Chapter 11, Section 1e

Hence the Good God is called the Fount, first, of the Very Primaries: then, of those creatures which share completely therein; then, of those which share partially therein. 484 484 Migne’s text here is corrupt, I have emended it. (1) The First Things = Absolute Existence, etc. (2) Those that share completely therein = the angels and perfected human souls. (3) Those that share partially therein = the lower orders of creation which possess existence without life, or life without consciousness, or consciousness without spirituality (stones, plants, animals). But it needs not to say more concerning this matter, since some of our Divine Teachers have already treated thereof. They give the title “Fount of Very Goodness and Deity” to Him that exceeds both Goodness and Deity; and they give the name of “Very Goodness and Deity” to the Gift which, coming forth from God, bestows both Goodness and Deity upon the creatures; and they give the name of “Very Beauty” to the outpouring of Very Beauty; and in the same manner they speak of “complete Beauty” and “partial Beauty,” and of things completely beautiful and things beautiful in part. 485 485 The beauty of a human being is more complete than that of a horse, and spiritual beauty is more complete than mere physical beauty. And they deal in the same way with all other qualities which are, or can be, similarly employed to signify Providential Manifestations and Virtues derived from the Transcendent God through that abundant outpouring, where such qualities proceed and overflow from Him. So is the Creator of all things literally beyond them all, and His Super-Essential and Supernatural Being altogether transcends the creatures, whatever their essence and nature. 467 i. e. The Seraphim. 468 The Divine Energy and Light streams through the medium of the higher orders to the lower. This is worked out in the Celestial Hierarchy of the same writer. We get the same thought in Dante’s Paradiso, where the Primum Mobile, deriving its motion from an immediate contact with the Empyrean, passes them on to the next sphere and so to all the rest in turn, the movement being received and conveyed by the succeeding angelic orders presiding severally, in descending scale of dignity, over the concentric spheres.—See Convito, II. 6. 469 Vide Acts i. 23 ; xviii. 7 ; or Col. iv. 11 . 470 Victorinus calls God the Father Cessatio, Silentium, or Quies, and also Motus, as distinguished from Motio (the name he gives God the Son), the former kind of movement being the quiescent generator of the latter, since Victorinus was an older contemporary of St. Augustine (see Conf. viii. 2–5) his speculations may have been known to D. The peace of God attracts by its mysterious influence. This influence is, in a sense, an emanation or outgoing activity (or it could not affect us), but it is a thing felt and not understood. 471 It multiplies Itself by entering into the creatures and seeking to be reproduced in each of them. This whole passage throws light on the problem of Personality. If our personalities are ultimately contained in the Absolute, the Absolute is not a Person but a Society of Persons. D. would reply that the Absolute is Supra-Personal, and that in It our personalities have their ultimate existence, outside of themselves, as an undifferentiated Unity, though that ultimate plane needs also and implies the existence of the relative plane on which our personalities exist as differentiated individuals. The Holy Spirit enters into the various individuals, but still possesses One Supra-Personal Godhead. Plotinus says the Godhead is indivisibly divided.