(Originally written March 17, 2007 in Book 13)
From Unity to Multiplicity
All multiplicity presupposes some prior unity, thus there must be some absolute simplicity as the source of all multiplicity. God is this absolute simplicity.
God does not have being because being involves multiplicity.
God is the One beyond all being.
Creation is the process of the One becoming multiplicity. When it gains knowledge of itself it creates mind. The Mind produces other minds when minds reflect outwards it creates Soul and Soul gives rises to other souls.
Souls create matter. Matter is the most multiplicity.
Being is good; matter is evil. Matter possesses no good in it, only the mere capacity for good.
Eventually all multiplicity will return to unity and evil will give way to good.
From Multiplicity to Unity
Humans are matter and soul, thus good and evil.
In order to travel towrads unity a person must turn from the multiplicity of matter to the unity of soul. Hue must become ascetic.
The Soul must move from what is sensible to what is intellectual. For, what is intellectual is touched by Mind which is almost pure unity.
Once one has achieved union with mind by moving from sensible to intellectual one must move from intellectual to intuitional to achieve whole unity because even mind is multiplicity (knower and known).
The goal is to become one with the One.
The Need for Negative Language of the One (God)
Plotinus states that there can be no positive descriptions about the One.
All the properties Plotinus ascribes the One he denies that he has.
In calling God the One he means, "not many". In calling him good he means, "not evil". But the One is not the first of any series and the One is not good in the sense that anything else is good.
"The One is nothing but itself and cannot be named in terms of anything else" (237).
Plotinus maintains that we "know" God via two ways:
1. Indirectly from his effects
2. by direct mystical intuitions which transcend all cognitive knowledge and provides a positive being for all cognitive negations of God.
Naming God from his Emanational Effects
All that comes from the One is a trace of the transcendent ONe.
If something comes from the One that is beauty then we can God is beautiful in the sense that He causally creates beauty. Thus, his effect is beauty and he therefore is Beauty, but greater.
God is called goodness because causes goodness, not because he possesses goodness.
Unity (God) is beyond Being because he caused being.
The intuitional basis for all naming of God
Giving God positive names from his extrinsically related effects does not provide any proper knowledge of God.
Rational and cognitive through can only point in the direction of God who is knowable only by mystical intuition.
Intuitional knowledge of God comes by purification of all multiplicity and the knower becomes one with the One in a temporary mystical union.
Negative language about God is wholly dependent on a prior positive intuition of God gained via mystical union with the One.
Pseudo-Dionysius brought Plotinus to Christianity in the 6th century A.D.
He affirmed the incomprehensibility of God. He stated God cannot be known directly but He can be known indirectly 3 ways:
1. Affirmation of the God of the Bible (positive theology)
2. Deny that these qualities apply to God in the same sense they apply to the created order (negative theology)
3. Apply these terms to God in a higher way
Moses Maimonides: Negative Attributes of God
Maimonides believed that the literal interpretations of Scripture were the heart of all problematic theology.
The way to positively attribute something to God
He had five ways to attribute a positive quality of God. The first four he felt inconsistent with the monotheistic God of Judaism. So he worked out the fifth way.
1. An object is described by its definition
2. An object is described by part of its definition
3. An object is described by something other than its true essence
4. An object is described by its relation to another object
5. An object is described by its action.
He claimed that Biblical language is anthropomorphic.
The knowledge o the works of God is the knowledge of His attributes.
The Use of Negative Attributes to Describe God
Maimonides held that negative attributes of God are true attributes and that positive attributes imply polytheism.
The function of negative attributes is that they are necessary to direct the mind to the truths necessary to believe concerning God. With each negative attribute learned one inches closer to knowledge of God.
He held that only YHWH indicates God's true essence and its meaning is wholly unknowable.
Mysticism: Ineffability
A definition of Mysticism
F.C. Haploid outlined the nature of mysticism in four points:
1. The phenomenal world is a manifestation of an Absolute and as such this world is not true reality. Only the Absolute is true reality.
2. Human beings can know the Absolute by a direct intuition. In this intuition a union between the human and the absolute occurs.
3. This intuition is a unique function of the true human self, which is usually obscured by the phenomenal self.
4. The possibility is the main goal of human existence and is the door to the experience of ultimate reality.
William James described the mystical union with four points:
1. Ineffability - the experience cannot be contained in words
2. Noetic quality - The impression of having received absolute truth is part of the experience
3. Transiency - The experience will not last very long
4. Passivity - The experience is received by or given to the person. He does not create it.
The mystic does not allow for a difference between the experience of the Absolute and the Absolute.
In the way one cannot doubt he is having a headache, a mystic cannot doubt he is having (or had) a mystical experience.
The problem with mystical experiences is that no one who has not had a mystical experience can know what it is like. Secondly, the mystic cannot describe it because it is ineffable by nature.
Stace's Theories of Ineffability
W.T. Stace provides a number of theories on ineffable experiences:
1. The emotion theory: mystical experience is ineffable because it essentially contains emotions that are too deep for words.
