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In the Neoplatonic understanding, Intellect (or Mind, the Greek nous) is the second of the divine hypostases, obtaining its reality from the One. However, since the One is a hyper-cosmic reality, it could be stated that Intellect is the first principle of all things that exist. In other words, Intellect is the ontological storehouse of all potential beings (Enneads, V.2.1, V.9.5). To be more precise, Intellect contains all of the eternal and immutable Ideas, or Forms, through which the physical world comes into being. Plotinus employs the Stoic term logoi spermatikoi, or seminal reasons, to indicate the productive ‘seeds’ that become actualized as distinct from Intellect (Enneads, V.9.6-7). These ‘rational seeds’ contain the potentialities of all beings.107 This reasoning implies that without Intellect, or the universal Mind of Anaxagoras, there would be no beings in existence.

In his brilliant study of the interaction between Neoplatonic philosophy and Christian theology, as represented by Plotinus and St Augustine respectively, the French philosopher Albert Camus sketches the intermediary role played by the Intellect as follows: “This Being that lies at the bottom of all things, that gives to the world its existence and its true meaning, draws all of its unity from its origin. And scattered in its intelligibles [i.e., the Forms] though being known as Intelligence, it is the ideal intermediary between the indefinable Good that we hope for and the Soul that breathes behind sensible appearances.”108 As intermediary between the One and Soul, Intellect receives its reality from the One and in turn bestows reality upon Soul, thereby becoming the foundation of all beings.

The creation of the cosmos is described in considerable detail by Plato in his late dialogue Timaeus, where Intellect is personified and called the Father, or more often the Demiurge (ho demiourgos, which has the meaning of a divine Craftsman). As Porphyry explains, with reference to Plotinus’ teaching that the essence of the Godhead extends over three hypostases: “The highest god is the Good [i.e., the One], and after him and second there is the Demiurge, and third is the Soul of the Universe; for the divine realm proceeds as far as Soul” (History of Philosophy, Book 4). This reasoning confirms that Plato’s Demiurge is a personification of the divine Intellect.

The concept of a creative Demiurge was not limited to Hellenism. The Greek Christian theologian Basil of Caesarea, although highly critical of Hellenic natural philosophy, referred to “the Creator and Demiurge of the universe” (Hex I.5). It has also been remarked that Plato’s Demiurge is comparable to the Egyptian god Ptah, the divine intermediary between the creative idea and the physical product, and to Jesus Christ as the Logos through whom all things are created (as taught in Christian theology).109

Thesis: The Creation of the World by Intellect

Plato commences his account of cosmic creation by arguing that something which is visible and tangible, like our universe, had to have an origin instead of having always existed. The Athenian philosopher adds that to find the maker and father of this universe (Greek, to pan, literally ‘the whole’; Latin, omnis, ‘every or all’)110 is hard enough, and to declare him to everyone is impossible. At any rate, this world of ours was fashioned after an eternal model and is grasped by a rational account, i.e., by wisdom (Tim, 28b–29a). Interestingly, Plato’s apophatic theology (of which more in a later chapter) was admired by the Greek Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria, who described Plato as a sincere friend of the truth, for recognizing that the mystery of the divine being cannot be expressed in words.111

In the Platonic understanding, goodness is an essential attribute of the divinity. The goodness of the Demiurge is moreover stated as the motive for creation: “He was good, and one who is good can never become jealous of anything. And so, being free of jealousy, he wanted everything to become as much like himself as was possible. The god wanted everything to be good and nothing to be bad so far as that was possible, and so he took over all that was visible—not at rest but in discordant and disorderly motion—and brought it from a state of disorder to one of order, because he believed that order was in every way better than disorder” (Tim, 29e-30a). Motivated by his goodness, the divine Intellect transforms the pre-cosmic disorder into cosmic order.

To the question as to why God created all things, Patristic theology gave the same answer as Plato: out of the abundance of his goodness. As John of Damascus writes, “Because the good and transcendently good God was not content to contemplate himself, but by a superabundance of goodness saw fit that there should be some things to benefit by and to participate in his goodness, he brings all things from nothing into being and created them.”112 However, in this passage we notice a divergence from the Platonic cosmology, namely that God creates the world from nothing, as opposed to forming it from primordial matter.

