uninvited and
unmoved by the sleazy comforts of theology. He strips away the Neoplatonic
drapery and looks at raw facts: existence, meaning time, space, identity, realness,
are all discontinuous, serial, quantised, random combinations. There is no
smooth emanation but a cascade of unpredictable contacts, each packet of
energy colliding, differentiating, modulating into the next. Identity,
whether of atom, organism, or human “I,” is not a divine gift but a temporary
standing wave in a random sea. Continuity is real enough to an observer, but
it is not divine unity—it is endless momentum, thrust across randomness,
without inherent direction, hence value. Where Erigena offered consolation—return to God—Finn
offers clarity: there is no return, no grand circle, no overall. Nature, which
Finn equates with God, provides no comfort, no salvation, no story. Meaning,
salvation, destiny, my story—these are local fictions, expedient props
invented by complex emergents (cultures, humans, machines) to sustain
personal survival. They are not universal truths but temporary strategies. This is the polemic: Erigena mystified continuity into
divine reassurance, Finn demystifies continuity as mere momentum and reveals
discontinuity as the fundamental fact. Erigena inflated humanity as the
rational mediator of return, Finn deflates humanity into just another
expendable probe in nature’s lottery of emergent striving for greater complexity.
Erigena promised salvation, Finn refuses the term. And yet—paradox of polemic—one might say Finn completes
Erigena. What Erigena saw dimly through the lens of theology, Finn
re-articulates in procedural, non-religious, information-technical terms.
Erigena’s monism is a medieval mystification of what Finn states with modern
precision: all is one, but that one is not a timeless Godhead; it is the
ceaseless discontinuous procedure of nature itself. Thus the circle closes—but not as Erigena dreamed. The
divine is not a continuum awaiting our return, but a discontinuous system
whose only drive is continuance appearing momentarily as random emergence.
Erigena’s vision of unity is not overthrown but transposed: from mystic
comfort to procedural realism. The medieval monk sought salvation in
continuity; the modern druid finds reality in discontinuity and private
salvation in momentary self-perfection.
Between them stretches a millennium of human longing for reassurance.
Finn answers not with comfort but with fact: Nature is God, and God is
nothing more—and nothing less—than the procedure of emergence. |