The One and the Many: A Short Reflection on Neoplatonism and Christianity
The locus of Neoplatonist thought is its hierarchical system of reality, otherwise known as the hypostases. In his Enneads, Plotinus divides reality into four main components: the One, the Nous, the Psyche (Soul), and the Many. The One is the source of all things. It is radical in its simplicity and perfection, yet it is also essentially indescribable. It lies beyond time, space, and any human understanding. The Nous emanates directly from the One. It is a primordial consciousness that contains the unified archetype of all things, equivalent to Platonic Forms. Plotinus sometimes refers to The Nous as Being itself, God, or the Good. It exists by the act of constant self-contemplation akin to Aristotle’s Prime Mover, whose activity (or energy) becomes its essence, and vice versa. The Psyche emanates from the Nous. It receives the knowledge of the Nous and makes it manifest into actual things, i.e., the natural reality of appearance which constitutes the lowest part of Neoplatonism’s hierarchical system: the Many.
These emanations “unfold” in eternity. In other words, they do not become or happen in the chronological sense of the word. Moreover, all emanations of the One share some sameness to it while differing from it simultaneously, a paradoxical condition that is made possible, argues Plotinus, by the utter perfection of the One. Therefore, the One can be seen as that which at once encompasses and surpasses the Many. The universe that we, the Psyche, perceive occurs in the Nous, which is ultimately in the One. Such perspective shows that the hierarchical system of Neoplatonism works as a monistic continuum.
Neoplatonism seemingly solves the discrepancy between the One and the Many, a specter that has haunted Hellenic thought since pre-Socratic days. It looks neat and logically convincing too, notwithstanding the reputation that Plotinus enjoys among the thinkers of some major religions, such as Judaism, Islam, Gnosticism, Hermeticism and Christianity. Even so, I argue that two potential errors might occur when one tries to inject Neoplatonism directly into Christianity. The first stems from Plotinus’s usage of the term emanation, which is noticeable throughout his system. Emanation denotes a non-volitional act of flowing or radiating from some substance or body, which implies that the product of such act will retain the essence of its source. Put into the framework of Christianity, this concept not only runs counter to the ontological distinction which characterizes monotheism, i.e., the radical difference between creatures and their Creator, but also depersonalizes the personal God of Christianity. The second stems from the hierarchical structure which characterizes his system. One instance in which such structure is directly applied to Christianity is Eunomius’s hierarchical construction of the Trinity. Due to his conviction that the Father is essentially unbegotten, he denotes the Father as the “First Supreme Being,” the begotten Son as the “Second Supreme Being,” and the spirated Holy Spirit as the “Third Supreme Being,” a perfect adaptation of “the One-Nous-Psyche” structure that sacrifices divine simplicity and the monotheism of Christianity.
How, then, did the Christian thinkers get around these potential errors? An in-depth explanation is in order, yet it is hardly relevant to provide such explanation in a short reflection like this one. Broadly speaking, the thinkers of the Patristic era — most notably Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch, and Irenaeus of Lyons — first substituted the concept of emanation with that of creation, specifically creation out of nothing (ex nihilo). This concept not only ensures the ontological distinction between the Creator and the creature, but also safeguards God’s personality and free-will, which in turn enables us to perceive the creation as an act of love. Then, the Patristic thinkers substituted the hierarchical hypostases of Neoplatonism with a notion of hypostasis that is developed out of the term prosopon or personae, which signifies role in relation or personhood, and conjoined it to the Aristotelian notion of primary ousia imbued with Plotinus’s negative description of the One. This highly complex feat was accomplished by none other than the Cappadocian fathers — Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa — and it culminated in a new metaphysical category outside of monism, materialism (atomism), arithmetical monotheism, and polytheism: Tri-unity or Trinity. With the Trinity, the Cappadocian fathers construed the God of Christianity as both the One and the Three, a communion of three distinct divine persons (hypostasis) who share the same, indescribable divine essence (ousia). Combined with the notion of creation ex nihilo, the Triune God becomes the “Christian bridge” between the One and the Many. It explains how every creature paradoxically bears God’s image, for the plurality of the Three mirrors the plurality of the Many, while simultaneously being and becoming in a radically different manner from Him, i.e., as His creation.