Plato continues his account as follows: “The god reasoned and concluded that in the realm of things naturally visible no unintelligent thing could as a whole be better than anything which does possess intelligence as a whole, and he further concluded that it is impossible for anything to come to possess intelligence apart from soul. Guided by this reasoning, he [the Demiurge] put intelligence in soul, and soul in body, and so he constructed the universe. This, then, in keeping with our likely account, is how we must say divine providence brought our world into being as a truly living thing, endowed with soul and intelligence” (Tim, 30b–c).

An identical causal schema to the foregoing is depicted in the ancient Hermetic writings, according to which the soul makes copies in the physical world of the things which Mind (nous) makes in the soul itself. In its turn, Mind makes copies in the soul of the things which the First Cause of all makes in Mind. Consequently, all the shapes and images which we can see with our bodily eyes in the sensible world of becoming are only semblances and copies of the eternal forms in the intelligible world of real being.113

In his Platonic Theology, the great Neoplatonist thinker Proclus credits Plato for advancing our understanding of theology beyond some earlier views, such as the identification of ‘gods’ with first principles in nature, or with the faculties of soul. “Only the divinely-inspired philosophy of Plato,” writes Proclus, “asserts, as has been said, that Intellect is the father and causal principle of both bodies and souls, and that everything that exercises its life in conditions of progression and unfolding possesses its being and its actualization in dependence on Intellect. But, then, it advances to another first principle, completely transcending Intellect, yet more incorporeal and ineffable than it, from which all . . . must derive their existence” (Book I.3). This transcendent Principle is, of course, the One.

Since the physical world must have bodily form, Plato continues, it must be visible and tangible (Tim, 31b). The components of the world therefore must include fire and earth, and since these elements are solids, the Demiurge also created air and water as intermediates to combine them. Each of these four elements are composed of different geometrical solids.114 The Demiurge made the sensible world from these four elements, bound together as a ‘symphony of proportion’ (Tim, 32b–c).

It should be noted that initially the four kinds (genē) of fire, air, water, and earth are without proportion and measure. They are ‘thoroughly god-forsaken’ in their natural condition, and therefore the Demiurge must give these kinds their distinctive shapes, by means of forms (eidesi) and numbers (arithmois) (Tim, 53a–b). The Demiurge employs specific geometrical figures known as regular solids: the tetrahedron for fire, the octahedron for air, the icosahedron for water, and the cube for earth (Tim, 55e–56a). These ‘shapes and numbers’ used by the Demiurge to produce the cosmos out of chaos are the basic intelligible features of the world.115

Plato adds that the world was created spherical in shape: “He [the Demiurge] gave it a shape appropriate to the kind of thing it was. The appropriate shape for the living being that is to contain within itself all the living beings would be the one which embraces within itself all the shapes there are. Hence, he gave it a round shape, the form of a sphere, with its center equidistant from the extremes in all directions. This of all shapes is the most complete and like itself, which he gave to it because he believed that likeness is incalculably more excellent than unlikeness” (Tim, 33b). As a matter of fact, the sphere is the most uniform of all solid figures and the only one which can move without change of place, through rotating on its axis. For Plato, the rotation of the world with all its contents shows the penetration and rule of intelligence over the entire universe.116

As a further step in the creative process, the Demiurge sets soul in the center of the cosmos, so that soul is given priority to rule over the physical universe: “And he [the Demiurge] placed soul into the midst of it, and stretched it through the whole of it, and enveloped its body with it from without” (Tim, 34b). The visible world is therefore a living creature, having soul (psychē) in its body and mind (nous) in its soul.

Four kinds of living beings were made by the Demiurge, corresponding to the four primary elements (Tim, 39e–40a). These are: (i) the heavenly gods, in which the element of fire is dominant; (ii) the flying creatures (air); (iii) the aquatic creatures (water); and (iv) the terrestrial creatures (earth). Interestingly, the Demiurge himself makes only the heavenly gods, while the remaining three classes of living beings were made by these gods. Plato’s delegation of the rest of the creative work to the celestial gods may reflect a notion that the heavenly bodies, especially the Sun, actively generates life on Earth.117 We also read in the Politeia that the Sun is the cause of coming to be, growth, and nourishment of things in the visible world, without itself coming to be (Book VI, 509b).