2. The spiritual blindness theory: mystical experience is ineffable because those who have not had it cannot understand it.
Stace rejects these two common sense theories because
a) mystical experience is not merely an empirical perception that must be held to understand
b) mystics themselves admit that it is ineffable, not the fault of their audience
c) The Dionysian Theory: positive language does not apply literally. God is described as "X" because he causes "X", not because he is "X".
d) The Metaphor theory: positive language is merely metaphorical
But, Stace rejects these four as well because if the mystic speaks metaphorically he uses either reducible metaphors (reducible to literal understanding) in which case it is not ineffable or irreducible metaphors in which case he speakings meaninglessly. He rejects c) because it is odd to label the cause of a property with the name of that property.
e) They mystic, during his experience is beyond words, but in describing his experience he is forced to use words which describe his experience as contradictory. But, while this makes it something ineffable, mystical experiences are in fact somewhat contradictory. "The language is paradoxical because the experience is paradoxical" (249).
Thomas Aquinas: Via Negativa
Thomas Aquinas agreed with Maimonides that no one in this life could grasp the essence of God in a positive way.
The knowledge of God by remotion is Aquinas' process of deriving the distinction of God from other beings by way of negative differences.
A creature can be admitted to be God-like but God cannot be creature-like.
Aquinas did hold that one can make position affirmations about God through intrinsic causal similarities between God and his creatures.
The via negativa is the denial of any imperfections in him.
The idea of negation is always based on a positive affirmation.
Positive affirmation are made possible by the intrinsic causal relation between Creator and creatures.
A totally negative God-talk is meaningless.
Complete negation without any affirmation is total skepticism about God.
But, without some kind of negation there is no way to preserve the transcendence of the theistic God.
12: Positive Language About God
There are two basic attempts to develop positive language about God:
1. Univocal (Scotus)
2. Analogous (Aquinas)
The Scotistic Insistence on Univocal Concepts
John Duns Scotus maintained that there can be no meaningful positive talk bout God unless it is univocal.
The Impossibility of Analogous Concepts
Henry of Ghent defended his "analogous concept of being" while Scotus was alive.
Henry claimed that God is known in a universal concept that is analogically common to himself and to creatures.
He claimed that God and creatures are distinguishable by negation of determination. Man is determined, God is undetermined.
Scotus rejects this on a few grounds
1. Differentiation by negation is no different at all
2. The concept of Henry's analogous concept is two concepts and thus equivocal
The Necessity of Univocal Concepts of God
Scouts chose univocal language because it avoids skepticism and meaninglessness.
Univocal to Scotus is that which possess sufficient unity in itself.
He gives four arguments to why concepts of God and man must be understood univocally:
1) The intellect can be certain about the concept of being without knowing it refers to created or uncreated being.
2) It is impossible to have natural knowledge of God without univocal concepts. We have natural knowledge of God. Thus, there are univocal concepts.
3) We would have no proper concept of God without univocal concepts. We have a proper concept of the Trinity, thus of God. Thus, we have univocal concepts.
4) Pure perfection applies wholly proper to God and not to creatures. Thus there must be universal understanding of pure perfection.
Scotus held that if there is no univocity in concepts of God there is no knowledge of God.
Scotus held that there is equivocal talk about God, which is meaningless. There is analogous talk about God which is either equivocal or univocal. If it is equivocal it is meaningless. If it is univocal it is not really analogical.
Thomistic Contention for Analogous Predication
Aquinas held that it was impossible for anything to be predicated of God and a creature in a univocal sense.
Aquinas' rejection of Univocal Predication
Aquinas had 6 arguments against univocality
1. Nothing may be said if God and other things univocally because the forms of the things God has made do not measure up to any specific likeness of God.
2. No creature has the same mode as God thus nothing can be predicated of God and other things universally.
3. Whatever is predicated of many things is a genus or species, but there exists no genus or species of God.
4. Whatever is predicated of many things univocally is simpler in concept than that which it is predicated of. God is wholly simple, thus there can be nothing predicated of God univocally.
5. Whatever is predicated univocally in many things belongs through participation to each of things of which it is predicated. But nothing participates with God, only through God.
6. Nothing is predicated of God and creation in the same order, but rather according to priority and posteriority.
Aquinas also argued that the difference between an infinitely perfect being an a finitely perfect being is infinite and thus, there can be no univocal predication of such beings.
The Need for the Via Negative
God cannot possess perfections in the way crated things possess them.
Properly speaking God dos not posses the properties of perfections; those perfections are the very essence of God.
Univocal predication removes the necessary distance between Creator and created. If any property were univocally attributed to God and created thing it would either limit God or delimit the created thing.
Aquinas' Rejecting of Equivocal Predication
Both Aquinas and Scotus agreed that equivocal predication lends no knowledge of God.
He held that if all knowledge of God came from equivocal terms then there would be no chance of rising from finite things to the infinite.
Equivocal language is false because if it were true there would be nothing known or demonstrable about God.
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