WHEATON COLLEGE GRADUATE SCHOOL Biblical and Theological Studies Department
Eternity, Image, Gift: The Influence of Plotinus, Hilary, and Basil on Augustine’s Doctrine of the Trinity
Chapter One: Being and Becoming: The Influence of Plotinus on Augustine’s Early Theology of Actuality and Potentiality by Amy J. Heck
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Chapter One Being and Becoming: The Influence of Plotinus on Augustine’s Early Theology of Actuality and Potentiality O Truth, Truth, how the deepest and innermost marrow of my mind ached for you . . . O Truth, in whom there is no variation, no play of changing shadow and all they set before me were dishes of glittering myths. Confessions, 3.6.10
Augustine begins his story of his search for God with an inclusive cry which resounds with familiarity for every seeker: “our heart is unquiet until it rests in you.”1 As his story unfolds, he lays out both the personal and intellectual hindrances keeping him from the Christian faith. One of these is his misconception concerning God, the soul, and materiality. He speaks of himself as being in the dark apart from the light, captive to his own limited reason and his fundamental belief in a solely material existence. He describes his conception of God as “an immense, luminous body” and that he himself was “a particle in it,” which he found to be an “outrageous perversity”2 following his conversion. This presumption of materiality as the foundational principle of the world was a common philosophical view during his time, but one of many. The spiritual metaphysics which had been considered the “classical” view of Pythagoras and Plato gave way over time to an immanent and materialistic line of thought exemplified in Stoicism and the “New Academy.” It also found an expression in the smaller and lesser known religion of Manichaeism: the sect which Augustine found himself taken with for much of his twenties. As this overall work will examine the influences of Augustine in his articulation of his Trinitarian theology, our first step will be to examine the impact of Neoplatonism 1 2
Confessions, 1.1.1 “ . . . inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te.” Ibid., 4.16.31
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upon his first category: the nature of God. Since Neoplatonism is a diverse movement, we will specifically deal with the works of Plotinus (considered to be the Father of Neoplatonism) and his student, Porphyry. Just as a Plotinian understanding of the One and Dyad began to unfetter the Augustine’s mind from the material image of God, it also helped him later begin to develop a framework by which to understand the Three in One—the Unity and Diversity of the Trinity—yet with clear divergence away from Plotinus and toward a Pro-Nicene and scriptural understanding of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The understanding of the One and the Dyad will also assist him later as he incorporates aspects of their being and becoming in terms of the divine names, which following chapters involving Hilary of Poitiers and Basil of Caesarea will address.
I.
Augustine and the Search for the One
While diverse understandings of God have always been present, the question of one cohesive unifying element underlies much philosophic and scientific investigation. From the time of the early Greek philosophers through Plato and beyond, there has been an attempt to form an understanding of the one force binding the universe together. To the east of the Mediterranean basin came the call of the Jewish nation: “Hear, O Israel. The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” 3 Those who believed that the long-awaited Jewish Messiah had come—both Jews and Gentiles—struggled to understand the identity of this Person of who claimed to be God and who seemed to perform the works of God. This Person not only claimed to be the Son of God, but identified himself as e*gwv e*imiv: identifying his being, or ousia, as God’s being, yet also as his Son. Matters were complicated further as apostolic witnesses also spoke of the Spirit as being God along
3
Deut. 6:4.
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with the Father and the Son. Centuries later, the church would affirm the one God as being in three persons or hypostases. In order to make these distinctions, the church began to adopt the language and conceptual framework of pagan philosophers as she began to make her apologia of mia ousia, treiς u&ypostaseiς. Some accused the Church of capitulating to pressures to make this Triune God in the image of the Greeks. Augustine, however, offered a different explanation of the appropriation of this framework. He found that the tools of the Gentiles, while “riddled with superstition,” 4 could be “adapted to the purpose of worshiping the one God.” Elsewhere, he describes these tools as the gold which God “willed [his] people to take from Egypt”5 as Moses led them to their inheritance. Augustine found this ‘gold’ within the works of the Platonists teachings which paved the way for his own conversion to Christianity. In his Confessions he told the story of how he found the teachings of the Neoplatonists Plotinus and Porphyry which he described as prefiguring the teachings of the Christian Scriptures: “not that the same words were used, but precisely the same doctrine was taught, buttressed by many and various arguments.”6 While Neoplatonic writings are not by any means “Christian” writings (in fact many Neoplatonists, including Plotinus and Porphyry, were adamantly opposed to Christianity), they helped early theologians such as Augustine to construct a framework by which to understand and communicate the unity of God, but also the diversity present among the Persons.
