The Voice of the Eagle: The Heart of Celtic Christianity (Paperback)

~ (Translator), Christopher Bamford (Author) "IT IS THE darkest night of the year, the dead of winter..." (more)
Key Phrases: primordial causes, Holy Spirit, Meister Eckhart, Holy Trinity (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...a precious gift for all of us who need to be touched anew by the truth of the Christian teaching" -- Jacob Needleman

"Christopher Bamford has written a wonderful book. Its lucid depths enrich the mind and awaken the heart to the grandeur of light where the eternal shines." -- John O'Donohue

"Christopher Bamford presents an accurate and readable translation of this classic of Christian thought and suggests valuable comments about its meaning." -- Bernard McGinn

"The book ... will be cherished by anyone who is thirsty for the water of wisdom that has flowed so abundantly from the spring of Christ." -- Bruno Barnhart

"The recovery of the Christian tradition ... will be nourished and assisted by this fascinating book." -- Stratford Caldecott, Center for Faith and Culture, Westminster College, Oxford

“Christopher Bamford has written a wonderful book. It combines a rigour of scholarship with a lyrical unveiling... -- John O’Donohue, author of Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Product Description

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. The translator’s “Reflections” make up the second half of this book and attempt to unfold 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 forward by Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and The Soul of Sex.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 3.36 pages
• Publisher: Lindisfarne Books; 2 edition (November 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0970109709
• ISBN-13: 978-0970109705
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #627,536 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good work., bad marketing, July 14, 2001

By	Rodger Clampitt (Palmdale, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This is a fine work on Eruigena's Homily on the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John. Eruigena was deeply influenced by Neoplatonic thought and it shows in this work. Bamford does a fine job of translating it and does Eruigena's homliy justice. His prose is first rate and is a joy to read.

The book can be divided into roughly two sections. The Homily itself which constitutes about 50 pages and the rest is Bamford's take of it, which is roughly 250 pages. Bamford's hermenutics of the Homily can be skipped - it really tells the reader more about Bamford's thinking than anything else.

I must take issue with Bamford's misleading advertising he used to market his book. Like the previous reviewer I am in agreement that this work has nothing to do with Celtic Christianity unless one would equate it Greek thought. Rest assured they are not the same thing. In a sense Bamford does an injustice to both neoplatonism and Celtic Chrisitanity by doing this.

Ratings wise it gets 3 Stars. 5 stars for the Homily itself. -2 stars for misleading advertising and marketing Neoplatonic writings as a work of Celtic Christianity.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Tribal Propaganda, October 10, 2001

By	David Pantano (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

Christopher Bamford, eminent writer of wisdom traditions, has written an important yet disjointed and ultimately disappointing account of/on John Scotus Eriugena. Any lover of truth will take exception to the grotesque inaccuracies marring the introductions to Voice of the Eagle. Fraught with forced associations, Bramford propagates ad nauseam a preeminent Celtic cultural import to the philosophical theology underlying Eriugena's works. Embarrassingly, Eriugena is taken out of context (ie. Medieval sage, part of the transnational Occidental wisdom canon) and is treated to page-after-page of ethnocentric historical revisionism. Bamford's views read like a form of tribal propaganda that distorts the timeless and universal themes contained in Eriugena's works. Once beyond the distractingly prejudiced intros, Bamford does an exceptionally good job to illuminate theological issues with penetrating philosophical perspectives. The obtuse subject matter leads at times to boring digressions. However, embedded throughout are lofty theosophical insights that suprisingly redeems the work making this book a profitable read and a keeper in one's library. For the sake of salvaging a really good work, one only hopes that in future editions, Bamford tones down the trendy Celto-mania introductions and places Eriugena where he rightly belongs in the heart of Medieval Occidental Christianity.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting idea, but overdramatic, November 18, 2006

By	Greg (Australia) - See all my reviews

This work presents the famous commentary on the Gospel of John by the great Celtic philosopher and theologian, Eriugena.

While Scotus was influenced by Celtic spirituality in the sense he had a very positive view of the universe, and especially in his belief the universe is one of God's primary 'theophanies' of manifestations, he drew most of his theological and philosophical thought from Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite. While Eriugena was an extremely creative innovator in many ways (especially in his emphasis on the meontic or negative aspects of Being, both human and divine) he was basically a Christian Platonist in a similar vein as Eckhart, and his intellectual formation relied on other Christian Platonists like Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine as much as it would on any Celtic wisdom. Eriugena is more of a world-class thinker and philosopher rather than someone who had a tribal or nationalistic agenda of any sort, and we should avoid anachronism when reading into the past.