6 Christianity and Platonism in East and West John Milbank Introduction In an es: ay written some time ago in the 1970s by a then very young Rowan Williams, it was argued that the distinction made by the fourteenth-century , Byzantine theologian Gregory Palamas between the divine essence and the equally divine energies impaired both the divine simplicity and the distinction between the created and the uncreated.' Williams also claimed that this. deleterious development was the result in large measure ofan excessive influence of neoplatonism, and in particular of those later neoplatonists like lamblichus and Proclus, often dubbed ‘theurgic’ neoplatonists, besides their Christian suicce ot, Dionysius the Areopagite. In doing so, he seemed to look askance on all notions of metaphysical ‘participation’ unless they were understood in a very minimalist and ‘de-mythologized’ sort of way. What he appeared to fayout instead was a strict notion of divine purity and self-containment only breached by acts of the divine willingness to create and to bestow grace, with ‘Ueilication’ reduced to the idea of agreement with the divine will and purged of any sense of a ‘quasi-material’ sharing in the divine substance. ' R, Williams, “the Philosophical Structures of Palamism Eastern Churches Review 9 (1977), pp. 27-4, Williams is on oral record as no longer agreeing with all of this article and now wishing, to qualily his critique of Palamas. However, the article has hecome canonical for the Pakamas dlebate and therefore must still he reckoned with, Many of its crucial points remain valid, and while its strictures on neoplatonism now appear dated, it also unerringly pinpoints just what is at stake concerning questions to do with the Forms, participation, ete > Williams, “Ihe Philosophical Structures of Palamismy, p. 1. In this article, he restriets ‘participation’ to meaning a true ‘intending’ of God. But he bere, like many others, confuses ‘intentionality’ which derives from Augustine and inyplies that every thought, asa thought ‘of something, reaches gcstatically beyond itself, with the different (though not incompatible) Aristotelian idea that 1o know something is to become that thing through ‘information’ by that thing, Lronically, such s notion as applied 10 knowledge of God would truly place Gad on the same plane of being as ourselves in (just the way Williams wishes to avoid, guiless qualified by Platonic notions of participation as an internal’ shariag that paradoxically coincides with an ‘external’ imitation, (See further in the mata108 A Celebration of Living ‘Theology ‘The same link of Palamas with the traditions of the later, ‘theurgic’ neoplatonists is upheld in a recent book by David Bradshaw, but in an opposite, positive spirit’ He wishes to praise both, and to do so because they both, in his view, allowed that the divine action really does reach outwards and downwards to create and to deify, while at the same time, the inaccessible divine mystery, which is the sole lure of sanctity, is preserved. In this view, the energies of the divine glory really are God, but they are to be distinguished in some fashion from the divine essence itself, Bradshaw hence endorses a ‘strong’ view of participation, which also sustains a sharp triadic separation between the unparticipated, the participated and the participating, In the present paper | wish to claim that both writers are making a false association. With Williams, I wish broadly to criticize Palamas (though in a slightly more muted manner with which he himself now probably agrees). But with Bradshaw, | wish to defen: the theurgic tradition of both the pagans and of text below) It is clear tl evolved, yet al this stage, 1 later Williams’ views on many matters (probably including intentionality) is Interesting to note the degree to which he was under the influence of a Geach/Anscombe reading of Witigenstein, Aristotle and Aquinas, combined with a Mackinnon derived Kantian insistence that our knowledge is confined within ascertainable finite limits, Insofar as he also exhibited an urge towards ‘Thomism, not only was his Aquinas Aristotelian, but also his Aristotle was read through the post-Fregean eyes favoured by analytic philosophy. One can, of course, agree with Williams afier Geach and Anscombe (Tliee Philosophers, Oxford: Blackwell, 1961, pp. 7-11) that substance is not for Aristotle some sort of Lockean vacuous punctual point to which ‘qualities might be ‘attached: (Williams suggests ~ perhaps rather too emphatically ~ Uhat Palamas is eflectively thinking, in such terms,) Yet that the substance is always ‘qualified’ is an ontological as well as logical truth, and so, iLis too bald when Williams appears to say that Avistotelian categories like substance, quality and accident only apply to epistemological categorisation (algebra of terms’) and snot to the actual composition of things. For this reading is more than dubious both philosophically and historically. Philosophically speaking, a brown bag is indeed only a bag because we conventionally take it to be a bag in accord with our practical usage, but if we dye the bag black, it will still