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his own penetrating insights, Plotinus presents an all-embracing cosmology in the Enneads (from the Greek ennea, ‘nine’; the work consists of fifty-four treatises arranged in six groups of nine each). To begin with, Plotinus distinguishes between four modes of being: The One, the Intellect, the Soul, and matter. The first three modes of being are intelligible (i.e., accessible to the mind only) and named hypostases (hypostaseis, the plural of hypostasis), comprising a divine Trinity. The Greek term hypostasis translates as ‘anything set under, or a support’; from which is derived the meanings of subsistence or substance.31 For Plotinus, the primary hypostases are the fundamental realities underlying the cosmos. He explains: “There is the One beyond Being; next, there is Being and Intellect; and third, there is the nature of the Soul” (Enneads, V.1.10). This scheme is attributed to Plato, who understood that the Intellect comes from the Good (i.e., the One), and the Soul comes from the Intellect (Enneads, V.1.8).

According to Plato and the Neoplatonists, the universe is produced through the imposition of order onto pre-cosmic disorder. It is significant that the Greek word kosmos means order, ornament, and decoration, and ultimately the world or universe (Latin, mundus), from its perfect arrangement. Its opposite in Greek is chaos, which means the unformed mass and/or infinite space. This is posited by Hesiod as the initial state of existence.32 We could say that the divine Creator fashions the world by transforming chaos into cosmos. Plato describes this creative activity in detail in his dialogue Timaeus, of which more later.

One of the most important Greek theologians, Basil of Caesarea (fourth century), wrote that God (Greek, Theos) created everything by drawing it out of nothing, or non-being. However, it has recently been commented that this ‘nothingness’ should not be confused with non-existence. Basil depicts this state as follows: “It appears, indeed, that even before this world an order of things existed of which our mind can form an idea, but of which we can say nothing . . . The birth of the world was preceded by a condition of things suitable for the exercise of supernatural powers, outstripping the limits of time, eternal and infinite” (Hex I, 5). In other words, the ‘nothing’ out of which God creates is an imperceptible condition that precedes the creation of the observable universe. Thus, in the early Christian understanding the creation of the world entails a transition from the non-perceptive to the perceptible.33

According to the immensely influential Latin theologian Augustine (who served as Bishop of Hippo in North Africa from 395 until 430), God is the opposite of non-being. To begin with, God is the Supreme Being. Next, He gave being in various degrees to all things that He created ‘from nothing’ (Latin, ex nihilo). Augustine adds, “To that Nature which supremely is, therefore, and by Whom all else was made, no nature is contrary save that which is not; for that which is contrary to what is, is not-being. And so, there is no being contrary to God, the Supreme Being, and the Author of all beings of whatever kind” (De civ Dei, XII.2). In this theological understanding, God is the highest or ultimate Reality, as opposed to the unreality of non-being. And in one of his polemical works against the Manichaeans, the Latin theologian depicts Being in terms virtually identical to those of Parmenides: being is that which always exists in the same way; it is in every way like itself; it cannot be injured or changed; and it is not subject to time.34

      Another influential figure in Christian thought is the mystical theologian writing under the pseudonym of Dionysius the Areopagite (one of St Paul’s first converts in Athens; Acts 17:34). Perceptively utilizing Neoplatonic categories in his exposition of Christian doctrine, Dionysius writes in the Divine Names that the Good (i.e., the One) is the source of all that exists: archetypes, heavenly beings, souls, animals, plants, and inanimate matter (DN, 4:1, 2). This pre-existent Supreme Being is the cause and source of all eternity, all time, and every kind of being. Everything participates in this Being, which precedes the entities that participate in it (DN, 5:5). This includes souls, which receive their being and well-being from the pre-existent Being (DN, 5:8). Ultimately, Dionysius writes, just as every number participates in unity, so everything participates in the One. The One precedes oneness and multiplicity, whereas the latter only exists through participation in the One (DN, 13:2). In other words, in the relation between the One and the many, the latter receive their reality from the One, which is the ultimate Source of all that exists.

With his penetrating intellect, Maximus the Confessor (seventh century) developed a theistic cosmology which is formulated in Neoplatonic and Aristotelian terms. In his important work Difficult Passages (known as Ambigua in Latin), Maximus writes that God’s creative activity establishes five concentric spheres of being. The first division is between uncreated nature (God) and created nature; the latter is divided into the intelligible universe and the sensible universe; the latter is divided into heaven and earth; the latter is divided into the inhabited earth and paradise; and finally, humankind is divided into male and female.35 And since all these divisions are brought about by God, it implies that gender differentiation is the will of God and any subversion thereof is an offence against the cosmic order.

One of the most thoughtful investigations into being and non-being from a Platonist Christian perspective has been undertaken by the Irish philosopher John Scottus Eriugena, who achieved renown while working at the Carolingian court of the ninth century. In his magnum opus, the Periphyseon (subtitled On the Division of Nature), this enigmatic yet brilliant thinker presents an all-inclusive world-view in terms of being and non-being. Continuing the ontology of Parmenides, he declares the fundamental division of reality, or nature (Latin, natura), as between that which is and that which is not (Per I, 441). Eriugena was probably influenced herein also by Dionysius the Areopagite (whose complete writings he had earlier translated into Latin), who made a similar distinction between ‘all things that are and that are not’ (Greek, panta ouk onta kai onta) in his influential Mystical Theology.36

However, for Eriugena the division of reality into things that are and things that are not is not a static one, since it could be interpreted according to five different modes (Per I, 443–445): (i) All things that are intelligible or sensible (being) and all things that are beyond thought and sense-perception (non-being); (ii) affirmation of a level of being (being) and negation of a level of being (non-being); (iii) visible effects (being) and invisible causes (non-being); (iv) all things that are intelligible (being) and all things that are subject to becoming (non-being); and (v) restored human nature (being) and fallen human nature (non-being). In this way, instead of holding a substantive view of being and non-being, Eriugena presents a shifting, dynamic ontology according to which being is a question of perspective, and it should therefore be conceived in relative terms.37 In other words, being and non-being are not absolute realities, but relative realities in which the perspective of the observer plays a decisive role. We will encounter scientific confirmation of this ‘observer effect’ in a later chapter.

      From Non-being to Being

The transition from non-being into the realm of being has been investigated by Plato and the early Christian theologians. Plato describes a dialogue between Socrates and Diotima in the Symposium, in which poetry and all other crafts are presented as ‘creating something out of nothing’ (205c). Nicolas Laos comments that for Plato, authentic creation (poiēsis) involves a transition from non-being into being. For example, a sculpture is a creative act because it is a material manifestation of a specific form, so that its creation entails a passage from formlessness into form. However, there is a fundamental difference between human and divine creative activity: unlike God, man cannot create out of nothing. Nevertheless, “When man’s creative activity imitates God, it is poiēsis, and, in this sense, it can be understood as the passage from non-being into being, since it produces a meaningful world from formless matter.”38

In this

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