Philosophy Matters — Dionysius (Chapter Two): Being as Theophany
Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite by Eric D. Perl
Chapter 2 — Being as Theophany.
God is not a being, but God is the cause all being, and as such, God can be named by all the names of all beings.
If God is not a being, how does God cause being? Isn’t it the case that something cannot give what it does not have?
The answer relies on Neoplatonism. Causation does not mean the kind of causation we are used to, such as where human parents cause human children or tectonic plates cause earthquakes. That kind of causation is “horizontal,” i.e., causation between things in the same ontological order. Causation involving God is “vertical,” where by something on a higher ontological level causes something on a lower level, such as the intelligible form of Fire is said to be the cause of the sensible fire on which you roast a hotdog.
This vertical causation gets weird quickly enough in Neoplatonism. Thus, causation is ratcheting down from Goodness (or the One) through the Intellect to the Soul (or Nature) to the sensible cosmos. Each level forms the next lower level (without really participating in that form.) According to Perl:
Most fundamentally, as we have seen, the One is the “cause” of all things as that by which each being is intelligible, is itself, is the one distinct being that it is, and so is. As the universal principle of determination whereby all beings are beings, the One itself has no determination and hence is not anything intelligible, any being:
Eric D. Perl. Theophany (Locations 290–292).
Each lower level is not “caused” by the higher level. Rather the lower level is dependent on the higher level. The causation is not efficient, such as when a lumberjack cuts down a tree, but “Platonic participation.” Perl explains this participation as a matter of the transcendence and imminence of the form:
A Platonic form is the intelligible nature, present in many things, by which they are such things. As such a nature, it is at once immanent in and transcendent to the instances that participate in it. It is immanent, in that it is present in them as the nature or character by which they are such instances; and it is transcendent, in that, as one and the same nature in many different instances, it is other than and unconditioned by each and all of them.’ Where, among the beautiful things in the world, is Beauty? Everywhere where and nowhere: everywhere, in that wherever there is a beautiful thing, there is Beauty, as the nature which it has by which it is beautiful; nowhere, in that as one universal intelligible nature it is other than the many beautiful things and is not confined to any one of them. The form’s transcendence is thus a strict implication of its immanence. The instances depend on the form to be such as they are, while the form, as a unitary intelligible nature capable of appearing in many instances, is independent of them. The instances, so to speak, owe everything to the form, as that by which they are what they are, while the form, as the nature which, by appearing in them, makes them what they are, owes nothing to the instances.
Eric D. Perl. Theophany (Locations 310–318).
Each Platonic form is a single thing, a comprehensible unity of an idea. Yet, we experience these solitary unities as found in a bewildering variety of appearances in many, many sensible things. There may be a single form of a cup, but have you checked out your kitchen shelves? And do you really need all those coffee mugs? The sensible things we experience — the red Solo cups, the “World’s Greatest Dad” coffee mugs, etc. — are simply images or appearances of the one real form of cup.
Are these appearances found in the sensible world “real”? When a woman stands before a mirror, there is a real person and a reflection. According to Perl, when we see a reflection, we see something real — it is not a delusion or a hallucination, but, alas, it is not the one real thing. The appearance is a different mode of understanding the real:
The different “levels of being” in Plato are in fact different modes in which reality may be given to cognition. Each form, or being, may be apprehended, by intellect, as it is, as one, as the single intelligible nature that it is; or it may be apprehended, by sense, as it appears, as many, as the character of this or that instance, differentiated from its appearances in other instances. The difference between intelligible forms and sensible instances is the difference, not between two kinds of reality, but between reality and appearance.
Eric D. Perl. Theophany: (Locations 328–331). Kindle Edition.
At our level of being, we experience the real through the appearance. We experience reality through our senses (and then by our intellect.) We can do this because the higher level — the form — “causes” the lower level — the form as understood by our senses — in that the latter is the “differentiated appearance or presentation of the former to a lesser mode of cognition.” (Id.)[1]
“Lesser mode of cognition”?
Well, there’s not much we can do about that.