truly be usable as a bag, since it wil stll he operatively-speaking an isolatable, unified item, and its inherent qualities of hollowness and containment will remain, Likewise, a tree really cart go Uhrough many mutations (but not all) and still remain ‘a tree’ in ils constitutive Shape’ and not just for our classificatory perception, It is therefore not obvious that substance, quality and accident are not indeed in some strange sense ‘thingy’ as well as meaningful, Nor is the Aristotelian view that ousia is the ‘forny of a ‘hing is well the real thing itself containable on the 'sense’side of the Fregean sense/reference divide which is supposed to be mutually exclusive Historically speaking, there has always heen a hesitation between Aristotle’ mainly logieal deployment of the categories in the specifically logical works, and his ontological deployment of them in the Metaphysies. Aquinas unquestionably lavours the priority of the latter, since (contra Geachis reading) he regards the logical categories themselves ontologically as being, to do with the formal realities exist in a universal ‘intentional’ mode in our understanding which truly relates sto the thing known (fi Met. VH. 1576). And as L mention in the main text below, the granting of the opposite priority to the categories as lngical commences with Porphyry — from whence it was taken up again in the Middle Ages by figures like Gilbert of Porreta, on the basis of a misreading of Boethins, which Aquinas later corrected, Yet Porphyry adopted this stance for reasons of a specific sort of Plotinian Platonism wh exalted the logical aver the ontological precisely because it thought that Hue intellection can dispense with the mediation of matter. (This logieism will therefore later evolve into subjective idealisny ane empiricism.)Christianity and Platonisin in East and West 109 Dionysius. In order to sustain this opposite combination to either of them, I will argue that, actually, it is theurgic rather than Plotinian neoplatonism which lends to urge towards a radical divine simplicity, incompatible with Palamas’ famous or infamous distinction. Why should thi matler? ‘The real point is that, in order to grasp the coherence of my combination, one must arrive at a correct understanding of . [contend that the view of participation entertained by Proclus and Dionysiu this offers an authentic reading of Platonic methex is, which Christian theology both requires and yet further intensifies. ‘This view is neither the ‘mythological’ one of Bradshaw, which tends to suggest that some sort of literal ‘aspect’ of the absolute can be literally ‘shared out, nor the demythologized view of the young Williams. Rather, it is a view which regards participation as a drastically paradoxical notion which metaphysics and theology nonetheless cannot dispens with. A supreme aspect of this paradoxicality is the coming together ILis therefore arguable that the choice historically has nof been one between a pure reading of Aristotle and a Platonically contaminated one, but rather between vo alternative neoplatonic options in the hernteneutics of Aristotle, given that a hesitation between the logical and the ontological is but one of many aporelic cruxes which Aristotle in his ‘esoteric’ writings bequeathed (deliberately?) to posterity’ So far then from it being the case, as Williams suggests, that the neoplatonists (whether Plotinian or theurgic) mistook logical for real entities, in seeking to ‘derive’ species from genus quality and accident from substance and ‘first’ concrete substance from ‘second’ essential substance, they were rather trying (o deal with a lacwa of generative explanation of heing which Aristotle own usage of the categories to deseribe the very structure of the real - either the material real (substance, accident, quality, relation etc) or the logical real (genus and species as ‘universal states of substance in the mind’) ~ manifestly left behind him, For example, itis clear that a.quality (like 'stickiness’) can be transferred from one thing to another, yet Aristotle gives no full account of such a process (which would seem to involve a kind of hybrid formal-eflicient causality in his own terms), so that if, indeed, as Williams says, a ‘quality’ should not be seen as an isolatable thing in itself, one still has the question of how a certain ‘mode of being’ is conveyed between substances. By suggesting that qualities can ‘proceed’ or emanate’ from one thing to another and that 2 lessee thing ‘shares’ in the quality of a higher thing, the neoplitonists do not imply, as Willianss says that they do, that a qualily might, asa kind of quasi-form “loat virtually free of any substance (such a suggestion awaits Avicenna), I is, however, entirely clear that later on Williams hecame more sympathetic (0 Plato, and in Arius: Heresy and Tradition (London: SCM, 2001, pp. 215-29), he provides a nuanced account of participation in the Platonic forms. He rightly insists that a Form is not merely a “very perfect example’ of that for which it serves as a model, but is in some crucial sense quite unlike that for which it operates as a causal paradigm. However, he