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Eriugena's great work, the Periphyseon or De divisione naturae (Περί φύσεων), which was condemned by a council at Sens by Honorius III (1225), who described it as "swarming with worms of heretical perversity," and by Gregory XIII in 1585, is arranged in five books. The form of exposition is that of dialogue; the method of reasoning is the syllogism. Nature (Natura in Latin or physis in Greek) is the name of the most comprehensive of all unities, that which contains within itself the most primary division of all things, that which is (being) and that which is not (nonbeing). The Latin title refers to these four divisions of nature: (1) that which creates and is not created; (2) that which is created and creates; (3) that which is created and does not create; (4) that which is neither created nor creates. The first is God as the ground or origin of all things, the last is God as the final end or goal of all things, that into which the world of created things ultimately returns. The second and third together compose the created universe, which is the manifestation of God, God in process, Theophania. Thus we distinguish in the divine system beginning, middle and end; but these three are in essence one; the difference is only the consequence of our finite comprehension. We are compelled to envisage this eternal process under the form of time, to apply temporal distinctions to that which is extra- or supra-temporal. It is in turn through our experience that the incomprehensible divine is able to frame an understanding of itself. The Division of Nature has been called the final achievement of ancient philosophy, a work which "synthesizes the philosophical accomplishments of fifteen centuries."
Eriugena's discussion of "primordial causes" in the non-linear book suggests they are a part of a theophanic spectrum of in effect energies from God, influenced in his articulation by both the writings of Blessed Augustine of Hippo and St. Maximus the Confessor. He describes these causes as created and yet admits too that viewed from divine or mortal perspectives they could be considered as uncreated or created respectfully. He arguably sought to synthesize aspects of Greek and Latin patristics in this regard, yet before the doctrine of uncreated energies and hesychasm had been fully developed in the Orthodox Church by later Greek writers, notably St. Simeon the New Theologian and St. Gregory Palamas. Thus his lengthy and non-linear discussions also have been viewed as heretical by later standards, although the problems in recent studies have been considered more in terms of ambiguity than heterodoxy, especially in light of his emphasis on apophasis. In the latter view, his emphasis on theophany is a key parallel to the Orthodox dogma of uncreated energies.
Likewise his description of Nature at one point as in a sense including God can be take in the overall context of his writings and Greek sources as an expression of St. Maximus' statement that the Logos and the logoi are one, an effort to indicate the presence of the divine energies in Creation theophanic ally and transfiguratively. Elsewhere he clearly articulated an apophatic sense of the unknowability of God as Divine Essence wholly distinct from Creation. St. Maximus' description of the logoi as also energies in his Ambigua can indicate how both writers were seeking to articulate a mystery of a continuum between transfigurative and formative energies of God , and created identities by and in Christ , from a Christocentric theandric standpoint.
==Influence==