Does Plotinus Present a Philosophical Account of Creation?

In his influential essay, “Plotinus’s Metaphysics: Emanation or Creation?” Lloyd Gerson raises

the question of whether Plotinus’ account of the procession of all things from the One is actually a type

of creationist metaphysics rather than an alternative to it.1 This paper is a reexamination of this

question. As with most philosophical questions, much depends on how the terms are defined.

Therefore, the first part of this paper will draw on Thomas Aquinas for a philosophical definition of

creation and for the judgment that the philosophical understanding of creation can be and was achieved

without the aid of divine revelation. The second part will argue that, according to Aquinas’ definition,

Plotinus presents a philosophical account of creation.2


Dedicated to the memory of Kurt Pritzl, my dean and teacher.
1
Lloyd Gerson, “Plotinus’s Metaphysics: Emanation or Creation?” The Review of Metaphysics 46.3 (1993): 559–74. This
paper was also inspired by John F. Wippel “Aquinas on Creation: A Philosophical or Theological Issue?” delivered at the
Catholic University of America on December 4, 2009 and to be published in a festschrift for Robert Sokolowski by the
Catholic University of America Press.
2
Gerson himself tentatively concludes at the end of his article that Plotinus has a creationist metaphysics, “if it is allowed that
instrumental creationism is a legitimate species of creationism.” However, Gerson is more hesitant to accept it as legitimate
species in his “Goodness, Unity, and Creation in the Platonic Tradition,” in The Ultimate Why Question: Why Is There
Anything at All Rather than Nothing Whatsoever? ed. John F. Wippel (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2012), 35–36 (This essay was original delivered at the 2006 meeting of the Metaphysical Society of
America). Finally, Gerson says “[Plotinus’] One does not create things ex nihilo” in his review of Gwenaëlle Aubry, Dieu
sans la puissance. Dunamis et energeia chez Aristote et chez Plotin in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, dated 1/28/2008,
though his argumentation in this book review is too brief to be seriously engaged.
That Plotinus has a metaphysics of creation is affirmed by John Rist in chapter three “The Plotinian One” of
Plotinus: The Road to Reality (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967) and by Hans Urs von Balthasar in his chapter on
Plotinus in Vol. 4 of his Glory of the Lord, trans. McNeil et al (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 280–91. In pages 291–
302, von Balthasar refutes the idealist or Hegelian interpretation of Plotinus that had some popularity in the beginning of the
20th Century. See note 3 for two more affirmations.
John Rist seems more hesitant about Plotinus and creation in his “The One of Plotinus and the God of Aristotle,”
Review of Metaphysics 27 (1973): 75–87, in which he describes Plotinus as halfway between Aristotle and Aquinas.
According to Rist, Plotinus differs from Plato and Aristotle in that he is concerned with the origin of existence itself. That
Plotinus stands between creatio ex nihilo and a non-creationist metaphysics (such as the metaphysics of Plato or Aristotle) is
a rather common judgment, finding expression in Frederick Coppleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 1: Greece and Rome
(1946, repr. New York: Doubleday, 1985), 466-67; Giovanni Reale, A History of Ancient Philosophy, vol. 4: The Schools of
the Imperial Age, trans. John C. Catan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 393–99; and Denis O’Brien,
“Plotinus on the Making of Matter. Part 3: The Essential Background” International Journal of Platonic Studies 6 (2012):
72–78. Similarly, Jean Trouillard, “Procession Neoplatonicienne et Creation Judeo-Chretienne,” in Néoplatonisme,
Mélanges offerts á J. Trouillard (Fontenay aux Roses, 1981), 1–30 argues that creation and neoplatonic procession have
substantial conceptual overlap and should not be seen as opposed viewpoints. For Trouillard, creation is primarily a
theological doctrine that is open to various metaphysical interpretations and procession is a philosophical explanation that
Christianity has mostly (and unfortunately) failed to embrace as a means of explicating the doctrine of creation. Other
scholars, such as John Dillon, “Plotinus at Work on Platonism,” Greece and Rome 39 (1992): 189–204, have taken to calling
Plotinus a monist in recognition of the fact that he argues for a single first principle, but “monism” is itself an imprecise term,
as it can have Parmenidean or pantheistic implication; as noted by Leo Sweeney, “Mani’s Twin and Plotinus: Questions on

1
 I seek to correct the thesis, advanced especially by Twentieth Century Catholic scholars, that

creation is a uniquely Christian idea3 and to further recent efforts in analyzing the congruities between

Aquinas and Neoplatonism. While other scholars have indicated conceptual similarities between

Plotinus and Aquinas,4 a detailed presentation of how Plotinus’ metaphysics aligns with Aquinas’

philosophical understanding of creation has not yet been ventured.5 It is almost certain that Plotinus’

metaphysics indirectly influenced Aquinas quite early in his career through the mediation of Avicenna,

Liber de Causis, Dionysius, and others; however, this paper offers a comparative rather than a genetic

treatment of the idea of creation.6 Finally, this essay is a preliminary study of the question of whether

‘Self’” in Neoplatonism and Gnosticsm, ed. Richard T. Wallis and Jay Bregman (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), 421, n. 51.
3
See for instance, Kenneth Schmitz, The Gift: Creation (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1982), 12–13 for the claim
that “no philosopher has been able to arrive at the knowledge of creation as production from nothing.” Schmitz does not
seriously engage Neoplatonism, but rather maintains a simple opposition between creation and emanation. Other examples
will be given below.
4
For example, Cornelia J. de Vogel, “Ego sum qui sum et sa signification pour une philosophie chrétienne,” Revue des
sciences religeuses 35 (1961): 337–55 argues for a basic agreement between Plotinus and Aquinas regarding their concepts
of God.
5
Two recent studies tread similar ground to this essay. First, Richard Taylor, “Primary Causality and ibda' (creare) in the
Liber de causis,” 130–32, in Wahrheit und Geschichte. Die gebrochene Tradition metaphysischen Denkens, ed. Alia
Mensching-Estakhr und Michael Städtler (Würtzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2012), 113–36 distinguishes between an
“Abrahamic” understanding of creation in which creation is due to the free choice of the creator and a philosophical
understanding of creation in which creation necessarily follows from the good nature of the First. Taylor says that the
philosophical account of creation is the common doctrine of “of Plotinus, Proclus, the Plotiniana Arabica , the Liber de
Causis, al-Farabi, and Avicenna” and that, following Thomas’ account of the philosophical meaning of creation in the
Sentences Commentary, the Abrahamic and philosophical creation are equally valid accounts of creation. This study
complements Taylor’s by discussing Thomas’ account of creation and Plotinus’ metaphysics in detail (Taylor’s article is
mostly about the Liber de Causis). Second, Eric Perl, “Esse Tantum and the One” Quaestiones Disputatae 2 (2011): 185–
200 argues for a basic agreement in the fundamental metaphysical positions of Aquinas and Plotinus, including on the
dependence of all things on God: “The production or causation of all things by the One, then, is nothing but the absolute
dependence of all things: their existence, their status as beings, does not come from themselves, but is received in them. This
idea is, of course, familiar to students of Aquinas, who argues that creation is nothing but the total existential dependence of
the creature on God; but scarcely anyone notices that the identical doctrine is expressly found in Plotinus” (187). Creation is
not the focus of Perl’s article, though Perl’s article responds in greater detail to the objection that Plotinus cannot have an
account of creation because his first principle is not Being than I will be able to present here.
6
Thomas’ knowledge and appropriation of Neoplatonic philosophy has been an ongoing topic of research since at least the
1950’s. The following are some prominent studies. Norris W. Clarke “Meaning of Participation in St. Thomas,” in
Explorations in Metaphysics: Being, God, Person, (Notre Dame, IN: University Press, 1995), 89–101 and “The Limitation of
Act by Potency in St. Thomas: Aristotlelianism or Neoplatonism?” in Explorations, 65–88 has argued that Plotinus is the
remote source of Thomas’ understanding of God as infinite act and of participation. John F. Wippel has numerous studies of
the Neoplatonic origins of aspects of Thomas’ thought, though he has not addressed Thomas’ definition of creation. See his
Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas II (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), essays II,
IV, V, V, VI, and XI. Richard C. Taylor, “Aquinas, the Plotiniana Arabica, and the Metaphysics of Being and Actuality,”
Journal of the History of Ideas 59.2 (1998): 217–39 argues for a basic agreement between Thomas and Plotinus on the
question of creation, and furthermore, that Thomas was indirectly influenced in his own thinking about creation by Plotinus
through the close relationship between the Arabic Plotinus and the Liber de Causis and Avicenna. Cristina D’Ancona Costa
has also examined the influence of the Liber de Causis on Thomas Aquinas in her Recherches sur le Liber de Causis (Paris,

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Plotinus presents an account of creation, to which I hope to devote a book-length treatment.

I.

Thomas on Creation. Aquinas stands out from the earlier Scholastic tradition by arguing that

creatio ex nihilo can be defined philosophically entirely in terms of ontological dependence.7 In book 2,

distinction 1, question 1, article 2 of his Commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, Thomas writes that

to create is “to produce a thing into being according to its entire substance.”8 Included in this idea are

two points that explain what is meant by describing creation as from nothing (ex nihilo). First, unlike

motion which presupposes a subject and generation which presupposes matter, creation “presupposes

nothing in the thing which is said to be created.”9 “Nothing” is not some kind of substrate out of which

creation is formed or void into which God creates, but signifies that God is the origin of the totality of

the creature. Second,

non-being is prior to being in the thing which is said to be created. This is not a priority
of time or of duration, such that what did not exist before does exist later, but a priority of
nature, so that, if the created thing is left to itself, it would not exist, because it only has

Vrin, 1995). Pierre Hadot, “Dieu comme acte d’être dans le néoplatonisme,” in Dieu et L’Être (Paris: Etudes
Augustiniennes, 1978), 57–63, building upon the work of de Vogel, argues that the idea of God as infinite being and the pure
act of existence from which all beings receive their existence is found in the Neoplatonic anonymous commentary on the
Parmenides (which Hadot attributes to Porphyry) and was communicated to Aquinas through Boethius’ Hebdomads. Wayne
Hankey has continuously argued that Aquinas should be understood as continuing the Neoplatonic tradition conveyed to him
by Dionysius and Erigena. See for instance, his “Aquinas’ First Principle: Being or Unity,” Dionysius 4 (1980): 133–73.
7
Timothy B. Noone, “The Originality of St. Thomas’s Position on the Philosophers and Creation,” The Thomist 60.2 (1996):
275–300 compares Thomas to seven thirteenth century predecessors and notes that Thomas is the only thinker that does not
connect creation to a first moment in time
8
Thomas Aquinas, Aquinas on Creation: Writings on the “Sentences” of Peter Lombard, trans. Steven E. Baldner and
William E. Carroll (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1997). In Latin: “Hoc autem creare dicimus, scilicet
producere rem in esse secundum totam suam substantiam.” All Latin quotations from Thomas Aquinas are from the online
Corpus Thomisticum, available at http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/iopera.html. While the Sentences commentary is a
very early work of Thomas – equivalent in some ways to a doctoral dissertation – scholars have noted that “all of his
principle conclusions are established” within it. (Introduction to Aquinas on Creation, 32, quoting James Weisheipl).
9
Ibid. “Primum est ut nihil praesupponat in re quae creari dicitur.” Cf. Summa Theologica I, q. 45, a. 1, ad. 3: “it is not
made from anything,” De potentia q. 3, a. 1, ad. 7: “Something might be said to come to be from nothing because it indeed
comes to be, but there is no preexisting thing from which it comes to be,” and De potentia q. 3, a. 4: “we must observe that
creation denotes an active power whereby things are brought into being, wherefore it requires no preexisting matter or
previous agency.” Thomas Aquinas, On Creation: Quaestiones Disputatae de Potentia Dei, Q. 3, trans. S. C. Selner-Wright
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011). Elsewhere he will say that God creates the whole
being of what he creates at once – there is no intermediate stage in which the thing was ‘nothing’ and then moved into being.
See ST I, q. 45, aa. 2–4 and De potentia q. 3, aa. 1–2. My quotations from the ST are from Anton C. Pegis’s translation in
Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 1945).

3
 its being from the causality of the higher cause.10

Creation means that the creature is ever dependent on the Creator for its existence; its existence is

always from another, such that non-existence or nihil is, as it were, the natural state of a creature. In

summary, created things are ex nihilo in that they come to be out of no pre-existing subject and in that

non-being belongs to a creature per se and being belongs to it ab alio.11 According to Thomas, if these

two notions are accepted “for the meaning of creation, creation can be demonstrated, and in this way

philosophers have held [the doctrine of] creation.”12

If, however, the notion of duration is added to creation, such that creatures exist temporally after

nothing, then creation becomes an article of faith and cannot be philosophically demonstrated.13

Thomas argues in article five of this question that no argument based on the present state of the world

can demonstrate either its eternity or its temporal origin and that both the eternity (understood as a

beginningless and endless succession of time)14 and the temporal finitude of the world are consistent

with the nature of the world and the nature of divine action.15 Therefore, the only way to know if the
10
“Secundum est, ut in re quae creari dicitur, prius sit non esse quam esse: non quidem prioritate temporis vel durationis, ut
prius non fuerit et postmodum sit; sed prioritate naturae, ita quod res creata si sibi relinquatur, consequatur non esse, cum
esse non habeat nisi ex influentia causae superioris.” Sentences Commentary II.1.1.2. Similar interpretations of ex nihilo are
found in De potentia q. 3, a. 1, ad. 7 and ST I, q. 45, a. 1, ad. 3. Creation in this sense is ongoing – “the creature [is] being
made by God as long as it has being” De potentia q. 3, a. 3, ad. 6. Aquinas argues at length that “things are preserved in
existence by God, and that they would instantly be reduced to nothing were God to abandon them” in q. 5, a. 1 of De
potentia. As will be seem below, this understanding of ex nihilo is largely based on material from Avicenna’s Metaphysics.
11
This summary is drawn from Timothy B. Noone, “The Originality of St. Thomas’s Position,” 298.
12
Sentences Commentary II.1.1.2
13
Ibid, last paragraph of the corpus.
14
It is a patristic argument that if the world were eternal, then it would be coeval with God. (Thomas attributes it to John
Damscene, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 1.8 in De Potentia q. 3, a. 14, sed contra 2 and in On the Eternity of the World).
Thomas rejects this argument as committing the fallacy of equivocation. Only God is eternal in the true and proper sense of
eternity as “the simultaneous-whole and the perfect possession of interminable life” (Boethius, The Consolation of
Philosophy, V.prose 6), for only God is absolutely immutable. Creatures can only be eternal in the sense of there being no
beginning or end to their duration; no creature can possess the entirety of his life in a simultaneous whole. All creaturely
existence, being composed of potency and act, suffers some kind of succession. This position is sketched in In Sentences
II.1.1.5.reply to contrary 7 and in De Potentia q. 3, a. 14, ad contrary 1 and developed more fully in Summa Theologiae I, q.
44, a. 1 and a. 2, ad. 5 cross-referenced with q. 10, aa. 1–3 and in On the Eternity of the World in which Thomas explains that
even angels are subject to succession.
15
Thomas explains how an eternal world can be considered to be created from nothing in the On the Eternity of the World:
“If the creature has always existed, it is not supposed that at some time it was nothing, but rather it is supposed that its nature
is such that it would be nothing if it were left to itself. For example, if we should say that air has always been illuminated by
the sun, it will be right to say that the air has been made light by the sun . . . , but that it would be [non-light or dark] if the
sun left it to itself.” Translated in Aquinas on Creation.