goes too far in seeming to rule out all notions of imitation’ of Forms by lower entities, when both Plato and neoplatonism ave, in fact, replete with such language (for example Proclus, Hlemeuts of Theology, 29); nor is be right 1o suggest, after Davi Burrell Gn his earlier though that for Aquinas analogy has woling to de with ‘resemblance, even though for Aquinas, we are only ‘like’ God in ternss of God himself as the common medium (p. 343, n 76.). Neither does he ever make it clear how real the ‘sharing’ element of participation might be ~ and elsewhere, he exhibits an antipathy to any talk of ‘Uegrees of being’ despite the fact that it is hard (o eliminate this from any authentic version of ‘Thomism, preferring to think in Seotist and Kantian terms of being as simply the zero-sum negation of a negation: ‘is’ is not ‘is not, since it is not a predicate, What is also apparent is that, while his arguments against both Palamas and Arius would seem to suggest kinship with a Middle Platonic merging of the One with intellection and other qualities, he also exhibits a certain sympathy with Arius as conceiving God to be so transcendent110 A Celebration of Living ‘Theology of radical divin implicity with a divine self-partition so radical that itamounts toa kind of ontological kenosis. Yor this reason, the rebuttal of Palamas, the endorsement of theurgy and the explication of meifexis all run naturally together. Simplicity, participation and the theurgic How should we understand the distinction between the essence and the energies of God as articulated by Palamas? Is David Bradshaw right to say, along with many other Eastern scholars and theologians, that Western Christendom has wrongly neglected this crucial distinction? 1 shall argue that this claim is mistaken and that the thought of the best theologians in the West is entirely in harmony with a proper comprehension of the relationship between the essence and the energies of God and in continuity with the thought of the Greek Church Fathers. Everything with respect to such a claim turns upon how one understands the distinction between the ‘unparticip; ed One’ and ‘participation in the One in the ion. Within this tradition itself, there is much variation and, aaeoplatonic trad that he can only mediate his nature through a act of gracious choice (p. 227). And he notes here that the Cappadocians faced the same Plotinian dilemma as the great heresiarch: how can the absolutely ineffable God communicate himsell? this sympathy seems implausible in view of the fact that the entire bent of Arius would appear to be against the non-Trinitarian notion of God as a lonely and arbitrary absolute will and equally against any notion of a medium hovering ‘between’ the uncreated and the created. And yet, there is always a hesitation in Williams about embracing the full participatory metaphysics that would counter sucha perspective, I is a never-resolved (and from my perspective unnecessary) hesitation between 1 broadly ‘Catholic’ Joosely “homistic’) perspective on the one hand, and a more Protestant and Rar thian’ perspective on the other, which also involves a certain reading of John of the Cross, linked fo an advocacy of the spivituality of the English Benedictine tradition. With this latier perspective, we confront God not as participants, but in a naked stripping of all self-imaging (seen, questionably, as almost necessarily delusory) and self-standing (as if we could ever be in some sort of zero-sum rivalry with God, even fiom the point of view of spiritual experience) and then await the divine voice and verdict ina total solitude and darkness (which can sound very non-ecelesial). In line with this tendency, Williams also at times refuses utholic notions of Created grace, which would seem eed to confine hint to the view that the divine grace, glory or ‘energy’ is simply God asacting with respect to his eternal will, not a paradoxical ‘streaming forth’ of God that participatorily remains God. But this surely risks adopting a position like that of Palmas’ oppouent Barkaam, by affirming a ‘bare’ divine essence, and it is notable that in the article attacking Palamas, Williams scarcely at all alludes to or defends Palamas’ own defence of the hesychastic experience of the uncreated light and the ‘theurgic’ and synergistic practice of the Jesus prayer. Later and elsewhere, he does indeed defend these experiences in his own voive, just as he fully grasps that God as transcendent is non ial as well as fotaliter uliter but isall of that really compatible with Williams’ more ‘Barthian’ and ‘ultra-apophatic’ moments, which risk hypostasising the negative? David Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West: Metuphysies and the Division of Christerone (Cambridge: Canibridge University Press, 2004)I Christianity and Platonisin in Bast and West UL | , ‘quite ofien, ambiguity. Is the non-participable a literally ‘separated’ ontological |X -"" with everything because nothing exists except by virtue of some sort of unity. Indeed, alter the energy of emanation has run out, at the bottom of the material” |’ scale, the power of unity still remains, which