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Why is there something instead of nothing? This question may at first glance appear to be irrelevant or even foolish, but it is actually one of the most important of all questions. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, also called the Law of Entropy, the total entropy of an isolated system can never decrease over time. In other words, a net loss of energy is inevitably taking place within any closed system. And since the universe in which we live is a closed system (albeit an unimaginably vast one), it should be inexorably moving away from things that exist to a state of nothingness. But instead, we observe a plethora of new things arising all the time, from the birth of solar systems to new life-forms appearing through evolutionary processes.

Our initial question could also be cast in ontological terms: why are there beings at all instead of only non-being? Broadly speaking, ‘being’ denotes that which exists and ‘non-being’ indicates that which does not exist, or nothingness. The study of being has come to be known as ontology. The Greek word ousia means the being, substance, or essence of a thing, while ‘ontology’ is derived from the Greek ta onta, meaning the things which actually exist;19 in other words, that which has being, or reality. Ontology is therefore an investigation into the nature of being. The purpose of such an undertaking is to distinguish that which is real from that which is unreal, and, since there are different levels of reality, also the more real from the less real. In other words, ontology deals with reality in the widest sense of the word.

The first Western thinker to distinguish between being and non-being was Parmenides (fifth century B.C.), who hailed from the Hellenic colony at Elea in southern Italy. It is not widely known that during the first millennium B.C. and continuing well into the Christian era, there was such a large Hellenic population in southern Italy, including Sicily, that the Romans referred to these areas as Magna Graecia, meaning Great Greece. In an influential poem titled On Nature (the contents of which was revealed to him by an unnamed goddess), Parmenides wrote about “the one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be,” and “the other, that it is not and that it is necessary for it not to be” (Fragment 2). An identical terminology is encountered in the Indian spiritual classic, the Bhagavad Gita: “What is non-Being is never known to have been, and what is Being is never known not to have been” (2:16).

The numerous and striking parallels between classical Indian and Hellenic philosophy have been explored by various authors. Hellenic thinkers mentioned in this regard include Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Plato. Concluding his informative survey of these parallels, A.N. Marlow suggests that Indian influence probably reached the Hellenic world through Iran as intermediary.20 Without denying a flow of thought in either direction, we suggest that these parallels should be ascribed primarily to a common spiritual-intellectual inheritance. For instance, the Indo-European names for the supreme Deity (of which more later) certainly indicate a common origin.

The characteristics of being, as Parmenides understands it, have been summarized as follows: (i) It is without origin or cessation, since it could only arise from or return to non-being, which does not exist other than as an abstraction; (ii) it is an indivisible whole, which is to say a homogeneous continuity; (iii) it is motionless, since motion requires empty space, but that is non-being (which does not really exist); and (iv) it is perfect, since any lack therein would imply the existence of non-being, which is impossible.21 Again, an identical ontology is presented in the Bhagavad Gita: “Know that to be imperishable whereby all this is pervaded. No one can destroy that immutable being” (2.17); “This is never born or ever dies, nor having been will ever not be any more; unborn, eternal, everlasting, ancient” (2.22); and “Perceivable neither by the senses nor by the mind, This is called unchangeable” (2.25). In summary: true being is eternal, continuous, motionless, immutable, and perfect.

The celebrated paradoxes of Zeno were written by a student of Parmenides to support this ontology. The paradox of Achilles and the tortoise is probably the most famous of these arguments, in this case directed against the concept of motion. The Hellenic hero Achilles and a tortoise compete in a race, with the tortoise given a hundred metres head-start. If Achilles runs ten times faster than the tortoise (which would make it a fast tortoise indeed), then by the time he reaches the tortoise’s starting point the reptile would have ran ten metres. By the time Achilles reaches this hundred-and-ten metres mark from his starting point, the tortoise would have moved a further metre, and so the process continues ad infinitum. Therefore, Zeno concludes, Achilles will never overtake the tortoise.

Not surprisingly, Zeno’s paradoxes have from the outset been opposed by a variety of thinkers, including Aristotle in his Physics. After all, everyday observation suggests that the physical world we live in is characterized very much by origin, cessation, motion, and imperfection. However, the reason for this apparent contradiction of Parmenides’ ontology is that our living world is the realm of becoming and not the world of true being. The imperfect world of becoming, in which things (both living and inanimate) come to be and cease to be and are in motion, is therefore situated somewhere between true being and non-being. We could therefore postulate the following provisional hierarchy of reality, arranged from higher to lower: Being, becoming, and non-being.