4
De Doctrina, 2.40.61 Confessions, 7.9.16 6 Ibid., 7.9.14 5
5 A. Neoplatonic Spirituality
Plotinus “revivified”7 the Platonic thought of the Classical tradition, but in doing so proved to be an innovator as he clarified and reframed the One and the Indefinite Dyad which provided a framework in which to consider the unity and simplicity of God along with questions of his immutability. Leading up to and following Nicaea, the fourthcentury debates concerning the nature of the Father and the Son were strongly invested in defending God’s ousia as that which does not change. The early church fathers wrestled deeply with the question of the Son’s begotten-ness from the Father, seeking to be true to Scripture. For, if the Scriptures present God as One—yet Father, Son, and Spirit as distinct hypostases, and if this Son is said to be begotten of the Father (with whom he is supposed to be One)—then, does God experience change? But how can he if he is One, existing in simplicity and immutability? These questions caused the early church writers to seek out philosophical tools and language in order to come to some degree (though never fully) of cognitive reconciliation with these paradoxes. Augustine addressed these issues in various works throughout his life, most notably in his De Trinitate, in which he gives evidence of influence of other Pro-Nicene Fathers of the fourth century on his thinking. However, in this, our first chapter, we will examine the one-day bishop whose search for Truth sent him on a journey in which he first was engrossed in the intellectual bondage of the dualistic methodologies of Manichaeism. Though Augustine grew disillusioned with their unsatisfactory answers to his questions, he found it impossible to unleash his mind from their materialistic view of reality. Even while encountering Christians such as Ambrose who could provide 7
Maria Luisa Gatti, “Plotinus: The Platonic Tradition and the Foundation of Neoplatonism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, edited and translated by Lloyd P. Gerson, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 21.
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intellectually viable answers, he was unable to fully commit to the Catholic Church because he was held back by an image of a God with a body. He was not able to intellectually come to terms with the Christian God until he found the “books of the Platonists”8 which would pave the way for him to find his ultimate freedom in the teachings of the Christian Church. Scholarship widely accepts these as being the works of Plotinus: edited and published by his student Porphyry and translated into Latin by Marius Victorinus, the renowned philosopher and teacher of rhetoric who himself had converted to Christianity. Through reading the works of Plotinus, Augustine was able to move out of the dualistic, materialistic framework which he had come to know in Manichaeism and began to conceive of God in spiritual and non-spatial terms. Plotinus commended a spiritual ascent to the One which assumed a God whose being existed in incorporeality and immutability. B. Manichean Materiality
The trouble was that I knew nothing else; I did not recognize the other, true reality . . . How could I see that, I whose power of sight was restricted to seeing material shapes with my eyes and imaginary forms with my mind? Confessions, 3.7.12 Augustine identifies two central enigmas which kept him bound to the Manichees, both of which he found resolution to through the works of Plotinus and freed his mind to later embrace the Christian faith: the “origin of evil”9 and the nature of materiality, particularly in terms of the being of God. The Manichees had a reasoned approach to both of these questions, though both ultimately left Augustine disillusioned. While Augustine’s search for the problem of evil is a significant one throughout his whole
8 9
Confessions, 7.9.13 Confessions, 3.7.12
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career, this work will focus on construct ‘behind’ the evil in Manichaeism, in Platonism, and in Augustine’s own more mature theories of deprivation: the actuality of the One and the potentiality of the Dyad, from which all else (including evil) derivates. With the Manichean system of thought, the ultimate goal was to reach the longedfor state of “illumination” of the mind by strict ascetic practices (a lack of desire to conform to these practices is what kept Augustine in the status of “hearer”). While few texts survive to give contemporary scholars a view into ancient Manichaeism, a Chinese Manichean catechism cited by Peter Brown instructs its followers that the first step towards reaching this state of illumination is to be able “to distinguish the Two Principles (the Good and the Evil).” This catechism found these “Two Principles” as having “natures absolutely distinct.”10 The controlling terms, “Good” and “Evil,” were substantive. “Monad” and “a divided thing,” as it was called, were merely descriptive of these substances. Mani’s Good was a passive force contrasted with the active substance of Evil, which Patout Burns describes as “an independent type of being.”11 Because of this influence, the young Augustine “thought of good and evil in the Manichean manner, as different kinds of material being, as bodies which occupied and fought in space.”12 Augustine’s recounted his own view of the “Monad” and division or “Dyad” in the Confessions while he was with the Manicheans. That which he called “unity” was filled with peace and harmony. It “was itself the essence of truth and of the supreme good” and he “conceived [of] it as a sexless soul.”13 But the Dyad, existed in 10
A. Chavannes and P. Pelliot, “Un Traité Manichéen Retrouvé en Chine.” Journal Asiatique, sér. XI, I, 1913, pg. 114 quoted in Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo; A Biography. 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 37. 11 J. Patout Burns, “Augustine on the Origin and Progress of Evil,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 16, no. 1 (April 1, 1988): 11. 12 Ibid. 13 Confessions, 4.15. 24
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“disintegration” in which “some indefinable substance of irrational life was to be found.” This was the seat of “the essence of supreme evil” and also included “the anger that issues in crimes and self-indulgent cravings that led to vice.” The Dyad in Augustine's mind at this point was one which was active in its disintegration and potential for violence. In his later years he reflected upon his views then: “But I did not understand what I was talking about. I did not know, never having learned, that evil is no substance at all, and that our mind is not the supreme, immutable good.” Young Augustine and the Manichees saw a dualism between the good and the evil displayed in that which is a Monad, and that which is divided or the Dyad: the same terms of Plato. However, the Manichees filled these terms with a degree of meaning which the Platonists did not.