4
world had a temporal beginning is through faith in a special revelation of God’s action, a revelation that

lies outside the domain of philosophy.16 The essential meaning of creation for Thomas is the

philosophical one, for Thomas insists that the priority of non-being to being in a created thing is not a

temporal one but “a priority of nature.”17 As Thomas clarifies in De Potentia, it makes no sense to say

that a creature was first nothing and afterwards was something, for this would reify nothing into a

substrate. There is nothing in common between nihil and created being (indeed, nihil cannot not be

spoken of as a subject), not even a common time, since time originates with the world. The Christian

faith does not hold that created being was temporally after non-being, but that the world and time have a

temporal beginning.18 By deemphasizing the importance of a temporal beginning even in the Christian

understanding of creation, Thomas is able to hold that the theological and the philosophical accounts of

creation count equally as creatio ex nihilo.19

16
That neither the temporality or the eternity of the world can be demonstrated is argued by Thomas in Sentences
Commentary II.1.1.5. That the duration of the world is determined only by the will of God and therefore is known by faith
alone and cannot be demonstrated from the present state of the world or from the nature of its efficient cause is argued in
Summa Theologiae I, q. 46, aa. 1–2 and De Potentia 3.17. De Potentia 3.14 and On the Eternity of the World argue that God
could make something that always existed, but did not. See John F. Wippel, “Did Thomas Aquinas Defend the Possibility of
an Eternally Created Word?” Journal of the History of Philosophy 29 (1981): 21–37 for a discussion of these texts. Wippel
revisits them in his “Aquinas on Creation.” Thomas’ dependence on Moses Maimonides for this resolution to the question of
the eternity of the world is discussed by David B. Burrell, “Aquinas and Islamic and Jewish Thinkers,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Aquinas, ed. Norman Kretzmann and Elenore Stump (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993), 71–75.
Thomas himself attributes his position to Gregory the Great in the Sentences Commentary.
17
Thomas credits Anselm, Monologion 8 with the insight that ex nihilo means that a creature has no material cause and that
being is after non-being in order and not in time. See De potentia q. 3, a.1, ad. 7 and Summa Theologiae I, q. 45, a. 1, ad. 3.
Wolfson, Harry Austryn. “The Meaning of ex nihilo in the Church Fathers, Arabic and Hebrew Philosophy and St. Thomas,”
in Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, Vol I, ed. Isadore Twersky and George H. Williams (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1973), 207–21, notes that Maimonides understands ex nihilo in the same manner, denying a
temporal understanding of ex. Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation, and Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle
Ages (1983, repr. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006), 317, in reference to Sentences Commentary II.1.1.2, says that
whether the world has a temporal beginning or not “is not a difference in the concept of creation.” Lawrence Dewan, “What
Does Createdness Look Like?” in Divine Creation in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Thought, ed. Robert D. Crouse,
Willemien Otten, Walter Hannam, and Michael Treschow (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 335–61 argues that Thomas intends to
remove from the idea of creation the temporal aspect so that creation is not mistakenly considered a type of change.
18
De Potentia q. 3, a. 2. In this article Thomas denies that even the metaphor that being is after nonbeing as noon is after
morning (which he himself uses in explaining ex in terms of order in ST I, q. 45, a. 1, ad. 3), for noon and morning share a
common time. Rather, in trying to grasp the idea of an absolute beginning, we imagine a time common to non-being and
being. In truth, however, the world began at an instant, to which the preposition “before” cannot be literally applied. See De
Potentia q. 3, a. 1, ad. 11–12 and Summa Theologiae I, q. 45, a. 2, ad. 2–3 for a discussion of imagined time and see Summa
Theologiae I, q. 46, a. 3 for a clear statement that the Christian faith holds that time, angels, and the world were created
together.
19
This is clearly expressed in Summa Theologiae I, q. 46, a. 2, ad 2 in which Thomas says that philosophers who believe that
the world is eternal understand it to be made by God from nothing just as much as Christians do. Thomas references

5
 Two striking feature of Thomas’ philosophical definition of creation are its economy and his

insistence that creation can be demonstrated by human reason naturally: “I answer that not only does

faith hold that there is creation but reason also demonstrates it.”20 In clear contrast to the mainstream

Patristic and Medieval tradition, which had equated “the temporally finite with the created” and “the

eternal with the uncreated,”21 Thomas separates the question of whether a philosopher presents the

doctrine of creation from that philosopher’s position on the eternity of the world.22 Thomas thereby

opens up the possibility of ascribing the doctrine of creation to any philosopher who describes the

existence of all things (and all their parts) as ever dependent on the causality of a first efficient cause.

In fact, Thomas is far from reticent in identifying his non-Christian predecessors as having

accounts of creation. Scholars such as Lawrence Dewan, Mark Johnson, and Steven Baldner have

shown that Thomas consistently attributes an account of creation to Aristotle.23 The first such attribution

seems to take place in the “expositio textus” at the end of Sentences Commentary part II, distinction 2.

In opposition to Peter Lombard’s evaluation of Aristotle, Thomas argues that Aristotle does not err in

positing a plurality of first principles, but in positing an eternal world.24 According to Thomas, Aristotle
Avicenna for the report that philosophers applied the term “creation” (as Avicenna himself does) to their eternal worlds. The
objection itself brings up Aristotle’s position that the heavens are ungenerated, so it seems that Thomas is saying that
Aristotle’s position is not incompatible with creation.
20
Sentences Commentary II.1.1.2. Thomas then proceeds to give a demonstration, rather similar to his Fourth Way, that the
existence of all finite being is dependent on the existence of a first and perfect being.
21
Baldner and Carroll, Introduction to Aquinas on Creation, 6. See pages 4–11 for the Patristic position that the eternity of
the world taught as if “by one voice” (5) by the Greek philosophers is inconsistent with the Biblical doctrine of creation.
Timothy B. Noone, “The Originality of St. Thomas’s Position” also notes that Thomas differs from his predecessors in
attributing creation to pagan philosophers. However, Albert the Great may have changed his mind on this issue, see p. 27 of
Baldner and Carroll’s introduction. I note that Baldner and Carroll do not mention the ancient interpretation of the Timaeus,
held by Aristotle, Plutarch, and Atticus, that the ordering of the world in the Timaeus takes place in time. Such a reading
hardly implies a doctrine of creation since it understands matter as eternal and subsisting independently from the Demiurge.
22
Lawrence Dewan, “St. Thomas, Aristotle, and Creation,” Dionysius 15 (1991):81–90 notes this separation causes Thomas
to think of creation in terms of a universal cause of being and thus achievable by any philosopher that reached the
consideration of being qua being.
23
Mark Johnson, “Did St. Thomas Attribute a Doctrine of Creation to Aristotle?” The New Scholasticism 63 (1989): 129–
155; the Introduction, 28–29 and Appendix D of Baldner and Carroll’s Aquinas on Creation; Lawrence Dewan, “Thomas
Aquinas, Creation, and Two Historians,” Laval théologique et philosophique 50.2 (1994): 363–87. Wippel, “Aquinas on
Creation: A Philosophical or Theological Issue?” thinks that the textual evidence is not as strong as these authors claim, but
concedes that Aquinas seems to attribute creation to Aristotle in De Potentia q. 3, a. 5 and On Separate Substances chap. 9,
§52.
24
Similarly, when listing errors that have been made regarding the creation of the world in De articulis fidei et ecclesiae
sacramentis and Expositio super primam decretalem, Thomas distinguishes between the error of holding that God made the

6
holds that the being (esse) of all things depends on a First principle. This First Principle is the efficient,

exemplar, and final cause of things, having produced their form and matter while remaining outside

them.25 Though this passage does not explicitly say that Aristotle taught the doctrine of creation, it is

very difficult to see how an efficient, exemplar, and final cause that produces the matter and form of all

things could not be a creator, especially when this is exactly how Aquinas describes God as a creator in

Summa Theologiae I, q. 44. Thomas also credits Avicenna with the doctrine of creation,26 and, in later

works, follows Augustine in attributing creation to the Platonists.27 In De potentia q. 3, a. 5, Thomas

clearly presents the doctrine of creation as the common achievement of the greatest nonchristian

philosophers:

Later philosophers, like Plato, Aristotle, and their followers, attained to the consideration
of universal being itself, and so they alone posited some universal cause of things, from
which all things came into being, as Augustine states in City of God VIII.28 Certainly
world but from preexistent matter and Aristotle’s error of saying that God made the world or produced all things but
eternally. Johnson discusses these texts in the articles listed above.
25
“Aristoteles non erravit in ponendo plura principia: quia posuit esse omnium tantum a primo principio dependere; et ita
relinquitur unum esse primum principium. Erravit autem in positione aeternitatis mundi.” Following a brief discussion of
material from Physics 2 and Metaphysics 12, Thomas says, “ex quo sequitur quod sit unum principium primum extra rem,
quod est agens et exemplar et finis; et duo quae sunt partes rei, scilicet forma et materia, quae ab illo primo principio
producuntur.” This text is discussed in Johnson, “Did St. Thomas Attribute a Doctrine of Creation to Aristotle?” 133–34.
26
He attributes arguments for a first principle that “gives being to all (dat esse omnibus)” to Aristotle and Avicenna in
Sentences Commentary II.1.1.1, while naming a number of Greek philosophers that erred in positing multiple first causes,
including those that posit an agent cause which is not the source of matter. See below for further references.
27
Thomas Aquinas’ judgment concerning Plato and creation changed. In his Sentences Commentary II.1.1.1, he, following
the judgment of Lombard and perhaps his own access to the Timaeus, says that Plato has three irreducible principles – matter,
the exemplars, and the Demiurge. However, in later works, such as the De potentia, the Prologue to his Commentary on the
Gospel of John, and On Separate Substances, Thomas attributes arguments for a doctrine of creation to Plato and/or his
followers. Such an attribution is expressed most forcefully in On the Eternity of the World (a text not discussed by Wippel
and Johnson) in which Thomas quotes Augustine’s judgment in The City of God X.5 that the Platonists held that the world
was created and eternal in support of his own view that an eternally created world is not a contradiction: “We are dealing
with those who agree with us that God is Creator of all bodies and of all natures which are not Himself.” It is quite clear
from the context that Thomas is appealing not to Augustine’s view on the question, but to the authority of the Platonists
themselves, an appeal that would be nonsensical if he thought they did not teach creation. For a more detailed study of this
matter, see Mark Johnson, “Aquinas's Changing Evaluation of Plato on Creation,” American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly, 66 (1992); 81–88. Thomas’ opinion on Plato/the Platonists probably changed as he read more Augustine and,
after their translation in 1268, texts by Proclus and Simplicius which present as Plato’s doctrine that all things, including
matter and the Ideas, are produced by a single first principle. See, for instance, Thomas, Commentary on the Book of Causes,
trans. Vincent A. Guagliardo, Charles R. Hess, and Richard C. Taylor (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America, 1996) §58 where Thomas identifies the meaning of proposition 9 with Proclus’ argument that what is essentially
good is the first cause of all things and with Dionysius’ position that because God is essentially good through his very being,
he is the cause of all existing things.
28
Augustine saw no difficulty in the Platonists having discovered the truth of creation through natural reason—indeed he
thinks that St. Paul discusses the possibility of such a discovery in Romans 1:19–20. Augustine attributes creation to the

7
 this position is in accord with the Catholic faith. And it can be demonstrated with three
arguments.

Thomas then proceeds to attribute a separate argument for a creating first principle to Plato, Aristotle,

and Avicenna. Likewise, in chapter 9 of On Separate Substances, Thomas credits Plato and Aristotle

with having reached an understanding of the origin of the existence (esse) of whole universe from the

First Being which is its own existence. Regarding their understanding of separate substances vis-à-vis

creation, Plato and Aristotle “did not depart from the position of the Catholic faith by holding such

substances to be uncreated, but because they held them to have always existed.”29 Unlike many of his

Twentieth-Century expositors, Aquinas did not consider creation to be a uniquely Christian idea that

could only be known through revelation.30

That Thomas credits Avicenna with an account of creation seems only fair since Thomas’

definition of creation borrows heavily from Avicenna’s Metaphysics of the Healing, most notably in his

Platonists in Confessions 7.9.13–14 and the City of God VIII.6–7, X.31, XI.4–5. Thomas refers here to VIII.7 in which
Augustine writes, “It is because of this immutability and this simplicity that the Platonists realized that God is the creator
from whom all other beings derive, while he is himself uncreated and underivative.” Trans. Henry Bettenson (New York:
Penguin Books, 2003).
29
Chapter 9, §52.
30
The classic expressions of this view are Étienne Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, trans. A. H. C. Downes (1936,
repr. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991) 67–73 and 437–440 and Anton C. Pegis, Saint Thomas and the
Greeks (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1939), which vehemently deny that Thomas attributes an account of
creation to Plato and Aristotle. Controversially, Gilson claimed that creation is a properly philosophical idea, but that natural
reason does not know that it can be established by argument until the idea is encountered in divine revelation. Anton Pegis,
“St. Thomas and the Origin of Creation,” in Philosophy and the Modern Mind. Cardinal Mooney Lecture Series, 1960–61.
ed. Francis x. Canfield (Detroit: Sacred Heart Seminary, 1961), 49–65 argues that Plato and Aristotle had principles that
Aquinas developed into arguments for creation, but that Aquinas knows they did not teach creation themselves. The only
text that supports the position that Aquinas does not intend to attribute creation to Plato and Aristotle is ST I, q. 44, a. 2;
however, in that Aquinas here only mentions Plato’s Ideas and Aristotle’s ecliptic, which are clearly intermediate principles,
and not the Good or the Unmoved Mover, this text does not seem to bear one way or the other on whether Plato and Aristotle
achieved the idea of creation.
Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press,
1995) understands the relationship between God and the world entailed by the doctrine of creation to be unique to
Christianity, but characterizes this conception as a theological concept tied to the Incarnation. The Christian understanding
of God and creation is “glimpsed at the margin of reason . . . at the intersection of reason and faith” (37). The authors of
Creation and the God of Abraham, ed. David B. Burrell, Carlo Cogliati, Janet M. Soskice, and William R. Stoeger
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) generally treat creatio ex nihilo as the exclusive possession of Christianity,
Islam, and Judaism—“creatio ex nihilo was not a concept available to Greek philosophy” (p. 7)—a thesis advanced in David
B. Burrell, “The Christian Distinction Celebrated and Expanded” in The Truthful and the Good, ed. James G. Hart and John
J. Drummond. (Boston: Kluwer, 1996): 191–206. All the authors listed in this note understand God’s freedom to create or
not to create to be an essential part of what creation means.

8
understanding of creation as meaning that non-being is naturally prior to being in the created thing.

Thomas covertly acknowledges his debt to Avicenna in Sentences Commentary II.1.1.5 in his second

reply to the arguments for the world having a temporal beginning. He writes, “To the second, Avicenna

responds in his Metaphysics, tract. 6, ch. 1 & 2 and tract. 9, ch. 4. He says, indeed, that all things have

been created by God and that creation is from nothing, that is, the creature has being after non-being.”31

Thomas also seems to be influenced by Avicenna’s judgment that “creation” is a term and concept used

by “the philosophers,” a judgment that he cites in Summa Theologiae I, q. 46, a. 2, ad. 2. Thomas is

probably thinking of Avicenna’s Metaphysics VI.2.9, in which Avicenna gives his own definition of

creation: “This, then, is the meaning that, for the philosophers is termed ‘creation.’ It is the giving of

existence to a thing after absolute nonexistence. For it belongs to the effect in itself to be nonexistent

and [then] to be, by its cause, existing.”32 Interestingly, Avicenna probably has the Arabic Plotinus in

mind here, since the Arabic word for creation that he uses here is the term used by al-Kindi’s circle in

their own writings and in their paraphrase of the Enneads known as the Theology of Aristotle. When

discussing the meaning of this term in his commentary on the Theology, Avicenna defines “creation” in

terms almost identical to those used in his Metaphysics.33

31
Thomas then explains that Avicenna means “after” in the same way that he does, that non-being is prior to being in nature,
not duration, in creatures. However, this explanation of Avicenna is essentially a borrowing from Metaphysics 8.3: “For, the
state of affairs that a thing possesses from itself precedes that which it has from another. If it has existence and necessity from
another, then from itself it has nonexistence and possibility. Its nonexistence was prior to its existence, and its existence is
posterior to its nonexistence. . . . Hence, in the case of everything other than the First, the One, its existence comes about after
not having been — (a nonbeing) that it itself deserves.” Avicenna, The Metaphysics of the Healing, ed. And trans. Michael
E. Marmura (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2005). I will refer to this work by book, chapter, and paragraph.
32
This passage may also be in Aquinas’ mind when he writes at the end of his philosophical definition of creation in
Sentences Commentary 2.1.1.2 – “If these two points are sufficient for the meaning of creation, creation can be demonstrated
and in this way philosophers have held [the doctrine of] creation.”
33
Jules Janssens, “Creation and Emanation in Ibn Sînâ,” Documenti e Studi, 8 (1997): 455–77 suggests that Avicenna’s use
of “ibda‘”, comes from the Theology of Aristotle. Indeed, in his commentary on Mimar V of the Theology (a paraphrase of
VI.7.1–2, which renders the opening sentence’s o( qeo\v h)\ qeo/v tiv as “First Creator”), Avicenna interprets the
adaptor’s use of “ibda’” as corresponding to his own understanding of creation as what does not exist in itself receiving being
from another: “Creation said absolutely is that to which being (l’être) proceeds from another and to which by itself being
does not belong” For a French translation of Avicenna’s notes on the Theology of Aristotle see G. Vajda, “Les notes
d’Avicenne sure la ‘Théologie d’Aristote,’” Revue thomiste 51 (1951), 346–406. An English translation of the Arabic
Plotinus by Geoffrey Lewis is available in Plotini Opera, vol. 2, ed. Paul Henry and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer (Paris: Desclée,
de Brouwer, 1951–1973). In Theology of Aristotle, Mimar I, Plato is described as presenting a First Creator that created the
intelligible and sensible worlds. In his note on this passage, Avicenna praises Plato for his account of creation and, once

