Speaker 1: You're listening to Jay's Analysis. This is the introduction to the.
Speaker 2: Jays Analysis podcast.
Speaker 1: The only authoritative source for Jay's analysis is Jay's Analysis, Film, Philosophy, Geopolitics,
Speaker 1: the Esoteric, and much much more satire and comedy too,
Speaker 1: now added bonus for free.
Speaker 3: One of the more difficult topics to disect is the
Speaker 3: topic of neoplatonism in Christianity. And I put a lot
Speaker 3: of years into this question because it is very texting,
Speaker 3: it's very intricate, but we can to some understanding on this,
Speaker 3: and the purpose of this video is going to be
Speaker 3: a kind of a rough introduction to the longer talk
Speaker 3: that I'm going to do now. I've been reading recently
Speaker 3: Michael Hoffman's new book, The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome,
Speaker 3: and as you can see, I'm about almost halfway. So
Speaker 3: I just got this the other day and I'm about
Speaker 3: halfway through the seven hundred page attack on the last
Speaker 3: five to eight hundred years of Western Roman Catholicism. And
Speaker 3: most of what's in here I think is correct. Everything
Speaker 3: I've seen so far is pretty solid. There's a couple
Speaker 3: of areas where I take issue with Hoffman, particularly where
Speaker 3: it's related to the character of Augustine if you look
Speaker 3: at Plotonis's and Neids, the phillyoquay that Augustine pioneered and
Speaker 3: which was subsequently dogmatized by the Council of Toledo with
Speaker 3: papal approval, which you can also find a dissection of
Speaker 3: in my essay that I just wrote about aryan arguments
Speaker 3: being used by Philioquist. So it's actually an inverse. It
Speaker 3: does not at all achieve the purpose for which the
Speaker 3: filioque was intended. But we're gonna not really delve into
Speaker 3: Augustine and all that right now, because the main point
Speaker 3: of this is to do a bit of a review
Speaker 3: of the first half of Hoffman's book and then maybe
Speaker 3: my own thoughts on it. But as I said, you know,
Speaker 3: over the last ten to fifteen years, this is a
Speaker 3: topic that's been very central to me. In my twenties,
Speaker 3: I was very much into Tomism and prior to that
Speaker 3: also the Augustinian tradition. So you know, most of my
Speaker 3: twenties I spent reading those two guys in mass Obviously
Speaker 3: I read other things too. I wasn't just studying Tomism,
Speaker 3: but you know, those things were something I took very serious.
Speaker 3: Thing weren't there weren't ideologies that I adopted happenstance or
Speaker 3: willy nilly. I really put the time and the effort
Speaker 3: into it. And so I have my Suma over here,
Speaker 3: and I have tremendous amounts of notes in it, as
Speaker 3: well as the Summa country Geen t Lace the other work,
Speaker 3: as well as other I have the Katina Array of
Speaker 3: quinas well, which is a commentary on the Gospels and
Speaker 3: other philosophical works de Veritate and so forth. So I'm
Speaker 3: not I'm familiar with this territory. I know it very well.
Speaker 3: I know very in depth that the nature of Tonism,
Speaker 3: and it's a lot more complex than a lot of
Speaker 3: times the way we want to break it down. Now,
Speaker 3: that's not an attack on Hoffmann's book, although he does
Speaker 3: still have a bit of a regard for Aquinas that
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have.
Speaker 2: With all of the.
Speaker 3: Errors of created grace and beatific vision and philioque and
Speaker 3: on and on and on that are occurring that occur
Speaker 3: in the Suma Theologica, it really doesn't matter about those
Speaker 3: guys and their opinions, because when it comes to the
Speaker 3: topic of Roman Catholicism, what matters is what's dogma and
Speaker 3: it's very clearly made dogma in Vatican One that the
Speaker 3: ordinary Universal teaching Magisterium of the Church cannot air. So
Speaker 3: when you read a book like Denzinger, which I've read,
Speaker 3: the entirety of Denzinger is the totality of what's more
Speaker 3: or less dogmatic. It was put together before the Second
Speaker 3: Vatican Council, so it constitutes dogma for normatively speaking, for
Speaker 3: Roman Catholicism, or it's supposed to if they're consistent with it.
Speaker 3: Of course, so they don't always follow that, but that's
Speaker 3: a different question of all the dogmas. And but what
Speaker 3: Hoffmann does is that he deconstructs some of the influences,
Speaker 3: and that's very accurate, very appropriate. It echoes the work
Speaker 3: of doctor Farrell and God History and Dialectic, which is
Speaker 3: really just the systematization of the critique from the Orthodox
Speaker 3: perspective over the last however, many hundreds of years. Right,
Speaker 3: it's not new, it's not fresh arguments, it's really just
Speaker 3: a systematization, and it's done very well. And shorter books
Speaker 3: like James Kelly's An Atomizing Divinity that I've done many
Speaker 3: interviews with. His book is a good presentation of the
Speaker 3: same theme. But again we have to eventually let go
Speaker 3: of some of these Augustinian ideas that just are not biblical. Now,
Speaker 3: that's not to be unfair to Augustine, because again, when
Speaker 3: I converted to Roman Catholicism back in I don't know,
Speaker 3: two thousand and one or two, I took his name,
Speaker 3: so I'm very familiar with what he teaches. I know
Speaker 3: what's in on the Trinity. I know it's in on Baptism,
Speaker 3: and I guess the Donatus, and I know it's in
Speaker 3: retractions and soliloquies and on and on on. So to
Speaker 3: be fair, obviously the later Augustine was a lot more
Speaker 3: biblical in his approach. He did shed a lot of
Speaker 3: that philosophical baggage, but it really doesn't matter, because we
Speaker 3: don't build our theology on a guy. We don't build
Speaker 3: our theology on Aquinas. We build our theology on the
Speaker 3: Bible and then, by extension, the Church universally what the
Speaker 3: Church is always believed everywhere and at all times. And
Speaker 3: the Augustinian argumentation for the philioqui, as well as the
Speaker 3: very very bad argument that I elucidated with absolute clarity
Speaker 3: in my article that the Holy Spirit perceives from the
Speaker 3: will of God. That's an aryan argument for why the
Speaker 3: Son is a creation. So the subordinationism that is often
Speaker 3: mentioned in terms of God and arianism and all that
Speaker 3: actually applies most coherently to philioquism. And I've sent this
Speaker 3: piece to numerous Catholics, numerous Catholic apologists. Nobody has responded
Speaker 3: to it yet or given it any adequate uh defense.