The One beyond Being and Non-being

The differentiation between being and non-being, as encountered in both Hellenic and Indian philosophy, might at first sight suggest that the cosmos entails a duality of something and nothing. However, transcending both being and non-being there is the supreme Reality of the Godhead: “I will expound to thee that which is to be known and knowing which one enjoys immortality; it is the supreme Brahman which has no beginning, which is called neither Being nor non-Being” (Bhagavad Gita, 11.12). It actually precedes the differentiation between being and non-being: “There was then neither being nor non-being. Without breath breathed by its own power That One” (Rig Veda X.129).22 This supreme Reality is called God (in Christianity), Brahman (in Hinduism), and the One (in Neoplatonism).

As could be expected, the greatest Western philosopher of all time, Plato, pondered the question of being and non-being.23 The notion of divine transcendence was developed in his dialogue Parmenides, in which the One is described as indivisible, unlimited, and shapeless, neither at rest nor in motion, neither like nor unlike anything else, not partaking of time or being, and not an object of knowledge (137c–142a). Moreover, the One is beyond the duality of being and non-being, since it sometimes partakes of being and sometimes does not partake of being (155e). A similar stance is found in the Indian philosophical school known as Advaita Vedanta, where the concept of divine transcendence is encapsulated in the phrase neti neti, which means ‘neither this, nor that’ in Sanskrit. It negates all descriptions about the ultimate Reality, but not the Reality itself.24

In the cosmology of Plotinus, the One (to hen) is conceived as beyond all being (Enneads, V.5.6). He insists further that the One is nothing, i.e., no thing (ouden), not anything at all (Enneads, VI.9.3). Even the term ‘One’ contains only a denial of multiplicity (Enneads, V.5.6). Now, since the One is eternally beyond the manifested cosmos, Plotinus reasons, the metaphysical realm consists of Intellect (Nous, also translated as Mind) in its higher aspect and Soul (Psychē) in its lower aspect. To be more specific, the One is absolutely transcendent in respect of Intellect, Forms, and Being (Enneads, VI.8.15).25 Nonetheless, as ultimate source of all Being (through the Intellect), the One provides the foundation (archē) and location (topos) of all things that exist (Enneads, VI.9.6). In this way the One is both nothing, being indistinct and pure unity, and everything, as the principle of all things.26 Or, as stated by Krishna (an incarnation of the God Vishnu in human form): “Whatever is the seed of every being, O Arjuna, that am I; there is nothing, whether moving or fixed, that can be without Me” (Bhagavad Gita, 10.39).

The Hellenic and Indian affirmation of the transcendence of the Godhead beyond being and non-being implies that the One is essentially beyond thought and speech. We can have no opinion, thought, or knowledge of the One; it is beyond everything. This insistence on divine ineffability would be elaborated by the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus and the Christian theologian Dionysius the Areopagite, among others.27 Stating the same approach in Trinitarian terms, the German mystic Meister Eckhart writes of the Godhead that transcends the God of the three divine Persons, as “the absolutely simple One, without any mode or any property; He is not there in the sense of Father, Son or Holy Spirit, but He is nonetheless a Something which is neither this nor that”; adding that “all that is in the Deity is one, and of that Godhead there is no occasion to speak.” And regarding activity, he writes that “God acts, the Godhead acts not at all. God and Godhead differ by acting and non-acting.”28

However, if the One is beyond all being, how can it also be the ground or source of all being, as the metaphysical tradition asserts? According to this tradition, all that exists is established by the movement from the Principle into Manifestation, which is the flow of the One into the many. The foundation of all things in the supreme Reality, which is to say of the immanent in the transcendent, is affirmed in the Bhagavad Gita: “By Me [Brahman], unmanifest in form, this whole world is pervaded; all beings are in Me, I am not in them” (9.4). This world-view is sometimes called pan-en-theism, derived from the Greek pan (all), en (in) and theos (god); in other words, all things are in God, in the sense of receiving their being from the supreme Reality. This concept is not the same as pantheism, which is defined as the view that God is in everything, or that God and the universe are one.29 In contrast, the ontological gap between the One and the many is preserved in pan-en-theism.

