Elsewhere we have seen how Numenius waged the traditional Academic feud with the Stoics bravely, but uselessly, inasmuch as it was chiefly a difference of dialects that separated them. In the course of this struggle, Numenius had made certain distinctions within the divinity, which were followed by Amelius, but are difficult to trace in Plotinos because, as a matter of principle, Plotinos482 was averse to thus "dividing the divinity." Why so? Because he was waging a struggle with the Gnostics, who had followed in the footsteps of the Hermetic writings (with their Demiurge and Seven Governors); Philo Judaeus (with his five Subordinate Powers); Numenius and Amelius (with their triply divided First and Second gods);—after which we come to Basilides (with his seven Powers); Saturninus (with his Seven Angels); and Valentinus (with his 33 Aeons).

This new feud between Plotinos and the Gnostics is however just as illusory as the earlier one between Numenius and the Stoics. It was merely a matter of dialects. Plotinos indeed found fault with the Gnostics for making divisions within the Divinity; but wherever he himself is considering the divinity minutely, he, just as much as the Gnostics, is compelled to draw distinctions, even though he avoided acknowledged divisions by borrowing from Plutarch a new, non-Platonic, non-Numenian, but Aristotelian, Stoic (Cornutus and Sextus) and still Alexandrian (Philo, Septuagint, Lucian) term "hypostasis."

The difference he pretended to find between the Gnostic distinctions within the Divinity and his new term hypostasis was that the former introduced manifoldness into the divinity, by splitting Him,483 thus allowing the influence of matter to pervade the pure realm of Being. Hypostasis, on the contrary, wholly existed within the realm of pure Being, and was no more than a trend, a direction, a characterization, a function, a face, or orientation of activity of the unaffected unity of Being. Thus the divinity retained its unity, and still could be active in several directions, without admixture of what philosophy had till then recognized as constituting manifoldness. But reflection shows that this is a mere quibble, an evasion, a paralogism, a quaternio terminorum, a pun. How it came about we shall attempt to show below.

In thus achieving a manifoldness in the divinity without divisions, Plotinos did indeed keep out of the divinity the splitting influence of matter, which it was now possible to banish to the realm of unreality, as a negation, and a lie. Monism was thus achieved ... but at the cost of two errors: denial of the common-sense reality of the phenomenal world,484 and that quibble about three hypostases without manifoldness, genuinely a "distinction without a difference."

This intellectual dishonesty must not however be foisted on Aristotle485 or Plutarch. The latter, for instance,486 adopted this term only to denote the primary and original characteristics (or distinctions within) existing things, from a comparative study of Aristotle's "de Anima," and Plato's "Phaedo."487 These five hypostases were the divinity, mind, soul, forms immanent in inorganic nature, "hexis," in Stoic dialect, and to matter, as apart from these forms.

So important to Neoplatonism did this term seem to Proclus, that he did not hesitate to say that Plutarch, by the use thereof, became "our first forefather." He therefore develops it further. Among the hidden and intelligible gods are three hypostases. The first is characterized by the Good; it thinks the Good itself, and dwells with the paternal Monad. The second is characterized by knowledge, and resides in the first thought; while the third is characterized by beauty, and dwells with the most beautiful of the intelligible. They are the causes from which proceed three monads which are self-existent but under the form of a unity, and as in a germ, in their cause. Where they manifest, they take a distinct form: faith, truth, and love (Cousin's title: "Du Vrai, du Beau, et du Bien"). This trinity pervades all the divine worlds.

In order to understand the attitude of Plotinos on the subject, we must try to put ourselves in his position. In the first place, on Porphyry's own admission, he had added to Platonism Peripatetic and Stoic views. From Aristotle his chief borrowings were the categories of form and matter, and the distinction between potentiality and actuality,488 as well as the Aristotelian psychology of various souls. To the Stoics he was drawn by their monism, which led him to drop the traditional Academico-Stoic feud, or rather to take the side of the Stoics against Numenius the Platonist dualist and the dualistic successors, the Gnostics. But there was a difference between the Stoics and Plotinos. The Stoics assimilated spirit to matter, while Plotinos, reminiscent of Plato, preferred to assimilate matter to spirit. Still, he used their terminology, and categories, including the conception of a hypostasis, or form of existence. With this equipment, he held to the traditional Platonic trinity of the "Letters," the King, the intellect, and the soul. Philosophically, however, he had received from Numenius the inheritance of a double name of the Divinity, Being and Essence. As a thinker, he was therefore forced to accommodate Numenius to Plato, and by adding to Numenius's name of the divinity, to complete Numenius's theology by Numenius's own cosmology. This then he did by adding as third hypostasis the Aristotelian dynamic energy.