II.
The Plotinian One and Dyad Plato defined reality by means of binary poles, the One and the Indefinite Dyad,
which he saw as the First Principles.14 These provided the structure which framed all of reality. According to Mary Clark, “Plotinus and Porphyry interpreted Platonism as a search for God.”15 This however was not necessarily the prevalent view of Platonism during their time in the third century. A. The Need for a Renewed Platonism
Plato’s original metaphysics advocated a spiritual ascent towards the intelligible world, but by the time of Plotinus, considered the Father of Neoplatonism, this tradition
14
Giovanni Reale and John R Catan, A History of Ancient Philosophy. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), 65-66. 15 M. T. Clark, “The Neoplatonism of Marius Victorinus the Christian,” in Neoplatonism and Early Christian Thought: Essays in Honour of A.H. Armstrong, ed. H. J Blumenthal and R. A Markus (London: Variorum Publications, 1981), 155.
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had all but crumbled. In the centuries following the death of Plato, his metaphysical teachings suffered a decline due to the rise of competing philosophical visions. Because of the influence of the Stoics, Skeptics, and others, metaphysics was diminished by materialism and uncertainty of the intelligible realm. Maria Gatti traces this decline of Platonism back to the teachings of some of his first disciples, “especially in [their] mathematical and ‘immanentist’ tendencies.”16 The transcendentals or intelligible forms which were so fundamental to Plato’s thought now were subject to uncertainty in light of a philosophy which emphasized those things which could be known only through the sensible world. While Plato defined “real” in spiritual terms, materialist schools would define “real” in terms of those things one could experience with the senses. This turn eventually led to Platonism becoming anti-doctrinal and materialist “culminating in the skepticism of the second and third Academies.” As a result came the rise of what scholars now call “Middle-Platonism” which is marked by “fragmentations, oscillations, and contradictions.”17 The Manichaeism which Augustine embraced (though a smaller and less influential sect overall) was just one of these “fragmentations” which maintained a materialistic vision of reality present in the philosophical “stew” of the late ancient period. However, during this time an important element was recovered: that of the “Platonic dimension of incorporeality” which had been all but lost. A view of incorporeality became fused with Aristotle’s view of Nou'ς, and constituted an important development for the future trajectory of Platonism. This recovery of the transcendent allowed Platonism to step away from the materialism of the “New Academy” and recover
16 17
Gatti, 15. Gatti, 15.
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the association of the human mind with the mind of God—the Intellect—through the intelligible world. It also opened the door for the recovery of the teachings of Pythagoras, considered to be “traditional” view prior to Plato. This is the “Platonism in process”18 into which Plotinus stepped. While he primarily saw himself as simply an exegete of Plato,19 he was also influenced by Pythagoras’ mystical view of numbers. In addition to his immediate teacher, Ammonius Saccus,20 Plotinus was also influenced by Numenius, known as the Grandfather of Neoplatonism. Numenius had a “knowledge of, and hospitality towards, oriental philosophical and religious systems, including Judaism” which had a significant influence upon the future Father of Neoplatonism. The Neo-Pythagoreanism of Numenius affirmed the “existence of the immaterial or incorporeal, something that was absent in the systems of Hellenistic philosophy.”21 This gradual recovery of the spiritual metaphysics of Plato and the intelligible world stands in contrast with all of those factions which took a material approach to reality: the skeptical New Academy, the Stoics, and for our purposes, the Manicheans. It is in this context which “Plotinus vivified or revivified the thought of Plato,” 22 according to Gatti. “His Platonism is a ‘Platonism in action’ as he discovered how to apply the method and ideas of the founder of the Academy.” Gatti continues to describe him as taking “a leap of faith in Plato that cared nothing for the problem of originality,
18
R.Arnou, “Platonisme De Péres,” Dictionnaire de Theology Catholique XII.2, coll. 2258-92. (Paris: Librairie Letouzey et Ané), 1935 quoted in Gatti, 14. 19 Ibid., 17. 20 Ammonius Saccus is thought to also be the teacher of the Christian confessor, Origen, though this is disputed. 21 Gatti, 12. 22 Ibid., 21.
