Elsewhere we have seen how Numenius waged the traditional Academic feud
with the Stoics bravely, but uselessly, inasmuch as it was chiefly
a difference of dialects that separated them. In the course of this
struggle, Numenius had made certain distinctions within the divinity,
which were followed by Amelius, but are difficult to trace in Plotinos
because, as a matter of principle, Plotinos[482] was averse to thus
"dividing the divinity." Why so? Because he was waging a struggle
with the Gnostics, who had followed in the footsteps of the Hermetic
writings (with their Demiurge and Seven Governors); Philo Judaeus (with
his five Subordinate Powers); Numenius and Amelius (with their triply
divided First and Second gods);--after which we come to Basilides (with
his seven Powers); Saturninus (with his Seven Angels); and Valentinus
(with his 33 Aeons).
This new feud between Plotinos and the Gnostics is however just as
illusory as the earlier one between Numenius and the Stoics. It was
merely a matter of dialects. Plotinos indeed found fault with the
Gnostics for making divisions within the Divinity; but wherever he
himself is considering the divinity minutely, he, just as much as the
Gnostics, is compelled to draw distinctions, even though he avoided
acknowledged divisions by borrowing from Plutarch a new, non-Platonic,
non-Numenian, but Aristotelian, Stoic (Cornutus and Sextus) and still
Alexandrian (Philo, Septuagint, Lucian) term "hypostasis."
The difference he pretended to find between the Gnostic distinctions
within the Divinity and his new term hypostasis was that the former
introduced manifoldness into the divinity, by splitting Him,[483] thus
allowing the influence of matter to pervade the pure realm of Being.
Hypostasis, on the contrary, wholly existed within the realm of pure
Being, and was no more than a trend, a direction, a characterization,
a function, a face, or orientation of activity of the unaffected unity
of Being. Thus the divinity retained its unity, and still could be
active in several directions, without admixture of what philosophy had
till then recognized as constituting manifoldness. But reflection shows
that this is a mere quibble, an evasion, a paralogism, a quaternio
terminorum, a pun. How it came about we shall attempt to show below.
In thus achieving a manifoldness in the divinity without divisions,
Plotinos did indeed keep out of the divinity the splitting influence
of matter, which it was now possible to banish to the realm of
unreality, as a negation, and a lie. Monism was thus achieved ... but
at the cost of two errors: denial of the common-sense reality of the
phenomenal world,[484] and that quibble about three hypostases without
manifoldness, genuinely a "distinction without a difference."
This intellectual dishonesty must not however be foisted on
Aristotle[485] or Plutarch. The latter, for instance,[486] adopted
this term only to denote the primary and original characteristics
(or distinctions within) existing things, from a comparative study
of Aristotle's "de Anima," and Plato's "Phaedo."[487] These five
hypostases were the divinity, mind, soul, forms immanent in inorganic
nature, "hexis," in Stoic dialect, and to matter, as apart from these
forms.
So important to Neoplatonism did this term seem to Proclus, that he
did not hesitate to say that Plutarch, by the use thereof, became "our
first forefather." He therefore develops it further. Among the hidden
and intelligible gods are three hypostases. The first is characterized
by the Good; it thinks the Good itself, and dwells with the paternal
Monad. The second is characterized by knowledge, and resides in the
first thought; while the third is characterized by beauty, and dwells
with the most beautiful of the intelligible. They are the causes from
which proceed three monads which are self-existent but under the form
of a unity, and as in a germ, in their cause. Where they manifest, they
take a distinct form: faith, truth, and love (Cousin's title: "Du Vrai,
du Beau, et du Bien"). This trinity pervades all the divine worlds.
In order to understand the attitude of Plotinos on the subject, we must
try to put ourselves in his position. In the first place, on Porphyry's
own admission, he had added to Platonism Peripatetic and Stoic views.
From Aristotle his chief borrowings were the categories of form and
matter, and the distinction between potentiality and actuality,[488]
as well as the Aristotelian psychology of various souls. To the Stoics
he was drawn by their monism, which led him to drop the traditional
Academico-Stoic feud, or rather to take the side of the Stoics against
Numenius the Platonist dualist and the dualistic successors, the
Gnostics. But there was a difference between the Stoics and Plotinos.
The Stoics assimilated spirit to matter, while Plotinos, reminiscent of
Plato, preferred to assimilate matter to spirit. Still, he used their
terminology, and categories, including the conception of a hypostasis,
or form of existence. With this equipment, he held to the traditional
Platonic trinity of the "Letters," the King, the intellect, and the
soul. Philosophically, however, he had received from Numenius the
inheritance of a double name of the Divinity, Being and Essence. As a
thinker, he was therefore forced to accommodate Numenius to Plato, and
by adding to Numenius's name of the divinity, to complete Numenius's
theology by Numenius's own cosmology. This then he did by adding as
third hypostasis the Aristotelian dynamic energy.