The form is not itself any of its appearances in matter. The form of a cup is not any particular cup you use to drink your coffee. The form of Fire is not any particular fire. God is, therefore, not any particular being. According to Perl:
Here again we can see just why the One is beyond being: just as the form Fire, as that which is common to all fires, whereby they are fires, is not itself one of the fires, so the One, as that which is common to all beings, whereby they are beings, is not itself one of the beings. And just as any form is at once transcendent to and immanent in its instances, so the One is at once transcendent to and immanent in all beings: transcendent, in that it is not identified with or confined to any one of them; immanent, in that it is present to all as that by which they are beings:
Eric D. Perl. Theophany (Locations 355–359).
God cannot be a being because God is transcendent and immanent in all beings. If God were a being, it would lose these features of transcendence and immanence:
If the One were merely “other” or “separate,” it would be another being, and so would be limited in relation to others. Precisely as transcendent, infinite, beyond being, it must be not separate but present to all beings. And precisely as present to all beings, it is not any one of them, and so is transcendent.
Eric D. Perl. Theophany ( Locations 364–366).
Let’s say that the Form of Man is Superman — the DC comic book character. Superman cannot be immanent in all human beings because (a) as a being, Superman has specific features that are not found in or which are contradicted by some or many instantiations of being human, and (b) Superman would not transcend all instantiations or appearances of being human because he would be another distinct and definite way of being human.
But wait! It gets more complicated.
Neoplatonism is addicted to the image of unfolding and enfolding. As things “unfold,” they differentiate into the different versions of sensible experience that are all still on some higher level the One Reality. God is the One, the ultimately enfolded. The One is concentrated existence; it “is not any one thing, but all things without distinction, it is all things “at once,” without the differentiation which constitutes them as themselves, as intelligible, and hence as all things, as being.”
The One is amazingly like a Black Hole.
Perl uses a “Plotinian image” of different points on the circumference of a circle. “If we imagine all the points moving toward the center, the circle becomes smaller, and at the point where they meet, the circle will blink out altogether. That is the One.”
Move in the opposite direction and we get being falling out of the One. As we move out from the One — as we “unfold” from the One — things begin to phase change into being as they differentiate from each other and from the One:
Conversely, then, all things are nothing but the “unfolding” of the One, its presentation in differentiated multiplicity. What constitutes beings as not the One but as all things, as being, is their differentiation from one another. They are beings in that they are distinct from each other and therefore determinate and intelligible. What distinguishes each being from the others is also what distinguishes each being from the One. Each being is not the One, precisely in that it is differentiated from other beings, is determinate, is intelligible, or, in short, in that it is a being. All things are other than the One, but the One is not other than all things, for the One, Plotinus says, “has no otherness” (VI.9.8.34). All the otherness is on the side of being, for the otherness of being from the One consists not in the One’s being defined over against being, but in the otherness, within being, of one being from another.
Eric D. Perl. Theophany ( Locations 415–420).
Unfolding sounds a lot like the Big Bang.[2] Scientists tell us that as the primordial universe expanded and cooled, different kinds of Being “dropped out” of the undifferentiated mass that formed the universe. First, photons, or maybe the strong force, then protons or the weak force, etc., etc. Previously, these things had been an undifferentiated unity; then they became atoms or gravity. It is odd to think that there was a time when gravity was not distinguishable from photons, but scientists say that is how it was.
One place where my facile and superficial analogy breaks down is that the primordial undifferentiated universe became the differentiated universe we live in. In contrast, the differentiated unfolding universe did not replace God (aka The One.) God (aka The One) is and remains existence itself. What we think of as reality is not reality but but an appearance of reality:
As differentiated, finite presentations, all beings are appearances of the One. In that they are intelligible, they are the One as it is given to and apprehended by Intellect, which is to say not as the One, the undifferentiated containment of all things, but as differentiated, i.e. as being. Since to be is to be intelligible, to be is to be given to thought, to be manifest, to be appearance. The differentiation of beings from one another, in virtue of which they are intelligible and are beings, constitutes them, therefore, as appearances of the One.
Eric D. Perl. Theophany ( Locations 420–423).