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nor for historical accuracy. Rather, it focused on that which was of permanent value in philosophical doctrine.”23 Gatti cites Heinrich Dörrie’s characterization of Plotinian thought as being one “born of a fusion of Pythagorean, Aristotelian, and Academic elements, according to a form that is different from the tradition.”24 This new element is that which was “mystical-religious,” a contemplation which brought unification with the One.25 In his influential article, “Plotinus: Traditionalist or Innovator?” Dörrie says that in the ancient world, philosophy was considered inalterable truth: [It] is not subject to arbitrary interpretation . . . but it is considered as a gift in itself, immutable and inalterable. A philosopher who dared introduce new solutions or propose new doctrines would be criticized as newterpivzwn. In fact, 26 newterismovς—that the attempt to introduce something new—was unforgivable. Plotinus, however, did just that. But he because he has such a high value for the tradition, he establishes “criteria that allows him to discard the false tradition, but to accept the good, and also to reevaluate a dogma obscured by his predecessors.”27 Some have described this as just the Platonism as Plato intended, though Plotinus is seen as bringing the doctrines of Plato forward to his contemporary time. In light of the fragmentation of materialism, he set forth a Platonism to reestablish the spiritual ascent to the One. B. Tradition and Innovation
Plotinus’ uniqueness is most readily shown in his interpretation of Plato’s three hypostases: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. Instead of the pure duality which was typically attributed to Plato, Plotinus took his thought a step further by continuing to 23
Gatti, 22. Ibid., 25. 25 Ibid., 25. 26 Heinrich Dörrie, “Plotino: Tradizionalista o Innovatore?,” Atti del Convegno Internazionale Sul Tema: Plotino e il Neoplatonismo in Oriente e in Occidente. (1974): 195. 27 Ibid., 197. 24
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draw out the relationship between the One and the Dyad, which resulted in the three hypostases “reciprocally related by means of a kind of circular relation.”28 The Intellect and the Soul, progressed from the One in a “circular triad,” rooted in the One. The reframing of the relationship between these three “became the point of departure” between Plotinus’ Neoplatonism and that of the traditional Platonic views of the Middle Platonists and the Old Academy. The “One” of Plotinus was not a static monad, but One which was separate than, yet existed in relationship to the other two hypostases: the Intellect and the Soul. While Plotinus’ primary influence upon his understanding of the immutability of the One comes from Plato, he also found certain aspects of Aristotle’s work to be instrumental in how he conceived of the other ‘First Principle:” the Indefinite Dyad. Though he was critical of various other aspects of Aristotelian thought, the distinctions between ‘actuality and potentiality’ or ‘being and becoming’ played a major role in his formulations and allowed him to further develop his theory of how the three hypostases relate to one another, and thus how humanity could take part in the knowledge of the One. C. The First Principles
For there must be something simple before all things, and this must be other than all things which come after it, existing by itself, not mixed with the things which derive from it, and all the same able to be present in a different way to these other things, being really one, and not a different being and then one.29 Plotinus, Ennead 5.4.1 Here we see important elements of Plotinus’ thought demonstrated: simplicity yet difference between the One and “things which derive from it.” This difference takes place
28 29
Gatti, 27. Ennead, 5.4.1
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in both actuality and permanence in rest (there is no movement across space or time). However, Plotinus does indicate that there is a movement from the first to the second and that these two must be different and separate: “if then there is something else after the First, it [the Second] cannot still be simple.” The First (that which is simple) and Second (that which is not) are the One and the Indefinite Dyad. 1. On the One: Prior Simplicity
Plotinus’ ‘One’ characterized his view of reality in such significant ways that it provides a distinguishing mark between his own views and those of his predecessors.30 Dominic O’Meara characterized this “Prior Simplicity” as “the idea that everything [is] made up of parts, every composite thing depends and derives in some way from what is not composite: that which is simple.” Yet Plotinus’ development of these intelligibles paradoxically inhabit that which O’Meara called a “double life.”31 It exists “both in a whole, as part of [the thing], and outside the whole, as in itself; it is both immanent in a compound and transcends it.” This view of the one also has major implications for a metaphysical incorporeality, the concept which Augustine wrestled to comprehend. The One by definition must be incorporeal and by this definition, must have no boundaries or division within it. Because it has no body, it must exist in unity, and not in any parts: were it not one but two or four or twelve, it would necessitate having boundaries and division to separate what it is from what it is not. But being One alone, it is simple and has no such division.
30 31
O’Meara, 44. Ibid., 46.
