The Major Features of Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism

The following discussion of the major features of Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism will be useful to those who interact with Trinitarians, especially those who espouse absolute divine simplicity and other formulations:

Major Features of Neoplatonism

1) The visible, tangible forms of the physical world are based on immaterial models, called Forms or Ideas.

2) Tangible forms are transitory, unstable, and imperfect, whereas ideal Forms are eternal, perfect, and unchanging.

3) Physical forms are many and diverse, but ideal Forms are single and unified.

4) There is a definite hierarchy of value on these qualities:

a) Eternity is superior to the temporal;
b) Unity is superior to division;
c) The immaterial is superior to the material.

5) The fleeting physical world that humankind inhabits becomes a kind or flawed manifestation of a perfect and eternal model that can be perceived only by the intellect, not by the senses.

6) The “One” is a transcendent, ineffable, divine power, the source of everything that exists. It is complete and self-sufficient. Its perfect power overflows spontaneously into a second aspect, the Intelligence (Mind or Nous), which contemplates the power of the “One.” By contemplating the “One,” the Intelligence produces Ideas or Forms. The unity of the “One” thus overflows into division and multiplicity. These Forms are translated into the physical world through the creative activity of the World Soul. In the immaterial realm, the higher part of the Soul contemplates the Intelligence, while in the material realm, the lower part of the Soul acts to create and govern physical forms. The following are clear from this position:

a) the existence of an ineffable and transcendent One;
b) from the One emanated the rest of the universe as a sequence of lesser beings;
c) Later Neoplatonic philosophers, added hundreds of intermediate gods, angels and demons, and other beings as emanations between the One and humanity.

The Soul, in descending from the immaterial to the material world, forgets some of its divine nature. All human individual souls, therefore, share in the divinity of the One and will eventually return to the divine realm from which they came, after they shed their physical bodies. Porphyry further developed Plontinus’ ideas about the soul, asserting that individual human souls are actually separate from the lower than the World Soul. However, by the exercise of virtue and contemplation of the spiritual, the human soul can ascend from the lower, material realm, toward the highest good, the absolute beauty and perfection of the immaterial One.

. . . .

Major Features of Aristotelianism

1) Plato used the theory of Forms to explain reality but Aristotle preferred to start from the acts given by experience. Philosphy to him meant science whose aim was the recognition of the “why” in all things.

2) All change or motion takes place in regard to substance, quality, quantity and place.

3) There are three kinds of substance:

a) those alternatively in motion and at rest, as the animals;
b) those perpetually in motion, as the sky;
c) those eternally stationary. The substances in this category are in themselves immovable and imperishable; indeed they are the source and origin of all motion.

4) Among these three types of substances, there must be one first being, unchangeable, which acts without the intervention of any other being. All that is, proceeds from it; it is the most perfect intelligence—God

a) The immediate action of this prime mover—happy in the contemplation of itself—extends only to the heavens;
b) the other inferior spheres are moved by other incorporeal and eternal substances, which the popular belief adores as gods.

i. The heavens are o a more perfect and divine nature than other bodies.
ii. In the center of the universe is the earth, round and stationary.
iii. The stars, like the sky, beings of a higher nature, but of grosser matter, move by the impulse of the prime mover.

5) For Aristotle, matter is the basis of all that exists; it comprises the potentiality of everything, but if itself is not actually anything. A determinate thing only comes into being when the potentiality in matter is converted into actuality. This is achieved by form, the idea existent not as one outside the many, but as one in the many, the completion of the potentiality latent in the matter. This concept will be very key in interpreting both Boethius and Aquinas. (James Henry Owino Kombo, Theological Models of the Doctrine of the Trinity [Global Perspectives Series; Carlisle, Cumbria: Langham Global Library, 2016], 52-53, 55-56)

Further Reading

Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought, Volume 1: The Attributes of God (Greg Kofford Books)