Aristotle likewise recognized the influence of the Sun in the generation of living beings, as we read in the Physics: “Man is begotten by man and by the sun as well” (II.194). He suggests elsewhere that the efficient cause of things coming to be and passing away is the movement of the Sun towards and away from the earth: “Thus we see that coming-to-be occurs as the sun approaches and decay as it retreats; and we see that the two processes occupy equal times” (De Gen et Corr, II.336b). In other words, for Aristotle the generation and destruction of substance is caused by the annual movement of the Sun in the ecliptic or zodiac cycle.118

Antithesis: The Role of Necessity

Unlike the Judaic and Christian doctrine on God as creator, the Platonic Intellect is not viewed as omnipotent (or all-powerful) in fashioning the physical world. The reason for this limitation is that Intellect is constrained by an opposing force, which is necessity (Greek, anangkē; also translated as force or restraint).119 This view was already stated in mythical language by Parmenides, writing that Necessity is a goddess who governs all things. This includes the celestial bodies, which are led and shackled by necessity.120 Plato describes the role of necessity in the establishment of the cosmos as follows: “For this ordered world was of mixed birth: it is the offspring of a union of necessity and Intellect. Intellect prevailed over necessity by persuading it to direct most of the things that come to be towards what is best, and the result of this subjugation of necessity to wise persuasion was the initial formation of the universe” (Tim, 48a).

In the Platonic understanding, necessity is associated with disorder and random chance. Necessity means the indeterminate, the inconstant, the anomalous; it is a force that is irregular and unintelligible. In his informative commentary on the Timaeus, Francis Cornford writes further that necessity resides in the properties of the elements. For example, fire has a characteristic power (Greek, dynamis) to produce burning heat. Since necessity is constrained by its own nature, Plato calls it a wandering cause; in other words, a cause without purpose.121

Plato therefore mentions two types of causes, “distinguishing those which possess understanding and thus fashion what is beautiful and good, from those which, when deserted by intelligence, produce only haphazard and disorderly effects every time” (Tim, 46e). Nonetheless, the Demiurge uses these lower, auxiliary causes (synaitia) to produce the best result possible (Tim, 46c). The properties of these contributing structures are unalterable by the Demiurge, which is the reason why persuasion by Intellect is required for creation to take place.122 Necessity is therefore a second principle (archē) in the origin of things (Tim, 48b), next to Intellect.

The phenomenon of necessity was naturally explored by such a keen observer of nature as Aristotle, who made a distinction between two kinds of necessity. On the one hand there is absolute necessity, which is manifested in eternal phenomena, and on the other hand there is hypothetical necessity, which is manifested in everything that is generated by nature and everything that is produced by art (PA I.639b). A conspicuous example of hypothetical necessity is animals requiring food to live (PA I.642a). An important instance of absolute necessity is circular motion, such as that of the sun which ensures the continuity of alternate generation and destruction (De Gen et Corr, II.338a). Many other natural phenomena are due to absolute necessity, flowing inevitably from the nature of the specific matter.123 The effects of gravity would be a notable example of absolute necessity. Whereas Aristotle thus views absolute necessity as unrelated to final causality (due to lacking purpose), the hypothetical necessity in nature provides the conditions for an explanation in terms of final causality.124

It was further reasoned by Aristotle that the formation of a person’s eye serves a certain purpose in accordance with the reason (logos) of the individual, while the color of the eye is incidental and must ‘of necessity’ (ex anangkēs) be ascribed to its matter and moving cause (GA, 778a–b). Sometimes necessity even opposes purpose, as in the case of monstrous births that are due to defective matter (GA, 767b).125 This reasoning implies that tragic conditions such as physical deformity and mental retardation are due to material imperfections that could not be overcome by the activity of Intellect.

Aristotle’s well-known insistence on final causality, or teleology, enables him to indemnify the Prime Mover (which is his conception of the divine Intellect) from the imperfections in nature. Thus, imperfections in the structure of animals are ascribed to defective material, not a defective maker. This phenomenon is due to the fact that matter is sometimes not suitable for the purpose in hand, Aristotle suggested. In their turn, imperfections in individual organisms are due to the inherent variability of matter, since the latter is formed of an endless variety of combinations of the four elements.126 Nevertheless, final causality cannot be ignored, he writes: “Both causes must be stated by the physicist, but especially the end; for that is the cause of the matter, not vice versa” (Phys II.200a). By recognising the role of both final causality and necessity in the physical world, Aristotle continues Plato’s notion that the cosmos is the product of the interaction between the divine Intellect and irrational Necessity.

The phenomenon of physical deformity has been explained by Thomas Aquinas in terms of Aristotelian causality: “For if the matter is not disposed to receive the agent’s imprint [i.e., the operation of the efficient cause] a defect will follow in the effect, as when monsters are born because of unprepared matter: the fact that it doesn’t transform and actualize the indisposed matter can’t be laid at the door of the agent, for agents have powers proportioned to their natures and their inability to go further can’t be called deficiency in power; we can say that only when its power falls short of the measure laid down by nature” (Summa contra Gentiles, 3.10).