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As already stated, that which is simple must be “other than all things which come after it.” 32 And “if there is something else after the First, it cannot still be simple: it will therefore be a One-Many.”33 This ‘One-Many’ comes about not by “chance,” but by intention. If not for intention, the “First would no longer be the principle of all things.”34 This ‘One-Many’ is different from the One and that which Plotinus called the “Intellect” (Nou'ς), or “Dyad.” 2. On the Dyad: Being and Becoming
The Dyad then (Intellect), then is a thought of the One. Plotinus attempted to solve this logical dilemma through incorporating Aristotle’s distinction of being and becoming. The One exists in an unchanging actuality. This then necessitates that whatever is associated with change is in a process of becoming or potentiality. As Plotinus began to consider the unity of the One and the Intellect/Dyad, he turned to the use of opposing pairs of binary terms which Aristotle used before him: actuality and potentiality, being and becoming, rest and motion, time and eternity. He used actuality, being, rest, and eternity to describe that which did not change, and thus immutable. Those terms on the other end of the dichotomy described that which was subject to change. While the One, is being or actuality, it has “not come into being,” following Plato.35 Or in other words, it has not become nor does it have the potential to do so, already being perfect and complete. In contrast, the Dyad—that which comes after the One—cannot by definition be simple. It necessarily has come into being within time and is thus bound by a temporal origin. Plotinus viewed time as a measurement of movement 32
Ennead, 5.4.1 Ennead, 5.4.1. A.H. Armstrong translates “e$n a#ra v e#stai” as “it will therefore be a One-Many” and therefore develops this term by combining e$n and polla. 34 Ibid, “pavntwn a*rchv” translated as “the principle of all things.” 35 Plato, Phaedrus, 245D1 quoted in Plotinus, Ennead 5.4.1 33
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and as an image of the intelligible form of eternity:36 the state of being in which the One exists. That which is true and actualized being is in a form of stasis or rest. But that which is “becoming and of this universe” is that which is affected upon by movement and time, which thereby implies change. It still has being, but its being is derived from and is contingent upon the actualized being of the One. This second principle was designated by Plotinus as the Intellect, which is the first of those which became. Plotinus described the nature of the Dyad as that which is “carried about and accepts every kind of change and is continually divided into every place, which it would be appropriate to call becoming, not substance” 37 (gevnsin, not ou*sivan). In contrast, the One’s nature is “always in exactly the same state, neither coming to be nor perishing nor having any space or place or base, nor going out from anywhere nor entering into anything, but remaining in itself.”38 Plotinus saw the Intellect as perfect and all other things as “imitate[ing] it as far as they are able.”39 These other things, he said, are capable of perfection and this perfection leads to production “and does not endure to remain by itself, but makes something else.” This he found to be true of rational things which have the choice to multiply, as well as irrational things which still grow in spite of not having cognitive choice. All of these things he saw as operating under the imitation of the First Principle by “tending to everlastingness and generosity,” as much as each was able. If then other objects multiplied out of this generosity, then how could the “first Good” not also “give of itself” or be “impotent” to do so “when it is the productive power of all things?” But then “how 36
Ennead, 3.7.1 Augustine will also use time in a similar manner in his philosophical speculations throughout his writings. 37 Ennead, 6.5.2.10-16 38 Ennead, 6.5.2.10-16 39 Ennead, V.4.1.32-33
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would it still be the Principle?” he asked. Plotinus found that it was necessary that another being come from it “and though it is second to the Principle must be better than all else” which was derived from the Principle. For Intellect (or Dyad/One-Many) to continue to produce is “absolutely necessary” as anything that does exist derives its being/substance/ou*siva from it. It is not the First Principle, the One, which is indivisible and immutable. But the Intellect is the Second Principle which is divisible and subject to change, yet does so in such a way that produces fruit of generosity and goodness as it imitates the One: “That which is generated by it must certainly be most honourable, and though it is second to the [First] Principle must be better than all else.”40 While the Dyad is different from the One, Plotinus goes on to say that it does not mean that “we [as part of the Dyad] have not departed from being, but are in it, nor has it departed from us: so all things are one.”41 This aspect of change and changelessness will become more apparent in Augustine’s later work as he begins to think through the Trinity and in particular the incarnational nature of the Son of God. He will wrestle with how it is that God could not only become a man, but become anything at all less than what he is: absolute being. But before his final conversion to Christianity, while his mind was still ‘stuck’ in the materialism of Manichaeism, the work of Plotinus on incorporeality set him free from his past assumptions of God. Any discussion on Plotinus’ view of incorporeality must be rooted in these two First Principles from which all else emanate: the One and the Dyad.
40 41
Ennead, 5.4.1.39-42 Ennead, 6.5.1.24-26
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III.