We read further in the Bhagavad Gita, “The state of all beings before birth is unmanifest; their middle state manifest; their state after death is again unmanifest” (2.28), and also, “But higher than the Unmanifest is another Unmanifest Being, everlasting, which perisheth not when all creatures perish” (8.20). And in the Politeia (usually translated as Republic), Plato employs the example of the Sun, which makes the things we see visible and also causes the processes of generation, growth, and nourishment, without itself being such a process. In the same way, the Good (which the Neoplatonists identify with the One) is the source of the intelligibility of the objects of knowledge, as well as of their being and reality, while in itself it is beyond that reality, being superior to it in dignity and power (Pol, 509b). From these statements we learn that the One is beyond all manifestation, even though all existing things (i.e., the many) receive their being from it.

The Manifestation of Being

How and whence does Being (i.e., the totality of beings) arise? This question was pondered per excellence by the late Hellenic thinkers of the early Christian era, including Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus. Since the eighteenth century they have been called Neoplatonists by Western scholars, although they viewed themselves as loyal Platonists. It has been convincingly argued that the modern distinction between Plato and Neoplatonism is utterly erroneous. The founders of modern philosophical hermeneutics rejected the Neoplatonist thesis of harmony between Plato and Aristotle, in the arrogant belief that they understood Plato better than his disciples of the late Classical era did.30

By drawing together the cosmologies of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, and enriching it with 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 regard, Nicolas Berdyaev draws a fundamental distinction between creation (whether divine or human) and procreation through birth. Unlike birth, which arises from nature, creation springs from freedom. Creation is thus out of nothing, for freedom is nothing, while birth is always from something. In this way, through creation there arises something perfectly new that has never existed before, i.e., ‘nothing’ becomes ‘something.’ Human creativity is therefore similar to God’s, although God does not need any material for creation, while humans do. As the Russian philosopher concludes, “A creative act is therefore a continuation of world-creation and means participation in the work of God, man’s answer to God’s call. And this presupposes freedom which is prior to being.”39

It is axiomatic in Patristic theology, both Greek and Latin, that God creates the entire realm of being out of nothing, thus effecting the transition from non-being to being. The first biblical mention of creation from nothing (Latin, creatio ex nihilo) is found in the apocryphal book of Second Maccabees. There it is declared that God created the heavens and the earth, as well as human beings, from what did not exist (2 Macc 7:28; ek ouk onton in the Greek text of the Septuagint).40 This terminology is significant, for ou or ouk is more emphatic than the customary mē used for negation. Accordingly, mē expresses that one thinks a thing is not, while ou that it is not. This reasoning implies that nothing can exist ‘before’ creation or ‘outside’ God, for time and space are presupposed by the act of creation. Therefore, ‘before’ creation or ‘outside’ God there is only the nothingness out of which He creates.41 The only occurrence of this doctrine in the New Testament is a passing reference by St Paul, namely that God ‘calls those things which do not exist as though they did’ (kalountos ta mē onta hōs onta) (Rom 4:17). In this way, a new entity is produced which is wholly other, removed from God not by place but by nature (Greek, ou topō, alla physei), in the words of John of Damascus. The created order is therefore not co-eternal with God, but moves from non-being to being.42

The essential nothingness of all beings created by God has been powerfully described by Meister Eckhart. All creatures are a mere nothing, for they are without being; they are not even small, but absolutely nothing. He adds, “Creatures have no real being, for their being consists in the presence of God. If God turned away for an instant, they would all perish.” The German mystic remarks that even if someone had the whole world as well as God, he would have no more than God by himself. “Having all creatures without God is no more than having one fly without God; just the same, no more nor less.”43

For another German mystical theologian, Jakob Böhme, the nothingness out of which God creates is the Ungrund, the bottomless abyss which is neither light nor darkness and neither good nor evil. Commenting on this view, the Russian philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev sketches the deployment of the Ungrund as follows: being-less freedom ignites like a fire in the darkness, and light comes to be (which reminds one of the divine command at the commencement of the creative process in Genesis 1: ‘Let there be light!’). Nothing becomes something, and out of bottomless freedom nature is born. The Ungrund is the Divinity of apophatic theology and simultaneously the no-thing that precedes God. No-thing is more fundamental than some-thing, darkness than light, and freedom than nature.44