9
 Thomas’ attribution of creation to Avicenna and his use of both Avicenna and the Liber de

Causis34 as authorities in discussing the meaning of creation are indicative of the precision of his

definition of creation, for Thomas also criticizes Avicenna and the Liber de Causis for presenting God

as creating according to natural necessity and through intermediaries. While modern scholars often

identify such features as characteristic of a metaphysics of emanation that is opposed to creation,35

Thomas treats Avicenna and the Liber de Causis as having accounts of creation, but as being wrong

about the manner in which God creates. That a strict opposition between emanation and creation is

unthomistic can be seen in Thomas’ preference for using the language of emanation and procession to

describe the creative act in order to distinguish creating from causing a motion.36 and in Thomas’ initial

willingness in his Sentences Commentary to grant, in deference to Peter Lombard, the Liber de Causis,

and Avicenna, that it is possible that the power of the primary cause could have operated through a

creature to produce “some simple being or matter,” in the way that “philosophers have held that the

intelligences create.”37 Even when he argues against the possibility of instrumental creation in later

works, Thomas will use these philosophers’ insights into creation against them. For example, in De
again, explains Plato’s account in the terms of his own metaphysics. See Cristina D’Ancona Costa, “Pseudo-Theology of
Aristotle, Chapter 1: Structure and Composition,” Oriens 36 (2001): 78–112 for a discussion of Mimar I and her “The
Origins of Islamic Philosophy,” in Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2011), 869–93 for a discussion of the willingness of Al-Kindi’s circle to understand and convey Greek philosophy as
consist with the Islamic belief in creation.
34
Al-Kindi’s circle created The Liber de Causis by reworking metaphysical ideas and propositions from Proclus’ Elements of
Theology into Plotinus’ simpler metaphysical hierarchy, in order to explain creatio ex nihilo using the model of Neoplatonic
procession. See the above cited works of Richard C. Taylor and Cristina D’Ancona Costa.
35
See for instance, Pegis, St. Thomas and the Greeks; Reginald Redlon, “St. Thomas and the Freedom of the Creative Act,”
Franciscan Studies 20 (1960), 1–18; Gregory Martin Reichberg, “The Communication of the Divine Nature: Thomas’s
Response to Neo-Platonism,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 66 (1992): 215–26
36
As is well known, ST I, 45, a. 1 says that creation is “Etiam emanationem totius entis a causa universali, quae est Deus.”
The preface to q. 45 describes creation as a mode of emanation (modo emanationis). In De potentia q. 3, a. 1, ad. 11, Thomas
argues that creation is better understood as an “outflow (effluxum) from the agent into the thing made” rather than as a
movement from non-being to being—as if non-being existed before God’s action as a term from which creation comes. On
Separate Substances chap 9, §49–51 contrasts between motion or generation and the “simple emanation or influx of being.”
37
Aquinas uses material from the Liber de Causis to deny that a creature could create independently of God’s power, but he
warns in ad 1 that philosophical authorities (Plato and the Liber de Causis are explicitly mentioned) should not be accepted in
their opinion that God did create instrumentally. For a thorough discussion of Thomas’ change of mind on this issue, see
John F. Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas on Creatures as Causes of Esse,” in Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas II, 172–193
and Paul Pearson, “Creation Through Instruments in Thomas’ Sentences Commentary,” in Philosophy and the God of
Abraham: Essays in Memory of James A. Weisheipl, ed. R. James Long (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies,
1991), 147–60.

10
potentia q. 3, a. 4 Thomas references the Liber de Causis thrice for material for his arguments against

the position that “God created lower creatures through the mediation of higher creatures,” even though

the Liber de Causis is named as holding that position!38 Thomas opposes the idea of a necessary

creation because it treats God as a natural agent and not as an intellectual agent who creates and orders

nature according to knowledge and will, not because of a direct contradiction between the ideas of

creation and necessity.39 If there were such a contradiction, it would be difficult to understand why

Aquinas would attribute creation to Plato and Avicenna and then critique them for understanding that

creation as necessary.40

If Thomas is willing to characterize a philosopher who holds as a basic principle that “from one

simple being only one simple being can be immediately produced,” such that the First Principle acts like

a natural agent and requires mediating intelligences in order to account for the diversity of reality, as

having an account of creation—as he does with Avicenna41—then we can conclude that such errors do

not impinge upon the philosophical meaning of creation, which focuses narrowly on the metaphysical

38
In the corpus of this question, Thomas attributes instrumental creation to Avicenna, Algazel, and the Liber de Causis. He
also mentions Peter Lombard as open to the possibility of instrumental creation. In ad 10, Thomas simply states that the
Liber de Causis is wrong about instrumental creation and that in this case, “the authority of that book is not to be accepted.”
Similarly, in ST I, q. 45, a. 5, material from Liber de Causis I and III is used to refute the positions of Avicenna and Peter
Lombard on this matter. I do not find Aquinas as adamantly opposed to instrumentally creation as Gerson does in “Plotinus’s
Metaphysics,” 572–73. While Aquinas’ mature position is that instrumental creation is impossible because instrumental
causes operate through their natural powers and the production of esse simpliciter is beyond the natural power of any
creature, and because since creation presupposes nothing, God’s need for an instrument would be superfluous at best and is
probably simply incoherent, he still treats Avicenna and the Liber de Causis as authorities for the meaning and use of the
term “creation.” Thomas is able to dismiss instrumental creation because he does not view the production of a diversity of
effects by a simple cause as a serious metaphysical problem. See De Potentia q. 3, a. 16.
39
See De potentia q. 3, a. 15.
40
For Avicenna, see the next note. Thomas says in De potentia q. 3, a. 16 that Plato treated creation as necessitated by the
final cause of the creative act. “For he maintained that this sort of universe had to be produced because of the divine
goodness as understood and loved by God, so that the best produced the best.”
41
For Thomas, the problems with Avicenna’s account of creation begin with his statement that “from the one inasmuch as it
is one, only one proceeds” (Metaphysics IX.4.10), which Thomas quotes as above in De potentia q. 3, a. 4. In article 6, ad 18
<22>, he says that using this principle to argue that God can have only one immediate effect “presumes an agent acting from
natural necessity, for which it is the case that if there is one, it produces one effect,” for as he says in article 14, “nature is
determined to one thing.” This principle also forces Avicenna to account for “the multiplication of different things through
many intermediaries,” as Thomas summarizes in a. 16. According to Thomas, Avicenna leaves the order of the cosmos to
chance by depicting it as due to the mix of instrumental causes rather than the intention of the creator (ST I, q. 15, a. 1 and q.
47, a. 1). See John F. Wippel, “The Latin Avicenna as a Source for Thomas’ Metaphysics,” 50–64 in Metaphysical Themes
in Thomas Aquinas II, 31–64 for a discussion of all the ways that Thomas disagrees with “Avicenna’s theory of emanation.”

11
relationship between the first principle and what it causes. What is necessary for a philosophical

account of creation is only that there is a first efficient cause which is responsible for the existence of

everything and which holds all things in existence.

Drawing on Thomas’ philosophical meaning of creation, I propose the following four models for

understanding the relationship between the first principle and everything else:

1. Essential philosophical meaning of creation: All things depend on the First Cause for
their existence, such that there is no part of reality whose existence cannot be traced back
to the First Cause and such that all things would cease to exist if the causality of the First
Cause ended. Avicenna and the Liber de Causis are considered as having philosophical
accounts of creation.
1a. Full philosophical idea of creation: God creates according to intellect and will
by a free choice and without the use of intermediaries.42
2. Theological Creation: #1a + there is a first moment in time. The temporal beginning
of the world can only be known through special revelation.43

3. Pantheistic Accounts: The First principle is, in some manner, the same as what it
causes or its existence is incomplete without what it causes. Philosophies that would fit
here are Stoicism, which identifies God both with the active, rational element of the
universe, and with one of its material components,44 and evolutionary models (such as
Aristotle attributes to Speusippus) in which the simple first is actualized by expressing
itself in the production of diversity, just as a grown plant actualizes the potency of a
seed.45 In these philosophies, “creation” is out of God and not out of nothing, such that
the radical difference between creatures and the creator implied by creation ex nihilo is
lost.46 Accounts in which the First produces an effect by performing some kind of
42
However, this does not mean, as it seems to for Al-Ghazali, that creatures have no real role in the generation of other
creatures. See John F. Wippel, "Thomas Aquinas on Creatures as Causes of Esse” for a detailed discussion of the way in
which creatures can cause being in a qualified sense.
43
This division of creation into 1, 1a, and 2 adds precision to the distinction of Richard Taylor, “Primary Causality and ibda'
(creare) in the Liber de causis,” 130–32 between Abrahamic and philosophical creation. Taylor does not note that Aquinas
thinks that much of the content of “Abrahamic” creation can be established philosophically. One may speculate on other
differences between the theological and philosophical meaning of creation that are brought about by the doctrine of the
Trinity such as a clearer affirmation of God’s freedom in creating and the goodness of ontological difference as such. See for
instance, D.C. Schindler “What’s the Difference? On the Metaphysics of Participation in Plato, Plotinus, and Aquinas,” Nova
et Vetera, English Edition, 5 (2007): 583–618.
44
See for instance the fragments collected on the Stoic idea of God and the world in A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The
Hellenistic Philosophers I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), especially 268–71 and 274–79. In the words of
Long and Sedley, 278, “God’s own life-history is co-extensive with that of the world which he creates” and changes in the
world seem to be “actually a self-transformation of god.”
45
See John Dillon, The Heirs of Plato: A Study of the Old Academy (347–274 B.C.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003),
42–46. It is of course probable that Aristotle is polemically distorting Speusippus’ meaning.
46
I am attempting here to formalize the critique some Christian philosophers make of Neoplatonic “emanation”, namely that
it confuses the Creator with the creature. See for instance, Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason, 12–19 and 31–
37 and P. Merlan, “Emanationism,” Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd ed., ed. Donald Borchert (NY: Macmillan, 1967), vol.
3, 188–90. Plotinus would be placed in this pantheist category by Wolfson, “The Meaning of ex nihilo in the Church Fathers,

12
 operation on itself or transformation of itself—such as Moderatus’ doctrine that the
Unitary Logos made room for the substrate Quality by “self-deprivation”47—would also
fit here.

4. Non-Creation: There is no single cause of the existence of all things. Manichean

Dualism and Peter Lombard’s interpretation of Plato as positing the first causes as the
Good, matter, and the Forms would fit here. Any philosopher who describes a Demiurgic
God as forming or ordering matter that he did not make does not have an account of
creation.48

Thomas understands Plato, Aristotle, and Avicenna as having achieved the philosophical idea of

creation. In so understanding Plato and Aristotle, Thomas follows the practice of Late Antiquity of

attributing to the founders and finding within their works the developments of their (temporally distant)

followers. While Thomas was probably mistaken about the metaphysical positions of the historical

Plato and Aristotle, his judgment that the philosophical meaning of creation was developed by pagan

Greek philosophers can be vindicated by applying it to Plotinus, who set the basic manner in which

Platonic and eventually Aristotelian metaphysics would be understood by subsequent Greek thinkers and

by many of the leading Arabic philosophers.49

II

Arabic and Hebrew Philosophy and St. Thomas” and Leo Sweeney, “Are Plotinus and Albertus Magnus Neoplatonists?” in
Graceful Reason, ed. Lloyd P. Gerson (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1983), 189.
47
According to John D. Turner, Sethian Gnosticism and The Platonic Tradition (Louvain-Paris, Peeters, 2001), 364–67,
Moderatus posited a unitary logos which retracts itself, thereby producing Quality (=Plato’s indefinite Dyad) and the First
One. Turner sees no reason to doubt the accuracy of Simplicius’ account of Moderatus, which comes from Porphyry.
Turner, “Neoplatonism and Gnosticism,” 453 in Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, ed. Richard T. Wallis (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1992) suggests that most Gnostics would fall into this category.
48
For the dualism of many of Plotinus’ Platonic predecessors, see A. H. Armstrong, “Dualism: Platonic, Gnostic, and
Christian” in Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, (1992), 33–54; and the accounts in John Dillon, The Middle Platonists (1977,
reprinted Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996) and Mathias Baltes, Die Weltenstehung des Platonischen Timaios nach des
antiken Interpreten, vol I (Leiden: Brill, 1976). Plutarch, Atticus, and Numenius seem to have posited preexistent matter and
disordered soul which the demiurge orders into the sensible universe.
49
See Sorabji, Time, Creation, and the Continuum, 271–72, 282–83, 313–15 for a brief account of the Neoplatonic doctrine
of beginningless creation and their attribution of it to Aristotle. On pages 314–315, he notes that the doctrine that God creates
without (sensible) matter, which “is itself created only at the ultimate point where creation peters out,” is the orthodox
Neoplatonic position after Plotinus. Sorabji criticizes Étienne Gilson for overlooking “the Platonists when he argues that the
Greeks do not have the conception of a creator who relies on nothing independently existent.” Sorabji also suggests that this
position influenced the metaphysics of Albert and Thomas Aquinas through Avicenna via the Arabic paraphrase of Plotinus’
Enneads. According to Cristina D’Ancona Costa, “The Origins of Islamic Philosophy,” Al-Kindi’s circle ascribed to
Aristotle a creationist worldview drawn from their own synthesis of material from Alexander, Plotinus, Proclus, Philoponus,
and Neoplatonic commentaries on De Anima.

13
 Plotinus and Creation. Turning now to Plotinus, I will argue that he has a philosophical account

of creation (#1) in three steps. (II.1) First, I will show that the One is qualified to be a creator. (II.2)

Second, I will show, in a general manner, that Plotinus presents an account of instrumental creation that

describes all things as eternally dependent on the One for their existence. (III) Third, I will delve into

certain details of Plotinus’s account in order to answer possible objections to my interpretation.

II.1. According to Thomas Aquinas, the main requirement for the act of creation is that the

creator must have the infinite power needed to bridge the gap between non-being and being. In turn,

infinite power can only be had by a being that is intrinsically infinite, which Thomas will express in

terms of God being unreceived act (ipse esse subsistens).50 That Plotinus argued that “the One is infinite

in itself and infinite in power” has been well established in Plotinian scholarship.51 Therefore, while

there is no need to establish the fact of the One’s infinity, I will briefly discuss the nature of the One’s

perfection in order to combat the old charge that the One’s ineffability and description as “beyond

being” somehow implies that it is indeterminate or unreal and thus incapable of causing being.52 This

discussion also lays the groundwork for discussing the One’s causality later.

When Plotinus writes that the One is “beyond being” and that none of our words can be properly

50
See ST I, q. 7, a. 1. This requirement is expressed most forcefully in De potentia q. 3, a. 4 as the main reason why no
creature can create or be used as an instrument in creation. See Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas and the Axiom that Unreceived
Act is Unlimited” for further discussion, including the axiom’s possible Neoplatonic origins.
51
Armstrong, “Plotinus’ Doctrine of the Infinite and its Significance for Christian Thought,” The Downside Review 73
(1954/5), 54 tentatively asserted “that when Plotinus says the One ‘does not exist’ he means what we mean when we say that
God is Infinite Being.” Clarke, “Infinity in Plotinus: A Reply” defended Plotinus’ originality, even contending that Plotinus
attributed infinity to God before the Christians did, against the position of Leo Sweeney, “Infinity in Plotinus,”
Gregorianium, 38 (1957) 515–35, 713–32 who argued that infinity only applied to the One’s extrinsic show of power and not
its intrinsic reality. Rist, Plotinus: The Road to Reality, chapter three is generally accepted as definitively proving that the
One is intrinsically infinite. For confirmation, see Gerson, Plotinus, p. 18 and n. 18 and Wippel, “Platonism and
Aristotelianism in Aquinas,” in Metaphysical Themes II, 280–81 for the judgment that Clarke is correct. Both Gerson and
Rist note that Sweeney conceded the point. My quotation is from Rist, Plotinus, 25, who treats Clarke as having settled the
matter. The main texts in Plotinus are VI.9.[10].6, V.5.[32].10, and VI.7.[38].32.
52
For the first view, I have in mind Étienne Gilson’s account of Plotinus in Being and Some Philosophers (Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1952). Gilson describes Plotinus’ philosophy thusly: “The ‘really real’ then hangs
upon something that is not real,” “ … because the One is not a thing, and if there is no thing which the One be, then we can
boldly say that the One is nothing,” and “the One itself has no being at all” (20, 22, 25). The worry that the One is
undetermined being is also found in Armstrong’s early The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe in the Philosophy of
Plotinus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), though it is corrected in his later works. For responses to Gilson’s
interpretation of Plotinus, see Clarke’s articles and Perl, “Esse Tantum and the One.”

