3. The logos theory of Plotinus.
(Extract from Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy, Vol II)
Philo’s logos theory exerted tremendous influence on the Apologists and on the church fathers Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Besides this, the logos theory of Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonic philosophy, became extremely important for Christian philosophical thought based on the accommodation standpoint. The reason was that Augustine derived his philosophical conception of the creation order from it.
Plotinus of Alexandria (ca. A.D. 205-270) was a student of Ammonius Saccas, a son of Christian parents who later reverted to pagan Greek religion and tried to achieve a philosophical synthesis between Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. He developed a logos theory which arose from the same kind of speculative philosophical reflections as that of Philo, but which nevertheless differed from the latter fundamentally. [Plotinus pursues the line of the step-wise descent from the One, in connection with the view that every emanation represents a weaker image of the preceding level of being.]
Plotinus agreed with Philo in his notion that the deity is absolutely transcendent to the principle of matter. For him as well, the deity is totally exalted above the active nous or reason, since the latter always contains a duality between thought and the object of thought. God is not irrational but supra-rational, just as He has no formed being, but a supra- (supreme) being that is the origin of every form of being.
Aristotle’s idea of God held that He is the absolute, actualized, perfect Reason, whose thinking has only itself as its object (the noēsis noēseōs, “thought thinking itself”). In Plotinus’ view, however, this idea still did not do justice to God’s transcendence. Like Philo, he assumed that human thought concepts can only be applied to the deity in a negative sense; they can only indicate what God is not. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and their followers were to follow him in this, although in working out his theory of the analogy of being, which I will discuss later, Thomas still also granted a positive significance to the metaphysical determination of God’s attributes.
For Plotinus, the only positive determinations of God’s nature are His unity and His goodness. God is exalted above all being, thinking, and doing. All forms of being (ideas) spring from the fullness of His being, but God Himself is not confined within a particular form of being. Plotinus then attempted, unsuccessfully however, to derive even the principle of matter from the absolute divine unity as Origin. Thus he tried to surmount the polar dualism in the Greek religious ground-motive, an effort that Philo had not made. To accomplish this, Plotinus devised his theory of emanation or procession.
Plotinus asked himself, how did multiplicity spring from the divine unity? This could not have happened through an act of creation or a decree willed by God, for God, according to Plotinus, is exalted above all doing and all activity. He is absolutely unmoved and remains in eternal, silent rest. It also could not have happened through emanation, as pantheism maintains, since by emanation the divine being would be diminished. Only through “radiation”(uitstraling) could all things issue from God’s fullness of being, while He Himself remains eternally the same, just as the sun produces the brilliance that surrounds it without itself losing any of its light. And this radiation takes place not through an act of God’s will, but through a necessity of His being.
The fullness of God’s being must radiate outward, merely because of His goodness. According to Plotinus this radiation occurs in three stages, each earlier stage calling into being the next one.That which originates from God diminishes in perfection of being in each of the three stages. Thus there are degrees of reality, determined by their greater or lesser distance from God and from the world of ideas. Plotinus maintains the dualism of the form-matter motive in his system by drawing, in Platonic fashion, a sharp distinction between the supra-sensible realm, which is entirely ruled by the form principle, and sensible reality, in which the form and matter principles are bound together.
The supra-sensible realm is altogether divine in character. Radiating from the divine One, which is the first and absolute hypostasis, are two lower divine hypostases. The first of these is the divine mind or Logos, which is “the greatest in perfection of being subsequent to the Supreme Perfection.” This Logos is the first reflection or mirror image of the divine unity. Its nature is to contemplate the divine unity. In the intellect or logos there is thus already a fundamental duality of subject and object, of the activity of thinking and that which is thought.
In the Logos are contained the divine ideas, the ideal ontic forms (forms of being) of everything that is actualized in the sensory world. Plotinus conceived of these ideas as substances and as active mental forces, which secure the operation of the logos or nous upon the levels of reality below it. They are inseparably tied to the logos, since their being is identical with their being thought; yet, they are not purely subjective divine thoughts as the middle Platonic school taught, but have a real existence. Furthermore, the ideas are not mere universal forms (universalia) – for instance, forms of the animal, the human being, the plant – but contain in themselves a fullness of individuality. Thus there is an idea of the individual man Socrates, of the man Plato, etc. They also have in them a synthesis between form and matter, since how else could sensible things be images of them? (Enn. II, 4, 4). This “matter,” however, is ideal in nature.
The third hypostasis, finally, is the soul, which is the reflection of the divine intellect or logos. It is the direct fruit of the intellect, and it receives its form from the world of ideas emanating from the logos or nous. It hovers about the divine intellect as its inseparable reflection, its light, its image inseparably attached to it; on the upper level united with it, filled from it, enjoying it, participant in its nature, intellective with it, but on the lower level in contact with the realm beneath itself, or, rather, generating in turn an offspring which must lie beneath (Eneads V,1.7).
The soul, therefore, is the lowest level in the divine, supra-sensible realm; and simultaneously it is the bridge to the sensible realm, which it in turn creates. Plotinus thus gives it an intermediary role, and he accordingly splits it into a higher, simple and rational part called the nous, and a lower part called the phusis, which is turned toward the sensible matter of the body. This lower part of the soul is divisible insofar as the material body cannot incorporate the psychical forces undivided. Nevertheless, the soul as a whole remains an indivisible substance.
There is a real multiplicity of substantial souls. The highest among them is the divine world-soul, which gives form to the entire sensible cosmos and pervades and animates it. The individual souls, however, are not parts of this world soul, but independent radiations from the mental ideas in the logos. All functions of the soul, including memory, sense perception, and even the vegetative function that forms the material body, are supra-sensible and rational in nature. They belong to the substance of the soul, are in fact identical with this substance, and are independent of and separable from the body.
The divine realm extends from the One through the soul. The world-soul contains the logoi, which correspond to the ideas of the logos and are the agents by which the intrinsically indeterminate matter is formed into the things of the sense world. Plotinus borrowed this latter notion from Stoic philosophy and its theory of the logoi spermatikoi, “germinal forms,” which supposedly exert a formative influence upon indeterminate matter from within the world soul. As we shall see later, however, he transformed this Stoic idea in a fundamental way.
Finally, matter itself is the product of the soul through radiation.The soul is a light that at the furthest limit of its radiation turns into its opposite, darkness (Enn. IV, 3.9), and this darkness is unformed matter. In this sense Plotinus calls matter the “depth” (bathos) or“abyss” of every sensible thing.
Whereas the logos is light, matter is darkness. It is non-being (mē on) and an absolute privation of ontic form. As the absence of form it is the principle of evil, but as receptivity for form it is simultaneously an intermediate state between good and evil.
One can plainly see that the polar dualism of the Greek theme of form and matter has reasserted itself in Plotinus’ whole view of reality. He merely camouflaged it by means of his theory of radiation or procession, but it easily broke through this disguise in the polar opposition between light and darkness.
(Extracted from Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy, Vol II, Paideia Press, 2013, pp 70-74)
The above book is available HERE
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Logos critique extracts:
1) The theory of the Logos in the critical realism of Kuyper, Bavinck, and Woltjer.
3) The Logos theory of Plotinus
4) Logos speculation in Christian thought before Council of Nicea (325).