Synthesis: The Combination of Intellect and Necessity

After describing the role of Necessity, Plato devotes the next part of the Timaeus to a discussion of the physical cosmos, which is presented as the offspring of the union of Intellect and Necessity. Stated the other way around, Intellect persuades Necessity to form the initial universe: “For the generation of this universe was a mixed result of the combination of Necessity and Intellect. Intellect overruled Necessity by persuading her to guide the greatest part of the things that become towards what is best; in that way and on that principle this universe was fashioned in the beginning by the victory of reasonable persuasion over Necessity” (Tim, 48a; Cornford’s translation). As Plato concludes, “That is why we must distinguish two forms of cause, the divine and the necessary” (Tim, 68e).

However, the result of the restriction of the activity of Intellect by irrational Necessity is that the physical world displays both design and accident, is both purposeful and contingent, and harbours both good and bad. This statement should not be confused with Gnostic dualism, according to which the world is inherently evil due to its creation by an inferior deity. In the traditional understanding, evil is not self-existing but follows from a privation of goodness, just as darkness is due to an absence of light.

Within this context of the interaction between Intellect and Necessity, Plato situates the constitution of the human being and the causal principles of its being. Earlier, in Book IV of the Republic, the various elements, or parts, of the individual soul had been sketched: the highest is reason, the lowest is appetite, and in between is thymos. The latter term is translated as any vehement passion, anger, or wrath, and in the good sense as spirit or courage.127 Now, in the Timaeus, Plato depicts the creation of the soul’s elements, as at least being a likely account (72d). The highest element, reason, is the immortal part of the soul and is therefore situated in the head, which is “the most divine part of us, and the master of all our other parts” (44d). This is followed by the creation of the mortal parts of the soul: the spirited part which is situated in the chest, and the appetitive part which is placed in the lower abdomen (69c–71a).

As a reflection of the intelligible and sensible realms of the cosmos, Plato thus conceives of the human being as consisting of two main components that differ essentially. On the one hand, there is the soul which participates in the realm of Ideas, and which is immortal and the bearer of Intellect. On the other hand, there is the body which is part of the sensible world, and which is mortal and represents the principle of Necessity in the human being.128 This anthropology would exercise an immense influence on Christian thought, in both the Greek and Latin traditions.

It has often been stated that the human body is a marvel of design, and in the case of religious believers this design is attributed to God. Now, if one considers the immense complexity and intricacy of organs such as the brain, the heart, and the eye, then the human body does appear to be marvellously designed. If, on the other hand, one considers the extreme susceptibility of the human body to an almost infinite range of illnesses and injuries during the entire lifespan between conception and death, a rather different picture emerges. One only has to think of the plethora of childhood diseases and bone fractures, the debilitating conditions appearing later in life, such as multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and arthritis, and the horrors of a whole range of cancers, as well as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

There are two possible explanations for this organic ambivalence: either the human body was designed by God, in which case He would have to be held responsible for the prevalence of disease and physical suffering among humans; or the human body is the product of the interaction between the divine Intellect and irrational Necessity, in which case there is no blame or responsibility involved in this matter. We contend that the latter alternative, as taught by Plato and Aristotle, is the more accurate one, and in fact the only explanation that does justice to both the existential reality and the divine Goodness. In contrast, the human soul is of divine origin—in particular, the rational dimension of the soul, which is also the seat of its immortality.

107. Moore, Plotinus.

108. Camus, Christian Metaphysics, 98.

109. Ferguson, Pythagoras, 130.

110. LSJ, 535; Wheeler, Latin, 529.

111. Alfeyev, Mystery, 27.

112. Quoted in Alfeyev, Mystery, 43–44.

113. Perry, Treasury, 672–673.

114. Cohen, “Plato’s Cosmology.”

115. Gerson, Aristotle, 219.

116. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, 54, 57.

117. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, 118, 141.

118. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, 11.

119. LSJ, 58.

120. McKirahan, Philosophy, 177.

121. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, 160, 165, 171–172, 174.

122. Zeyl, “Plato’s Timaeus.”

123. Ross, Aristotle, 81.

124. Gerson, Aristotle, 122.

125. Ross, Aristotle, 82.

126. Ross, Aristotle, 130.

127. Lee, Republic, 207–208; LSJ, 323.

128. Dreyer, Wysbegeerte, 102.