14
predicated of Him, his chief concern is that we do not unintentionally make Him imperfect in thought or

word.53 “For whatever you say about it, you will always be speaking of a ‘something (ti\).’” 54 The

problem is that multiplicity is inherent in every thing—“all the other things are what they are along with

their being one”55—and every being, especially substance (ousia), is defined as this or that—“for a

substance must be some one particular thing (to/de ti), that is defined and limited.”56 Therefore, if we

really want to understand and express the perfect unity of the One, we must not make it multiple by

predicating of it the qualities and perfections of being and substance.57 Compared to the simplicity of

the One, the perfections of finite being are but mixed perfections, such that “if anyone adds anything at

all to him, substance or intellect or beauty, he will deprive him of being the Good by addition,”58 that is,

he will introduce multiplicity and limit into the One. Because of this multiplicity and finitude implicit in

all speech and thought, Plotinus argues that it is best to confine ourselves to saying what the One is not

or what the One is in relation to us.

Therefore, when Plotinus says that the One is beyond being (e)pe/keina ou)si/av or

53
For studies of the One’s ineffability, see chapter 5 of O’Meara’s Plotinus and chapter 3 of Rist’s Plotinus: The Road to
Reality. Also important are the treatment of the subject in the second chapter of Gerson’s Plotinus and John Bussanich’s
three articles on the One: “Plotinus on the Inner Life of the One,” Ancient Philosophy 7 (1987): 163–90; “Plotinus’s
Metaphysics of the One,” in The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, 38–65; “Plotinus on the Being of the One,”
Metaphysical Patterns in Platonism: Ancient, Mediaeval, Renaissance, and Modern, ed. John Finamore and Robert
Berchman (New Orleans: University Press of the South, 2007), 57–72. Unless otherwise stated, I use the translation and
Greek text of Plotinus, The Enneads, trans. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966–89).
54
V.3.[49].13.1–2.
55
VI.9.[10].1.36–38. VI.8.[39].21.34: “[the One] is only itself and really itself (mo/non au)to\ kai\ o)/ntwj au)to/),
while every other thing is itself and something else (au)to\ kai\ a)llo).” In V.5.[32].6, Plotinus says that “these things are
beings, and being; so it is ‘beyond being.’ This phrase ‘beyond being’ does not mean that it is a particular thing . . . but all it
implies is that it is ‘not this.’” “tau=ta de\ ta\ o)/nta kai\ to\ o)/n : e)pe/keina a)/ra o)/ntov. To\ ga\r
e)pe/keina o)/ntov ou) to/de le/gei . . . a)//lla\ fe/rei mo/non to\ ou) tou=to.” V.3.[49].13.24: “Being is
multiple (to\ o)\n polu/ e)stin).”
56
V.5.[32].6.6 – to/de ga/r ti dei~ th\n ou)si/an ei}nai : tou~to de\ w(risme/non. Note that Plotinus follows
Aristotle in understanding ousia to be implicitly multiple. For instance, Aristotle writes in Metaphysics VII.1.1028a12 that
ousia signifies what a thing is and that it is (to/ ti e/)sti kai/ to/de ti). Plotinus also follows Plato’s Sophist in conceiving
being, intellect, rest, motion, sameness, and otherness as mutually entailing each other. See, for instance, V.1.[10].4.
57
VI.8.[38].13.1–4: “But if one must bring in these names of what we are looking for, let it be said again that it was not
correct to use them, because one must not make it two even for the sake of forming an idea of it.”
58
VI.5.[32].13.10–11. See also III.9.[13].9. By mixed perfection, I mean what is a perfection for an imperfect being would
be an imperfection for a more perfect being. Thus, predicating “running fast” of God would make him less perfect than he is,
because it would imply that he is the kind of being that is confined to a particular place and in need of locomotion. See
Aquinas, Dei Potentia q. 1, a. 6 for the distinction between powers that imply a lack and perfect powers.

15
o)/ntov), he means that He has none of the limitations associated with o)/n or ou)si/a; he

emphatically does not mean that the One is unreal or is not existent.59 Rather, our words cannot express

and our thoughts cannot contain the One’s reality and perfection. As Bussanich lucidly puts it, “he is

more, not less, than anything we can describe or define. . . . Negation is directed at our intellectual

activities, whether discursive or noetic, and not at the superabundant reality of the One.”60 As Plotinus

himself puts it,

For it is the greatest of all things (me/giston ga\r a(pa/ntwn). . . . And it must be
understood as infinite (a)/peiron) not because its size and number cannot be measured
or counted but because its power (duna/mewj) cannot be comprehended. For when
you think of him as Intellect or God, he is more; and when you unify him in your thought,
here also the degree of unity by which he transcends your thought is more than you
imagined it to be; for he is by himself without any incidental attributes.61

Even though the One does not possess the perfections of its finite effects62—it does not, for instance,

think or know, and even unity and goodness are not predicated of it substantially63—the One is as

perfect as can be, such that all things find their own perfection in imitating its unity as much as possible.

As expressed in VI.2.[43].11.9–12: “But nevertheless all try to imitate (mimei~tai) the same [One],

but some attain only a remote resemblance, some come nearer, and attain it already more truly in

59
See Kevin Corrigan, “Essence and Existence in The Enneads,” The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, ed. Lloyd Gerson,
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 106, 107 for a note on Plotinus’s terminology. ‘o)/n’ or ‘ou)si/a’ are
almost never used to speak of the One. But ‘to be’ as a general term, “to/ ei}nai” sometimes is; as are various other
generic words for existence, such as hupostasis ὑπόστασις and ὕπαρξις.
60
“Plotinus on the Inner Life of the One,” 183–84. “Plotinus counsels against not only the tendency to misconceive the One
as a limited and knowable reality but also the possibility that we think the One is lifeless and barren, a sheer nothing.”
61
VI.9.[9].6.7–16. See also V.3.[49].14.17–19: The One is “something higher (ti krei=tton) than what we call being
(o)/n),” and One “is more and greater than anything said about him, because he is higher than speech (lo/gou) and thought
(nou=) and awareness (a)isqh/sewj); he gives us these, but he is not these himself.”
62
Aquinas argues that there are pure perfections, such as wisdom and goodness, that “are predicated substantially of God,
although they fall short of representing Him.” Even so, we must understand all imperfection and multiplicity being removed
from the predicates that we attribute to God. Thus we can truly say that God is wise, as long as we acknowledge that we do
not understand what is like to be wise and perfectly simple and eternal. See ST I, q. 13, aa. 1–2. Rist, Plotinus, 32 proposes
that Plotinus must have an implicit theory of analogy for talking about One, however it seems to me that Plotinus would not
hold to Thomas’ idea of substantial predication. As will be shown in the discussion of the One’s will, Plotinus tends to more
thoroughly purify our terms of content than Thomas does and constantly warns about the imprecision of our language.
63
In V.5.[32].13.11–12, Plotinus says that the name “‘One’ contains [only] a denial of multiplicity,” and should itself be
discarded if it is taken as a positive predication. Plotinus of course identifies his first principle with the Good beyond being
of the Republic, but qualifies that it is the Good in relation to us (VI.9.[9].6.36–42 and VI.7.[38].41.28–33) or ‘the Good’ has
the negative meaning that the One is not dependent on or striving for anything else, but is completely self-sufficient. See I.8.
[53].2.1–7 and I.7.[54].1 for the latter.

16
Intellect: for soul is one and Intellect and being are still more one.”64 Τhe One has no need of thinking,

for it is already the perfect unity that thinking tries to achieve by overcoming the duality of subject and

object. In this sense, the One is characterized as the Intelligible (nohto/n) that is prior to Intellection

(no/hsiv), inspiring thought and making it possible.65 In a certain sense, the One is the exemplar cause

of all reality, for the form of each thing is a particularized unity and all things are perfected by imitating

it.

II.2. Having shown that Plotinus describes the One as infinite and perfect, I now turn to the

general question of whether he also describes it as responsible for the existence of everything and for

keeping them in existence, the two notions that make up Thomas’ idea of creation. He writes in

VI.7.23.19–25, that the One makes and maintains all things in their existence and their activity:

What then does it make, if it is like this? It made Intellect, it made life, and from Intellect
the souls and all else that has a share in reason or intellect or life. . . . But what is it
making now? Now as well it is keeping (sw/|zei) those things in being and making the
thinking things think and the living things live, inspiring thought, inspiring life and, if
something cannot live, existence (ei}nai).

In chapter 42.21–24 of the same ennead, he clarifies that all is dependent on the One through

intermediaries: “But since soul depends on Intellect and Intellect on the Good, so all things depend on

him through intermediaries, some close to him, some neighbors of those close to him, and the things of

sense dependent on Soul at the ultimate distance from Him.”66 The general point that the One causes the

existence of all things and maintains them in existence can be found throughout Plotinus’ writings. Here

are some examples. In VI.9.[9] he says that the One has “the power which generates being”

64
See VI.8.[39].7.3–5: “But the nature of the Good is the very goal of striving and that through which the others have what is
in their power.” VI.2.11 says that each thing is one insofar as it attains the Good, for the goal of each thing is to be one with
the Good. Cf. I.7.[54].1–2 and III.2.[47].3.
65
On Nous’ thinking as the attempt to overcome the multiplicity of finite being, see See V.1.[10].6; V.6.[24].1: All thinking
is an “escaping being two;” and V.3.[49].15. For depictions of the One as the Intelligible, see the early V.4.[7].2.14–16 and
VI.9.[9].6.51–56 and the mature V.6.[24].2.8–13 and VI.7.[38].37.15–17.
66
This is the last line of the ennead. Plotinus offers this as his interpretation of the famous and cryptic line in Plato’s Second
Letter about all things being around the King of all, the first, the seconds, and the thirds. See John Rist’s review of Harold
Tarrant’s Thrasyllan Platonism in The Review of Metaphysics 48 (1995): 933–34 for the suggestion that Thrasyllus himself
may have written this letter.

17
(du/namin gennw=san ta\ o)/nta) (5.37), and “The other things are established through him,

through whom they at once exist (di ) o(\n u(pe/sth a(/ma) and have the place to which they are

assigned” (6.28). III.8.[30].10 says that the One is “the productive power of all things (du/namiv

tw~n pa/ntwn); if did not exist, neither would all things, nor would Intellect be the first and universal

life.” V.5.[32].10.12–15 directs that the Good be thought of as “the productive power of thoughtful,

intelligent life, from whom come life and intelligence and whatever there is of substance and being

(ou)siav kai\ tou~ o)/ntov) – that he is One – for he is simple and First – that he is the Principle –

for all things come from him (a(p ‘ au)tou~ ga\r pa/nta).”67 VI.8.[39].21.21–22 says that “All the

other things that exist are held together by this, for they exist by some kind of participation in him, and it

is to this that their origin is to be traced” and chapter 18.39–40 describes the One as “something like the

most causative and truest of causes (oi(/on aitiw/taton kai\ a)lhqe/stepon ai)ti/a), possessing

all together the intellectual causes which are going to be from him.” Finally, as Gerson notes in his

article, the One is said in V.3.[49].15.27–29 to be the principle of all things (a)rxh\ tw=n pa/ntwn)

because it “brought them into existence” (o(/ti u(pe/sthsen au)ta/) and because “it keeps them in

being, making each one of them exist” (o(/ti au)ta\ sw/|zei e(/n e(/kaston au)tw~n

poih/sasa ei}nai).68 In this passage we seem to have both parts of Aquinas’ philosophical definition

of creation.

Plotinus explains in V.5.9 that when he describes lower realities as being “in” their cause, “in”

expresses ongoing causal dependency. That which “is brought into being by something else and needed
67
See also chapter 5: “the One itself is sufficient to generate reality (ta\ o)/nta).” All the beings that come after it
participate in it unequally, such that each “has in itself a kind of form of it”; their participation “gives beings substantial
existence (ou)si/an), so that being is a trace of the One (to\ ei}nai i)/xoj tou~ e(no/j).” “Thus that which came to
exist, substance and being, has an image of the One since it flows from its power. Plotinus’ famous derivation of ei}nai and
o(/n from e(/n is also found in this passage.
68
Plotinus also never tires of describing the One as the principle of all and as the power of all. In his “Goodness, Unity, and
Creation” Gerson lists V.1.[10].7. 9; V.3.[49].15.31; V.4.[7].2.38; VI.9.[9].5.36–37 as references for du/namiv tw~n
pa/ntwn. I interpret this phrase as Gerson does in his Plotinus (New York: Routledge, 1994), 35–36 as “the power to cause
to exist everything that can exist, including eternal Intellect and Forms” and not as “virtually all things” as Gerson does in
“Goodness, Unity, and Creation.” Though, it is true that the One eminently precontains its effects.

18
something else for its coming into being . . . needs something else at every point: and this is why it is

also in something else.”69 In this sense, the last and lowest things are in the principles before them and

they are in what is ontologically prior to them and all things are in the First and the First is in nothing

but encompasses all that exists.70 This passage affirms as a general principle that what depends on

another for its existence always depends on another for its existence, a principle that clearly corresponds

to Thomas’ second criteria for creation ex nihilo. Thus even when Plotinus describes Nous as self-

sufficient (au)/tarkev), he still affirms that the One is the cause of its being and self-sufficiency.71

III

Difficulties. While I have now shown that Plotinus’s account of the procession of all things from

the One can be generally characterized as a philosophical account of instrumental creation, three doubts

may remain about the specifics of the procession: (III.1) First, is not the One somehow a constitutive

part of what it creates, such, for instance, that each thing can be conceived of as the One plus some kind

of addition?72 (III.2) Second, even granting that necessary creation is not a contradiction, does not the

identity of the One somehow depend on what it causes, such that it would not be entirely itself without

its creation?73 (III.3) Third, how can the One be responsible for the multiplicity of what it causes? Must

69
lines 3–5: “a(/te ga\r geno/menon u(p ) a)/llou kai\ pro\j th\n ge/nesin dehqe\n a)/llou, a)/llou dei~tai
pantaxou= : dio/per kai\ e)n a#llw|.”
70
V.5.[32].9.12–13 contains a great line against pantheistic interpretations of Plotinus: “But in encompassing them it is not
dispersed into them and it possesses them without being possessed.”
71
V.3.[49].17.11–14. Plotinus makes a similar point in VI.7.[38] when he identifies intellectual being as identical to its
reason why, but still argues for their radical origin from the One. Thomas Aquinas will also speak of necessary beings and
describe their necessity as having been made by God. By necessary, Aquinas means that they are not subject to generation
and corruption. See Dewan, “Thomas Aquinas, Creation, and Two Historians,” 383 for references to texts in Thomas and in
Aristotle from whom the idea originally comes.
72
Although Dominic J. O’Meara in chapter 6 of his Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1993) says that emanation is a material process by which Plotinus merely illustrates the procession of all things from
the One, a procession that could be described as creation, his explanation of participation in Plotinus makes me uneasy. He
attributes to Plotinus a Principle of Prior Simplicity which “postulates elements which constitute compounds while
continuing to exist as themselves. A compound only exists to the extent that its constitutive elements exist and come together
to produce it.” This formulates makes it sound as if the One is unchanged by its causal activity even though it also exists as a
part of what it causes. I find this problematic formulation repeated in “The Hierarchical Ordering of Reality in Plotinus,” in
The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, 66–81.
73
This is part of the reason why Sokolowski, God of Faith and Reason, 18 says that Plotinus’ One is still part of the world
and incompatible with the Christian idea of God as transcendent Creator. .