Incorporeality and the Unfettering of Augustine’s Mind
As Augustine sought to develop a vision of God, he had become disillusioned enough with the Manicheans to see that even their most esteemed teacher, Faustus, had more loquaciousness than substance. While the seeking Augustine found himself personally drawn to this man’s manner, he found him “poorly informed in the very disciplines in which [he] had believed him to excel.”42 The books of Mani were filled with “interminable myths concerning sky, stars, sun, and moon” and Augustine had hoped to discuss how these compared with certain “numerical calculations” with Faustus. But once Augustine saw that this would not happen, he began to see that Faustus “without intending it began to spring the trap in which [he] was caught.”43 Yet while Augustine’s mind was being loosened, he could not reconcile that which he believed to be true of God—that he was “imperishable, inviolable, and unchangeable”—with the image of a corporeal God. The problem of the necessary materiality of God was one which he could not put off because he had no other way by which to understand the substance of God, until he read Plotinus. A. Incorporeality is Boundless
Even though I was no longer hampered by the image of a human body, I was still forced to imagine something corporeal spread out in space, whether infused into the world or even diffused through the infinity outside it. . . anything to which I must deny these spatial dimensions seemed to me to be nothing at all, absolutely nothing, not even a void such as might be left if every kind of body—earthly, watery, aerial, or heavenly—were removed from it, for though such a place would be a nothingness, it would still have the quality of space.” Confessions, 7.1.1
42 43
Confessions, 5.7.12 Ibid., 5.7.13
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Within Plotinus’ conceptualization of the indivisible and immutable One, also came the predication of incorporeality. As previously mentioned he saw the nature of the One as not “having any space or place or base.” Just as the One exists beyond measurement of time by virtue of its eternality, so it also exists beyond measurement of location. Anything belonging to the Dyad necessarily has limits and boundaries—it is corporeal or embodied in some way whether “earthly, watery, aerial, or heavenly.” That which has any kind of body is capable of decay and corruption. While we often think of becoming and potentiality in terms of growth and advancement, in the ancient philosophic milieu change could take place in either the negative or positive direction. But regardless, change is change and an attribute of any production of the Dyad: any produced thing. Our twenty-first century minds usually have only two conceptions of existence: that which is material and that which is spiritual (though even spiritual existence is not a necessary assumption for some). The ancient mind, on the other hand, could envisage bodies made up of each of the four elements. Plato found it “of course obvious to anyone that fire, earth, water, and air are bodies.”44 Plato saw these elements as the raw tools by which his Demiurge, or his lesser god or Dyad, made the world. A quality of each of these bodies, therefore, is “depth,” which “must be bounded by a surface.” Depth, surface, and boundaries therefore inherently involve division. Incorporeality implies that which is without the possibility of division. It has no potentiality or becoming because it is all actuality or being. As stated previously, if that which is being has no mass—earthly material or otherwise—it has no boundaries or places where it divides. It fills all, but not in a spatial way. The Stoic idea “that a body 44
Timeaus, 55d
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can be dispersed throughout other bodies and yet retain its unity is for Plotinus an impossible one.”45 He found that this account “brings along to its enquiry the nature of bodies and takes its principles from them, both divided substance . . . because it did not take the starting-point of its enquiry from the principles proper to its substance.”46 To introduce mass or body into the discussion of any actuality is a categorical error. B. Incorporeality Cannot be Observed by the Senses
In his search, Augustine later admitted that he did not see truth because his eyes were “accustomed to roam among material forms.”47 He writes in multiple places how his pride blinded him from being able to see God. Referring to St. Paul’s image of pride “puffing” one up,48 he later saw that that his “face was so puffy that [his] eyes were closed.”49 Much of this pride came from his trust in his own intellectual reasoning and physical senses by which he could only detect material and sensory information. In a description of an early part of his journey, in Book Four of the Confessions, He described how he could perceive beauty and harmony as his “mind scanned material forms,” but was “balked by the false opinion which [he] held concerning spiritual entities, and unable to discern the truth.” He continued that it “was thrusting itself upon me, staring me in the face, but I averted my trembling thought from incorporeal reality and looked towards shapes and colors and distended mass.”50 He ultimately had to come to a place where he learned to accept that his own sensory reason would not bring him to truth. According to G. R. Evans, the more mature “Augustine thought the Platonists came closest to the
45
O’Meara, 24. Ennead, 4.5.2.1-6 47 Confessions, 7.1.2 48 I Corinthians 8:1 49 Confessions, 7.7.11 50 Confessions, 4.15.24 46
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Christian view among the pagans precisely because they saw theologia as a philosophical activity in this special sense. They understand that truth is to be perceived not with the bodily eyes, but by the mind alone.”51 Our senses must only be used as they are designed; they too have their limits of what they can perceive. Hence the bodily senses have not been designed to determine spiritual truth, only the mind and heart can do this, through the love and illumination which can only be known spiritually, not with the organs of sense perception. Yet this is precisely the Manichean mistake which leaves Augustine’s mind “captum et offocatum, ‘closed in and stifled,’”52 for so long, “restricting his thinking about the divine.” In his attempt to understand the world by nature of the senses alone, all he can perceive is the material and not “what is eternal and changeless.”53 It is what Augustine would later write in his Against the Manicheans as “summa dementia” or “the height of madness.”54 C. The Neoplatonic Legacy and Augustine’s Theology
Plotinus’ vision of actuality and potentiality, culminating in derivation from the One, “enabled Augustine to order his thoughts” 55 concerning the problem of materialism, incorporeality, as well as the problem of evil. According to O’Meara, the term ‘derivation’ is associated with water flowing from one source to another receptacle, aptly describing Plotinus’ vision of the One and the Indefinite Dyad and echoing Plato’s teaching on receptacles in the Timaeus. However, the traditional terminology of
51
G. R. Evans, Augustine on Evil (Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 37. 52 Evans, 17 quoting Confessions, 5.11.21 53 Evans, 28. 54 Evans, 38 quoting De Duabus Animabus contra Manichaeos (391-2). 55 Evans, 29.