is why for Proclus, matter regains in the very pit of being a certain simplicity characteristic of its trans-existential summit (59), See Dominie |. O'Meara, Platonopolis: Platonie Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 96. O'Meara, Platonopolis, p. aR.Christianity and Platonisin in Bast and West 13. My use here of political metaphors for theurgic ontology is justified because Jamblichus, Proclus_and, later, Damase d_politi “constitution. ms of a balance of the One, the Few and the Many, which involved a certain combining of Pythagorean tradition (a I espouse cally a ‘mixed s found especially in the Pseudo-Archytas) with that of Platd." In the latter’s Republic, there is famously an aporia whereby the city must be ruled by the philosopher who alone knows the good through contemplation, and yet civic involvement is likely to contaminate this knowledge. However, the theurgists, unlike the more separatist Plotinus, tended further to integrate the ontological and theoretical with the political, and so to s ck to overcome the aporia: the individual good of the philosopher-ruler is inseparable from the common good of all the people. In accord with this accentuated organicism, which may well be the implication of Plato's Laws rather than his Republic, lamblichus and Proclus regarded the everyday ritual life of the city as itself the beginning of the process of deification. ‘The philosopher ruler’s monarchic supremacy was not for them, therefore, simply to do with his contemplative ‘height, but also with the totally inclusive ‘scope’ of his concern with justice for all, which was tantamount to a concern for the salvation of all. In terms of theoretical ontology, the same pattern whereby, at a starry «theight beyond the mere summit of a pyramid, a ‘reach’ to the entire base of the pyramid establishes a meta-primacy, is repeated when Proclus says that the first ‘principles’ below the strictly divine realm of unity are being, life and intellect, taken in that serial order (103, 115). For from a strictly hierarchical point of view, intellect is more than life which is, in turn, more than being, but the greater reach of being and then life in terms of scope is taken by Proclus to reverse the « normal hierarchical succession. ©\ From this, one can conclude that ‘non-participability’ is, in fact, something 0 Tike a hyberbolic degree of self-sharing, such that unity gives everything to be, yet "without dividing itself! Somehow it gives itself absolutely and without stint, yet because it really does give, it is not identical with its diversity of gifts which can «only be gifts because they remain less than the giver. Hence, each reality is only real because it has fully received unity, yet its unity is after all but particular and incomplete: asa particular limited mode of coherence, it only ‘shares’ in the One. {t must be for this reason that Proclus with seeming inconsistency does after all ;peak of ‘participation in the One, even though he often deems the One to be y } imparticipable (3, 5,21). Uy cn tee cts le be ticned renect pie fie hyypatrtes Meo) rt gain O'Meara, Platonopolis, pp. 87105. aey existence = which ee consists within itselfin a tri | of remaining, ae and reversion. This triad can also be constituted as imparticipable, participated and participating (23, 30, 3' 35, 64). However, it is clear that the ‘imparticipable’ element at the top of the triad itself shares in the next level above it and ,{ transmits this upper level economically within its own level via the outgoing to the lower elements within its own triadic series, which ‘rebound’ upwards. More evidently than Plotinus, the theurgic neoplatonists assume that such Procession also involves participation, and therefore one must conclude that by ‘imparticipable, they mean that which cannot be communicated within the very act of communication as the very condition for the possibility of communication, Moreover, the fact that ‘imparticipability’ recurs at every lower level of the ontological series (or hierarchy) shows that this paradox can be |.’ inverted: what is communicated down the serie: \ is supremely that which cannot be communicated, since the ‘imparticipable’ element always takes the lead at each stage. [tis perhaps for this reason that Proclus says that the descending scale of internally triadic levels can also be considered (beginning at any point upon this scale) a8 two-different series of ‘complete’ imparticipables and ‘dependent’ participations (64). In strict parallel, what descends is the complete, and so indeclinable, as it were alongside the declinable. ‘ | This second, paradoxical model_of methexis, characteristic of theurgic neoplatonism, can be described as ‘participation all the way up! — or ‘radical | Participation, since it does not allow that there is any literal ‘reserve’ in excess. 