19
not the cause of multiplicity itself somehow be independent of the One?74

III.1. In response to these first two objections, I must turn to Plotinus’ account of why the One

creates. Plotinus posits as a general principle: “Now when anything comes to perfection (ei)j

telei/wsin), we see that it produces, and does not endure to remain by itself, but makes something

else.”75 Therefore, as Atkinson put is, “Since the One is teleio/tatoj (most perfect) it cannot help but

create.”76 This explanation, in turn, is tied to Plotinus’ well-known doctrine of dual activity, the idea

that everything, insofar as it is active produces something like itself.77 As Plotinus explains:

In each and everything there is an activity (e)ne/rgeia) which belongs to substance

(ou)si/aj) and one which goes out from substance; and that which belongs to substance
is the active actuality (e)ne/rgeia) which is each particular thing, and the other activity
derives from the first, and must in everything be a consequence of it, different from the
thing itself: as in fire there is a heat which is the content of its substance, and another
which comes into being from that primary heat when fire exercises the activity which is
native to its substance in abiding unchanged (me/nein) as fire.78
74
The question of whether the One is responsible for the content of Nous or not is the main reason why Gerson hesitates to
ascribe an account of creation to Plotinus in his two articles. In “Plotinus’s Metaphysics” and in the material from it repeated
in his book, Gerson presents the interpretation that the One is the cause of the existence of Nous and of essence, but that the
essences or whatnesses of the Forms are in themselves uncaused, such that Plotinus’ metaphysics has separate causes for
existence and essence. In his “Goodness, Unity, and Creation,” Gerson lessens the division between the One and Nous by
describing the One as giving Nous the power by which it defines itself. The content of Nous, the Forms, however, remains
independent of the One’s causal activity.
75
See V.4.[7].1.27–33 for the full account of this principle. Eric Perl, “'The Power of All Things:’ The One as Pure Giving in
Plotinus” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 71 (1997): 301–13 argues that this principle cannot actually be meant
to explain why the One produces, for “it subjects the One to a law more fundamental than itself, explaining its productive
activity in terms of a more universal principle, whereas the One itself is the ultimate explanation of all things” (302). Rist,
Plotinus, 66–75 also discusses the problematic nature of the passages in which Plotinus says that emanation is necessary, and
developing his remarks, I would suggest that the necessary here is that of an argument from fittingness. Given that all objects
produce when perfect and given that all objects imitate the One, it must be the case (it is the most fitting) that One produces
because it is perfect. I bring up the doctrine of two acts primarily to discuss the metaphysical relationship between the One
and its effects; the manner in which the procession is necessary will be discussed afterwards.
76
Atkinson, Ennead V.1 On the Three Principal Hypostases (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 148. He identifies as a
source for Plotinus’ idea De anima 415a26–28 in Aristotle says that it is most natural for a living being to “make another like
itself” when it is mature (te/leia). He notes that the word Aristotle uses for mature is the same as the one Plotinus uses for
perfect, thus enabling Plotinus to appropriate Aristotle’s maxim. The referenced passage is V.1.[10].6.39–40: “All things
when they come to perfection produce; the One is always perfect (a)ei\ te/leion) and therefore produces everlastingly (ai!
dion genna~|=); and its product is less that itself.”
77
The most complete study of the doctrine of dual activity is chapter one of E.K. Emilsson Plotinus on Intellect (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007), though most accounts of Plotinus’s metaphysics have discussions of it. I found von
Balthasar; Gerson, “Plotinus’s Metaphysics;” and Bussanich, The One and its Relation to Intellect in Plotinus ( New York: E.
J. Brill, 1988) to be the most helpful.
78
V.2.[11].2.27–33. This seems to be an elaboration of the productive principle expounded in V.4.1. Other descriptions of
or allusions to what has been called the double act doctrine or the doctrine of dual activity are found, according to Gerson,
Plotinus, 23, in II.9[33].8.22–25; IV.5.[29].7.15–17, 51–5; V.1.[10].6.31–36; V.3.[49].7.23–24; V.9.[5].8.13–15; VI.2.
[43].22.24–29; VI.7.[38].18.5–6; VI.7.[38].21.4–6, 40.21–24. I have underlined the most helpful discussions. See also IV.3.

20
As regards the One, “The activity generated from the perfection in it and its coexistent activity acquires

substantial existence (u(po/stasin) … and arrives at being and substance (to\ ei}nai kai\

ou)si/an),” namely “the Intellect and the whole intelligible nature.”79 In turn, “Intellect generates soul,

since it is perfect Intellect. For since it was perfect it had to generate, and not be without offspring when

it was so great a power.”80 “Resembling the One thus, Intellect produces (poiei~) in the same way,

pouring forth (proxe/aj) a multiple power—this is a likeness (ei)a/doj) of it—just as that which was

before it poured it forth (proe/xee)” 81 Soul, due to its own level of perfection, then generates matter

and acts upon it to create the sensible world.82 Through these intermediary outpourings, the power of the

Good “goes on forever, until all things have the ultimate limit [impelled] by the power itself, which

sends them out and cannot leave anything without a share of itself.”83
[27].10 and III.8.[30].7.
79
V.4.[7].2.36–37 combined with V.3.[49].12.41–42: “we shall state that the first activity, which, so to speak, flows from it
like a light from the sun, is Intellect and the whole intelligible nature.”
80
V.1.[10].7.36–38. See also VI.2.[43].22.26–28 for the explanation that Nous’ internal power is the generation of the
intelligibles and its external power is the generation of Soul. A very similar account is given in the second half of V.1.7 in
which Nous is said to immediately produce the intelligibles by the power it has from the One and then, being perfected by its
possession of them, produces Soul. I.8.[53].2.21–23: “Nous is the first act of the Good (prw/th e)ne/rgeia) and the first
substance; the Good stays still in himself, but Nous moves about him in its activity, as also it lives around him.” See also the
note in II.9.[33].8.24–25 that only what is most powerless does not produce another thing below it.
81
V.2.[11].1.14–16
82
That Soul generates matter is implied at the end of V.1.[10].7 and in III.4.1 and III.9.2 That matter is conceived as the last
manifestation of the power proceeding from the Good is clearly expressed in I.8.[53].7.17–23: “One can grasp the necessity
of evil in this way too. Since not only the Good exists, there must be the last end to the process of going out past it, or if one
prefers to put it like this, going down or going away: and this last, after which nothing else can come into being, is evil. Now
it is necessary that the last should exist; and this is matter, which possesses nothing at all of the Good.” The exact way in
which matter is generated is disputed. III.4.1 seems to indicate that it is Nature—the principle of the life of plants—while
II.5.5 may present hypostatic Soul as generating it. See Denis O’Brien, “Plotinus on the Making of Matter,” The
International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 5–6 (2011–12): 6–57, 209–60, 27–80 for a spirited defense of the position
that matter is generated by some aspect of soul. See also his “Plotinus and the Secrets of Ammonius,” in Neoplatonica,
Studies in the Neoplatonic Tradition=Hermathena 157 (1994): 117–53 for the intriguing suggestion that the production of
matter by soul was the doctrine of Ammonius that Plotinus swore to keep secret. O’Brien’s account is generally more
plausible than that of Jean-Marc Narbonne, Plotinus in Dialogue with the Gnostics (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 11–53 and 88–95
who suggests that matter is a “by-product” or “collateral damage” of the emanative system, which exists prior to the
emanation of soul. Narbonne’s account is difficult to square with II.5.[25].5’s depiction of matter appearing after the
intelligible realm had come to an end: “with the beings of the intelligible realm having already came to an end [matter]
appeared (tw~n d )o!ntwn h!dh pausame/nwn e)kei/nwn fanei~sa)” (lines 18–19). See my review of
Narbonne’s book forthcoming in The Review of Metaphysics.
83
IV.8.[6].8.13–15. I interpret this passage as being about the unfolding of the external activity of the One and not as
describing creation as the unfolding of the One itself. See Rist, Plotinus, 74–75 and “Plotinus on Matter and Evil.”
Phronesis 6 (1961): 154–66, section I.5 for suggestions on interpreting this chapter so that it is consistent with Plotinus’ later
accounts of how everything comes from the One.

21
 Plotinus’ colorful language of pouring forth and overflowing should not distract us from two

crucial aspects in his account of dual activity. First, the generator generates because it is already in

perfect actuality. Its generation is a sign of its perfection; it is not what makes it perfect. Second, the

external activity that proceeds from the internal activity constitutes a new being—a “something else

(e(/teron),” “different from the thing itself (e(te/ran ou}san au)tou=).”84 The generator is not

the same as the thing generated, just as the light streaming from the sun is not the sun itself and just as

the word expressed in speech is not the same as the word in the mind.85 As regards the causal activity of

the One, these two points are often mentioned side by side.86 The One is constantly described as abiding

unchanged or remaining the same (translations of different forms of me/nw) “in its own proper way of

life” while generating Intellect.87 And the One’s ability to generate all things is often connected to it not

being one of things that it generates.88

This second point is expressed most clearly in respect to the One in III.8.[39].9.43–55:

For all things are not an origin (ou0 ga\r a)rxh\ ta\ pa/nta), but they came from an
origin, and this is no more all things, or one of them. . . . But if anyone should think that
the One itself is also all things, then either it will be each one taken separately or all of
them together. If, then, it is all of them collected together, it will be posterior to all
things; but if it is prior to all things, all things will be other than it, and it will be other
than all things, but if it and all things are simultaneous, then it will not be an origin. But
it must be an origin, and exist before all things, in order that all things, too, may exist
after it. But as for its being each one taken separately, first, any one of them will be the
same as any other, then all will be confounded together and there will be no distinction

84
V.4.[7].1.29 and 2.30.
85
These are Plotinus’ own examples. See, for instance V.1.[10].6.29–30 for the sun and I.2.[19].3.27–32 for the word.
86
“The first principle remains (menei) in its transcendent state while it generates, without its substance being impoverished;
the generated is inferior to the generator, and does not impoverish it nor does the generator have need of the generated in any
way.” Maria Luisa Gatti, “The Platonic Tradition and the Foundation of Neoplatonism,” in The Cambridge Companion to
Plotinus, 30.
87
See I.6.7.25–27, V.9.2.23–27, IV.8.6.1–24, V.4.2.14–16 and 21–23, VI.9.5.36–39 and 9.1–11, V.1.6, V.2.2, IV.5.7,
III.8.10.16-19, V.5.5.1–7, V.3.12.35–45, and I.7.1.18–25 for a description of the One or of the first activity remaining the
same while generating a second act. The language of remaining in his own proper place consciously echoes the description
of the Demiurge in Timaeus 42E who gives to the created gods the task of ordering the realm of becoming.
88
III.9.[13].4.8–9: “He must fill all things and make all things, not be all the things he makes.” See also VI.7.[38].16.27–32
and V.5.[32].13.35–6: The Good is “unmixed with all things and above all things and cause of all things.” This is also the
meaning of the paradoxical opening of V.2.[11]: “The One is all things and not a single one of them: it is the principle of all
things, not all things . . . . In order that being (to\ o!n) may exist, the One is not being, but the generator of being.” V.3.11:
“It is not, then, one of all things but before all things.”

22
 [between them]. And so it is not one of all things, but is before all things. 89

Plotinus’ argument is rather simple. If the One exists in the same way as the beings that it causes, then it

too will need to be caused—“then it will not be an origin (a)rxh/)”—and will fail to account for the

existence of all things. Likewise, if it exists as all things taken together, then the existence of the One

will be based on its parts—“it will be posterior to all things,” and therefore an effect of their existence

rather than their cause. If the being of the One is the same as each thing taken separately, such that each

thing is at root a simple unity and in fact, the same unity, how will things be really distinct from each

other? We would fall into Parmenidean monism; Being will be one, (in this case, the One), and “then all

will be confounded together and there will be no distinction.”90 Therefore the One must be ontologically

prior to all beings and their being must be other than his. The One is all things in the sense that he

causes them and keeps them in existence and that they exist as expressions of him, not in the sense that

they really are him or that he makes up a part of them.91

According to V.3.11.16-25, to think that the One is a constitutive part of Nous is to be confused

about what kind of principle the One is. Refining Aristotle’s discussion of a)rxh/ in Metaphysics V.2,

Plotinus says that that which is prior to no/hsij, ousi/a, and nou~j is the principle of them,

not as a principle subsisting within them; for that from which (a)po/) something comes
does not subsist within it, but rather that out of which (e)k) something arises subsists
within it; that from which each comes is not the same as each, but is different from all of
them. Therefore [the One] is not one part of all the things [that come from it], but is

89
As Armstrong remarks in a footnote to this passage on page 392–93 of the third volume of his translation of the Enneads,
“Plotinus could hardly make it clearer than he does in this passage that he is not a pantheist.” Commenting on this passage,
D’Ancona Costa, “Causality of the First Principle,” 364 writes, “Plotinus ruled out any ‘pantheistic’ interpretation of the
omnipresence of the One by repeatedly asserting that the One must fill all things and make them, rather than ‘being’ itself all
the things that it makes.” Cf. Rist, Plotinus, 27: “the One and the others are radically opposed, as far apart as creator and
creatures must be.”
90
This last point is not as clear as the first two. My reading of it is influenced by Plotinus’ denial in VI.1.[44].25 and VI.2.
[45].9 that there is a common genus such as ti, to/ o)/n, to/ e)/n, or The One itself. Many of the arguments against there
being a common genus are similar to those here. In Plotinus explicitly brings up the Parmenidean problem that if everything
falls into one genus then what will differentiate the members of the genus and how will the existence of the genus itself be
accounted for in VI.1-2.
91
Plotinus will also express this sharp division between the being of the One and the being of what comes from it as one
meaning Plato’s description of the Good as “beyond being.” See, for instance, V.5.6 and the discussion above.

23
 before all things.92

Thus the One is not an intrinsic principle of Nous in the manner of form or matter, but is an extrinsic

principle, being the efficient and final cause of all things.93

III.2. This real difference between the One and ta\ pa/nta bolsters Plotinus’ claim that the One

is unaffected by the procession of all things from himself and has no need of them. That “the principle

of all things needs none of them” is a specification of Plotinus’ general metaphysical principle that “a

principle is not in need of the things which come after it.”94 Some scholars have called this the

‘Principle of Undiminished Giving:’ that “the higher reality in its existence and activity is, at every

level, completely independent of and unconcerned with the lower.”95 Unlike Aristotle’s conception of

first and second act which involves the agent moving itself into full actuality, Plotinus denies that the

One’s external act requires any change or movement within the One at all. Thus he denies any

conception of the One’s generative activity that implies duality within the One, an intermediary between

the One and Intellect, a movement from potency to act on behalf of the One, or that makes the One

dependent in any way on its product.96 The conclusion of all these denials is that if, per impossibile, the

92
My translation of “Τὸ δὲ πρὸ τούτων ἡ ἀρχὴ τούτων, οὐχ ὡς ἐνυπάρχουσα• τὸ γὰρ ἀφ’ οὗ οὐκ ἐνυπάρχει, ἀλλ’ ἐξ ὧν• ἀφ’
οὗ δὲ ἕκαστον, οὐχ ἕκαστον, ἀλλ’ ἕτερον ἁπάντων. Οὐ τοίνυν ἕν τι τῶν πάντων, ἀλλὰ πρὸ πάντων.” This text clearly
disproves that Plotinus opposes Aristotle’s idea of efficient causality with his own emanation model of causality, as
suggested by Sweeney, “Are Plotinus and Albertus Magnus Neoplatonists?” The Christian Church Fathers who understood
Plotinus’ One, Mind, and Soul as the three hypostases of a single Godhead, that is, as a distortion of the Trinity, did not read
Plotinus closely enough. Nous and Soul do not proceed out of (e)k) the One as the Son and Spirit do from the Father, but
from (a)po/) the One like angels from God. See Salvatore Lilla, “The Neoplatonic Hypostases and the Christian Trinity” in
Studies in Plato and the Platonic Tradition, ed. Mark Joyal (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1997): 127–89 for the Patristic
reception of Plotinus.
93
cf. V.4.1: “For there must be something simple before all things, and this must be other than all the things that come after
it, existing by itself, not mixed with the things which derive from it.”
94
VI.9.[9].6.34–35. Plotinus also says that the One does not need what comes from it in V.2.1.8–9, V.6.4.1–5, III.8.11.10-12
and 16, VI.8.19.13–20 and 21.25: “he does not need all things to be himself”, VI.7.41.26–38, V.3.13.17–19, and I.8.2.2–7.
95
Paul Henry, “The Place of Plotinus in the History of Thought,” in Plotinus, The Enneads, trans. Stephen MacKenna, ed.
John Dillon, (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), xlii–lxxxiii.
96
See V.6.5 for the denial that the One must be activity in the sense of moving into actuality, thinking, or being directed
toward anything else. Thought and intentionality are denied of the One throughout; see VI.7.37.39–41 for the fullest
discussion of why the One does not think or have knowledge. V.1.6.26–27: “If there is a second after the One it must have
come to be without the One moving at all, without any inclination or act of will or any sort of activity on its part.”

24
One did not generate anything, its perfection would remain the same.97 This point is expressed best in

V.5.[32].12.38–50:

[The Good] has all power; that which comes after it has not all power, but as much as can
come after it and derive from it. The Good then is master (ku/rioj) also of this derived
power. He does not need (ou) dehqei/j) the things which have come into being from
him, but leaves what has come into being altogether alone, because he needs nothing of
it, but is the same as he was before he brought it into being. He would not have cared if it
had not come into being.98

The generation of all things from the One is due to the One’s perfection and is the sign of that

perfection. Since the generation is ontologically posterior to that perfection, its happening and whether

it happens or not does affect the One’s perfection. Plotinus will also express the inability of anything to

affect the One as the One being “altogether unrelated to anything; for he is what he is before them.”99

“The First itself is not related to anything, but the other things are related to it” as to their ultimate

efficient and final cause.100 We call the One “Good” because he brought everything into existence and

everything strives after Him as its final cause,101 not because he needs all things in order to be good; All

things are because the One is, “but the One does not need all things to be himself.”102 Plotinus also

expresses the One’s independence by saying that the production of all things is an overflow from the

One’s superabundance and that the One’s external activity is gratuitous.103

Even though it requires him to “depart a little from correct thinking,”104 Plotinus goes to great

97
A similar interpretation of the One’s need to create but lack of need for creation is found in Bussanich, “Plotinus’
Metaphysics of the One,” 49–50. He calls Plotinus’ position “simple if not completely convincing.”
98
See also VI.8.21.19–25, in which Plotinus argues that all beings exists by a participation in the One, while the One “is all
things by and in himself—but rather none of them, and he does not need all things to be himself.”
99
VI.8.[39].8.13–14: “dei~ de\ o(/lwj pro\j ou)de\n au)to\n le/gein : e)/sti ga\r o(/per e)sti\ kai\ pro\
au)tw=n.”
100
III.9.[13].9. This point seems to be essentially the same as the one Aquinas makes in De potentia q. 3, a. 3. He says that
creation is a real relation of dependence of the creature on the creator, but God is not really related to anything.
101
VI.2.[43].11 – “And the One is on both sides of them; for it is that from which they come and to which they go; for all
things originate from the One and strive towards the One.” I.8.[53].2: The Good “is that on which everything depends” and
“to which all beings aspire.”
102
See VI.8.21.19–33. Here Plotinus says the One, being completely unrelated to anything else, is “alone free in truth
(mo/non . . . a)lhqei/a| e)leu/qepon).”
103
See for instance V.4.[7].1.33–37 and V.2.[11].1.8–9.
104
VI.8.[39].13.4.

