 Eriugena’s exceptional learning would be sufficient to distinguish him from contemporary Carolingian scholars, such as Alcuin and Sedulius Scottus; but his true and lasting genius lay in his ability to combine elements from these auctores into a new cosmological framework which is rationally argued to the highest degree. Eriugena enthusiastically incorporated many Greek Christian theological concepts: God, the One, creates by self-emanation; creation is a timeless, and hence on-going and always contemporary, event; human nature is originally a Platonic Idea in the mind of God; human nature is a certain intellectual concept formed eternally in the mind of God, Periphyseon, IV.768b). Humans fail to understand their true nature as image of God in God, because they are distracted by created, fleeting temporal “appearances” (phantasiai), which entrap the intellect in the clouded spatio-temporal realm of sense. However, through intellectual contemplation (theoria, intellectus) and divine illumination (which is the receiving of a divine self-manifestation, theophania), humans may achieve unification (henosis) with God, and the select few will even undergo “deification” (deificatio, theosis) which Eriugena interprets as complete identity with God.