But as Intellect is permanent, how can Energy arise therefrom? Here
this eternal puzzle is solved by distinguishing energy into indwelling
and out-flowing. As indwelling, Energy constitutes Intellect; but its
energetic nature could not be demonstrated except by out-flowing, which
produces a distinction.
Similarly, there are two kinds of heat, that of the fire itself,
and that emitted by the fire, so that the fire may remain itself
while exerting its influence without. It is thus also there: in that
it remains itself in its inmost being, and from its own inherent
perfection, and energy, the developed energy assumes hypostasis, as
if from a Dynamis that is great, nay, greatest; and so it joins the
Essence and the Being. For that was beyond all Being, and that was the
Dynamis of all things, and already was all things. If then it is all,
it must be above all; consequently also above Being. "And if this is
all, then the One is before all; not of an essence equal to all, and
this must be above Being, as this is above intellect; for there is
something above intellect."[489]
This is the most definite statement of Plotinos's solution of the
problem; other references thereto are abundant. So we have a trinity of
energy, being and essence,[490] and each of us, like the world-Soul has
an Eros which is essence and hypostasis.[491] Reason is a hypostasis
after the nous, and Aphrodite gains an hypostasis in the Ousia.[492]
The One is intellect, the intelligible, and ousia; or, energy, being,
and the intelligible (essence).[493] The soul is activity.[494] The
soul is the third God,[495] we are the third rank proceeding from the
upper undivided Nature,[496] the whole being God, nous, and essence.
The Nous is activity, and the First essence. There are three stages of
the Good: the King, the nous, and the soul.[497] We find energy,[498]
thinking and being, then[499] the soul, the nous, and the One. We find
Providence threefold (as in Plutarch)[500] and three ranks of Gods,
demons and world-life.[501] Elsewhere, untheologically, or, rather,
merely philosophically, he speaks of the hypostasis of wisdom.[502]
Chaignet's summary of this is[503] that[504] Plotinos holds that every
force in the intelligible is both Being and Substance simultaneously;
and reciprocally that no Being, could be conceived without hypostasis,
or directed force. Again,[505] the world, the universe of things,
contains three natures or divine hypostases, soul, mind and unity;
which indeed are found in our own nature, and of which the divinest is
unity or divinity.
Let us now try to understand the matter. Why should the word
hypostasis, which unquestionably in earlier times meant "substance,"
have later come to mean "distinctions" within the divinity? For
"substance," on the contrary, represents to our mind an unity, the
underlying unity, and not individual forms of existence. How did the
change occur?
Now Plotinos, as we remember, found fault with the Gnostics in that
they taught distinctions within the divinity.[506] He would therefore
be disposed to remove from within the divinity those distinctions of
Plotinic, Plutarchian, Numenian, or Gnostic theology; although he
himself in early times did not scruple to speak of a hypostasis of
wisdom, or of Eros, or other matter he might be considering. Such terms
of Numenius or Amelius as he seems to ignore are the various Demiurges;
the three Plutarchian Providences he himself still uses. Still, all
these terms he would be disposed to eradicate from within the divinity.
As a constructive metaphysician, however, he could not well get along
without some titles for the different phases of the divinity; and even
if he dispensed with the old names, there would still remain as their
underlying support the reality or substance of the distinction. So he
removed the offensive, aggressive, historically known and recognized
terms, while leaving their underlying substances, or supports. Now
"substance" had become "substances," and to differentiate these it was
necessary to interpret them as differing forms of existence. The change
was most definitely made by Athanasius, who at a synod in Alexandria,
in A.D. 362,[507] fastened on the church, as synonymous with hypostasis
the popular term "prosopon" or "face." That this was an innovation
appears from the fact that the Nicene Council had stated that it
was heretical to say that Christ was of a hypostasis different from
that of the Father, in which case the word evidently meant still the
original underlying (singular) substance. With this official definition
in vogue, the original (singular) substance became forgotten, and it
became possible to speak in the plural, of three faces, as indeed
Plotinos had done.
In other words, so necessary were distinctions in the divinity,
that the popular mind supplied other individual names to designate
the distinctions Plotinos had successfully banished, for Demiurges
and Providences no longer return. Thus more manifold differences
re-entered into the divinity, than Plotinos had ever emptied out of
it, although under a name which the poverty of the Latin language
rendered as "persons," which represents to us individual consciousness
of a far more distinctive kind than was ever implied in three phases
of Providence, or of the Demiurge. Thus the translation into Latin
clinched the illicit linguistic process, and the result of Plotinos's
attempt to distinguish in the Divinity phases so subtle as not to
demand or allow of manifoldness, resulted in the most pronounced
differences of personality. This was finally clinched by Plotinos's
illustration of the three faces around a single head,[508] which
established the idea of three "persons" (masks, from "per-sonare") in
one God.
Not only in the abstract realm of Metaphysics, therefore, is the world
indebted to Greek thought; but even in the realm of religion a Stoic
reinterpretation of Platonism, itself reinterpreted in a different
language has given a lasting inheritance to the spiritual aspirations
of the ages.