25
lengths in VI.8 to explain that the necessity that all things proceed from the One is not other than the

simple activity that is the One itself. Having denied that the One creates out of need or out of intention

but described its activity as necessary, Plotinus has left himself open to the charge that the One and its

causality is determined by chance or some sort of extrinsic necessity.105 In response, Plotinus says that it

is better to think of the One as existing and acting according to His will than as having mysteriously

popped into existence. He writes,

if we were to grant activities (e)nergei/aj) to him, and ascribe his activities to what we
might call his will—for he does not act without willing—and his activities are what we
call his substance (ou)si/a), his will and his substance will be the same thing. But if this
is so, then as he willed, so he is (e)/stin).106

The One is self-caused in the sense that all causative and determinative factors are posterior to his

simple existence.107 Rather than the One being forced to be or do anything, necessity should be thought

of as the One’s creation, for he is “the source of being and the why of being (phgh/ ou}n tou~

ei}nai kai\ tou~ dia\ ti/ ei}nai),” or as identical to the will of the One, which is the “necessity and

law of the others.”108

If the One is as he wills, then the generation of all things that follows from his perfection also

happens in accordance with the One’s will:

“He is then in a greater degree something like the most causative and truest of causes,
possessing all together the intellectual causes which are going to be from him and
generative of what is not as it chanced but as he himself willed (w(j h)qe/lhsen
105
Plotinus is opposing the view that the Good is not free because its making of the world necessarily follows from that it
“happens to be as it is (tuxou=sa ou(/twj e)/xein)” VI.8.7.12–15. This charge may stem from the fact that Plotinus
seems to have made the One subject to a universal metaphysical principle in his earlier accounts of why it creates.
106
Ibid., 13.6–9. See also lines 56–59: “For if his will comes from himself and is something like his own work, and this will
is the same thing as his existence, then in this way he will have brought himself into existence[:] … he is not what he
happened to be but what he himself willed.”
107
Chapter 8 argues that having a nature and “happened to be” (sune/bh) come after the One. Chapter 9 argues that
“necessity is in the things which follow the principle.” Chapter 14 says that the One is self-caused and as far removed from
chance as can be: “For he is the father of reason and cause and causative substance, which are certainly all far from chance,
he would be the principle and in a way the exemplar (para/deigma) of all things which have no part in chance, truly and
primarily, uncontaminated by chances and coincidence and happening, cause of himself (ai!tion e(autou) and himself
from himself and through himself, for he is primarily self and self beyond being” (37–42). It is clear from the context that
Plotinus does not mean self-caused in a literal way, as if the One was not and then brought Himself into existence.
108
Ibid., 14.32 and 10.35.

26
 au)to/j). And his willing (qe/lhsij) is not irrational, or of the random, or just as it
happened to occur to him, but as it ought to be (w(j e!dei).”109

This “what ought to be (to\ de/on)” is not other than the One itself and what he wishes to be. What

ought to be is not a constraint on the One’s activity, and does not represent the One in some state of

potency (as if the One had to exert itself to make what ought to be a reality), but is the same as the One

as the first actuality. It is not the case that the One must do the best, rather, because the One actually is

the best, all things proceed from it as a revelation of what ought to be.110 If we must discuss why the

One generates all things, the generation is due to the will of the One, and his will is necessary in the

sense that it is simply the best and cannot be other than the best, not in the sense of constraint or need.

Throughout VI.8, Plotinus seeks to affirm the ‘up to us (to\ e)f ) h(mi=n)’ and self-

determining nature of voluntary action for the One while simultaneously separating free choice from

what it means to be absolutely free. The One is first “in authentic mastery and purely self-determined

power (kurio/thti kai\ duna/mei au)tecousi/w| kaqarw=j),”111 and the greatest power

(ma/lista du/manij) is to be and cause the best without possibility of being shaken or deflected. The

ability to do opposites is not in fact a perfection, but is rather the “incapacity to remain with the best;”112
109
Ibid. 18.39–41. Rist, The Road to Reality, 82 notes that this passage is as close as Plotinus comes to saying that the
products of the One are the products of the One’s will. At lines 45–46, Plotinus ties his use of dei~ to Plato’s association of
to\ de/on with kairo/j (opportune or at the right moment) at Statesman 284c–d. Plotinus probably intends de/w to be
taken in the sense of what is fitting or what is best, namely, the necessity appropriate to a rational cause. Although Plotinus
does not mention it, the Statesman connects to\ de/on with to\ me/tron (the limited) which Plotinus would obviously
never apply to the One!
110
VI.8.18.46: “but what it is is what it ought to be. Indeed, if he is what he ought to be, he is not so irrationally . . . but he is,
as it were, as he willed himself (tou=to/ e)stin o!per oi}on e)boulh/qh au)to/j), since he wills what is necessary
and what ought to be and the actuality of what ought to be are one; and it is not what ought to be as a substrate, but as the first
actuality (e)ne/rgeia prw/th) revealing itself as what ought to be (e!dei)” (modified Armstrong). See Laurent Lavuad,
notes 348–50 for VI.8.18 in Plotin, Traités 38–41, translation and notes under the direction of Luc Brisson and Jean-Francois
Pradeau (Paris: GF Flammarion, 2007) for Plotinus’ attempt to bring necessary being (devoir-être) and free will together in
the act (e)ne/rgeia) of the One. See the above note for the unity of what ought to be and the best.
111
VI.8.20.32–33. Earlier at chapter 18.43–44, Plotinus says that the One has to\ ma/lista kupriw/taton e)n toi~j
met ) au)to/, which Armstrong translates as “the most authentic mastery among the things which come after it,” while
Lavuad translates the passage as “the One is sovereignly the master of what comes after it.”
112
Summary of VI.8.21.3–7. Lavuad notes that Plotinus here is drawing on Alexander’s discussion of what is up to us as the
human ability to choose between opposite. Plotinus and Alexander agree that the divine cannot be free in this manner, but
they part ways in that Plotinus argues that the One’s inability to go to the worse is absolute freedom, while Alexander says
that the concept of what is up to us simply does not apply to the gods. See Alexander, On Fate, text, translation, and
commentary by R.W. Sharples (London: Duckworth, 1983), XII and XXXII. See Narbonne, Plotinus in Dialogue with the

27
likewise that the One cannot be otherwise than it is is not an incapacity, but is the upmost limit of power

(th\n u(perbolh\n th~j duna/mewj), for it remains absolutely itself while all other come to be

after it and are determined by their desire for it.113

It is a mistake, therefore, to understand the necessity of the One’s production of all things as a

suppositional necessity that only exists because the One has willed itself to be such that it is the cause of

all things.114 The One’s will is not prior to the One’s ‘substance’ or activity, but is identical or

coextensive with it.115 Plotinus always corrects his metaphors of the One causing or making himself by

arguing that for the One, the maker and the making, the act and the actuality are the same.116 What

Plotinus means by saying that the One is self-caused and the product of His own will is that the One is

utterly self-determined because it is prior to and the ultimate source of all determining factors and

Gnostics, 136–38 for commentary. It is probable that one of the reasons behind the composition of VI.8 is Plotinus seeking
to correct the impression, left by Alexander that humans are free and the gods are not. In other words, Plotinus may be
responding to problems caused by Peripatetic view of god and freedom, not to a Peripatetic critic of Plotinus’ own views.
According to Plotinus, human freedom is based on our ability to act according to Intellect and virtue in opposition to
our bodily needs and desires and to what external circumstance try to force us to do. See VI.8.3.20–26 and 6.4–22.
However, the ability to choose to act rationally utterly fails as a definition of freedom when the discussion turns to Intellect
and to Intellect’s cause. Intellect, for instance, is said to be free through itself at 7.3 and to transcend choice at 17.8–9
(e)pe/keina proaire/sewj).
113
See VI.8.10.23–25. As Lavaud, 186–89 notes, Plotinus is correcting Aristotle’s definition of necessity in Metaphysics 5.5
as the inability of something to be other than it is. If freedom for all that comes from the One consists in the ability to pursue
the Good, the Good’s freedom consists in simply being itself.
114
See Gatti, “Plotinus: the Platonic Tradition,” 30: ‘The activity of the One is self-creative freedom, while the activity from
the One follows necessarily from the first, but is a necessity sui generis, that is, a necessity that follows from an act of
freedom.” With some hesitation, Rist, Road to Reality, 83 offers a similar interpretation: “Since, however, the One as an
emanating being is itself in a sense the product of its own will, must conclude that the One’s willing of its own nature is the
direct cause of the emanation from that nature. . . . The One does not concern itself directly with the second hypostasis; it
concerns itself with itself. But the result of willing itself is its production of the second hypothesis, for it wills itself to be
such as to produce it.” This voluntarist reading of Plotinus seems to have been first introduced by Jean Trouillard, La
Procession plotienne (Paris: Presses Universaires du France, 1955). I follow Georges Leroux, Plotin: Traité sur la liberté et
la volonté de l’Un (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1990) and “Human Freedom in the Thought of Plotinus,” in
Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, 292–314 in being skeptical of such voluntarist accounts.
115
VI.8.21.16–19 at first says that the One is “also as he willed and of the kind he willed, and what follows upon his will,
what this kind of will generated,” but then Plotinus takes away the causal meaning of his statement by saying that “he was
this (what he willed) already.” That we must not understand the One’s will to be causally prior to the One itself can be seen
at 9.45–49 where Plotinus describes the One as “all power, master of himself, being what it wills to be,” and then
immediately qualifies that “what it wills to be” belongs rather to the beings (ta\ o!nta) and that the One is “itself greater
than all willing, setting willing after itself. It did not then will the ‘in this way’ so that it might conform to it.”
116
In chapter 20 of VI.8 Plotinus meets the objection that if the One makes Himself then “he exists already before himself.”
In response, Plotinus says that the One should be thought of as the maker rather than as made and that if making or activity is
not directed to the perfection of something else, then “making and self are concurrent.” In chapter 16, the One’s giving
himself existence is explained as the identity between activity and actualization with the One.

28
because there are no constraining or determining factors intrinsic to its simple, perfect, self-constituting

activity. As Laurent Lavaud argues in his introduction to VI.8,117 the conceptual climax of this treatise is

not the description of the One as self-caused, but the One as activity that is not limited by or received in

substance:

Nor should we be afraid to assume that the first activity (e)ne/rgeian th/n prw/thn)
is without substance (a)/neu ou)si/aj), but posit the very fact as his, so to speak,
existence (u(po/stasin) … if then the activity is more important than the substance, and
the first is most perfect, the first will be activity. … Now certainly an activity not
enslaved to substance is purely and simply free (e)leuqe/ra), and in this way he himself
is himself from himself.118

Freedom does not come before necessity for the One, rather they are united in the identification of what

ought to be (to\ deo/n), ultimate power (th\n u(perbolh\n th~j duna/mewj, ma/lista

du/manij), unlimited activity (e)nergei/an th\n prw/thn . . . a@neu ou)si/aj), and self-

determination in the One. Though capable of imagining that nothing comes from the One in order to

separate the One’s perfection from the existence of all things which follows from that perfection,

Plotinus sees no reason for assuming that things could have been otherwise without the One being

otherwise, which is impossible.119

117
See pages 192–94.
118
VI.8.20.10–11 and 14–16 and 18–20. See 7.47: “so to speak, existence is his, as it were, activity (h( oi=(on u(po/stasij
au)tou= h( oi=(on e)ne/rgeiaj).” Similarly, in V.5.[32].13, Plotinus pleads that we must allow the One his “e)/stin”
without making it multiple by predicating supposed perfections to it. In V.6.[34].6.1–8 Plotinus denies that the One acts on
the ground that activity (e)ne/rgeia) itself does not need to be active (e)nergei=n).
Gerson, “Plotinus’s Metaphysics: Emanation or Creation?” 568–69 points to this passage as proof that Plotinus’ One
is analogous to Thomas’s conception of God as ipsum esse subsistens and therefore metaphysically capable of bestowing
actuality on all beings. I prefer Gerson’s original treatment of this text to his comment in “Goodness, Unity, and Creation,”
34–35 that if creation cannot happen due to intermediaries, then the only thing that the One creates is itself. Adamson,
Arabic Plotinus, 128–137 and 157–59 and Taylor, “Aquinas, the Plotiniana Arabica,” 234–37 suggest that this passage is the
inspiration for the description of the First as Pure Act and Pure Being in the Arabic Plotinus and the Liber de Causis,
descriptions that seem to have been inspirational for Avicenna and for Thomas Aquinas respectively. However, Rist,
Plotinus, 33–37 says that “pure being” (to\ ei]nai mo/non, u!parcij) comes from Porphyry, Marius Victorinus, and the
anonymous Parmenides Commentary and that due to the finitude inherent in the Greek understanding of to\ ei]nai, to call
the One “pure being” turns the First into indeterminate being or places it in competition with finite being. For Rist, “pure
being” is a metaphysical step backward from Plotinus’ “beyond being.” Hadot, “Dieu comme acte d’être dans le
néoplatonisme,” however, argues that the Parmenides Commentary purifies to\ ei}nai of its finitude through the notion of
infinitive (a)pare/mfaton) being that exists neither as subject or predicate but as pure act.
119
While I agree with much of Perl’s analysis in “The Power of All Things,” I think that Plotinus intends to apply something
like the distinction between the internal and external act to the One’s production of all things, otherwise it would be
impossible to imagine the One as being fully perfect without all things. Whereas Perl wishes to collapse the giver and giving,

29
 For Plotinus, that all things must come from the One does not imply a pantheistic, evolutionary,

or self-transformative explanation of the generation of all things by the first cause, rather Plotinus should

be understood as a forerunner of Avicenna’s account of necessary, mediated creation.120 To give the

briefest of comparative sketches, Avicenna also argues that the emanation of all things is necessary, that

this necessity follows not from God’s nature or intention but from God’s perfection and unfailing

power,121 and that the necessary emanation of all things is accordance with, (in fact is identical with), the

will and generosity of God.122 For both Avicenna and Plotinus, having posited a First principle that is

the ultimate cause of existence of all things, there are no grounds for supposing that the causal efficacy

of the First Principle could have been otherwise. Avicenna agrees with Plotinus and indeed states it

more clearly than Plotinus, that the ability to do otherwise could only be an imperfection for God, as it

I would collapse the giving and the gift—the external activity of the One does not cause all things but rather constitutes itself
as an image of the One expressed in all possible multiplicity and diversity.
120
For discussions of Avicenna’s attempt to combine creation ex nihilo with his conception of God as a perfect, intelligible,
eternal cause, see Jules Janssens, “Creation and Emanation in Avicenna”; Jules Janssens, “Ibn Sînâ’s ideas of Ultimate
Realities: Neoplatonism and the Qur’ân as Problem-solving Paradigms in the Avicennian System,” in idem, Ibn Sînâ and his
Influence (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2006), 252–71; Michael E. Marmura, "The Metaphysics of
Efficient Causality in Avicenna (Ibn Sina)," in Islamic Theology and Philosophy, ed. by Michael E. Marmura (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1984), 172–87; and Kafrawi, Shalahudin, “What Makes the Efficient Cause Efficent? The
Notion of Will in Ibn Sînâ’s Emanative Scheme,” Proceedings of The American Catholic Philosophical Association, 81
(2007): 179–91. Shalahundin explicitly compares Avicenna to Plotinus on the free and necessary quality of the First Cause’s
agency. I find Rahim Acar’s attempt in Talking about God and Talking about Creation: Avicenna’s and Thomas Aquinas’
Positions (Leiden: Brill, 2005), to map Avicenna’s God’s volitional necessity onto Thomas’s God’s suppositional necessity
unconvincing (Thomas holds that creation is necessary insofar as God has willed it, Summa Theologiae I, q. 19, a. 3 and q.
25, a. 5), but Acar nicely summarizes Avicenna’s account of creation in “Creation: Avicenna's metaphysical account,”
Creation and the God of Abraham, 77–90.
121
Similar to Plotinus’ argument that the One’s activity is either activity identical to his substance or activity without his
substance and that all necessity is identical with the One or rather proceeds from it, Avicenna argues in Metaphysics of the
Healing VIII.4 that God, the Necessary Existent is the same as his quiddity, or if this would seem to make Him two, God has
no quiddity but is pure existence, which Avicenna differentiates from indefinite existence. God, by virtue of His simple,
necessary existence “is the principle of the necessitation of the existence of everything” (4.1). In IX.3.12, Avicenna writes
“[The emanation] of the existence of things from Him has no entry at all as regards the ennobling and perfecting of His
essence. Rather, the entry is with respect to His being in His highest perfection and [His being] such that the existence of the
whole is emitted from Him not by quest and intending.” IX.4.2 argues that “it is impossible for the existence of all things
[proceeding] from Him to be by way of intention,” for that would posit a reason for creation or object of divine volition that
is other than God Himself. IX.4.3 argues that “the coming to be of the whole from Him is not by way of nature” for the
emanation of all things happens in accordance with God’s knowledge, will, and satisfaction. Unlike Plotinus who treats the
One as a supra-rational agent, Avicenna says that God “intellectually apprehends that the existence from Him of the whole is
a necessary consequence of Himself.”
122
See VIII.7.10–12, especially 12: “This will, in the form we have ascertained (which is not connected with a purpose with
the emanation of existence), is nothing other than emanation itself. And this is munificence. . . . this will is itself
munificence.”

30
would necessitate a movement from potency to act as God changed from being an ineffective cause to

an effective cause.123 For Avicenna God’s effect can only be contingent if contingency is allowed within

God Himself, but then God would not be the necessary existence (Plotinus’ to\ deo/n).124

What is at issue between Aquinas on one hand and Avicenna and Plotinus on the other in regard

to God’s freedom is not the metaphysical relationship between God and what comes from Him—for

Aquinas grants that Avicenna and the Platonists have philosophical accounts of creation—nor whether

God is free, for all three affirm God’s freedom in the strongest terms, but whether free choice is

philosophically compatible with God’s perfection, simplicity, and (supra-)eternity.125 However,

following Aquinas’ own procedure, we can leave this question to the side and simply affirm that the type

of necessity that Plotinus argues for regarding the emanation of all things from the one does not

contradict the philosophical understanding of creation.

III.3. Having shown the fundamental difference between the One and its products and having

123
At Metaphysics IX.1.13 Avicenna argues if the divine essence does not necessitate the existence of all things but only the
possibility to exist or not exist, then there must be another cause in addition to the divine essence that moves that potency to
actuality. But then God would not be the First Cause or would not be simple. See also IX.1.24.
124
According to Avicenna, all beings are possible in themselves and are necessary through the creative act of God which
gives them actual existence. God is the per se or true cause of existence (as opposed to an accidental cause) and since per se
causes necessitate their effects through themselves, if a per se cause is permanent, it necessitates the effect permanently,
unless some other agent prevents its effect. However, since God’s causality is prior to all things, it cannot be prevented by
anything, unless God were to prevent his own effect, but that would posit multiplicity in God. Therefore “what proceeds
from the Necessary Existence is necessary.” (Summary of Metaphysics VI.2 and IX.1.) As Marmura, “The Metaphysics of
Efficient Causality in Avicenna,” 175 summarizes: “God is the supreme efficient cause, the necessary and sufficient
condition for the existence of the world, the effect. The causal conditions are ideal. There is and can be no impediment.
Hence the effect follows necessarily. . . . Since God, the necessitating cause, is eternal and changeless, the world, the
necessitated effect, is eternal.” See also Jon McGinnis, “Avicenna on Why God Is Absolutely Necessary”, 65–83 in The
Ultimate Why Question. Plotinus seems to be advocating a similar understanding of efficient causality in II.9.[33].3, where
he argues that the ordered dependence of all things on the First must exist forever.
As Aquinas will point out, one weakness in Avicenna’s position is that Avicenna seems to think of God and His
causes as existing in the same timeframe, such that Avicenna treats the position that God is temporally prior to creation and
that creation is not necessary together in IX.1. See also Acar, “Creation: Avicenna's Metaphysical Account,” 87–88.
125
For a thorough defense of Thomas’ position that God is completely free regarding whether to creation anything at all and
what to create, see John F. Wippel, “Norman Kretzmann on Aquinas’s attribution of will and of freedom to create to God,”
Religious Studies, 39, (2003): 287–98; “Thomas Aquinas on God’s Freedom to Create or Not,” in Metaphysical Themes in
Thomas Aquinas II, (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 218–39; and “Thomas Aquinas on the
Ultimate Why Question: Why Is There Anything At All Rather Than Nothing Whatsoever?” Review of Metaphysics, 60
(2007): 731–55. Thomas suggests in Summa Theologiae I, q. 32, a. 1, replies 2–3 that an understanding of the Trinity
enables one to clearly see that creation is not necessary, though he consistently argues that God is free to creation or not to
create throughout his corpus. See Summa Theologiae I, q.19, aa. 3 and 10, Summa Contra Gentiles I, chapter 88, and De
Veritate q. 24, a. 3

31
discussed the necessity of the emanation of all things, I now turn to the manner in which the One is

responsible for the existence and the essence or content of what it creates.126 How it is possible for an

absolutely simple Creator to make a multiplicity is a problem that vexed Plotinus throughout his

writings and that has vexed his interpreters. That Plotinus treats Nous’ generation as an eternal process

of procession and return seems to be the key to understanding how the One is the cause of all, but there

does not seem to be a scholarly consensus on the details.127 I propose that Plotinus’s account of Nous’

generation in VI.7.[38] should be considered as the key for understanding the accounts in his other

treatises (which I have no space to discuss) and that the interpretative tool for understanding the

accounts in VI.7 is Aristotle’s account of the actualization of the mind from the De Anima.

Aristotle says that the mind, before it is actualized by knowledge, “can have no nature of its own,

other than that of having a certain capacity <to receive>,” and that it “is before it thinks, not actually any

real thing.” If the mind had its own form, this would prevent it from being conformed to the object that

it receives.128 Therefore, “if thinking is like perceiving, it must be either a process in which the soul is

acted upon by what is capable of being thought, or a process different from but analogous to that.” The
126
The account that I give here is a substantially abridged version of the main argument of my unpublished MA thesis, Sight
Becomes Seeing: Plotinian Emanation as a Dynamic of Procession and Return, The Catholic University of America, 2009.
127
Following a description of inchoate Nous (Nous before it is formed) as possessing a vague image or intention of the One
before it was actualized, A. C. Lloyd “Plotinus on the Genesis of Thought and Existence,” Oxford Studies in Ancient
Philosophy 5 (1987): 155–86 has argued that Intellect actualizes itself by the power it has received from the One by actively
thinking itself, such that its conversion is to its own innate image of the One, not the One itself. Emilsson, Plotinus on
Intellect contends that when Intellect turns to the Good, it sees an intelligible image of the Good by which it becomes an
intelligible expression of the Good. Kevin Corrigan, Plotinus’ Theory of Matter-Evil and the Question of Substance: Plato,
Aristotle, and Alexander of Aphrodisias (Leuven: Peeters, 1996), 284–85, if I understand him correctly, has presented the
interpretation that what Intellect sees when it turns to the One is itself as eminently present in the One. In his thorough study
of the relationship between the One and Nous, John Bussanich, The One and Its Relation to Intellect, 12 argues that Nous
sees the One, but “sees it as many instead of as the unity it is.” F. M. Schroeder, “Conversion and Consciousness in Plotinus,
Enneads 5.1.7,” Hermes 114 (1986): 186–95 suggests that Nous receives its power to constitute itself as the Forms by turning
to the One and knowing itself as its activity and thus as having that power. Finally, Lloyd Gerson, Plotinus, 31–35 interprets
Plotinus as meaning that the One is the cause only of the existence of everything, as it can only have one effect. Intellect
exists due to the One’s power, but it constitutes itself as the principle of essence or Form for all things, including itself.
128
My quotations and references are to Aristotle, De Anima, III.4.429a18–24. I have added “<to receive>.” I will quote from
the English translation by J. A. Smith, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: The Modern
Library), 2001. Aristotle’s point is that the mind cannot have any of the bodily qualities. Plato makes a similar point in the
Timaeus 51a–b, arguing that the xw/ra must “be devoid of any inherent characteristics of its own” if it is to receive the
likenesses of the intelligibles. However, the conformity of sensible matter and intelligible matter to what they receive is very
different, in that xw/ra always remains other than what it receives whereas intellection is the unity of the mind with the
received form. Translation of Donald J. Zeyl in Plato, Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997).

32
mind must be “capable of receiving the form of an object, that is, [it] must be potentially identical in

character with its object without being the object.”129 Aristotle also claims that if a mind thinks that

which is beyond its ability to receive, it better understands what is properly intelligible to it, unlike the

senses, which are damaged by an object beyond their receptive abilities. Finally, in De Anima

2.5.417a21–b17, Aristotle distinguishes between a man who is able to have knowledge, a man who

possesses knowledge, and a man who is actually thinking his knowledge. Later commenters formalized

this three-fold distinction into mind in first potency, mind in first actuality or second potency, and mind

in second or complete actuality.130 Mind is moved into first act by the intelligible and moves itself into

second act by thinking what it has received.

Plotinus conceptualizes Nous’s generation as being a three-stage process with each stage

separated by a conversion (e)pistrophh/).131 These stages correspond to first potency, first act, and

second act and can be sketched as follows:

1. Nous as unseeing sight which moves toward the One. (Pure potency).
A. Nous’ immediate apprehension or “touching” of the One.
2. Nous as having been filled and actualized by the One. (First actuality/second potency).
B. Nous’ contemplation of itself by which it perfects itself through the One’s
power and pluralizes what has been received from the One.
3. Nous as knowing itself as the totality of Forms, the perfect expression of the Good.
(Second actuality).132

I will now fill in some of the details of this sketch.

First, the One generates Nous as unseeing intelligible matter or as Intellect not yet thinking,

129
De Anima III.4.429a13–18. Aristotle also says that the act of sensation is like that of intellection in II.5.417b19.
130
In his Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima, trans. Kenelm Foster and Silvester Humphries (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox
Books, 1994), bk. 2, lectio 11, St. Thomas says that the states of these men correspond to first potency, first actuality/second
potency, and second actuality. Bussanich, The One and Its Relation, 106 says that evidence of Plotinus’ use of these
distinctions can be seen in part by his own distinction between passive and active potencies. For example, the power
(du/namij) of the One is the e)ne/rgeia by which the One emanates Nous, while the du/namij of the inchoate Nous is its
capacity to receive the One.
131
Gatti, “Plotinus: The Platonic tradition,” 31–33 and Bussanich, The One and Its Relation to Intellect have accounts similar
to this.
132
See Plotin, Traité 38, introduction, translation and notes by Pierre Hadot (n.p.: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1987), 264–5 for a
chart of eight descriptions of the One’s generation of Nous in VI.7. Hadot identifies these three moments of Nous’
development in all eight descriptions.

33
which is moved by eros toward the One as its intelligible object.133 Being undetermined, Nous is not

multiple, thus there is no difficulty in the One having generated it.134 Seeking to grasp the One, Nous

throws (e)/fesij) itself toward it. While the One in its simplicity and infinity cannot be intellectually

grasped, Nous has an immediate apprehension (e)pibolh/)135 or rather “a touching and a sort of contact

without speech or thought (qi/cij kai\ oi}on e)pafh\ mo/non a)/rrhtoj kai\ a)no/htoj)”136 of

the One.137 The result of this conversion to the One is that Nous is defined as Intellect and Substance

and that it receives from the Good “the power to become all things.”138 Since the infinite and absolutely

simple cannot be either received or thought, what Nous receives is the power and content of the One

expressed in intelligible multiplicity.139 It is precisely in Nous’ reception of the One that the Forms are

created. Pierre Hadot expresses this reception and its results well:

The Good therefore gives to Mind what it, the Good, did not possess, that is to say, the
Forms and the power to engender the Forms. In other words, it is the contact with this
One that is the Good which, paradoxically, causes to be born in Mind this multiplicity,
this variety of Forms, which is totally foreign to the Good, but which, because it is a
systematic totality, permits Mind to contemplate in a reflection the infinite power of the
One. Paradoxically, it is this multiplicity which is the expression of the Good, the “trace
133
Nous is said to long for (poqei~) and love (a)gapa~|) the One like a child does its parent at V.1.6.50–52.
134
III.4.[15].1 that “everything which was produced (e)genna=to) . . . was produced shapeless (a)mo/rfwton), but was
formed by turning towards (e)pistre/fesqai pro/j) its producer.” Intellect is called sight not yet seeing and prethinking in
V.3.[49].11.5 and 10.43 respectively. See V.3.15 for the suggestion that there would be no difficulty in the One giving one
simple thing from itself.
135
V.3.[49].11.13–14 for e)/fesij and e)pe/bale which have literal meanings of throwing. e)pebo/lh is a special term in
Plotinus’ work. It and its cognates are used to describe the One’s simple awareness of itself (VI.7.[38].39.2), soul’s
“mystical union” with the One (III.8.[30].9.21 and 10.32 and V.5.[32].7.8–9); and Nous’ “direct awareness and reception
(e)pibolh~| kai\ paradoxh~|),” by which it “acquired intellect and is one” (VI.7.[38].35.21–22). Concerning the soul,
the term is associated with “throwing” oneself on the One or becoming fully present to its infinite being. The term is also
associated with the language of touch—e)pafh/ or qi/cij (VI.7.[38].39.20; V.3.[49].42–3). It seems to signify the most
intimate presencing possible, a presencing which escapes the duality inherent in Intellection. See the discussion of
e)pibolh/ in Rist, “The One of Plotinus,” 81–83; Bussanich, The One and Its Relation, 231–36; and Bussanich, “The Inner
Life of the One,” 169–72.
136
V.3.11.43–44.
137
Something that some scholars miss is the importance for Plotinus that Nous be in direct contact with the One so that it can
accurately image it. Plotinus denies through the Enneads that there is any kind of intermediary between One and Nous and
Nous and Soul. See, for instance, V.1.6.48–50, V.3.[5].13, and II.9.[33].1.
138
Ibid., 17.32–34: “and the Intellect which came to be is manifested as the very totality of things (a)nefa/nh ta\
pa/nta).”
139
With Parmenides 142e–143a in mind, Plotinus argues in VI.7.8.18–27 that the One must give at least a dyad, for there can
be only one that is utterly simple. However a dyad is minimally resolvable into two parts, but neither of these parts can be
utterly simple either. The dyad and its parts would also have the Platonic ‘transcendentals’ of rest, motion, being, sameness,
and otherness. Thus there is an inertia in what the One gives to resolve itself into the intelligible world.

34
 of the Good,” for Mind.”140

In this way, the Good makes Forms, giving to Nous its ou)si/a and intelligibility.141 Following this

reception, Nous is Intellect, but not yet Intellection (no/hsij). Rather it turns to itself in order to

understand the One by contemplating what it has received from it. This self-contemplation makes the

Forms actually multiple and defined, so that Nous becomes fully actualized Thought and Being—all

things and seeing sight.142 This perfecting contemplation of itself corresponds to the descriptions of

Nous unrolling itself in III.8.[30].8, of Nous engendering and swallowing the Forms in V.1.[10].7 and

VI.7.[38].15, and of Nous defining its being for itself by the power which comes from the One

(V.1.7.14).143 As mentioned above, Nous being perfect and full generates Soul, which is actualized by a

similar double conversion.144 Matter, however, is “generated . . . lifeless (III.4.[15].1.7), and has no

power to turn back of itself toward the principle from which it has sprung,” rather Soul must somehow

form and illuminate matter by its own activity.145 Yet, as depicted above (II.2), Nous’ production of

140
My translation of “Le Bien donne donc à l’Esprit ce que, lui-même, le Bien, ne possédait pas, c’est-à-dire les Formes et le
pouvoir d’engendrer les Formes. Autrement dit, c’est le contact avec cet Un qu’est le Bien qui, paradoxalement, fait naître
dans l’Esprit ce Multiple, cette variété des Formes, qui est totalement étrangère au Bien, mais qui, parce qu’elle est totalité
systématique, permet à l’Esprit de contempler, dans un reflet, l’infinie puissance de l’Un. Paradoxalement, c’est cette
multiplicité qui est l’expression du Bien, la “ressemblance du Bien”, pour l’Esprit.” Hadot, Plotin.Traité 38, 263.
141
VI.7.17.41:“this is how he [the Good] makes forms (ou(/tw ga\r ei)dopoiei=).” Note that what the Good gives to
Nous is conceived on the model of the analogy of the Sun. VI.7.16.24: “This is why that Good is said to be the cause not
only of substance but of its being seen.”
142
V.3.6.4–6: Intellect thinks itself “as itself, and as what and who it is and [it started its thinking] from its own nature and
thought by turning back to itself (e)pistre/fwn ei)j au(to/n). For in seeing real beings it saw itself, and in seeing itself,
and in seeing it was in act, and its actuality was itself: for Intellect and intellections are one.”V.3.[49].11.9–12: “The sight,
again, certainly has the impression (tu/pon) of what is seen; otherwise it would not have allowed it to come into existence in
itself. But this impression became many out of one (polu\j e)c e(no/j), and so Intellect knew it and saw it (ei]den), and
then it became a seeing sight (i)dou=sa o)/yij).”
143
See also V.1.4.16 where Nous is said to think by having, not by seeking and chapter 5.18–19: “[Nous] is shaped in one
way by the One and in another by itself, like sight in its actuality; for intellection is seeing sight, and both are one.
144
V.1.[10].3.16–17: “Soul’s establishment in reality, then, comes from Intellect and its thought becomes actual in its seeing
(o(rwme/nou) of Intellect.” III.9.[13].5: “The soul itself must be like sight (o)/yin), and what it sees must be Intellect;
before it sees it is indeterminate (a)o/riston), but naturally adapted to intellection (noei~n): so it is matter in relation to
intellect (u(/lhn ou]n pro\j nou~n).”
145
Denis O’Brien, “Plotinus on Matter and Evil,” in the Cambridge Companion, 183. O’Brien quite clearly demonstrates the
difference between Soul’s generation of matter and the One’s generation of Nous and Nous of Soul by emphasizing that Soul
is depicted as moving in its generation of matter and must exert itself to form matter. See also II.5.[25].5.17–23 which
describes matter as appearing after “the realities of the intelligible world had come to an end,” as then being “caught
(katalhfqei=sa) by the things that came into being after it,” and as taking its place as ontologically inferior to these,
though it is prior to them in generation.

35
Soul and Soul’s production and illumination of matter are stages of the One’s establishment of reality in

being,146 for it is the unspeakably great creative power of the One that works through Nous and Soul to

bring all things into existence.147

Plotinus makes it quite clear that the temporal language used to describe the generation and

formation of Nous, Soul, and the sensible world indicates the eternal causal relations between them.148

Rational accounts (oi( lo/goi) “make generations of things ungenerated” and “separate things which

are together” so that they can be explained.149 In II.9.[33].3, Plotinus says that the language of

becoming, when applied to first principles, shows causal derivation:

Of necessity then, all things must exist for ever in ordered dependence upon each other:
those other than the First must have come into being (genhta/) in the sense that they are
derived from other, higher, principles. Things that are said to have come into being did
not just come into being [at a particular time], but always were and always will be in
process of becoming (e)gi/neto kai\ genh/setai).150

This description leaves no doubt that Plotinus agrees with Aquinas that whatever is created depends

upon its creator at all times for its existence. Thus Nous is eternally proceeding from the One, ever

turning back to the One and touching it in love, ever being defining and actualized by it, and ever

perfecting itself through the power from the One by thinking itself as the One expressed intelligibly in

the Forms.151 Nous is thus intimately and ever dependent on the One for all it is. Since Plotinus
146
V.5.[32].3.24: The activity of the One establishes reality in existence (th\n e)ne/rgeian ei)j u(po/stasin ou)si/aj).
147
I understand IV.8.[6].6.1–24 to mean that the power of the One works with and through the lower powers to ensure that
goodness is communicated as far as is possible. V.5.12.37–50 says that all power is derived from the Good who is the master
of it and that He has brought all things into being that can come into being.
148
V.1.[10].6.19–23: “When we are discussing eternal realities we must not let coming into being in time be an obstacle to
our thought; in the discussion (tw~| lo/gw|) we apply the word “becoming (ge/nesin)” to them in attributing to them
causal connection and order.” See Dominic O’Meara, “The Hierarchical Ordering of Reality in Plotinus” for an account of
how “prior” and “posterior” indicate causal relations.
149
III.5.[50].9.27–28. This passage intriguingly compares mu~qoi and lo/goi as making the same kind of separations in
time and being so that the nature of reality can be explained. I interpret Plotinus as meaning that we must not understand his
metaphysical discourses, which often contain very vivid imagery, overly literally, but must seek their philosophical meaning;
similar to how one must not interpret the myth of Kronos and his children as meaning that some gods are cannibals, but as
enigmatically expressing a truth about reality.
150
Lines 11–14. At line 18, Plotinus argues that if anything is going to exist as result of a higher principle, that necessity
applies now and for all time.
151
VI.7.[38].35.20–24 and 28–33 describes Intellect thinking the things in itself as “the contemplation of Intellect in its right
mind” and the prenoetic touching and reception of the One as “Intellect in love.” Then Plotinus asks, “but does that Intellect
see in part, at one time some things and at another others? No, but our rational discourse (lo/goj) instructing us makes them

36
describes the Good as the “cause of substance, intellect, and light . . . to the things seen there and to the

seer,”152 there is no aspect of Nous that is not caused by the One by means of Nous’ two conversions,

and therefore no aspect of reality that is not ultimately caused by the One through Nous.

A final objection to ascribing creation to Plotinus is that the formation of Nous is not due solely

to the causal activity of God but depends on Nous turning back to it, such that Nous plays an

instrumental role in its own development.153 In response, Aquinas associates God’s identity as creator

with God being the efficient, exemplar, and final cause of all things in Summa Theologiae I, q. 44.

Plotinus gives all three causalities full expression in his account of Nous’s formation: the One emanates

Nous in potency, draws it back to itself via final causality, and fills it with content and actuality by being

the exemplar cause of what is thought (nohta/) and the thinking (no/hsij).154 Following Trouillard’s

analysis, Nous is just as dependent on the One as any created thing in Thomas’s philosophy, the

difference is that in Plotinus the very act that constitutes Nous is a conversion towards God and itself,

come to be [so], but Intellect always has its thinking and always its not thinking (to\ de\ e)/xei to\ noei~n a)ei/,
e)/xei de\ kai\ to\ mh\ noei~n), but looking (ble/pein) at that god in another way. For when it saw him it had
offspring and was intimately aware (sunh|/sqeto) of their generation and existence within it; and when it sees these it is
said to think.” The idea that Nous is simultaneously directed to the One and to itself is also found in the early VI.9.[9].2.40–
43 as part of Plotinus’ argument that Nous is not the First. He writes, “And one must suppose that Intellect is of such a kind
that it is present to the Good and the first and looks to him, but it is also present with itself and thinks itself, and thinks itself
as being all things.” See P. A. Meijer, Plotinus on the Good or the One (Enneads VI.9) (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1992),
119 for a brief confirmation. I interpret III.8.[30].11.24 as expressing the same idea—“[Nous] is always desiring and always
attaining (e)fie/menoj a)ei\ kai\ a)ei\ tugxa/nwn)”—since e)/fesij is often used to describe inchoate Nous.
Alternately, this passage could mean that the trace of the Good in Nous is both Nous’ attainment of the Good in so far as it is
able and the object of its no/hsij. Finally, V.3.[49].11.13, after describing Nous’ immediate apprehension of the One and its
grasping it, says that Nous is “perpetually in need (a)ei\ de\ e)ndeo/menoj) [of the One].”
152
VI.7.16.28–29: h) tou~ a)gaqou~ fu/sij ai)ti/a ou)si/aj kai/ nou~ ou}sa kai\ fw~j.
153
O’Brien, “Making of Matter III,” 72 raises this objection, though in the context of applying Spinoza’s definition of
creation to Plotinus.
154
I part ways with Gerson’s analysis of the One’s causality in “Plotinus’s Metaphysics: Emanation or Creation?” and in his
Plotinus in that I understand the One to the per se cause of the total being (essence and existence, to use Aquinas’
terminology) of all things, with Nous and Soul functioning as instrumental causes of the essence and existence of what is
below them. However, the Thomistic distinction between the principle of essence and the principle of existence is not the
most helpful key for unlocking Plotinus’ metaphysics, since Plotinus is still thinking in terms of matter/potency and
form/e)ne/rgeia, though perhaps straining towards Thomas’s real distinction. See Bussanich, “Plotinus’ Metaphysics of
the One,” 53–55 and “Plotinus on the being of the One” for a similar critique of Gerson. Also see Perl, “Tantum esse and the
One” and “The Power of all Things” for the interpretation that the One is the cause of the determination and differentiation of
things and precontains them in a single unity like Aquinas’ account of God as the exemplar cause of all.

37
whereas Thomas tends to explain creation in terms of procession only.155 Even though Thomas argues

that mediated or ministerial creation is impossible from the Summa Contra Gentiles onward, in the

Sentences Commentary he argues that God creating through creatures through the conjunction of divine

causality with the natural power of the creature would still count as creation ex nihilo.156 Insofar as

Nous’ creative activity follows from its perfection which depends on Nous’ intimate conjunction with

the One, it seems that, by Thomas’ terms, Plotinus offers a philosophical account of mediated creation.

IV

Conclusion. If the metaphysical idea of creation simply demarcates a certain kind of causality—

the production of a thing into being according to its entire substance, such that the product is dependent

on its cause for its continued existence—which can be separated from the question of the manner in

which the cause acts—whether by necessity or choice, or through created instruments or directly—then

Plotinus presents a philosophical account of creation,157 and Aquinas, insofar as he follows the Late

Antique and Arabic practice of attributing to Plato and Aristotle the doctrines of their followers

(Plotinus and the Neoplatonists), is correct to attribute to the Greek philosophers the doctrine of

155
Trouillard, “Procession Neoplatonicienne et Creation Judeo-Chretienne,” 18–22 argues that the Neoplatonic schema of
procession and conversion as intrinsic to what the creature is internalizes creation in the inner life of the creature in a manner
that Neothomistic accounts of esse fail to do.
156
See Pearson, “Creation Through Instruments in Thomas’ Sentences Commentary,” 153–54, quoting Sentences
Commentary IV.5.1.3, qla 3: “Hence it is clear that creation, by its very definition, excludes the presupposition of anything
pre-existent. Now this occurs in two ways. In one way, it excludes everything pre-existent, both as regards the agent (ex
parte agentis) and as regards the thing made (ex parte facti), so that the word ‘creation’ is used when the agent does not act
by virtue of some prior agent, and the thing made does not come from some pre-existent matter. This is the power of
authority in creating, and it is infinite. And therefore it can be communicated to no creature. In another way, it excludes
[something] preexistent as regards the thing made, but not as regards the agent, so that the word ‘creation’ is used, although
less properly, when some agent, by virtue of some prior agent, produces some effect not from presupposed matter. And this is
the ministry of creation. And in this way certain philosophers posited that some creatures create.” Thomas opposes tout court
that the power to create could simply be communicated to a creature, such that that creature is able to create on its own.
However, the idea that God’s creative act could happen through a creature, such that God is the efficient cause and no part of
what is created precedes the creative act, is at least conceptually tenable as a species of creation.
157
The old debate about whether a certain thinker has the doctrine of creation can surely be advanced by distinguishing what
is essential to the philosophical idea of creation from the details about the manner in which God acts and from the theological
aspects of creation. For instance, if Thomas’ very precise definition of creation is used, that one can easily judge that a
philosopher has the philosophical idea of creation while denying that he holds what Sokolowski calls “the Christian
distinction” or even what Pegis calls “a metaphysics of creation” in “St. Thomas and the Origin of Creation,” 59–60. In fact,
in this essay, Pegis says that Avicenna defined the philosophical idea of creation correctly but failed to develop a
“metaphysics of creation,” which was Aquinas’ unique achievement.

38
creation. As I have indicated in passing, crediting Plotinus with the philosophical idea of creation is

only fitting because many of the conceptual tools that Aquinas uses in defining and are arguing for

creation were developed in the Arabic reception of Neoplatonism.

An important historical question in the opposite direction is whether Plotinus’ account of

instrumental creation was primarily inspired by his interaction with the Jews, Christians, and Gnostics of

his day or whether it arose from his development of Middle Platonic and Pythagorean philosophical

speculation about the true meaning of Plato’s Timaeus, Parmenides, and Republic and of Aristotle’s

reports on the One and the Dyad.158 However, addressing this question requires beginning again from

another starting point.159

Brandon Zimmerman

Good Shepherd Seminary

Banz, Papua New Guinea

158
See, for example, John M. Rist. “The Neoplatonic One and Plato’s Parmenides” Transactions and Proceedings of the
American Philological Association 93 (1962): 389–401 and “Monism: Plotinus and Some Predecessors,” Harvard Studies in
Classical Philology 70 (1965): 329–44 for discussions of to what extend Plotinus’ predecessors thought of everything as
deriving from a First Principle. For details on the cross-pollination of Gnosticism and Platonism see Gnosticism and Later
Platonism: Themes, Figures, and Texts, ed. John D.Turner and Ruth Majercik (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009)
and John D. Turner, Sethian Gnosticism and The Platonic Tradition (Louvain-Paris, Peeters, 2001) which has a very good
overview of Middle Platonic speculation on first principles. See the preface of Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The
Doctrine of ‘Creation out of Nothing’ in Early Christian Thought, trans. A.S. Worrall (London: T & T Clark, 1994) for a
summary of Christopher Stead’s suggestion (made in response to May’s work) that creatio ex nihilo originated in
Neopythagorean circles and was later adapted by Christians and Jews. May himself argues that creatio ex nihilo was only
first clearly spelled out in late second century Christian polemics against Gnostics and Platonists.
159
I thank Lloyd Gerson, John Rist, Cristina Ionescu, and Gregory Doolan for looking over drafts of this essay. All the
remaining imperfections are due to my inability to adequately receive their wisdom. I thank Eric Perl, John Wippel, and
Richard C. Taylor for sending me advance copies of their work in this area, and I thank Robert Sokolowski for discussing the
meaning of creation with me. I am also grateful to the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies for giving me financial
assistance in attending their 2011 meeting where an early version of this paper was first presented.

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 Appendix160
My schema 15.9–23 16.10–32 16.32–35 17.10–32
st
1. (Pure potency). Nous 1 Phase: L’Esprit L’Esprit regarde Le principe La Vie,
as unseeing intelligible L’Esprit qui regarde vers le vers le Bien mais de l’Esprit est première,
matter/potential n’est pas Bien. ne voit rien. Il vit ce qu’il était energeia venue
intellect, which moves encore [Nous looks près du Bien. Il avant d’être du Bien, est
toward the One. Being Esprit. La toward the n’est pas encore rempli. indéterminée.
undetermined, Nous is Vie. Good.] Esprit. [Nous looks [The [Life which
not multiple, thus there [Nous is not toward the Good principle of first came from
is no difficulty in the yet Nous. but sees nothing. It Nous is what the Good is
One having generated it. Life.] lives about the it was before undetermined.]
Good] having been
A. Conversion to the filled.]
One: Nous throws
(e)/fesij) itself toward
the One. It has an 2nd Phase: L’Esprit Son mouvement L’Esprit Après avoir
immediate apprehension Les Formes fragmente la s’achève en devient “regardé” vers
(e)pibolh) or touching se formant puissance tournant autour du Esprit en se le Bien, elle se
(qi/cij) of the One. dans qu’il a reçu du Bien. remplissant. délimite en
l’Esprit. Bien. [Mind [Its movement is commençant à
2. (First fragments the completed by [Nous voir une Forme
actuality/second [The Forms power that it turning about the becomes déterminée.
potency). Nous as are formed has received Good.] Nous by [After having
having been filled and within from the being filled.] looked toward
actualized by the One. Nous.] Good.] the God, it is
The One is imperfectly delimited and
received begins to see a
(paradoxh=) by it as determined
all intelligible content Form.]
and the power to think.

B. Conversion to itself:
Nous’ contemplates
itself, thereby perfecting 3rd Phase: L’Esprit qui L’Esprit se Il est achevé L’Esprit est la
itself by the One’s L’Esprit garde en lui constitue comme lorsqu’il est Vie délimitée
power and pluralizing achevé. ses enfants Esprit en prenant rempli et voit comme Un-
what has been received (= Kronos.) conscience qu’il est les Formes. Plusieurs,
from the One. The [Completed devenu la Totalité [It is comme Totalité
Forms are born. Nous.] [Nous which des Formes. Il a complete des Formes et
3. (Second Actuality) keeps in itself quelque chose à when it is full des Esprits.
Nous as knowing itself its children voir. [Nous and sees the [Nous is Life
as the totality of Forms, (=Chronos).] constitutes itself as Forms.] delimited as
the perfect expression Nous by being One-Many, as
of the Good. aware that it has the Totality of
become the Totality Forms and
of the Forms. It has Minds.]
something to see.]

160
Page 1 of the table in Plotin, Traité 38, introduction, translation and notes by Pierre Hadot (n.p.: Les Éditions du Cerf,
1987), 264–65.

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