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‘emanation’ and the imagery of agency used by Plato of the ‘demiurge’ indicate materialistic connotations of ‘making’ which Plotinus wished to avoid.56 It was through this understanding of derivation and potentiality that Augustine was also able to come to terms with the problem of evil. His view of evil as privation of the good is a direct consequence of the actions of the Dyad through which matter becomes and then is joined to rational beings who then have the freedom to potentially choose good or evil. The problem of evil has been treated in detail by many others, but it is the purpose of this particular work to specifically focus on the dual concepts of actuality and potentiality and their implications upon Augustine’s view of incorporeality as he developed his trinitarian theology. While Neoplatonic doctrine differed greatly from Christian doctrine, Augustine was still able to take that which was useful and find that they could be “adapted to the purpose of worshiping the one God.”57 Evans describes Augustine’s reading of Plotinus as allowing him to bring “into focus certain points of doctrine with which he was able, in some cases to match, in others to contrast, the fundamental principles of the Christian faith as he came to understand it better.”58 Like Plotinus, Augustine was a creative intellect whose thought was enlivened by the tradition, but not exclusively bound to it in the search to understand the ineffable, One God. And because he was able to pick up some pieces while leaving others behind, he was able to construct a Trinitarian theology which in some ways stands in debt to Neoplatonic constructs, but in other ways clearly
56
Dominic O’Meara, Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads (Oxford ;New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1993), 60-62, 70-71. 57 De Doctrina 2.40.61 58 Evans, 29.
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diverges in favor of the description of the consubstantiality of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit found in the Scriptures.
IV.
Of His Own Mind: Augustine’s Clear Divergence While it is clear that Augustine was significantly influenced by the Neoplatonic
writers, the extent of this influence has come under much scrutiny, particularly within much of twentieth-century scholarship. Many have attempted to brand Augustine’s Trinitarian theology as a wholesale embrace of Neoplatonism which placed the Latin Church on a speculative theological trajectory based Greek philosophy and not the teachings of Scripture and the Early Church. Many strongly disagree with this claim and find Augustine clearly to be of his own mind in his divergences not only from Neoplatonic thought, but also from other Christians whom he found did not conform to Scripture and tradition. A. “Ibi legi . . . non ibi legi”
Making a case for Augustine’s use of Neoplatonic concepts is not difficult due to his own admission and demonstrations in such works as the Confessions. Book Seven of his autobiographical memoir finds his statement that “precisely the same doctrine was taught, buttressed by many and various arguments”59 within the works of Plotinus as in the books of the New Testament. In this he included much of John’s prologue, particularly including the identification of Jesus with the lovgoς and light. Yet he is also clear concerning the distinctly Christian doctrine which he did not find there, including the Son taking on flesh and emptying himself in the forma servi/forma Dei construct from Philippians 2:6-9, providing the framework for much of Augustine’s Christology in De 59
Confessions, 7.9.13
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Trinitate. Even during his earlier work, Augustine demonstrates his ability to see that which is Christian doctrine and that which is not. In his Augustine and the Trinity, Lewis Ayres focuses his introductory argument upon Augustine’s early works written before his baptism in 387, particularly those following his retirement from teaching rhetoric shortly after his conversion. Directly confronting the hypothesis of Olivier Du Roy and others who would see Augustine uncritically embracing a Neoplatonic framework, Ayres contends that Augustine’s Trinitarian formula is not taken parcel for parcel from Plotinian and Porphyrian texts. Augustine also shows divergence from the earlier Latin theology of Marius Victorinus, toward whom Augustine shows much esteem in the story of his conversion and to whom he has to thank for the translation of these works from Greek into Latin. But even the works of those Christians whom Augustine deeply respects do not enjoy an unexacting acceptance. Ayres cites an important instance in which Augustine goes a different direction from Victorinus: his use of “tres potentiae” as a descriptor of the Trinity. Ayres states that “no Latin Nicene Christian author of the fourth century describes God as tres potentiae: in the context of late fourth-century pro-Nicene theology, description of God as una potentia had become a standard and central formation.”60 Ayres finds that while Augustine may not have been aware of much pro-Nicene theology during these earlier years, it is clear throughout various works such as his Soliloquia that he understood the priority of the unity of God. Even with one he esteems as much as Victorinus, Augustine
60
Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 29.
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shows no qualms with parting ways with those whose ideas he does not deem as ultimately edifying to the development of doctrine which reflects Scripture. While Augustine’s trinitarian theology does incorporate some Neoplatonic constructs, Ayres cautions that readers must be discriminating concerning just how deeply these concepts are appropriated. Augustine, he argues, clearly accepts some degree of the tools of Neoplatonism, yet just as clearly rejects others. Evans states in her monograph, Augustine on Evil, that Augustine’s “is not an eclectic system of thought but an attempt to build upon truths which seemed to him to be self-evident, truths he recognized perhaps in other men’s writings, but which he took, not on their own authority, but on the grounds of reasonableness of the ideas themselves.”61 In doing so, Augustine is “strikingly Roman,”62 and he was following a common practice of the time, according to John O’Meara. In particular, his understandings of being and becoming are clearly and unabashedly Neoplatonic. Evans states that Augustine’s view on materiality and evil are enhanced and focused because of these aspects of Neoplatonic thought from Plotinus and Porphyry. However, she agrees with Ayres in finding his Trinitarian theology decidedly unNeoplatonic. B. A Different Three (or “These are not the hypotheses you are looking for.”)
