THEOLOGICAL REFERENCES.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Plotinus and Guthrie, Kenneth Sylvan
General theological references may be grouped under three heads: the soul's salvation, the procession of the divinity, and the trinity.
As to the soul's salvation, God is the opposite of the evil of beings,551 which, when created in honor of the divinity552 is the image of the Word, the interpreter of the One,553 and is composed of several elements;554 but it is a fall from God,555 and its fate is connected with the "parousia."556
This going forth of the soul from God, when considered cosmically, becomes the "procession of the soul."557 This is the "eternal generation,"558 whereby the Son is begotten from eternity,559 so that there could be no (Arian) "ên hote ouk ên," or, "time when he was not."560 This is expressed as "light of light,"561 and explained by the Athanasian light and ray simile.562 We find even the Johannine and Philonic distinction between God and the Good.563 The world is the first-begotten,564 and the Intelligence is the logos of the first God,565 as the hypostasis of wisdom is "ousia," or "being,"566 and it is the "universal reason."567
As to the trinity, Plotinos is the first and chief rationalizer of the cosmic trinity, which he continuously and at length discusses.568 God is father and son,569 and they are "homoousian," or "consubstantial."570 The human soul (as image of the cosmic divinity), is one nature in three powers.571 Elsewhere we have discussed the history of the term "persons," but we may understand the result of that process best by Plotinos's simile of the trinity as one head with three faces,572 in which the "persons" bear out their original meaning of masks, "personare." Henceforward the trinity was an objective idea.