But as Intellect is permanent, how can Energy arise therefrom? Here this eternal puzzle is solved by distinguishing energy into indwelling and out-flowing. As indwelling, Energy constitutes Intellect; but its energetic nature could not be demonstrated except by out-flowing, which produces a distinction.

Similarly, there are two kinds of heat, that of the fire itself, and that emitted by the fire, so that the fire may remain itself while exerting its influence without. It is thus also there: in that it remains itself in its inmost being, and from its own inherent perfection, and energy, the developed energy assumes hypostasis, as if from a Dynamis that is great, nay, greatest; and so it joins the Essence and the Being. For that was beyond all Being, and that was the Dynamis of all things, and already was all things. If then it is all, it must be above all; consequently also above Being. "And if this is all, then the One is before all; not of an essence equal to all, and this must be above Being, as this is above intellect; for there is something above intellect."489

This is the most definite statement of Plotinos's solution of the problem; other references thereto are abundant. So we have a trinity of energy, being and essence,490 and each of us, like the world-Soul has an Eros which is essence and hypostasis.491 Reason is a hypostasis after the nous, and Aphrodite gains an hypostasis in the Ousia.492 The One is intellect, the intelligible, and ousia; or, energy, being, and the intelligible (essence).493 The soul is activity.494 The soul is the third God,495 we are the third rank proceeding from the upper undivided Nature,496 the whole being God, nous, and essence. The Nous is activity, and the First essence. There are three stages of the Good: the King, the nous, and the soul.497 We find energy,498 thinking and being, then499 the soul, the nous, and the One. We find Providence threefold (as in Plutarch)500 and three ranks of Gods, demons and world-life.501 Elsewhere, untheologically, or, rather, merely philosophically, he speaks of the hypostasis of wisdom.502

Chaignet's summary of this is503 that504 Plotinos holds that every force in the intelligible is both Being and Substance simultaneously; and reciprocally that no Being, could be conceived without hypostasis, or directed force. Again,505 the world, the universe of things, contains three natures or divine hypostases, soul, mind and unity; which indeed are found in our own nature, and of which the divinest is unity or divinity.

Let us now try to understand the matter. Why should the word hypostasis, which unquestionably in earlier times meant "substance," have later come to mean "distinctions" within the divinity? For "substance," on the contrary, represents to our mind an unity, the underlying unity, and not individual forms of existence. How did the change occur?

Now Plotinos, as we remember, found fault with the Gnostics in that they taught distinctions within the divinity.506 He would therefore be disposed to remove from within the divinity those distinctions of Plotinic, Plutarchian, Numenian, or Gnostic theology; although he himself in early times did not scruple to speak of a hypostasis of wisdom, or of Eros, or other matter he might be considering. Such terms of Numenius or Amelius as he seems to ignore are the various Demiurges; the three Plutarchian Providences he himself still uses. Still, all these terms he would be disposed to eradicate from within the divinity.

As a constructive metaphysician, however, he could not well get along without some titles for the different phases of the divinity; and even if he dispensed with the old names, there would still remain as their underlying support the reality or substance of the distinction. So he removed the offensive, aggressive, historically known and recognized terms, while leaving their underlying substances, or supports. Now "substance" had become "substances," and to differentiate these it was necessary to interpret them as differing forms of existence. The change was most definitely made by Athanasius, who at a synod in Alexandria, in A.D. 362,507 fastened on the church, as synonymous with hypostasis the popular term "prosopon" or "face." That this was an innovation appears from the fact that the Nicene Council had stated that it was heretical to say that Christ was of a hypostasis different from that of the Father, in which case the word evidently meant still the original underlying (singular) substance. With this official definition in vogue, the original (singular) substance became forgotten, and it became possible to speak in the plural, of three faces, as indeed Plotinos had done.

In other words, so necessary were distinctions in the divinity, that the popular mind supplied other individual names to designate the distinctions Plotinos had successfully banished, for Demiurges and Providences no longer return. Thus more manifold differences re-entered into the divinity, than Plotinos had ever emptied out of it, although under a name which the poverty of the Latin language rendered as "persons," which represents to us individual consciousness of a far more distinctive kind than was ever implied in three phases of Providence, or of the Demiurge. Thus the translation into Latin clinched the illicit linguistic process, and the result of Plotinos's attempt to distinguish in the Divinity phases so subtle as not to demand or allow of manifoldness, resulted in the most pronounced differences of personality. This was finally clinched by Plotinos's illustration of the three faces around a single head,508 which established the idea of three "persons" (masks, from "per-sonare") in one God.

Not only in the abstract realm of Metaphysics, therefore, is the world indebted to Greek thought; but even in the realm of religion a Stoic reinterpretation of Platonism, itself reinterpreted in a different language has given a lasting inheritance to the spiritual aspirations of the ages.