Plotinus, Augustine, and Aquinas on God and Neoplatonism

Introduction to Neoplatonism and Its Major Figures

The school of thought known as Neoplatonism has had a profound influence on three major philosophical figures, all of whom engaged deeply with questions about the existence of God and his relationship to nature. Plotinus, St. Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas each developed distinctive reasoning about the nature of human existence and the hierarchies of creation. In their writings, the three men traced both direct and indirect links between the abstract form of existence and the concrete human world. Their ethical worldviews function within the shared prospect of humanity's closeness to the divine through the use of wisdom and intellect.

Plotinus: The One and the Nous

Plotinus was the founder of Neoplatonism, though he himself identified simply as a Platonist. In his philosophical studies, Plotinus focused on the concept of the One and the Nous, with the One ruling in a classical hierarchy. According to him, the One is the "source of all being," a "source of endless creation, charged with the task of eternally conserving Its own creations at the heart of the world" (Lekkas, 2005). Following the One is the Nous, which is the lesser "image" of the One and the archetype of all existing beings. For Plotinus, the One is the unprovable essence of the Good, which he characterizes as God. In a classical hierarchical sense, the One is ineffable — the One transcends all. The Nous, by contrast, corresponds to thought and being, to "idea and [the] ideal world" (Lekkas, 2005). The second highest sphere, in Plotinus' framework, becomes the human mind and the human intellect.

Augustine: Wisdom as the Bridge to the Divine

Influenced by Plotinus, St. Augustine also believed in God's ineffability. Everything was created simultaneously by God, with human life produced within that creation. Augustine, however, takes the concept of human intellect further than Plotinus does. Whereas Plotinus focuses on the One and the Nous, Augustine's philosophy attempts to resolve and link the divine to the human through wisdom. "Wisdom unites the spiritual and the material worlds, natural and supernatural spheres of man's life" (Kowalczyk, 2006). To Augustine, wisdom is the divine nature within God, attainable only by the "pure of heart," while science "refers to the authority of the senses" (Kowalczyk, 2006). In his writings, Augustine defined and bounded the idea of wisdom and provided the link between God's inner essence and the essence of human life.

Conclusion: The Shared Neoplatonist Vision

The three major figures — Plotinus, Augustine, and Aquinas — have contributed rich philosophical ideas within the tradition of Neoplatonism. Plotinus, the founder of the school of thought, influenced the studies of Augustine, who in turn shaped the writings of Thomas Aquinas. All three believed in the higher presence of the One — the God who is virtually unprovable and beyond characterization by human language, because God transcends the plane of human thought. The worldviews of all three figures and their shared commitment to Neoplatonism rest on the same conviction: that only through the use of intellect and wisdom can humans successfully attain a higher level of thought, drawing closer to the idea of the One.

References

Kowalczyk, S. (2006). Topicality of St. Augustine's concept of wisdom. Dialogue & Universalism, 16(5/6), 83–89. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Lekkas, G. (2005). Plotinus: Towards an ontology of likeness (On the One and Nous). International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 13(1), 53–68. doi:10.1080/0967255042000324335

Schall, J. V. (1997). The uniqueness of the political philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Perspectives on Political Science, 26(2), 85. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.