Speaker 3: And there's not going to be a defense, because it's
Speaker 3: our it's in your dogma. So that that human psychological
Speaker 3: analogy of mind and and will and the spirit being
Speaker 3: will and all the stuff that's that's read up into
Speaker 3: the Trinity, that's wrong. And we have to let that go.
Speaker 3: And once we do that, and we get back to
Speaker 3: what's in the Councils and what's in the Fathers, whose
Speaker 3: theology has been confirmed by the Universal Church already in
Speaker 3: the first seven slash eight Councils, which deal specifically with
Speaker 3: Christology and the Triad. I mean those teachings are they're
Speaker 3: pretty solid. I mean they line up there, They make sense,
Speaker 3: They give balance to what we're what we believe, and
Speaker 3: all the deviations, be it filioquism, be it papism, that
Speaker 3: you can all trace them back to deviations that relate
Speaker 3: to Christology or the relationship between God and the world.
Speaker 3: So what we're going to talk about now is the
Speaker 3: subject matter of Hoffman's book, what is the relationship of
Speaker 3: God to the world? And can we look to Plutonis
Speaker 3: and Plato and Plethon and all of these Neoplatonic and
Speaker 3: Platonic middle Platonic guys who are coming up with their
Speaker 3: ratio mathematical mysticism as a way to understand God. And
Speaker 3: I think that the answer is no. And that's an
Speaker 3: emphatic no, because so much of the early Patristic argumentation
Speaker 3: when it comes to the nature of God, or the
Speaker 3: questions of Christology and the natures of Christ and so forth,
Speaker 3: all those questions are not grounded in obscure neoplatonic arguments.
Speaker 3: They're grounded in the Bible. And you'll see that very
Speaker 3: clearly when you read through their works, especially somebody like Athanasius,
Speaker 3: or if you read Ceri Old Jerusalem, Saint Cerul of Alexandria,
Speaker 3: if you read Saint Gregory Palomas a thousand years later,
Speaker 3: the arguments are consistently Bible, Bible, Bible blah blah Bible
Speaker 3: and if there's ever a philosophical subtlety or clarification that's
Speaker 3: brought in, it's merely for a teaching tool.
Speaker 2: We might use the.
Speaker 3: Term monad, and I believe that if the Church fathers
Speaker 3: ever used that term, Like when Athanasius and decent Otis
Speaker 3: is arguing with about the Arians, he's making fun of
Speaker 3: the way that they talk about the monad and then
Speaker 3: it being what creates a diad. So they're relying on neoplatonism.
Speaker 3: When Saint Basil is arguing with heretics, he points out
Speaker 3: that the I am the toe on I am being
Speaker 3: supposedly that's not a Greek philosophical statement in Exodus. That's
Speaker 3: not God is not saying I am super existent essence.
Speaker 3: I am super existent. He's not saying that.
Speaker 2: He's saying I.
Speaker 3: Am the personal God that has the covenantal relationship with Israel.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So the error has been that when the Church and
Speaker 3: different apologists like Origin, we're trying to convert their friends
Speaker 3: who are very steeped in Greek philosophy, a lot of
Speaker 3: times they were speaking the Greek philosophical lingo to try
Speaker 3: to have a common ground. Now, I don't think that
Speaker 3: that's inherently necessarily always wrong, but it's it's a little
Speaker 3: bit dangerous. I mean John does this in John one
Speaker 3: one where he talks about the logos, and certainly the
Speaker 3: corn corny Greek New Testament would have been going out
Speaker 3: to people who spoke coin a Greek.
Speaker 2: So it's not that it's wrong.
Speaker 3: The terms inherently are wrong, it's rather the context and
Speaker 3: what you mean by them. So for example, hoopostasis, the
Speaker 3: personhood that's spoken of as a you know, characterizing the
Speaker 3: Father of the Son and the spirit. This person aspect
Speaker 3: that is not from Plotinus, is not from the Eneids,
Speaker 3: it doesn't originate in Greek philosophers and Athens. It comes
Speaker 3: out of the New Testament. Right, The New Testament uses
Speaker 3: the Greek term hoypostasis, and this was again originating probably
Speaker 3: ultimately in the Septuogen, the Greek translation of the Old Testament,
Speaker 3: which is generally speaking, what the New Testament writers relied
Speaker 3: on was the septuigen. So that's kind of the norm
Speaker 3: in the Orthodox Church is generally speaking, is the septuagen
Speaker 3: and that terminology. But again, as I've shown in my
Speaker 3: Logos talk, where we go to Saint John Damascus's exposition
Speaker 3: of the Orthodox face. You know, what we see is
Speaker 3: that it's clear that the context for these terms and words,
Speaker 3: the one right the triad, it's not what Plato meant.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So again, if you look at the eneids, if you
Speaker 3: look at the third in the fifth in neid of Platinis,
Speaker 3: you'll see that Platinis makes these arguments of how the
Speaker 3: monad and the diad love one another, and then that
Speaker 3: that love creates this third hypostasis, which is spirit or something.
Speaker 3: Now that's obviously clearly what is being said by Augustine
Speaker 3: when he tries to make this very new argument for
Speaker 3: the philioque and this spirit proceeding from will and being will,
Speaker 3: which is again there's no way to make that orthodox
Speaker 3: because it's an aryan argument. So all that to say
Speaker 3: that Hoffmann's book is another witness another researcher coming to
Speaker 3: the conclusions that I came to that many have come
Speaker 3: to for the most part, ten years or so ago,
Speaker 3: when it was really a question of what is the
Speaker 3: perennial philosophy?
Speaker 2: What is this?
Speaker 3: How does it relate to Neoplatonism, how does it relate
Speaker 3: to the you know, Jewish mysticism, in the Kabbalah. How
Speaker 3: does that relate to the topics of the Renaissance guys
Speaker 3: like Marsilio Ficino and Cornelius Agrippa and who else, Johann
Speaker 3: Reuchlinn and these different guys who were very interested in
Speaker 3: utilizing Kabbalistic structures to try to convert Jews or as
Speaker 3: a means by which the Church might be able to
Speaker 3: improve upon its theology of who Christ is and all
Speaker 3: this kind of stuff and divine Plato as he's called. Now, this,
Speaker 3: as Hoffman correctly argues, has been the dominant trend since
Speaker 3: the Renaissance, in the Renaissance papacy. And when you look
Speaker 3: no further than the art and architecture of Rome to
Speaker 3: see that confirmed. And that's ultimately what starts becoming. The
Speaker 3: problem is, it's not just philosophers philosophizing, it's also.
Speaker 2: Very weird artworks.
Speaker 3: I remember when I was getting really into Rome Catholicism
Speaker 3: back in my twenties, I took a tour of the
Speaker 3: One of the actually is an episcopal cathedral.
Speaker 2: I'm not making this up. You can look it up.
Speaker 3: There's an episcopal cathedral in Memphis, and when you go
Speaker 3: in there there's a giant blonde hair, blue eye Ariyan Jesus.
Speaker 3: I don't know why they made him in an Aryan Jesus,
Speaker 3: but there's and then he's like facing opposite of a
Speaker 3: Michael the Archangel who's holding a scroll with E equals
Speaker 3: MC squared on it with with Einstein's STICKT. Now, I
Speaker 3: did a little research on this guy. I don't remember
Speaker 3: his name, but he was very well respected Roman artisan
Speaker 3: an artist, and I think he did a lot of
Speaker 3: work for Pious the twelve and different popes and whatnot.
Speaker 3: He's designed various cathedrals, so in the point, because it's
Speaker 3: not just a Episcopalian thing, he's also very important for
Speaker 3: all the Roman Catholic cathedrals that he's designed. And then
Speaker 3: you start to think, well, now, wait a minute, So
Speaker 3: there is actually all this bizarre alchemical imagery and all
Speaker 3: these kinds of images that are that populate the cathedrals
Speaker 3: of Roman Catholicism. Now, why would that be? And that's
Speaker 3: what we're going to look at as we get into
Speaker 3: this book. It is going to be precisely because the
Speaker 3: West was not just corrupted through Renaissance and Hermeticism and
Speaker 3: all this kind of stuff, from the year, you know,
Speaker 3: fifteen hundred on or twelve hundred on. There's a deeper
Speaker 3: route that is actually the philosophical presuppositions of absolute dune simplicity,
Speaker 3: of filioquism, of created grace, of the natural immortality of
Speaker 3: the soul as opposed to the body. All of these
Speaker 3: things were already condemned in the chart. The soul is
Speaker 3: not naturally immortal. It's what Christ grants to it through
Speaker 3: the incarnation, death, buril.
Speaker 2: And resurrection.
Speaker 3: That's how we participate in the immortality that God has
Speaker 3: promised us in the resurrection. And so very very different
Speaker 3: doctrines is what I'm trying to point out here, and
Speaker 3: so all the more absurd by the way, then for
Speaker 3: Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox that try to mesh together
Speaker 3: because the theology is not compatible. It's not compatible because
Speaker 3: Neoplatonism is not compatible with the Bible, simply put. So,
Speaker 3: what I want to do in this talk is get
Speaker 3: into Middle and in later Platonism and particularly the character
Speaker 3: of Platinus. And Platinus is important because his philosophy is
Speaker 3: very influential in the West and it leads to a
Speaker 3: whole host of controversies and debates and part relationship to
Speaker 3: the Christian Church in the first several centuries and then
Speaker 3: even into the Middle Ages. The character of Plotinus and
Speaker 3: his ineads, first of all, are going to be the
Speaker 3: most relevant for influencing characters like Augustine. Now, if you
Speaker 3: read a book like A City of God, for the
Speaker 3: most part, City of God is something that we would consider,
Speaker 3: you know, an orthodox book. It does contain several sections
Speaker 3: of speculation, but the first half of the book is
Speaker 3: Augustine's critique of the pagan world, the City of Man
Speaker 3: as he calls it, and accurately accurately, So we would
Speaker 3: say that the City of Man is flawed precisely because
Speaker 3: it all the way back to you know what we
Speaker 3: read in Genesis six or Genesis ten and eleven, the
Speaker 3: Tower Babbel is basically been trying to erect a culture,
Speaker 3: a society around the worship of Man slash Idolatry slash
Speaker 3: the Devil. And so the idea here is that you know,
Speaker 3: all of the pagan empires in the past pretty much,
Speaker 3: you know, collapse into that pattern.
Speaker 2: You know, this is the entire experience of Israel as
Speaker 2: a nation.
Speaker 3: You know, with the Babylonian captivity and the destruction of
Speaker 3: the temple. It's the experience of most of mankind throughout
Speaker 3: history is to be subjected to some form of pagan
Speaker 3: human based law that is tyrannical. And so this is
Speaker 3: not always totally brutal. You know, there was times where
Speaker 3: the empires might provide a lot of peace.
Speaker 2: And so you'll read.
Speaker 3: In sections in Isaiah about Darius, and I excuse me,
Speaker 3: about Cyrus and Isaiah and Darius with Daniel and Nebucaneser
Speaker 3: and so forth. And at times these guys might have
Speaker 3: even been converted by the prophets. We don't exactly know,
Speaker 3: but we get tints of that, perhaps like with in
Speaker 3: the Book of Daniel when he interacts with Nebucaneser. But regardless,
Speaker 3: for the most part, the pagan empires are a thorn
Speaker 3: in the side of God's people. And then, certainly for
Speaker 3: the first few centuries of Christianity, the Empire is very
Speaker 3: virulent on persecuting Christians. But the persecution quote unquote of
Speaker 3: the Church and of our theology doesn't always come in.
Speaker 2: The form of overt attack through dictators or kings or armies.
Speaker 3: It can also come at times through subtle philosophical wranglings
Speaker 3: and sophistry, and one of those issues, I think you
Speaker 3: could argue is shown. One of those examples is very
Speaker 3: clearly shown in the example of Platonis. Now, I'm not
Speaker 3: saying that Platonus was necessarily Christian, but as we saw
Speaker 3: in the talk that I did on the older Greek guys,
Speaker 3: you know, Heraclitis and Promenides and the Ionians, and then
Speaker 3: into Plato and Platonism, we saw a lot of figures
Speaker 3: who were perhaps you know, into the Roman period as
Speaker 3: it's called the Stoics, who were probably drawing from several
Speaker 3: different well springs, maybe even Marcus Aurelius. Some of these
Speaker 3: guys were probably influenced in some degree by Christian thought,
Speaker 3: early theologians. But even though that's still a little unclear,
Speaker 3: we know that there were, you know, dialogues between different
Speaker 3: early Church writers, you know, writing letters to different Roman
Speaker 3: rulers and so forth, trying to explain that you know,
Speaker 3: their position was not anti authoritarian in itself, that it
Speaker 3: was just based on the law of God, and that
Speaker 3: you know, they couldn't in good conscience sacrifice.
Speaker 2: The idols and so forth.
Speaker 3: Now that philosophy of Platinus is crucial because it will
Speaker 3: present one of the most subtle sort of challenges and
Speaker 3: will influence some people to move in the direction of Platonism.
Speaker 3: If I recall Celsus, one of the guys who Origin
Speaker 3: was very pathetically trying to debate with the Celsus was
Speaker 3: a Neoplatonist, and so you get a lot of that
Speaker 3: same tendency of the platonic argumentation, trying to show that
Speaker 3: Christianity is foolish because it relies on the Old.
Speaker 2: Testament being historical.
Speaker 3: And so this is why when Irenaeus writes his big
Speaker 3: Treatise against Heresies in I think one eighty or so,
Speaker 3: somewhere in there, Iernas is battling a lot of Gnosticism,
Speaker 3: and so Gnosticism and Platonism, Neoplatonism, these are very very
Speaker 3: close cousins. They're very influenced perhaps one another at times,
Speaker 3: and so there's not exactly one Neoplatonic thing.
Speaker 2: That you can go to.
Speaker 3: You get Sometimes you get these guys like Iamblicus, who
Speaker 3: is more of a ceremonial magi magic magician type guy.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you get characters like Platinists, where it's not so
Speaker 3: much about ceremonial rituals as it is the individual in
Speaker 3: his own innernosis, the intuitive spark of the inner divine,
Speaker 3: and so forth, and that this is how the soul
Speaker 3: ascends into the higher planetary realms and spheres up to
Speaker 3: the one as we see, we're going to see. That's
Speaker 3: the argumentation of Plotinus, particularly.
Speaker 2: In the Eneiods.
Speaker 3: But if you recall, we did many lectures on Plato
Speaker 3: and the dialogues and the entirety of the Republic, and
Speaker 3: people can go back and listen to those, But the Fiato,
Speaker 3: the Thiadrius, Symposium, Timaeus, Republic, these all provide the skeletal
Speaker 3: outline for what will influence Plotinus, and what he does
Speaker 3: is kind of dispense with all.
Speaker 2: The Socratic dialogue.
Speaker 3: It says, you know, out with all that stuff, let's
Speaker 3: just have a more direct, almost a sort of a
Speaker 3: philo theological treatise.
Speaker 2: It's kind of what the Eneids are. It's not really.
Speaker 3: Making a distinction between those two because in plotin in thought,
Speaker 3: there's not a distinction between the knowledge or nosis that
Speaker 3: you gain in philosophy and theology. They're basically the same endeavors,
Speaker 3: and so by extension, obviously there's no revelation. All experience
Speaker 3: of the forms and phenomena are themselves quote revelation, you
Speaker 3: could say, in plutonium thought. But if we remember, I
Speaker 3: think I did do at least an article on the
Speaker 3: Fayto and then a talk on it, I think, And
Speaker 3: I still haven't gotten to the Tomayos yet. I've read
Speaker 3: it obviously, but I haven't done an electro on it.
Speaker 3: But if we recall that's this sort of Egyptian gnostic
Speaker 3: creation cosmogony of Plato is the Tomayis, and it's where
Speaker 3: we get a lot of the esoteric symbolism that continue
Speaker 3: into the Western tradition. You know, the snake and the
Speaker 3: egg and the oral bo roast and all that out
Speaker 3: of the Tomais. The platonic solids come out of the Tomais.
Speaker 3: And then of course we know everything that's in the Republic.
Speaker 3: We we did a lecture on each one of the
Speaker 3: books of the Republic.
Speaker 2: So if we.
Speaker 3: Recall all that, and if we remember the talk that
Speaker 3: I did a couple of months ago about the mysteries
Speaker 3: of the early Greeks or something to that, if I
Speaker 3: forget exactly what I titled it, but something like that,
Speaker 3: where we did a critique of the dialectics of the
Speaker 3: Greeks and the one and the many, and that's kind
Speaker 3: of what it all boiled down to, was this presupposition
Speaker 3: of setting the one in contrast, contrastinction, dialectical tension and
Speaker 3: opposition with the mini and vice versa. Now, when you
Speaker 3: get to Platinus, as we said, we've dispensed with Socratic
Speaker 3: tales and storytelling and myths and and we've kind of
Speaker 3: tried to boil it into more of a principled, logical
Speaker 3: philosophical treatise that is metaphysical. So it's it's a logical,
Speaker 3: rational approach to metaphysics, trying to pause it different tiers,
Speaker 3: structures and levels of reality. So what does he argue, Well,
Speaker 3: in these aneads, he is giving this metaphysical structure, and
Speaker 3: we're going to kind of go in summary here. Obviously
Speaker 3: it's a fairly long book, so we're not gonna go
Speaker 3: through every single one, but for four Plotinus, just like Plato,
Speaker 3: the soul is divine. The object of life is to
Speaker 3: understand how.