The bishop of Hippo draws a clear line in the sand when it comes to understanding the divine Persons of the Trinity. Ayres argues against much twentieth-century scholarship that his understanding of the “three what’s” are not a direct correlation 61
Evans, 29. John J. O’Meara, “The Neoplatonism of Saint Augustine,” in Neoplatonism and Christian thought, by Dominic J O’Meara, Studies in Neoplatonism, v. 3 (International Society for Neoplatonic Studies ; State University of New York Press [distributor], 1981), 36. 62
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between Plotinus’ One, the Intellect, and the Soul.63 While both systems feature three hypostases, this essentially is the end of the similarities. Plotinus has a clear hierarchy, whereas Augustine makes every effort to embrace the full consubstantiality of Father, Son, and Spirit. However, according to Evans, Augustine did find in Plotinus “a philosophically satisfying account of the notion of the threeness in God. They gave him the intellectual assurance that there was not crude polytheism here, but real philosophy,”64 as opposed to the substance-less eloquence he had received from the Manicheans. This is particularly evident in the movement which Plotinus makes away from a monadic understanding of Plato’s One, and toward his own view of the One which has a triadic relationship with the Dyad: the Intellect and Soul. The shift which Plotinus made very well could have inspired Augustine to make a shift all his own, yet in the direction of Scripture and Pro-Nicene Tradition. While Augustine may make clear breaks with the content of the Neoplatonists, he does utilize some of their tools of description concerning a unity within three. They helped the bishop articulate a triadic understanding of Father, Son and Spirit, in a way which is intellectually tenable, yet distinct in doctrinal content. Augustine sees neither Son nor Spirit as being part of the Dyad: they are One along with the Father. Unlike the Dyad, they are separate and distinct from that which they have made. Whereas the Dyad or Intellect exists in potentiality, Augustine affirms that “there is no modification in God because there is nothing in him that can change or be lost.”65 In his triple affirmation that “the Father is God and the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God,”66 Augustine displays a
63
Ayres, 24ff. Evans, 31. 65 De Trinitate, 5.4.5 66 Ibid., 5.8.9 64
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significant difference in the aspects of multiplicity of the One and the Dyad of Plotinus, and the relationship between the Creator and creation of the catholic Christian faith. Evans characterizes this difference between the two: “Plotinus seeks to understand how the multitudinousness of the world is related to the One: Augustine how an eternal and immutable God can create, work in, a world which is in a continuous state of change.”67 Yet even still, both Augustine and Plotinus work within the same categorical framework of being and becoming: “the two problems are not identical,” says Evans, “but they are of the same order.” While Augustine clearly uses the tools which he receives not only from the Neoplatonists, but also from Aristotle, is it clear that he is not beholden to them. He may utilize their terminology, but fills it with a meaning which he finds in the Scripture and the traditions of the church which he finds to follow it.
V.
Conclusion: Being, Becoming, and the Immutability of God
This is exactly what many good and faithful Christians have done . . . Pagan society, riddled with superstition, would never have given to all these men the arts which it considered useful . . . if it had suspected that they would be adapted to the purpose of worshiping the one God. De Doctrina, 2.40.61 While the main focus of this overall work will be Augustine’s Trinitarian theology, I have sought to establish in this first chapter the significant framework of all of his thought which he first found in the writings of the Neoplatonists. The concepts of being and becoming as part of the Platonic legacy were not only strategic in Augustine’s early formation, but also in how he went on to write about the possibility of change within the Godhead in regards to the onlybegotten Son. This issue of how the eternal God could beget an eternal Son caused much controversy both within the Church and without—in particular following the Constantine’s
67
Evans, 32.
27 involvement in the Council of Nicaea and the following political aftermath. But by setting his framework within that which is and that which becomes, Augustine lays a foundation to understand the immutable God and his relationship with the created order. The place of the Son in this framework is not only incredibly important, but also incredibly complex conceptually. Augustine cites his predecessors—“Cyprian . . . Lactantius, Victorinus, Optatus, Hilary,”68 countless Greek scholars and as well as those who were still living at the time of his writing—as each having used the “gold, silver, and clothing” of Egypt to put into the service of the Lord God. In his mind, he was following in their path by using the philosophical, linguistic, and conceptual tools of the pagan world in order to more fully understand and communicate a robust trinitarian faith which was in keeping with the traditions handed down by the Apostles and agreed upon at Nicaea. Subsequent chapters in this work will examine two other figures whom Augustine followed: one named above explicitly, and one only implicitly: Hilary of Poitiers, the Latin Bishop from Gaul and one of the “innumerabiles Graecci,” Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea. Both of these developed significant theological constructs involving the dilemma of begottenness, substance, and the use of the name(s) of God. Each relies upon the concepts of being and becoming, but they do so in very different ways. Augustine finds guides in both of them, however. The following two chapters will show how, like with Plotinus, Augustine takes that which he finds both helpful and resonating with Scripture and the tradition of the Church and develops his own theological framework.
68
De Doctrina, 2.40.61
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