11). , of communication, precisely because itis this very reserve which is ‘i . “S communicated. “) 5 Wi Cut Yithaly ecoye ayy et ileaftt lor I would argue that it was this model that was generally adopted by Christianized neoplatonism, even though this was not evidently, prior to (Pieces, the she, oil Areopagite and Boethius, under pagan theurgic influence. {0 4, .9) ete os Bey ‘This was for very good reasons. First, Christianity as a monotheism insisted ihe} on the absolute simplicity of God: a simplicity incompatible with different jy /)>)4" ‘aspects’ or ‘ontological regions’ within the Godhead. Second, in terms of the doctrine that ‘God is Love, especially s spelt out in Trinitarian terms, Ke hristianity saw ‘sharing’ as an attribute of God’s very essence, even though it also held, for monotheistic reasons, that this essence is radically incommu: Such an affirmation was a crucial aspect of the Christian view that (God wa gminently ‘personal’ in nature. Christianity was therefore com- mitted to both gift and paradox as fundamental dimensions of its theology.,Witty ‘Yo para-doxa ~ an incomprehensibly original excess of glory, which is to say also, an incomprehensibly original excess of gilt.” ‘This tradition was inherited by Gregory Palamas who ~ it must be stressed was loyal to it up to a point. For this reason, he never s iggested anything like a ‘real distinction’ in God between the reserved ‘essence’ and the shared ‘energies. ‘The question is whether he nonetheless admitted a kind of ‘formal distinction’ between the two, if we define a formal distinction as roughly ‘a kind of latent division within a real unity, permitting a real if partial separation on some arising occasion. This mode of distinction is most of all associated with John Duns Scotus, Palama: near contemporary in the West. I shall contend below that Palamas did indeed make a distinction within God along these lines and that to do so was to compromise the divine simplicity to a dangerous degree. A further consideration supporting ‘radical participation’ is thal the Fathers normally spoke of ousia in the singular, but of energeiai in the plural. ‘This implies that since God is simple, when his energy is single, it is entirely at one with uncreated ousia, However, when the energies are plural, then they are created energies ~ and this is the way that the Cappadocians generally spoke of them. A comparison can be made with Aquinas's consideration of grace: this is either uncreated and identical with God's eternal essence or created, insofar as it acts upon us (ST I-IT.q. 110a.1 re eation, since, for Christianity, this is an absolute ontological divide. .). For there is no realm ‘between’ the Creator and One can make the same point about grammatical tense with respect lo the t is eminent gift. But insofar as the Spirit acts upon us, he conveys a diversity Holy Spirit, in keeping with Pauline usage. As one and uncreated, the Holy Spi of created ‘gifts, ‘There would be no warrant for arguing that the Spirit is, in itself, according to a lesser aspect, incorrigibly plural. Indeed, one point of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, well-grasped by David Bradshaw, is that it is God. himself who acts energetically upon his creatures both to create and to restore them." So while the Spirit is, in a sense, the point of linkage’ between the ‘Trinity and the Creation, this does not at all imply any ontological ‘middle realm. On the contrary, the striking Christian understanding of the Holy Spirit as the ontological connection enabling both creation and deification means that it is God himself who mediates between himself and creatur and that the energies which he communicates to them simply are himself, And herein lies one crucial * This is true conceptually and probably also etymologically, Whatever may be claimed by some nothing really forbids us from supposing that all Indo-European ‘do’ and ‘da’ roots are originally concerned at once with gift and outgoing manifestation or intentional action ~ as in ‘I do! © Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West, p. 23.difference between the Old ‘Testament and the New: in the former, the divine spiritual energies were only revealed as der iving from him, not to him ~ to his very being, his eternal essence. also belonging Palamas, Scotus and the formal distinction ‘The danger, then, of even any formal distinction between the essence and the energies of God is, lirst, that it refuses the specifically Christian view of God in ‘cond, that it displaces the primacy of a Trinitarian logic whereby both the order (logos) and the potent vitality (pneuma) that we seein the world derive entirely from a God who is eminently both these things throughout his very being: ‘all the way up, he is utterance, and ‘all the way up, he is living breath terms of gift and paradox. However, it is just these points, which in the main, Palamas, as Bradshaw well argues, was Lrying to sustain, Against Barlaam, who (rather like Avicenna) took the view that God can only act in this world via created mediating powers, he insisted that the power by which God acts upon the creation is God himself and is uncreated; thus his profoundly mystical insistence upon uncreated energeiai.* For Palamas, the energies are ellampsesi, or ‘the shinings forth’ of the good from the divine essence (Triads [1 2.22). Although distinguished from the latter, they are inseparable from it, just as the faculties of seeing and hearing persist in the soul even when they are not being exercised. Despite the latter circumstance, the soul remains ‘without composition’ (Triads II] 2.22). Nevertheless, one cannot, for Palamas, say that the soul simply ‘is’ these faculties ~ within the soul, they somehow introduce both a plurality and a virtuality, Here, a certain initial resemblance to Scotus appears in view: for Scotus, the soul was as simple in nature as God, and correspondingly, simplicity was not the key distinguishing feature of the divine as il was for Aquinas, for whom the soul is composed of the distinction between essence and being, exemplified (in the case of the human soul) asa distinction between its essence and its active powers of sensing and under standing, Scotus made ‘infinity’ and not ‘simplicity’ the crucial mark of the divine, and regarded all modes of activity, whether infinite or finite, as somewhat qualifying any sheerly simple nature." "Ibid. pp. 221-62. ** See Duns Scouus, Opus Oxoniense, LV, dist 43,¢ 2,6 for the view that ‘the intellective soul is the proper form of man, in contrast ( Aquinas who, with greater fidelity to Aristotle, sees the power to under stind as but a proper accident’ of the animal soul. See also Op. Ox. Ud, 16. q. 1, 3-4, 1-12, 16 | | | |Itis for this reason that Duns Scotus takes Augustine's ‘psychological analogy" for the ‘Irinity in an over iteralist fashion, ‘Ihe face that the human soul can image God with respect to simplicity is not for Scotus compromised by the dis inction of the intellectual faculties of memory, intellect and will, because these are not really distinct from each other and nor are they together distinct from the substance of the soul. ‘Thus in his earlier Oxford version of his Sentence Commentary, Scotus embraces a doctrine of the soul as radically simple which he later qualifies in the Paris version merely in terms of a forma distinction, as opposed to a real one, between alll these elements.!? But then he is prepared to see an equally formal distinction between the divine essence and the divine persons, and between the divine persons themselves which he identifies more by attribute than by relation. For even though, for Scotus, God is infinitely different from us, by virtue of an infinitely high degree of intensity of being, he is still univocally ‘the same’ as us in terms of the formal character of his essential quiddity. ‘This is because Scotus, unlike Aquinas, chose to derive his ontology without reserve from a specific semantics which has itself opted to regard being as logically univocal rather than equivocal. (Scotus reversed his earlier position on this score.) One thing which appears problematic about Scotus’s schema is that (albeit partly in the name of the primacy of the will) it seems to edge back towards a Plotinian neoplatonism, as mediated by Avicenna, for which ‘essen and especially the essence of the first principle, remains locked within itself, and any doi ive aclivity constitutes a secondary ontological moment. ‘Ihus for cotus both divine intellection and the ‘Lrinitarian emanations are ‘somewhat secondary, in formal terms, to the absolute primacy of infinity as defining the divine nature."® Yet Palamas appears proximate to Scotus’s onto-theological schenia, bet ause ition’ in he compares God to the Soul and discovers in both a certain ‘compos terms of the distinction between what e and what always in active exere remains latent. As with the great scholastic from the Borders, we do not have a ‘real distinction’ here, but we do seem to have a ‘formal distinction’ in terms of an irreducible difference within an albeit simple reality that can become apparent. " See O, Boulnois, Eire et representation (Pais: PUF, 1999), p, 202. "Fora correction of the crude and anachronistic ‘analytic’ renderings of univocity by Richard Cross, see C. Pickstock, ‘Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Significance, Modern ‘Theology 21.4 2005), pp. 543-74. iin, Pickstock, ‘Duns Scotus: * See a118 A Celebration of Living ‘Iheology Likewise, Palamas refuses the idea of the greatest height as a democratic scope because he seems to attribute divine omnipresence only to the divine energies and not to the divine essence. Again, in this instance, he indulges in a somewhat univocalist and onto-theological direct comparison between God and the human person. Kor he says that God's nature do s not consist in being everywhere any more than our own nature consists in being somewhere (Triads III, 2, 9). Once more this suggests a kind of formal distinction between embodied human nature and spatial position, whereas for Aquinas, an embodied being is necessarily individuated, and individuation occurs in part by virtue of spatially- determined (or designated’) matter.'® For Scotus, by comparison, individuation is by virtue of a property of haecceitas inherent in an individual thing, while matter is a quasi -form ‘virtually’ detachable [rom each formed entity.” In these two accounts, stability and flux are themselves positioned in very diflerent places: for Aquinas, there is an absolute unity of form that ties a creature toa specific, if mobile habitation, even though the highest part ofan intellectual creature aspir s beyond this. For Scotus, in contr st, the entire specificity of a creature ~ which in the human case is an intellectual specificity — re ns individual integrity in a more inward, ineffable manner, which means that it is more subject to exterior locational shifts and internal bodily mutation - given the Scotist acceptance of an Avicennian plurality of forms in a single substance!’ ~ or even to de-materialization, without losing its very identity. Aquinas favours the peasant integrity of a dweller in a specific place and heavenwards aspiration that would sustain this integrity in an eminent fashion; Scotus favours the cosmopolitan integrity of a traveller which survives essentially unaltered every horizontal movement and even every vertical one, since they have been levelled to the horizontal plane of univocity of being. Therefore, for Palamas to s y that human nature is detachable from location is perhaps surprisingly to p iF P BY approximate to the cosmopolitan ontological option of the Franciscan, By invoking this comparison for 3od, he denies, as the Domini- can theologian explicitly aflirms, that God is more like a super-elevated intuitive rusticus, than he is like a kind of map-reading cosmic voyager (SCG 4.1 (3)).!” In consequence, ‘every place’ becomes for Palamas somewhere that God might Aquinas, Quodlibetal Questions 11, a 6. Aquinas fuctual contributes an ‘extensional’ component, but seems finally to have returned to the Avicenni position that it does, Duos Scotus, Ordinatio, Hd. p. Lg. 4. 76:49. 5-61, 188; Questiones in Metaphysiva 7. 4. 5. Ondinatio W.d V4 g. 3.1. 54 See J. Milbank and C. Pickstock, Truth in Aquinas (London: Routledge 2001), p. 14 for an ironic comment ou this po on the issue of whether matter of itselfChristianity and Platonism in East and West lg go, just as | might go to Brighton, having heard of it. But for Aquinas, ‘every place’ as the divine location simply is God, in a way remotely analogous to the way in which my bodily positioning is myself, with the proviso, of course, that 's case, ‘his place’ (that he is) is in no way a limitation of his being or essence. Participation in Platonic and Christian tradition Can Palamas’s idea of an ineffable ‘excess’ within God over his own capacities and activities be true to Christian tradition? 1 would sugg: st that it even lag: behind the direction in which Plato was earlier moving. For Plato increasingly saw the daemonic rather than ‘divine’ force of eros, belonging to the metuxu, the ‘between realm, as springing directly from the divine and leading back to the divine, And the latter he regarded not just as ousia but also as dynamis, as something never without its mode of self-manifestation, of acting outwards ‘beyond itself” Both these elements, of eros and dynantis, were taken up into Christian , Wadition, and Gregory of Nyssa deploys the category of dynamis in order to, 1." explain how the Trinitarian outgoing from the Father can be fully divine? In the case of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, we get the idea of God as in himself eternally outflowing in the double mode of the immanent hearchia of the Trinity and the external hierarchia of the Creation ~ the two motions being absolutely inseparable within the divine simplicity, such that God is paradoxically ‘cartied self’ (TDN I1V.13: 712A). Considerably later than Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor operated with a ’ outside of hin Sdistinction of Logos and logoi which lies profoundly close to that between the '-'\" essence and the energies. However, this is by no means for Maximus a distinction f | 5 7 ; within the Godhead itself, nor is there for him any ontological limbo between the created logoi and the uncreated Logos. Instead, the logoi participate in the unity | bf the Logos and conyey ils simplicity of order in diverse and yet harmoniously coordinated ways, Conversely, the Logos enfolds within its singularity the myriad dive sity of the Jogo which are the ‘ideas’ in God of every living creature (Ambiguum 7; 41). " See J. Milbank, “Ihe Force of dentity’ in The Word Maile Strange: ‘Theology, Language, Culture (Osford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 194-216. * Milbank, “Ihe Force of klentity’120 A Celebration of Living ‘Theology Jumping to the most authentic development of Eastern theology in the twentieth century, the mature thought of Sergei Bulgakov remained in continuity with Maximus by stressing that the mediation exercised by ‘quasi-hypostatic’ Sophia (the ‘personating’ dimension of the divine essence itself) nonethele lies paradoxically on either side of the divide to be mediated and never ‘in the middle Thus, wisdom is either the uncreated divine essence, or it is the created principle of mysteriously vital and ‘personating’ power that shapes the universe from within. No ‘formal distinction’ of the divine Wisdom from the divine essence is ever clearly invoked by Bulgakov and it would, in fact, be adverse to the entire character of his theological ontology, When it comes to the fundamental division in interpreting the distinction between the imparticipable and the participated, it is therefore clear that Christianity has remained consistently wedded to the view that participation goes ‘all the way up’ — ‘radical participation, However, it is also possible to argue for a certain aflinity between this version and the theurgic current within neoplatonism. Indeed, the strange thing is that Bradshaw himself partially makes thisa rgument, and renders ita crucial aspect of his book. Non-theurgic neoplatonism in the tradition of Plotinus (although the latter “ is by no means entirely without theurgic elements)” tends to emphasize a ws retreat into the soul which is also an ascent upwards into the ontological ‘sphere’ Vt “of soul that lies above the body. ‘This a cent continues through the sphere of (yy othe intellect up to very threshold of the One, where (aporetically) the climb >. canniol be completed on pain of abolition of the soul and the intellect in favour VOL a merging with, and mystical ‘non-comprehension’ of ineffable unity. Via Avicenna, this tradition encourages a transmutation of the Platonic doctrine.of recollection of transcendent forms through the operation of occasional ‘triggers, into a doctrine of a priori understanding in the depths of the soul. Ultimately, 9 both Descartes and Kant stand within this lineage. By comparison, theurgic neoplatonism after lamblichus tends to emphasize how the soul is ‘fully descended’ into the body and remains there in order to execute ritual acts which attract the ‘descent’ of the divine power. While pe the capacity of the divine to descend remains distinct from the question of | participation, there is clearly a strong link: for the ability of the divine at any level to descend suggests that the higher realm itself condescends, rather than See |. Milbank, ‘Sophiology and ‘Iheurgy: ‘the New ‘Theological Horizon! in Fncounter Between Fasteen Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodaxy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 45-85, * However, Plotinus tends to view theurgic descent as belonging to the intellectual life of the soul rather than to the cosmos or to external ritualChristianity and Platonism in East and West 121 being but the passive subject of an ontological declension. And since, at any level, according to Proclus, the higher rank is relatively imparticipable (for its | 4. Specific dignity can never be fully communicated) this implies, as already argued, -2 paradox in the idea of theurgic descent: what cannot decline, nevertheless jaa does, in a kenotic fashion, In principle, this paradox can reach up ‘all the way to the Lop’ and one can conceive the One itself as the origin of descent and even <,) 48 as in itself descending, precisely because the very highest is so by virtue of its unlimited ‘spatial’ reach, Such an explicit extremity of paradox is perhaps only arrived at within _«¢ Dionysius’ Christianization of the theurgic, in the course of his incorporation of the ideas of Proclus. It should, however, be noted here that there are also ‘Christian equivalences of the theurgic prior to Dionysius and that, for all Augustine’s opposition to what he saw as the magical, demon-invoking character of pagan theurgics, there is a certain equivalent of the theurgic moment in his Confessiones.”* It is singing a psalm that ‘shows’ (in a Wittgensteinian sense) to us the answer to the conundrum of time, while such liturgical action is only possible because God himself has descended into time at the Incarnation in order to counteract its fallen tendency to ‘dispersal’ Finally, the entire book concludes with a joining of the self with the cosmos to sing a cosmic hymn of praise. | Whatis more, Augustine’sinterest in number,and even adoption ofan ontology of number, which runs through the whole course of his works, is toa large degree of neo-Pythagorean nspiration, and an increase in the Pythagorean dimension was, as already alluded-to, one characteristic of theurgic neoplatonism. O'Meara notes a specific p allel in Augustine's early work De Ordine (II xiv, 39-xvi, 44) in which he refers to the fact that Pythagoras led his disciples to the heights of contemplation through the study of mathematics and then finally applied this ! number-based curriculum to politics.’ However, O'Meara wrongly argues that Augustine’ later critique of both empire and pagan magic in the City of God | imply a complete rejection of this earlier Pythagorean approach to the political.” He claims this on the basis of the view that Augustine later rejects any theurgic- al life on earth style integration of theoria and politics, which would regard poli as training for the divine life, or any earthly city asa reflection of an archetypal heavenly one. ‘The latter notion was much more to the fore in Iamblichus and * [tis not impossible that Augustine knew something of humblichus’s works: see O'Meara, Platonopolis, psi Augustine's later retraction of the endorsement of Pytha, clearly alludes to ils apparent endorsement of a merel and approach to the political. oras in the De Oriine at Retractiones 1.3.4 pagan and philosophic ascent to the divine