Speaker 2: We might restore that soul to.
Speaker 3: Its original sort of proper place. And you know, the
Speaker 3: getting back to the one, the journey back to the monad. Now,
Speaker 3: this can only be done by knowing a comprehensive structure
Speaker 3: of reality. We have to we have to have a
Speaker 3: comprehensive knowledge of metaphysics and reality and our place in
Speaker 3: the world in order to get to find the map back.
Speaker 3: So in many ways the Labyrinth mythology could be could
Speaker 3: be looked at as a kind of allegory for this,
Speaker 3: you know, the kind of mythology of Minos and the
Speaker 3: Labyrinth and so forth. And it's what a lot of
Speaker 3: the polatness would do is kind of go back. And
Speaker 3: Plotonus does this in the Aeneads. He goes back and
Speaker 3: he looks at Homer and he like he reads these
Speaker 3: sort of allegorical meanings and to Homer. So you get
Speaker 3: a level removed from the grammatico historical. You know, this
Speaker 3: god beating up, this god type story, and we're told, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, Aros is love, and it's not really about
Speaker 3: an actual god. It's an allegory for the principle of
Speaker 3: love and love not falling into porn ai or porno
Speaker 3: or whatever, or erotic lust fixation, but rather that it's
Speaker 3: pure chased a lot you get all these kinds of
Speaker 3: allegorical readings of Homer and Odysseus, which I'm not sure
Speaker 3: that that's totally wrong. I think sometimes it's I mean,
Speaker 3: it's either just totally clever creativity, but sometimes it does
Speaker 3: look like they're making an interesting case that maybe Homer
Speaker 3: was actually encoding those stories as allegorical myths. I don't know,
Speaker 3: but that's debatable regardless, you know, we're not I'm not saying,
Speaker 3: by the way, that has anything to do with theology.
Speaker 3: I'm just considering a different approach is to Platonism and Homer.
Speaker 3: And you know, there's all kinds of millennia of scholars
Speaker 3: debating this stuff, so these are not new questions. But
Speaker 3: with Platinis, we want to stress the dissimilarity to Christianity.
Speaker 3: And again, it's entirely possible that Plotinus heard, you know,
Speaker 3: Christian philosophers, Christian theologians, you know, speaking about things, right
Speaker 3: he maybe he read some of them, maybe he read Origin,
Speaker 3: who knows, and you know, he could have borrowed a
Speaker 3: lot of their terminology and concepts. So could Plutonian ideology
Speaker 3: be a corruption of Christianity?
Speaker 2: Of that's possible.
Speaker 3: Now, I say that because nobody will entertain the thesis
Speaker 3: that I consider very viable that when we look at
Speaker 3: the her structure of the theology of Egypt or any
Speaker 3: of those ancient empires.
Speaker 2: So let's let's use Egypt. So we go back to Egypt, and.
Speaker 3: You know that one of the things that does distinguish
Speaker 3: Egyptian fought from Greek hermeticism is the bodily resurrection. So
Speaker 3: at a certain point in Egypt's history they appeared to
Speaker 3: have adopted some kind of monotheism and a belief in
Speaker 3: the resurrection. I'm not saying that their views weren't totally corrupted,
Speaker 3: but what's interesting is, well, where do they get that idea. Well,
Speaker 3: the liberal scholarship will say, well, this was like some
Speaker 3: old form of monotheism, and you know, then this degenerated
Speaker 3: into paganism or polytheism or something like that, and which
Speaker 3: is not our view. It's not the view of a
Speaker 3: biblical inspiration, it's not orthodox theology. We would say, what's
Speaker 3: more likely is that when Joseph was in Egypt, he
Speaker 3: influenced Egyptian theology. I mean, he has the ear of Pharaoh.
Speaker 3: That's every bit as possible in my view as well. Actually,
Speaker 3: I think that's way more possible and likely than the
Speaker 3: hier critical liberal narrative of.
Speaker 2: Why Egypt.
Speaker 3: Had theological changes that it did. But regardless, the structure
Speaker 3: of the Egyptian Hermetica and so forth is basically the
Speaker 3: kind of architecture that you get in Platonis. So Platonius
Speaker 3: goes on and again, if you read the Hermerica, you
Speaker 3: see that similarity very clearly. Whenever that her Medica is
Speaker 3: from who knows is it really Egyptian? I guess that's
Speaker 3: debated too, but whatever.
Speaker 2: Is likely Egyptian.
Speaker 3: You know, again, with the body resurrection stuff, that is
Speaker 3: a dissimilarity to Platonis. We're not going to have any
Speaker 3: kind of body resurrection with Platonics. So in this philosophy
Speaker 3: there's no access to to the divine through any kind
Speaker 3: of special revelation. So plutonium philosophy, Platonic philosophy, excludes revelation.
Speaker 3: And that's because all nosis, all knowledge, is ultimately of
Speaker 3: the forms. Now, we might be duped by the phantasms
Speaker 3: and the material world and think that we're only understanding
Speaker 3: you know, base matter and so forth, as they would argue,
Speaker 3: but in reality, what we need to do is purify
Speaker 3: ourselves and then the soul, you know, the mind. Soul
Speaker 3: and mind are kind of interestingly linked here, which will
Speaker 3: become another normative view in the West, the body soul dichotomy,
Speaker 3: where intellect and soul almost become interchangeable. So in Plotinus,
Speaker 3: that is the so called reality that we have to accept.
