The Voice of the Eagle

Includes John Scotus Eriugena's "Homily on the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John""This kind of theological writing will appear almost psychotic to the average modern person who has learned only how to be pragmatic, empirical, and materialistic in all things--particularly with regard to the interpretation of experience. After all, we live in a psychological era, in which we suppose that there is no meaning beyond emotion and the personal situation. How can Eriugena go on and on about God without mentioning our existential anxieties, our problems with human love? How can he prove any of his outrageous assertions?" -- Thomas Moore (from his foreword)John Scotus Eriugena was born and raised in Ireland during the early ninth century. Neither monk nor priest but a "holy sage," he carried to France the flower of Celtic Christianity. His homily, The Voice of the Eagle, is a jewel of lyrical mysticism, theology, and cosmology, containing the essence of Celtic Christian wisdom. He meditates on the meaning and purpose of creation as revealed by the Word made flesh, distilling into twenty-three short chapters a uniquely Celtic, non-dualistic fusion of Christianity, Platonism, and ancient Irish wisdom.Christopher Bamford's "Reflections" make up the second half of this book, unfolding some of the life-giving meaning implicit in Eriugena's luminous sentences. Inspired both by a personal search for a living Christianity and by a sense of the continuity of Western culture, these "Reflections" offer a contemporary, meditative encounter with the Word, or Logos, as mediated by both St. John's Prologue and Eriugena's Celtic homily.This favorite of Celtic Christianity, unavailable for several years, has been revised and includes a new foreword by Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul.