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18. Platonism and Neoplatonism. Preface to Exposition of On the Divine Names (1265–8)

Thomas is on record again and again as subscribing to Aristotle’s dismissal of the Platonic doctrine of Ideas. None the less, he accepted Augustine’s famous interpretation of the Ideas as the divine creative patterns, effectively identical with the Word of God. When Thomas confronted such Neoplatonic works as Dionysius’s On the Divine Names and the Book of Causes, that Augustinian influence not only tempered his criticism but, given his acceptance of the quasi-apostolic status of Dionysius, made him a docile and accepting reader.

During the early part of this century, Thomas’s fundamental Aristotelianism obscured for many the other sources of his philosophical thinking. When the tide turned, it did so massively. The work of L.M. Geiger and Cornelio Fabro drew attention to the pervasiveness of the notion of participation in Thomas. Sober studies turned up the fact that Dionysius was the most quoted author in the Summa theologiae. Some took this to mark an unnoticed shift on Thomas’s part from Aristotle to Plato. After all, Aristotle had dismissed participation as an empty metaphor. Others saw the thought of Thomas as eclectic, a hopeless pastiche of incompatible elements.

Thomas was never a partisan Aristotelian. Indeed, our notion that there are kinds of philosophy, more or less autonomous and unrelated to one another, was foreign to his thinking. Aristotle might not have responded as positively to Plato as he could have, but he was a model of the thinker who sees all his predecessors as engaged more or less in the same enterprise. That is why all make contributions to the emerging understanding of reality.

It would be absurd to think that Thomas opted for Aristotle as against Plato, or vice versa. The prologue to his commentary on Dionysius’s On the Divine Names is a succinct charter for the assimilation of Platonism. The assimilation is guided by his conviction that he has learned many truths from Aristotle. He continues to reject the Ideas as an acceptable account of the species of natural things. But he insists that the Platonic Ideas are of inestimable help in theology and in understanding the divine names. The result is an Aristotelianism that goes beyond the historical Aristotle but is a principled assimilation of truths from whatever source, even those Aristotle had mistakenly failed to recognize.

PROLOGUE TO THE COMMENTARY ON DIONYSIUS’S ON THE DIVINE NAMES

In order to understand the books of the blessed Dionysius, consider that he artfully distinguished into four parts what is found in Sacred Scripture about God. For in a book which has not come down to us called the Divine Hypotyposes, that is, the Divine Characters, he treats what pertains to the unity of the divine essence and the distinction of persons. There is no sufficient similarity to this unity and distinction in creatures since this mystery surpasses the capacity of natural reason.

Where Scripture does says something of God that has a created likeness, a distinction has to be made. For in some this similitude is understood as something that derives from God to creatures, as all goods are from the First Good and all living things from the First Life, and so on with others. Dionysius treats such things in On the Divine Names, which we have in our hands.

In some things, however, the similitude is understood according to something carried over from creatures to God, as God is called a lion, a rock, the sun and the like. Dionysius treats such matters in a book that he called On Symbolic Theology.

Because every similarity of the creature to God is deficient, and we find that God exceeds anything that is in creatures, whatever we know of creatures is denied of God as it exists in creatures. So it is that after all that our intellect can conceive of God, having been led from creatures, what God is remains hidden and unknown. For not only is God not a stone or the sun, which are grasped by the senses, neither is he the kind of life or essence that can be conceived by our intellect, and thus he remains unknown to us. Concerning these denials whereby God remains unknown and hidden for us, he wrote another book which he called On Mystical – that is, hidden – Theology.

Note that the blessed Dionysius in all his books uses an obscure style, not because of ineptitude, but intentionally, in order that sacred and divine teachings might be kept from the derision of infidels.

Difficulties in these books arise from many sources. First, because he often uses the style and mode of speaking that the Platonists used, which is not customary nowadays. The Platonists, wanting to reduce all composite and material things to simple and abstract principles, posited separate species of things, saying that there is a man outside matter, and similarly a horse, and so on with the other natural species. Therefore, they said that this singular sensible man is not what man is, but he is called man by participation in that separate man. Hence there is found in this sensible man something that does not pertain to the species of humanity, such as individual matter and the like. But in the separate man there is only what pertains to the species of humanity. So they called the separate man, ‘man’ himself or ‘man as such’, insofar as it has nothing that is not of humanity, and ‘chiefly man’, insofar as humanity is derived to sensible men from the separate man by way of participation. Thus it can also be said that the separate man is above men and is the humanity of all sensible men insofar as human nature belongs purely to the separate man, and is derived from him to sensible men.

The Platonists did not restrict this kind of abstraction to the ultimate species of natural things but applied it as well to the most common, such as good, one and being. For they held that there is a first one that is the very essence of goodness and of unity and of existence, and we call him God, and all other things are called good or one or being by derivation from this first. That is why they named the first good itself or good as such or principal good or supergood or even the goodness of all goods or goodness, essence and substance in the same way that they had spoken of the separate man.

This argument of the Platonists is not in harmony with either the faith or truth with respect to what it says of separate natural species, but it is most true and consonant with the Christian faith with respect to what it says of the first principle of things.

Dionysius, accordingly, sometimes names God good itself or supergood or principal good or the goodness of every good. Similarly, he names him superlife, supersubstance and the thearchic deity, that is, the principal deity, because even some creatures receive the name ‘deity’ by way of a certain participation.

The second difficulty arises from what he says, because often he uses effective arguments for making a point, by suggesting them with a few words or even only one.

The third source of difficulty is that he often uses many words which may seem superfluous, though to one diligently considering them they are found to contain a great profundity of thought.

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