Speaker 3: Once we kind of are initiated into this, you know,
Speaker 3: Plato type stuff, then what happens is you'll realize that
Speaker 3: philosophy is the real guide to life, not any kind
Speaker 3: of special revelation from spirits or gods, and philosophy will
Speaker 3: give you the complete account of reality, and in doing
Speaker 3: so it becomes the guide to life, and that life
Speaker 3: is a signpost. It's a labyrinth maze pointing us to
Speaker 3: going beyond this sensible visible world. So to know that
Speaker 3: reality very much in the same way as Plato, there
Speaker 3: is a need to purify oneself, to work to attain
Speaker 3: virtue and not It's not to be fair to plotonis
Speaker 3: he's not saying that, Oh, it's just mental Like you
Speaker 3: just sit there and contemplate as hard as you can
Speaker 3: on the nature of being or something, and your soul
Speaker 3: will ascend into the heights. You also have to practice
Speaker 3: other ideas of Greek platonic virtue. I guess you know,
Speaker 3: you have to understand aesthetics, and you have to know
Speaker 3: the good and know justice and all this kind of
Speaker 3: stuff that we talked about in the Platonic lectures that
Speaker 3: I did. And so in doing all that, the soul
Speaker 3: is then prepared for its progressive journey into up into
Speaker 3: the One. So well, how then do we live properly
Speaker 3: in this view? What's the ethics here? Well, it starts
Speaker 3: with again dialectics as we saw of Plato, and the assumption,
Speaker 3: the presupposition. The starting point of this system is that
Speaker 3: there is one monad blob unifying principle, a concrete, absolute,
Speaker 3: metaphysical principle, and it is beyond being, as it's called
Speaker 3: many times in these writers. Now, the beyond being is
Speaker 3: not in any way conceptual. It's not in any way tangible,
Speaker 3: it's not in any way knowable.
Speaker 2: It's ineffable. It's not a god.
Speaker 3: It's beyond the conception of God or any notion of God.
Speaker 3: It's not personal.
Speaker 2: It's beyond all that.
Speaker 3: And this one, the supreme principle, we might say, is
Speaker 3: in some way like mind, which is interesting because how
Speaker 3: can it be beyond being if it's supreme mind. But
Speaker 3: maybe to be fair, he thought that he could overcome
Speaker 3: dialectics in that way somehow, I don't know. But the
Speaker 3: unity that we seek, right, we are fragmented.
Speaker 2: We have the multiplicity of.
Speaker 3: Experiences, we experience things through beginning middle end. There's change,
Speaker 3: there's alteration that in the system is the problem. So
Speaker 3: the fact that there's multiplicity, the fact that there's many
Speaker 3: objects of our experience that we change from day to day,
Speaker 3: and we feel one way, we feel another way, that's
Speaker 3: all the problem. And you see the greade one, the
Speaker 3: great monad. It's not like that. And if we could
Speaker 3: only be like that, then we wouldn't have all the
Speaker 3: problems we have. And so all of the forms, the
Speaker 3: platonic forms in the world that are standing behind the
Speaker 3: phenomenal reality that we experience, even the forms still exhibit
Speaker 3: some kind of distinction and duality and opposition. And therefore,
Speaker 3: since they're not an ultimate unity above mind, so to speak,
Speaker 3: is this ineffable one. So it's almost like it's kind
Speaker 3: of like there's gradations. I should have made that a
Speaker 3: little bit clearer minute to go. Excuse me, Mind is
Speaker 3: actually a step below the one. So even mind is
Speaker 3: conceptual and is in some way an analogy between like
Speaker 3: the human mind and some sort of and you know,
Speaker 3: the divine mind. But okay, let me have to make
Speaker 3: it clear. Plotinus is saying that the moment add the
Speaker 3: one is even beyond that. So that's actually technically what
Speaker 3: the ineffable beyond being is. So my mind and above
Speaker 3: the mind and above forms, what you're in, that mind
Speaker 3: is the one. Now Plato will follow Platinus as one
Speaker 3: again in saying that it is beyond a being and
Speaker 3: totally apathetic. That is, nothing can be said of it
Speaker 3: in any positive way or known about it. And you
Speaker 3: can't even say that it quote exists, because whatever kind
Speaker 3: of existence that the monad has, it bears no relation
Speaker 3: or similarity to anything in our experience. So when he
Speaker 3: calls it the good, it's very similar to what Plato says,
Speaker 3: in that the form of the good is above all
Speaker 3: the other forms and is beyond being.
Speaker 2: So ultimate reality is the one.
Speaker 3: Maybe in some way goodness is closer of an approximation,
Speaker 3: but even still you can't predicate goodness of the One,
Speaker 3: because it's beyond being, beyond all conceptuality. If we were
Speaker 3: to give a name to the one, it would be
Speaker 3: the good, he says. So back to Promenides, in the
Speaker 3: old lecture, there was a notion of this kind of
Speaker 3: monad unity, and that's kind of what a lot of
Speaker 3: the ancient Ionians.
Speaker 2: And so forth.
Speaker 3: What they were seeking was some grand unifying principle, but
Speaker 3: they always wanted to make it impersonal. And of course
Speaker 3: that's the same thing that Platonis is doing. So unqualified oneness,
Speaker 3: absolute divine simplicity is the one. Now from this one
Speaker 3: descend various emanations and degrees of reality that as you
Speaker 3: go down the tree of reality, so to speak, there
Speaker 3: is less and less unity and thus less and less reality.
Speaker 3: So this scale of being comes into play here, the
Speaker 3: Greek scale of being, which will be very influential in
Speaker 3: the medieval Christian West, especially when you read the Scholastics
Speaker 3: and all of this speculation about the chain of being
Speaker 3: and all this stuff. It continues on for a long
Speaker 3: long time. Now, that's not to say that every single
Speaker 3: aspect of metaphysics or medieval metaphysics about being is necessarily wrong.