Search far and wide, and you will not find the primordial universe of the Big Bang. That means that the Big Bang is not God because God is the necessary being, that which must always exist to be the first thing at all times. Take away the necessary being—the unmoved mover—and everything stops. Replace the Big Bang with a mature universe, and we do fine.
So, the One is existence itself. The One shares existence with with everything, and everything secondary to the One shares that existence as an appearance or “as a trace of the One.” (Plotinus, V. 5.5.14; cf. VI 7.17.39.) And where does this “appearance” exist? In something called the Intellect, which is another rung down from the One:
Just as a Platonic form is one and makes its instances to be such instances by appearing many, so that the contents of the instances are differentiated appearances of the form, so the One “makes” all things by appearing multiply, ply, so that the entire content of being is the differentiated appearance of the One in Intellect.
Eric D. Perl. Theophany ( Locations 427–429).
With all of its differentiation, our universe is a feature of Intellect understanding at a lower level a higher order of reality it cannot comprehend.
At this point, Neoplatonism seems to take a strong turn away from Christian orthodoxy. As Aquinas explains in volume 2 of the Summa Contra Gentiles, articles 9–15, God interacts with the world as something other than Himself through his actions of understanding and willing. In the Christian God, there is an intellect that wills and a will that chooses. The orthodox Christian understanding is that God causes effects in sensible things (or chooses not to create things in made things.) The Christian God causes things to happen.
In contrast, the Neoplatonic God does not cause things to happen. Rather, “vertical causation” or procession is not an activity on the part of the cause — the One — that is distinct from the cause itself:
Eric D. Perl. Theophany(Locations 429–433).
The Christian God creates the lower orders of existence; the Neoplatonic One unfolds into Intellect, and then Intellect looks back at the One, which — doing the best it can — perceives differentiation in the One. Then, maybe Nature — doing its best — populates sensible reality with even cheaper copies of the appearances perceived by the Intellect.
It seems like we are some distance away from the Logos.
On the other hand, this part is classic Thomism:
Thus just after describing the One as “all beings and not even one,” i.e. all things without distinction, Plotinus says, “This, we may say, is the first act of generation: the One, perfect because it seeks nothing, has nothing, and needs nothing, overflows, as it were, and its superabundance makes an other” (V.2.1.8–10). This can only mean, not that the One is a being which `overflows,” which would contradict Plotinus’ entire metaphysics, but that the One is Overflow itself, the differentiating or appearing by which all beings are. Plotinus frequently expresses this by referring to the One as not any thing but “the power of all things” (111.8.10.1; V.1.7.10; V.3.15.33; V.4.1.36; V.4.2.39; VI.7.32.31), i.e. nothing but the production of beings, the enabling condition by which they are beings.
Eric D. Perl. Theophany (Locations 437–442).
Aquinas affirms that the Good is self-diffusive. The Christian God creates by sharing His Goodness, i.e., His existence, with His creation. [3]
The One (according to Plotinus) does not make “additional things.” Rather, the One manifests itself. The One is manifested in the appearances of everything that exists. The Neoplatonic law is that “the things that belong to the effects pre-exist in the causes.” Therefore, everything that exists manifests God, and all things “therefore, are God-in-them, making them to be by making them what they are, so that God is not only being in beings and life in living things but “all things in all things (Eric D. Perl. Theophany (Locations 479–480).) This harkens back to the point about transcendence and immanence:
Dionysius’ God, then, like Plato’s forms in relation to their instances or Plotinus’ One in relation to all things, is at once transcendent and immanent. He is transcendent, as we have seen, in that he is not a being at all, not included within reality as any member of it. And he is immanent in that he is immediately present in all things as all their constitutive determinations.
Eric D. Perl. Theophany (Locations 484–487).
For Dionysius, God is “the whole content of reality, “all things in all things,” which means that reality is theophany:
For Dionysius, then, as for Plotinus and Proclus, the whole of reality, all that is, is theophany, the manifestation or appearance of God .15 For the entire content of any being is God present in it in a distinct, finite way, and, in virtue of this distinction and finitude, knowable in that being as its intelligible content. It is just as distinct, or finite, that God is present in the being, or that the being is a presentation of God.
