Elements of Theology, Proposition 2

[readoldthings]

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.