Speaker 3: I'm just speaking of general trends here. So in these
Speaker 3: degrees of reality or emanations from the one. Again, as
Speaker 3: we move further away from the One, there is a
Speaker 3: noticeable differentiation in particularization that leads to less and less
Speaker 3: unity and less and less reality. So as we move
Speaker 3: down from the One, we lose that super essence and
Speaker 3: we fade towards non being. Now, the One is said
Speaker 3: to overflow in this way as a kind of emanation
Speaker 3: in these descending levels, all the way down to the
Speaker 3: physical universe, which is kind of at the bottom of
Speaker 3: this this scheme, this pyramid here, and these these emanations
Speaker 3: are kind of like the sun. So we can look
Speaker 3: at the light of the sun and it's and maybe
Speaker 3: it fades away as it.
Speaker 2: Gets further or something like that.
Speaker 3: And the further away you are, you know, the weaker
Speaker 3: the power and heat of the Sun would be. So thus,
Speaker 3: in order and in structure, we can say the fabric
Speaker 3: of this thing, the universe is unchanging, and it's it
Speaker 3: is static, but it is alive, so it's not dead matter.
Speaker 2: It's full of life.
Speaker 3: There is a cyclical celestial sphere dance that the universe
Speaker 3: does in an orbital pattern around the one, around the monad.
Speaker 3: This will be again very similar to all the traditions
Speaker 3: of the celestial spheres and Neoplatonism, and even.
Speaker 2: In Aristotle talks about the celestial.
Speaker 3: Spheres and how all the spheres move in a circle
Speaker 3: around the monad.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 3: At the highest level, the fullest sense of the good
Speaker 3: there is pure act. It is self contained thought, thinking itself,
Speaker 3: even perhaps the way that Aristotle characterized his quote unquote God,
Speaker 3: which is not the God of the Bible, thought thinking itself,
Speaker 3: total complete contemplation.
Speaker 2: And stasis. There's no change, no alteration, no movement.
Speaker 3: And so the life of the here and the now,
Speaker 3: the physical level that we experience, these are faint images
Speaker 3: precisely because they change and are therefore some in some
Speaker 3: way lesser than the static, perfect super beyond essence essence.
Speaker 3: Now this again, this obviously will be rejected in our theology,
Speaker 3: because change, alteration is not in itself bad. Time isn't
Speaker 3: inherently evil, there's no there's nothing wrong with any kind
Speaker 3: of there's no dialectic at work here. And Saint Gregor
Speaker 3: of Nissa is very good in refuting the heretics who
Speaker 3: argue this, particularly the Platonists, this kind of stuff where
Speaker 3: we don't do that, we don't say that right, because
Speaker 3: if once we say that, it's impossible for there to
Speaker 3: be an incarnation. Right, the Highest Good could in no
Speaker 3: way incarnate because it's absolutely in dialectical tension with time
Speaker 3: and change in space. That's again why we're not Platonists.
Speaker 3: Neoplatonism would exclude the possibility of an incarnation. So there's
Speaker 3: a flow within the universe which consists of a downward
Speaker 3: movement from the One, but some of these beings, particularly Man,
Speaker 3: has the ability to also have an upward movement back
Speaker 3: towards the One. Now, how is that going to happen? Well,
Speaker 3: Platinus is going to construct this elaborate superstructure of metaphysics
Speaker 3: to where there are three hypostaces or persons. Now you
Speaker 3: might say, well, wait a minute, did the Christian Church
Speaker 3: rip off Platinus? No hypostasis. It comes from the subtu agent,
Speaker 3: the Greek translation of the Old Testament, and it comes
Speaker 3: from the New Testament texts.
Speaker 2: So epistasis was used.
Speaker 3: In our revelation prior to the coming of Platonis on
Speaker 3: the scene. Now, individual substances that make up the intelligible
Speaker 3: universe are three, the one and mind and soul. So
Speaker 3: this is the triad of Platonis, One, Mind and Soul, Mind,
Speaker 3: will emanate outward from the One, and it has it's
Speaker 3: automatic and it has the potential itself to know. So
Speaker 3: you have this ineffable beyond being one, the monad, and
Speaker 3: it emanates outwardly a lesser entity called mind.
Speaker 2: And then.
Speaker 3: By this act of contemplation, the world of forms arises.
Speaker 3: So the mind that's that springs forth from the One.
Speaker 3: We could think this is very similar to the story
Speaker 3: of Athena and Zeus. Right, it doesn't Athena spring from
Speaker 3: the head of Zeus. This, this thought form world is
Speaker 3: the result of this first emanation. Now, so when this happens,
Speaker 3: mind wants to be united to the One from from
Speaker 3: whence it emanated or radiated. And so the world of forms,
Speaker 3: the ideals that are generated by mind, is the way
Speaker 3: that the One or the good is known by mind.
Speaker 2: So again it's.
Speaker 3: Very bizarre, but so it comes out from the one
Speaker 3: mind quote unquote, and mind wants to know its origin,
Speaker 3: the One, the mon Ad, and so it thinks about
Speaker 3: the forms, and in those forms it contemplates the One.
Speaker 3: By the way, this is some almost exactly the way
Speaker 3: that a quant talks about knowing the essence of God
Speaker 3: and the archetypes and the essence of God. This absolute
Speaker 3: unity is known at the level of mind through the
Speaker 3: multiplicity of forms. Of course, I don't know how that's
Speaker 3: supposed to happen, But the forms then have this high
Speaker 3: degree of unity, and mind, when it knows these objects,
Speaker 3: it becomes like it. So mind is its own thoughts, thought,
Speaker 3: thinking itself right Aristotle, However, that isn't the absolute level
Speaker 3: of unity, as we saw that was the one. The
Speaker 3: forms only represent the monad or the One at the
Speaker 3: level of the contemplative mind. So mind or noose thus
Speaker 3: timelessly emanates or radiates from the One as a potency
Speaker 3: or ability to know, and thus timelessly mind actually knows
Speaker 3: the One as the multiplicity of forms. Very bizarre, by
Speaker 3: the way, is in no way the orthodox theology of
Speaker 3: the trinity. For one, when you can see this replicated
Speaker 3: in the debates that Athanasius has.
Speaker 2: With the Aryans.
Speaker 3: Because the Arians have all of these same Plutonian presubpositions,
Speaker 3: as Origin would earlier than them, Origin borrow, borrowing all
Speaker 3: this theology would try to say the same stuff. He
Speaker 3: would try to say, well, I guess the son being
Speaker 3: the second emanation is in some way a kind of
Speaker 3: lesser being, and that's what the Church had for, you know,
Speaker 3: a damn goodwhile have to combat this presubposition. And when
Speaker 3: Athenasius fights with it, he says, there's no dialectical tensions
Speaker 3: in God. There's nothing dialectically in opposition. By saying that
Speaker 3: the Father eternally generates the Son, you can have those
Speaker 3: two things be true, and the Father and the Son
Speaker 3: not be in any kind of lesser greater ontological distinction. Now,
Speaker 3: the Father, we believe, is the archae or prime principle
Speaker 3: of the Trinity. He's the beginning and source of the Godhead,
Speaker 3: the fountain of deity. But the fact that there's a
Speaker 3: logical distinction St. Basil says between the Father, the Son,
Speaker 3: and the Spirit, or an ordinal distinction in that the
Speaker 3: Father is prima in patres.
Speaker 2: So you know, kind of.
Speaker 3: Collegiality so to speak, does not mean that there's less dignity, honor, deity,
Speaker 3: et cetera, or glory for the Son or for the
Speaker 3: Holy Spirit. That is at least the rallying cry for
Speaker 3: the first several centuries battling the Arians. But I want
Speaker 3: you to notice, and this is something that has been
Speaker 3: pointed out by different orthodox theologians is the similarity between
Speaker 3: the plutonium starting point and presubsition of what the one
Speaker 3: or the monad or God quote unquote is and that
Speaker 3: of the Arians. And by the way Eunomius, when Eunomius
Speaker 3: has his version of Arianism that he argues with Saint
Speaker 3: Gregor of Nissa, Saint Gregory responds by all the things
Speaker 3: that I'm saying to him that you're hearing me say
Speaker 3: in a response to Platinus. So what is then the
Speaker 3: third emanation? So one in mine also contemplate their distinction.
Speaker 3: And because it is discursive thought, and it's a thought
Speaker 3: process that has successive thoughts rather than being intuitive, Mind's
Speaker 3: contemplation or thought is intuitive. So this is the highest level,
Speaker 3: and therefore to have a lower level, the springing fourth
Speaker 3: of the third of the triad can't in any.
Speaker 2: Way be natural. It has to be or what's the
Speaker 2: word I'm looking for.
Speaker 3: It happens discursively, that is, it happens by reasoning process.
Speaker 3: So mind thinks about all these forms, and it thinks
Speaker 3: about its relationship to the One, and this gives birth
Speaker 3: to soul, and soul is then a lower level of
Speaker 3: emanation and reality from mind So what's the triad here?
Speaker 3: One mind and soul monad diad triad. Now, the soul
Speaker 3: is the cause of everything in the sensible world, and
Speaker 3: it represents the intelligible world to the sense world. So
Speaker 3: the mediator between mind and sense is soul. And then
Speaker 3: once you ascend from soul to mind, you have to
Speaker 3: ascend from mind to monad to one. Although although it's
Speaker 3: distinct from mind, the top levels of soul touch the
Speaker 3: realm of mind, let's see. So it's the bridge, and
Speaker 3: with mind it can rise to self, transcendence and unity
Speaker 3: with the one. So you have to climb the ladder
Speaker 3: of the emanations. So these three hypostases are distinct, and
Speaker 3: they are hierarchically arranged, but they're not totally cut off.
Speaker 3: So again faint images of the idea of the trinity here,
Speaker 3: But the trinity has just been replaced with these different
Speaker 3: intellectual concepts and weird ideas of thought, thinking itself and
Speaker 3: so forth. And so the one in the mind are
Speaker 3: always present to the soul. And because the emanations are
Speaker 3: lower than the starting point, they have to in some
Speaker 3: way be in movement and particular.
Speaker 2: So the life of mind itself is pure stasis. And
Speaker 2: arrest the soul.
Speaker 3: Like the mind desires to know and be itself, so
Speaker 3: there's a succession to its awareness to know a continuous
Speaker 3: series of thoughts then, and so it cannot grasp truth
Speaker 3: all at once like mind can. And the soul is
Speaker 3: the logos of the mind. It is an expression or
Speaker 3: direct image or representation of a higher level of reality
Speaker 3: to a lower level. So here we have a misuse
Speaker 3: of co opting of the idea of logos, where it
Speaker 3: turns into a mystical magical mediator between grades of reality that,
Speaker 3: as we said, are just are different.
Speaker 2: So this is a.
Speaker 3: What's the word I'm looking for? Is this a trinity?
Speaker 3: It is a kind of trinity, but it's not a
Speaker 3: trinity like we teach. In this trinity, the levels are
Speaker 3: lesser and greater, and we don't believe that there's no
Speaker 3: chain of being in God. So reality becomes an unfolding
Speaker 3: process from the top down, from maximum supreme unity down
Speaker 3: into a total differentiation in particularity multiplicity. And as we
Speaker 3: descend down the chain of being, you come to non being.
Speaker 3: The closer that you move towards a way, excuse me,
Speaker 3: the further that you move away from the one the monad.
Speaker 3: You're just like shooting yourself towards non existence and non being,
Speaker 3: So the good the monad. You've been listening to the
Speaker 3: first half of my talk on Plotinus and the Eneids
Speaker 3: and deconstructing them as well as pointing out the hermetic
Speaker 3: influence that would come to be in the West. If
Speaker 3: you want to hear the rest of this talk, then
Speaker 3: you can subscribe at Jay's Analysis for four ninety five
Speaker 3: a month or for sixty dollars a year. Thank you
Speaker 3: for listening.