Eric D. Perl. Theophany (Locations 533–536).
As neat as this might be, it does not mean “thou art God” because that would make God a being — one of many beings — in the universe, and that is a non-starter for Dionysius, largely because “thou art” a finite, limited, contingent being, and God is not:
Dionysius’ metaphysics is not a form of “pantheism,” if by this we mean the doctrine that all things are God. On the contrary: every being, precisely in that it is a being, i.e. something distinct, tinct, finite, and intelligible, ipso facto is not God. Indeed, since to be is to be intelligible and therefore to be finite, to be means to be not God. This, again, is precisely why God is beyond being. Every being, then, absolutely is not God.
Eric D. Perl. Theophany (Locations 548–551).
Neither is God the universe. The problem here would seem to be that if God were everything, it would still be limited. Add up everything in reality, then slice out the limited, finite parts, and you do not end up with God because that would make God merely a subset of being itself, which is a non-starter. God the Creator never goes into the same box as God’s Creation:
But if Dionysius is not a monist or pantheist, neither is he a dualist, regarding God as another being over against the world. All things are not God, but God is not therefore something else besides all things. Such a notion, as the very words indicate, is manifest nonsense. If God were another being besides his products, he would be included as a member of a more inclusive totality, subordinated to a more embracing universal term, and distinct from the other members and therefore finite
Eric D. Perl. Theophany (Locations 554–556).
So, what are we left with if God is not part of the universe?
Well, we are left with God being real and the created universe being an appearance of reality:
As Dionysius’ Neoplatonic metaphysics is neither theism nor atheism, so also it is neither monism nor dualism, but can only be called, for want of a better term, “theophanism.”31 The relation between appearance and that which appears is irreducible to either unity or duality and cannot be expressed in any terms other than those of appearance, manifestation, image, expression. Only through this Platonic concept is it possible to understand Dionysius’ metaphysics or to make sense of the relation between the world and God without reducing the world to God (monism) or God to a being (dualism).
Eric D. Perl. Theophany (Locations 568–571).
The “created universe” is the appearance of God. Saying that something is an appearance does not mean it is definitively something other than the thing itself. The reflection of a woman in a mirror shares something with the woman. Light rays bounce off the woman and are transmitted via the mirror to the eyes of the viewer. On the other hand, the reflection of the woman is also not definitively the woman herself.
We might say that the reflection is “analogous” to the woman. The reflection is not in all ways the same as the woman, which would have made it univocal. It is not in all ways different from the man, which would have made it equivocal. Rather, in some ways, the reflection shares something with the woman, something on a different order of existence, substance, we might say, and light rays bounced off the glass.
If we follow this “analogia entis” — the analogy of being — we might learn something about the man, but we would have to be smart about how we approach this inquiry. It would be stupid to take a sample of the mirror and conclude that the woman is made of glass.
That is the approach Aquinas follows in the section most indebted to Dionysius.
Footnotes:
[1] What else are we going to do? It might be great to see the entire electromagnetic spectrum, but we are limited to a small segment of the spectrum We participate as best we can with what we have. Aquinas follows the same kind of thinking when he discusses how we know God. We can’t really comprehend God and our language is not really capable of communicating the nature of God, but our limited language is not wrong in what it does say, just limited.
[2] Don’t put too much stock on my scientific analogies. They are placeholders. Perl doesn’t use them, but they seem intriguingly apt. Where the analogy sucks, though, is that all of the differentiated things that became the universe started out in existence. One thing we can say is that the primordial kernel of the universe existed. Therefore, it was not the One since existence is a thing in the universe and the One is not.
[3] At this point, Perl provides another touchpoint with Thomism when he describes Neoplatonism “image” of the One “not to an object which gives off light to the ambient light itself whereby things are visible.” “Just as light is involved in every act of seeing …., so the one is involved in every thought as the condition of intelligibility.” (Perl, supra.)
In the Summa Theologica, Aquinas speaks of the “Light of Glory” whereby the blessed will see God, but more significantly, that “All things are said to be seen in God and all things are judged in Him, because by the participation of His light, we know and judge all things; for the light of natural reason itself is a participation of the divine light….”
