| Nicaea and Plotinus's god (c.300 CE via Porphyry) Mar 26th 2012, 10:03 The following quotes from the Enneads may serve to introduce Plotinus's god, with whom the at least 90% pagan population around the time of the Council of Nicaea may have been aware, perhaps even familiar. Quote:
Originally Posted by Plotinus
"God -- we read -- is outside of none,
present unperceived to all;
we break away from Him, or rather from ourselves;
what we turn from we cannot reach;
astray ourselves, we cannot go in search of another;
a child distraught will not recognise its father;
to find ourselves is to know our source."
Concluding statement of Plotinus's Enneads
11. This is the purport of that rule of our Mysteries: Nothing Divulged
to the Uninitiate: the Supreme is not to be made a common story
| This of course did not deter Constantine from publishing the Bible. Quote:
... the holy things may not be uncovered to the stranger, to any that has not
himself attained to see. There were not two; beholder was one with
beheld; it was not a vision compassed but a unity apprehended. The man
formed by this mingling with the Supreme must -- if he only remember --
carry its image impressed upon him: he is become the Unity, nothing
within him or without inducing any diversity; no movement now, no
passion, no outlooking desire, once this ascent is achieved; reasoning
is in abeyance and all Intellection and even, to dare the word, the
very self; caught away, filled with God, he has in perfect stillness
attained isolation; all the being calmed, he turns neither to this side
nor to that, not even inwards to himself; utterly resting he has become
very rest. He belongs no longer to the order of the beautiful; he has
risen beyond beauty; he has overpassed even the choir of the virtues;
he is like one who, having penetrated the inner sanctuary, leaves the
temple images behind him -- though these become once more first objects
of regard when he leaves the holies; for There his converse was not
with image, not with trace, but with the very Truth in the view of
which all the rest is but of secondary concern.
There, indeed, it was scarcely vision, unless of a mode unknown; it was
a going forth from the self, a simplifying, a renunciation, a reach
towards contact and at the same time a repose, a meditation towards
adjustment. This is the only seeing of what lies within the holies: to
look otherwise is to fail.
Things here are signs; they show therefore to the wiser teachers how
the supreme God is known; the instructed priest reading the sign may
enter the holy place and make real the vision of the inaccessible.
Even those that have never found entry must admit the existence of that
invisible; they will know their source and Principle since by principle
they see principle and are linked with it, by like they have contact
with like and so they grasp all of the divine that lies within the
scope of mind. Until the seeing comes they are still craving something,
that which only the vision can give; this Term, attained only by those
that have overpassed all, is the All-Transcending.
It is not in the soul's nature to touch utter nothingness; the lowest
descent is into evil and, so far, into non-being: but to utter nothing,
never. When the soul begins again to mount, it comes not to something
alien but to its very self; thus detached, it is not in nothingness but
in itself; self-gathered it is no longer in the order of being; it is
in the Supreme.
There is thus a converse in virtue of which the essential man outgrows
Being, becomes identical with the Transcendent of Being. The self thus
lifted, we are in the likeness of the Supreme: if from that heightened
self we pass still higher -- image to archetype -- we have won the Term
of all our journeying. Fallen back again, we awaken the virtue within
until we know ourselves all order once more; once more we are lightened
of the burden and move by virtue towards Intellectual-Principle and
through the Wisdom in That to the Supreme.
This is the life of gods and of the godlike and blessed among men,
liberation from the alien that besets us here, a life taking no
pleasure in the things of earth, the passing of solitary to solitary.
| Rowans Williams writes about Arius of Alexandria, that : "Arius' entire effort consisted precisely in acclimatizing
Plotinic logic within biblical creationism." Also relevant is the recent Philip of Side fragment here Quote:
Originally Posted by Fr. 5.6 Supporters of Arius at the Council of Nicaea
(8) When these things were expressed by them—or rather, through them, by the Holy Spirit—those who endorsed Arius' impiety were wearing themselves out with murmuring (these were the circles of Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicaea, whom I have already pointed out earlier), and yet they were looking with favor on the "hirelings" of Arius, certain philosophers who were indeed very good with words; Arius had hired them as supporters of his own wickedness, and arrived with them at that holy and ecumenical council.
(9) For there were present very many philosophers; and having put their hopes in them, as I have said just now, the enemies of the truth were reasonably caught, along with the one who actually taught them their blasphemy. The Holy Scripture was fulfilled in him and in them, which says, "Cursed is everyone who has his hope in a mortal man, and whose heart has departed from the Lord."[161]
(10) For truly, the blasphemous heart of the fighter against God, Arius, and of those who shared in his impiety, departed from the Lord—they dared to say that the Son of God, the creator of the universe and the craftsman of both visible and invisible created natures, is something created and something made.
| What was going on with Plotinus's god at Nicaea? Did Sopater care? . | |
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