Some Notes on a Platonic Theology, Part 2: Christian Triads, Christian Trinities

Platonism and Early Christianity

 

The influence of late Platonic thought on early Christianity is very strong. Some contemporary thinkers-- almost always Anglophone converts to Eastern Orthodoxy-- try to deny this, but in doing so they make fools of themselves; the ideas of Plato and his successors are all over the early Church. The idea of the Intelligible Triad, in particular, was borrowed by the Church Fathers, in order to explain the relationship between the three members of the Holy Trinity.

Let's take a minute to recall what we said last time. The "Intelligible Triad" refers to three qualities which characterize beings, and which particularly apply to the Primary Hypostases. These qualities are: Being; Life; and Intelligence. We could also call these the capacity to Be, the capacity to Act, and the capacity to Know. (If this reminds you of someone, you're not far off.)

The Three Primary Hypostases, meanwhile, are the One, Intellect, and Soul. These are the three primary Beings, which bring all other beings into existence. The One is first; Intellect proceeds from the One; Soul, from Intellect (and the One). Now, the terms of the Intelligible Triad, as we said, are different from the Three Primary Hypostases. The terms of the Intelligible Triad are arranged horizontally, not vertically.

Now, one of the things that makes later Platonic philosophy difficult to access is that the ideas are not static; the doctrines evolved with time, and the thinkers involved often disagreed among themselves. For Plotinus, the terms of the Intelligible Triad are qualities possessed by the One, or by the One as it emanates into Intellect and returns to Itself. But Plotinus's student Porphyry turned the terms of the triad into hypostases themselves, calling them "three Gods." This was-- probably-- part of the process of transforming the pagan Chaldaean Oracles into sacred texts which could form the basis for a Platonic pagan theology; in the Oracles, the primary Gods are referred to as "Father -- Power -- Intellect."

It isn't certain, because many of Porphyry's writings are lost, but it's likely that he actually spoke of three Triads emanating one from the next, to form an Enneagram of deities. 

The Triad Christianized

Remember the terms of our Triad-- Being, Life, and Intellect. And remember that the Three Primary Hypostases, for Plotinus, are the One, Intellect, and Soul-- in that order. Now, let's turn to Saint Augustine, the most important of the Western fathers of the Christian Church:

 

Porphyry... speaks of God the Father and God the Son, whom he calls (writing in Greek) the Intellect or mind of the Father; but of the Holy Spirit he says either nothing, or nothing plainly, for I do not understand what other he speaks of as holding the middle place between these two. For if, like Plotinus in his discussion regarding the three principal substances, he wished us to understand by this third the soul of nature, he would certainly not have given it the middle place between these two, that is, between the Father and the Son. For Plotinus places the soul of nature after the intellect of the Father, while Porphyry, making it the mean, does not place it after, but between the others.

That is all to say: For Augustine, Porphyry's Triad is the Christian Holy Trinity. 

Being is the Father.

Life is the Holy Spirit.

Intellect is the Son.

It's worth noting that Augustine isn't quite right about Plotinus (as far as I know). Soul Itself is not the same as the "soul of nature" or the World Soul. The latter, while immensely greater than any human being and properly honored as a god, is still one soul among many, and so not the same as the hypostasis Soul Itself.

Augustine was not alone among Church Fathers in his use of the Intelligible Triad. The anonymous author who wrote under the name "Dionysius the Areopagite" used it explicitly:

The divine name of Good revealing all the processions of the universal Cause, extends both to the things which exist, and to the things which do not exist, and is beyond both existent and non-existent things. And the title of Existent extends to all existent things and is beyond them. And the title Life extends to all living things and is beyond them. And the title of Wisdom extends to all intellectual and rational and sensible things and is beyond them all.
 

Notice that in Dionysius, the terms of the Triad are not hypostasized, unlike in Porphyry or Augustine. Saint Maximus the Confessor also used the Intelligible Triad as a description of the Trinity: 

Furthermore, having noticed that through sophisticated investigation connected with reasoning, the Cause could be variously contemplated in its effects, they [that is, saints of prior generations] piously under-stood that it exists, and is wise, and is living . And from this they have learned divine and salutary doctrine about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, so that they both have been mysteriously enlightened about the principle of being of the Cause and have been initiated into the mode of its existence 

 

Christian Platonisms

A straightforward, more or less Orthodox and in fact quite traditional Christian Platonic theology, then, simply borrows the terms of the Intelligible Triad and applies them to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The One Itself, which stands above Being, Life, and Thought, can be understood as the Godhead which all three share, as in the diagram that heads this page. The realm of Intellect is the proper habitation of the Angels, and Intellect is, as I wrote before, called Angelic Mind in the work of Marsilio Ficino. Soul comes next, just as in the pagan Platonic thinkers, and imparts the capacity for life and motion to beings. In this way of looking at things, Plotinus's First Hypostasis, the One, becomes the Three Hypostases of the Holy Trinity. His second two hypostases are levels of being, but are no longer hypostases in the same sense. 

Ficino describes the levels of reality this way: Above mobile soul is motionless Angel. Above Angel is God; for just as Soul is mobile plurality and Angel motionless plurality, so God is motionless Unity." For Ficino, as for Plotinus, the World Soul exists and is also one soul among many. Stars, planets, and elements are ensouled-- as they were for many medieval and early Renaissance thinkers. For readers who are interested, Ficino wrote a six volume treatise of Platonic Christian Theology, and if the Catholic Church had preferred it to Aquinas's Summa Theologica we would all be much better off. 

Ficino represents one possibility for Christian Platonism. I would like to suggest another, which draws upon him and other thinkers, including Dionysius and Iamblichus, but goes further than they did. But that will have to wait for next time!