The transition from non-being into being through the divine creative activity has been poetically depicted by more recent authors. Referring to the creation of the heavenly beings, which in the traditional Christian understanding preceded the creation of the physical universe, Alan Watts writes: “From beginningless time they were not. And then, by the sudden command of the Word, they appeared—circle upon circle, sphere upon sphere of lesser lights about the Light—points of substantialized nothingness, reflecting in a million ways the central radiance of the Trinity as if they had been great clouds of crystal fragments swirling about the sun.” And in the words of Deirdre Carabine: “The paradox of creation is that the original darkness of God, which is no-thing, becomes light, becomes some-thing. God’s fullness above being is the ‘nothing’ that is the negation of something, but through its becoming, it becomes the negation of the negation: the divine nature becomes ‘other’ than itself: God becomes not-God through the process of ex-stasis, literally, God’s going out from God.”45 Thus, darkness becomes light, nothing becomes something, and non-being becomes being.

In the traditional Christian understanding, it is the creative activity of the Logos, or the divine Word, which brings the universe into being, including all its life-forms.46 The following statement by Philaret of Moscow, a leading Orthodox theologian of the nineteenth century, has to be one of the most evocative depictions of the created order: “All creatures are balanced upon the creative word of God, as if upon a bridge of diamond; above them is the abyss of the divine infinitude, below them that of their own nothingness.”47 In other words, all created beings are suspended, so to speak, between the Beyond-being above them and the non-being below them. In their essences, the many (i.e., the world of phenomena) are indeed nothing—their only reality is derived from the One which is the uncreated Ground of all Being.

Being and Nature

One of the prominent metaphysical thinkers of the twentieth century, Martin Heidegger, opens his Introduction to Metaphysics with the following question: “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” This is presented by the German philosopher as the fundamental question of metaphysics, for it is the broadest, the deepest, and the most originary (i.e., causing existence) question. It is the broadest in scope, being limited only by what never is, i.e., non-being; it is the deepest question, aimed at establishing the ground from where beings come and to where beings go; and it is the most originary question, addressing not a particular being but beings as a whole.48 The striving to answer this question underlies the enduring metaphysical quest.

The Greek noun physis, which means the nature or inborn quality of a person or thing, is related to the verb phuō, which means to bring forth, produce, or make to grow. Evidently, the early Hellenic thinkers conceived of ‘nature’ as a creative power rather than a material environment.49 Heidegger suggests that the Hellenic thinkers did not first experience physis in the natural processes, but in poetry and thought physis disclosed itself to them. Thus, ‘nature’ meant the totality of heaven and earth, animals and plants, humans, and even the gods. This wider meaning of physis comprises “what emerges from itself (for example, the emergence, the blossoming, of a rose), the unfolding that opens itself up, the coming-into-appearance in such unfolding, and holding itself and persisting in appearance—in short, the emerging-abiding sway.” Therefore, although physis can be experienced in the processes of nature, such as birth and growth, it is not synonymous with these. Instead, physis indicates Being-itself, through which beings appear.50

Heidegger contends further that by translating physis into Latin as natura, which means ‘birth,’ the realm of nature became reduced to the world of biological phenomena. This Latin term is therefore said to represent the beginning of the alienation of Western thought on nature from its original essence in Hellenic philosophy.51 However, Plotinus recognized an etymological connection between the noun physis and the verb ephy; in other words, between ‘nature’ and ‘was born’ (Enneads VI, 8, 8).52 In the light thereof, we could say that natura is not limited to physis, but that it is embraced by the latter (which also reaches beyond the biological realm).

