In the ancient world there was a detectable ennui with the ability of any cult or philosophy to wield a binding vision. There was more serious discontent with the lack of an embraceable order to govern the acts of men. Greek thought could allow for the intellectual elite to find spiritual peace in the contemplation of the Pure Act or the Idea of the Good, or to exalt forbearance (Stoicism), or to flaunt the ephemeral nature of time (Epicureanism), but the masses of humanity were in want and in search of an understanding, a way, a light, a truth to live by in hope and with hope. Christianity was on the cusp of being able to fulfil that need. Unfortunately, history always seems to take the long and circuitous road, and along the way many things change, many things fail to happen, many things get tied up in indecipherable knots.
In the third century there arose a neo-Platonic philosopher, Plotinus, who decidedly set a knot forming. He revisited the theories of Plato and enriched them, entrenching the tendencies toward dualism wherein the intellectual and contemplative aspects of being human were set against the material. He accepted the old division of knowledge between sense and reason, and expanded it, leaving to reason the knowledge of the essence of things, adding intelligence as the knowledge of self, and ecstasy as the knowledge of god. God is the ONE, which cannot be spoken of as an entity, being beyond all aspects of spirit and matter, beyond all ability to know and will, beyond any manner of being considered other than absolute ONEness. Yet this “singularity” leaked. That, I admit, is my jocular pejorative. The correct enunciation is thus: all that we encounter in and through the world “emanates”, radiates, by degrees from the ONE. The first emanation is the Nous (Mind) which corresponds to Plato’s world of Ideas, then the World Soul, which corresponds to Plato’s Demiurge, and finally the universe. All this is a gradual descent into the abyss of non-being, and hence evil (the “state” of lacking-ness). We are essentially at a revival of Plato with added emphasis on the evil of the material. While the “evil” here referenced is a metaphysical evil, a meta-evil, a groundwork of evil, which ultimately is manifest as moral evil, a nuance is entrenched. The way of morality and immortality is to be awakened to the true source of whom and whence we are, and by contemplation to climb back up the ladder of emanations.
An Excursus: The history of Western philosophy usually begins with Thales of Miletus. He reportedly met his end by falling into a well, having lost his footing while looking up in contemplation of the stars. It is an inauspicious beginning, and philosophy still labours under its minacity. Too often do great thinkers forget to keep two feet upon the ground and move one after the other, to stop gazing up or in long enough to look down or look out. Too often does the desire to clarify some nuance in the work of another turn into an intellectual avalanche destroying the paths of ascent and rearranging the landscape for ages. In this survey of occidental thought regarding god and soul this miasmic emanation shall be encountered over and over. One presumes it keeps angels amused.