Reviews for The Voice of the Eagle

The average rating for The Voice of the Eagle based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-02-17 00:00:00 david danna My copy of John Scottus Eriugena's homily on the prologue to the Gospel of John did not contain Christopher Bamford's commentary, so I can't speak to that aspect of the work (though the Goodreads summary claim that this text is full of ancient Irish wisdom confuses me a bit, as I'm not really sure what that is supposed to mean). This is, however, a genuinely beautiful piece of writing from Eriugena. Even if you aren't spiritual the joy and awe that he has in writing this really just spills of the page to the point that I think anyone could enjoy it. It is a bit complicated, though - John Scottus Eriugena is a fascinating guy, even though we know almost nothing about him. Just this: he was born in Ireland, and somewhere around 50 years later he was floating around the Carolingian court of Charles the Bald, participating in theological debates and translating a number of Greek texts. It's the last part that's really key - Eriugena's translation work, particularly his translation of all the works of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite not only made available key theological texts to the western world, but really permeated his own philosophy as well. Pseduo-Dionysius's conception of the universe was deeply Neoplatonic - he saw the universe as essentially emanating out into existence, divine light cascading down a universal hierarchy all the way to the created universe. It's a lovely worldview, and one that frequently has a deep appreciation for nature: after all, for these writers, it was filled with little glimpses of God. Eriugena picks this up and runs with it, and develops a theory of cosmic harmony and unification that I thought was really imaginative, sensitive, and expansive. And then, in his homily, he finds an articulation of this cosmology in the first 14 verses of the Gospel of John, one of the most interesting parts of the Bible. I'm having a lot of fun reading all these theological texts for my class this semester. It's been an interesting experience, particularly approaching them with a group of people who are quite a bit more religious than I am myself. It's making me think that everyone could benefit from a theology class, regardless of level of belief.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-01-06 00:00:00 John Sawyer Note for future reading: Want to read for the translation of Eriugena's commentary on John's Prologue. Will probably not read the substantial secondary commentary by Bamford comprising the largest portion of this book.