The traditional Indo-European understanding of Being has been perceptively sketched by Heidegger through an etymological analysis: (i) The oldest stem word in this regard is es, which becomes the noun asus in Sanskrit, meaning ‘life’ or ‘the living,’ and the verb forms esmi, esi, esti and asmi. To these terms are related the Greek eimi and einai (both meaning ‘to be’), and the corresponding Latin terms esum and esse. In this regard the Germanic verb ist is cognate to the Greek estin and the Latin est, meaning ‘it is.’ (ii) Another root is the Sanskrit bhu or bheu and related to the Greek phuō, which for Heidegger means “to emerge, to hold sway, to come to a stand from out of itself and to remain standing.” This is in turn cognate to the Greek terms physis (‘nature’) and phainesthai (‘to show itself’), so that nature is described by Heidegger as “that which emerges into the light, phuein, to illuminate, to shine forth and therefore to appear.” The German verbs bin and bist (‘am/are’) are also derived from this Sanskrit stem. (iii) Finally, the stem wes appears in the Sanskrit vasami and the Germanic wesan, meaning ‘to dwell, to abide, to sojourn,’ which in turn becomes the German verbs wesen and sein, ‘to be’ and ‘being.’ From these three stems, Heidegger concludes, one derives the “vividly definite meanings of living, emerging, and abiding”—i.e., the domain of Being.53

This ‘emergence and abiding of Being’ has been outlined by the South African philosopher Danie Goosen, building on the notion of theurgy (from the Greek theourgia, literally ‘divine-working’) as developed by the Neoplatonic thinkers Iamblichus and Proclus. In terms thereof, Reality expresses itself in and through the ‘actors of being’ serving as mediators between the infinity of being and the finitude of the world. These actors assume roles such as being and beings, esse and essentia, transcendent and immanent, other and self, giver and receiver, subject and object, sublime and beautiful, erōs and agapē, and substantive and accidental.54 Through this dynamic interaction between the One and the many, the cosmos obtains the character of a differentiated unity, or a many-in-One.

19. LSJ, 491, 507.

20. Marlow, “Hinduism and Buddhism,” 45.

21. Dreyer, Wysbegeerte, 44–45.

22. Quoted in Perry, Treasury, 26.

23. Plato founded the Academy in Athens that would function (intermittently) for over 900 years, thereby laying the foundations of the later Western university system. In his book Process and Reality (1929), the British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead famously characterized the whole course of European philosophy as a series of footnotes to Plato. However, despite his intellectual brilliance, Plato did not lay claim to originality. In his dialogues he builds on cosmological and metaphysical insights by a number of his Hellenic predecessors. What Plato achieved, among others, is to provide this metaphysical tradition with a thoroughgoing theistic foundation, thus affirming God as the beginning and the end of all things.

24. Wikipedia: Neti neti.

25. Perl, Theophany, 12; Dillon and Gerson, Neoplatonic Philosophy, 174.

26. Moore, Plotinus; Camus, Christian Metaphysics, 94.

27. Lossky, Orthodox Theology, 24.

28. Quoted in Schuon, Divine, 21.

29. Blackburn, Oxford Dictionary, 266.

30. Uzdavinys, Golden Chain, xii.

31. Oosthuizen, Plotinus, 83; LSJ, 743.

32. LSJ, 389, 777; Wheelock, Latin, 528.

33. Kalachanis et al., Theory of Big Bang, 36.

34. Perry, Treasury, 773–774.

35. Lossky, Mystical Theology, 108.

36. Wheeler, Latin, 528; Moran, Eriugena, 217–218.

37. Moran, Eriugena, 218.

38. Laos, Metaphysics, 194–195.

39. Berdyaev, Destiny of Man, 65–66.

40. OSB, 1244; Lossky, Orthodox Theology, 51.

41. LSJ, 442; Lossky, Orthodox Theology, 51–54.

42. Lossky, Mystical Theology, 92–93.

43. Quoted in Perry, Treasury, 803.

44. Berdyaev, “Being and Existence,” 374–375.

45. Watts, Myth and Ritual, 35–36; Carabine, Eriugena, 35.

46. See the author’s book From Logos to Bios. Evolutionary Theory in Light of Plato, Aristotle & Neoplatonism (2018) for an extensive treatment hereof.

47. Quoted in Lossky, Mystical Theology, 92.

48. Heidegger, Introduction, 1–4.

49. LSJ, 772; Coomaraswamy, Civilization, 83.

50. Heidegger, Introduction, 15–16.

51. Heidegger, Introduction, 14.

52. Dillon and Gerson, Neoplatonic Philosophy, 169.

53. Heidegger, Introduction, 75–76.

54. Goosen, Nihilisme, 94, 103.