Elements of Theology, Proposition 2

Everything which participates in The One is alike one and not one. 

For though it is not The One itself — since it partic­ipates of The One and is therefore other than it is — it experiences The One through participation, and is thus able to become one. If therefore it is nothing besides The One, it is one alone, and will not participate of The One but will be The One itself. But if it is something other than The One, which is not The One but a par­ticipant of it, it is alike one and non-one, — one being, indeed, since it partakes of oneness, but not oneness it­self. This therefore is neither The One itself, nor that which The One is. But, since it is one and at the same time a participant of The One, and on this account not one per se, it is alike one and not one, because it is something other than The One. And so far as it is multiplied it is not one; and so far as it experiences a privation of number or multitude it is one. Every thing, therefore, which participates of The One is alike one and not one.
 

 

COMMENTARY

This is straightforward enough. Every thing which participates in the One-- which is to say, every thing that we can experience-- is both one and not one. That's all of us. But-- and I think this critical-- no particular being is the One Itself.

The easiest way to understand the Platonic ideas-- easiset for me, at any rate-- is to think of color. Imagine a red cup on a red table next to a red couch. All of these are red objects; none of them is the color red itself. Indeed, if the color red were to somehow appear, it wouldn't actually be Red Itself, but would be yet another red object. Redness as such is outside of the series of red objects. In the same way, the One Itself is outside of the series of particular ones-- no matter how unified they may be.

SPECULATION

Replace "One" with "God" and we can draw two very important points regarding theology. By the way, this substitution doesn't place us outside of the tradition of Proclus himself. In his Platonic Theology, he also calls the one "God" and "the First God."

1. Every particular being is able to become One, which is to say, to unite its being to God. But at any given moment, all beings will be ordered from most-united-to-God to least-united-to-God. On the other hand, this is a progression which can never end, because even the most exalted of particular beings is not the source of being, anymore than the most vividly red object is the color red itself. Therefore our journey upward toward unity with God will continue forever.

2. Even the most exalted of Gods is not God Godself, who is entirely transcendant. This is why worship is directed at the highest of the gods, but the First God, as Proclus tells us, is honored only by "silence." This silence is the silence of deep meditation, which is a higher thing than theurgic ritual, as Porphyry knew. In Christian terms, the ways of Centering Prayer and Hesychasm are, therefore, necessary higher than the Eucharistic rites-- but it is through the Eucharistic rites that one must come to know God as He is encountered in the silent modes of prayer. But the First God being absolutely transcendant, the way to him is unending and cannot be contained by any one particular tradition.

Elements of Theology, Proposition 3

 Every thing which becomes one, becomes so by the partici­pation of The One, and is one so far as it experi­ences the participation of The One.

 

 

For if the things which are not one become one, they doubtless become so by a harmonious alliance and association with each other, and experience the presence of The One, though they are not that which The One is. Hence they participate of The One, so far as they allow themselves to become one. But if they are already one, they will not become one: for that which is, does not become that which it already is. But if they become one from that which was previously not one, they will possess The One, since a certain one was ingenerated in their nature. [And this ingenerated one must be de­rived from The One itself. Everything, therefore, which becomes one, becomes so by the participation of The One, etc.]

 

Or: 

For if things which are not one become one, they doubtless become so by a conjunction and communication with each other, and they sustain the presence of The One, not being that which The One itself is. Hence, they participate of The One so far as they suffer to become one. For, if they are already one they will not become one; since that which is does not become that which it is already. But if they become one from nothing, i.e., from the privation of The One, since a certain one is ingenerated in them, The One Itself is prior to them. [And this ingenerated one must be derived from The One Itself. Every thing, therefore, which becomes one, becomes so through the participation of the One, etc.]

COMMENTARY

The subject of today's proposition is "becoming one." It has two basic components. First, things which become one do so by participation in the One itself. Second, oneness is a matter of degree, with the degree of oneness indicating the degree of participation in the One.

So things become one by participating in The One itself. How is this done? 

By disparate things uniting with one another. 

Now we have our first indication of an important concept in Neoplatonic thought-- nothing. In the Taylor translation, which is the second one I posted, "if they become one from nothing, i.e., the privation of The One..." 

From this, again, we learn two things. First, "nothing" has a kind of existence; its existence is the privation of the One. But what is this nothing? It is that concept of fragments of fragments of fragments, endlessly divided and united by nothing at all. This is the primordial chaos. What is interesting about this concept is that it has a claim to a kind of eternity, just as the one is eternal. That is because, on the one hand, it is the source-substance of all things other than the One Itself, but, being nothing, it is also necessary uncreated. We could see it as just as eternal as the One. Proclus circumvents this, by teaching us that the One, which is the ordering principle, is necessarily prior in an ontological sense to the chaotic multitude. 

Notice that in modern thought, order and oneness are secondary and deriviative principles, and Chaos is the first principle. The primordial chaos is also linked to the Dyad in Pythagorean thought, and is also the unformed Prime Matter. "Materialism" as a philosophy is well named, and can be seen as nothing less than the worship of Chaos. 

SPECULATION

It is this chaos that is certainly meant by the opening lines of the Book of Genesis:

The Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

In ancient near-Eastern thought, the primordial chaos is often represented as the Sea, and personified in the form of a great sea-monster. The oldest creation-myths of this region have the creator-God bringing order through force, literally killing the great Sea Monster. This notion is also preserved in the Bible, i.e., 

Thou didst divide the sea by thy might;

    thou didst break the heads of the dragons on the waters.

Thou didst crush the heads of Leviathan,

    thou didst give him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.

 

Plato's Timaeus is a kind of philosophical myth, a re-writing of the ancient creation stories in a more rational form. In the Timaeus, the act of creation is a straightforward act of applying order to chaos, which is to say, of bringing unity to multitude. Genesis appears to be the same type of thing, probably written under the influence of the Platonists. This is more comprehensible, closer to the reality of the situation-- but far less dramatic. Sometimes it's more fun to think of Chaos as the many-headed dragon dwelling in the primordial waters, and to think of one's inward journey of growth and development as a battle against titanic forces.