On Gods and Henads

Are Gods Henads?

Introduction

The great sage and philosopher Proclus is credited with developing the idea that the gods are henads or unities existing within the highest hypostases of the One. This idea has gained some popularity amongst Platonists and other pagans in recent years and seems to be one of the default ways the gods are explained. However, this perspective on the gods is not a universal feature of Platonism. Virtually all Platonists before Iamblichus in the 4th century did not view the gods as anything like the henads described by Proclus. It’s even debatable that Iamblichus saw the gods as henads but merely hinted that they may be beyond being.

I should warn readers that this post will be more technical and philosophical than usual. There is simply no way to avoid more complex philosophical jargon when discussing an issue such as henads and their relationship to the One and the gods. You may want to skip this if you are already confused about what I’m talking about. I’ll write another post on the nature of the gods, which will be less technical. This post serves as a primer on the philosophical reasoning behind the Romanist view of the gods for those initiated into such things. As such, I won’t be explaining what the terms henads, hypostases, being, essence, intellectual realms, or other terms mean. I will assume you already know.

I aim to show that the henads, as conceived by Proclus, fail as a theological idea in a few ways. First, they ruin the divine simplicity of the One by introducing unnecessary complexity. I will show why this is so and explain why divine simplicity, as understood by Plotinus and every previous Platonist, is essential to Platonism and the reasoning that undergirds the One going back to Plato. Secondly, by associating the gods with the henads, the idea of gods is confused and diminishes the importance of the gods as divine beings. Lastly, I aim to reconcile the core ideas made by Proclus and recast them in a new light that preserves the fundamental logic behind the concept of henads while still preserving the gods as intellectual beings and the divine simplicity of the One.

The One as Divine Simplicity

Divine simplicity is often associated with Christianity but is rooted in Platonic theology and the Platonic understanding of the One, i.e., God. Divine simplicity suggests God is ultimately unified without any parts, composites, or complexities. God is conceived as simple unity with no distinct attributes. This fits well with the Plotinian conception of the One. The critical point here is that the One is beyond multiplicity, and the essence of the One is not separate from its operations. For example, the One is not necessarily separate from emanation as the platonic axiom shows, “All in One, One in All.”

Why is the One unified and beyond Multiplicity?

If we survey Platonic cosmology, we can conclude why the One is associated with unity. Firstly, unity is the opposite of plurality. Anything that is plural is, by definition, not unified. A plurality can be a composite of unified things, but it cannot be unity itself.

Suppose the One is to be considered the ultimate principle of reality. In that case, it must transcend all plurality and complexity because if it is the source of all things, it cannot be any of the many things but must be simple and unified. If the one were divided or contained any complexity, it would be composed of parts. These parts would then depend on some higher unity to bind them together. This would mean we would need to posit something above these parts as the ultimate principle, which would then be simple and the cause of all things.

How the Henads introduce Multiplicity into the One

Proclus understood the principle of divine simplicity, but his idea of the gods as henads continually confuses this understanding by oscillating between the One as absolute unity and the One containing multiple henads. Proclus gets around this problem by suggesting that the Henads, while being at the hypostases of the One, are actually of the character of unity.

Prop. 113: The whole number of the gods has the character of unity.

He follows this statement by saying that each god is what he terms a henad or unity.

Prop 114: Every god is a self-complete henad or unit, and every self-complete henad is a god.

Already, we have a description of the gods, which are distinct and have a particular character ascribed to them. Still, Proclus develops this idea even further and sums up the nature of these henads later in Proposition 133.

Prop 133: Every god is a beneficient henad or a unifying excellence, and has this substantive character qua God; but the Primal God is the Good unqualified and Unity unqualified, whilst each of those posterior to him is a particular excellence and a particular henad.

From this proposition follows a few conclusions. If a god is a beneficient henad or unifying excellence, then they are a distinct and intelligible form of some kind. If the Parmenidean axiom that ‘thinking is the same as being’ holds here, then what is being described is not something beyond being. If these henads were beyond being, we could say nothing about them because they would be beyond intelligibility. If we can confidently say that they are particular excellences, then they are intelligible and thus have being and are not in the hypostases of the One.

Secondly, the gods are described as possessing ‘substantive character.’ What is a substantive character other than an intelligible quality, thus an aspect of a particular being? This again suggests that what is described here is not a super-essential principle but rather a divine being with particular attributes.

Finally, he makes a clear distinction between the primal God who is beyond qualities, whereas he says that the henads posterior to this primal God contain a particular nature. Several conclusions can be drawn from this statement.

First, if there is a distinction between the primal God and its posterior particular henads, then they are not purely one essence but a composite of some kind. This implies that God has parts and is not truly unified; only some aspects of him are unified. If this is so, there needs to be another absolute principle of unity that unifies the primal God and the henads. All of this, of course, could be avoided by keeping the more Plotinian understanding of the One as purely beyond attribute, form, or quality altogether, i.e., no gods as henads.

Secondly, the term posterior describes the rank of henads, which implies a hierarchy at the level of the One, further cementing the differentiation within. Not only is there differentiation within the One, but there is also rank and procession. All of these things (quality, multiplicity, rank, procession, and character) are intelligible divisions. They can only exist once there is such a thing as defined being, which is to say, the Intellect. That is where these concepts belong and have always belonged within Platonic cosmology.

Right away, it’s not hard to see how this introduces multiplicity into the One. Proclus says that these henads receive their unity from their association with the Godhead, i.e., the One as the Monad. So, we can see that this makes a composite of the hypostases in the One. Previous to Proclus, the One was simple unity beyond character, attributes, or parts; it now contains a plurality of henads that get their unified character from the higher Godhead.

While this appears to be a multiplicity of beings, Proclus is cautious not to let the idea be a genuine plurality and attempts to reduce the tension between unity and plurality. Since the henads are of the character of unity, they are not plural but the same as the One. As Radek Chlup points out in his book, Proclus: an Introduction, “the difference between the One and the henads must approach zero, the henads existing around the one rather than below it. (PT III, 12.2-13.4).” It’s clear that Proclus wants to maintain the pure simplicity of the One and find a place for the gods as henads in his theological system. The problem that presents itself immediately is that the One needs to somehow be both One and many simultaneously.

From the idea that there is no distinction between the One and the henads follows a few conclusions. Either the One is all that exists at the hypostasis of the One, and the Henads are purely symbolic or illusory. Or if the henads retain any unique identity, character, or attribute to themselves, they are not the same as the One and thus a part. This, however, destroys the unity and simplicity of the One.

The Nature of the Henads as Unified

The only path through this problem tries to harmonize the two by saying that since the hypostasis of the One is beyond being and intellect, it can simultaneously be one and many. Many supporters of the henadic theory of the gods take this approach resulting in explanations that sound incomprehensible and contradictory. This should be expected since attempting to explain how opposites like unity and plurality are the same is inherently illogical and contradictory. That doesn’t make it wrong by default, but it does make it nearly impossible to explain coherently. The same kinds of confused language are seen when people attempt to explain the mystery of the Christian Trinity. They are confusing for the same reason: they don’t actually make any sense.

The appeals to super-intelligible incomprehensibility are an unsatisfying answer at best. At worst, it’s an attempt to make the argument for henads or the Trinity unfalsifiable. If we are going to say that beyond being, there is the transcendence of all opposites, thus the One and the Many are also transcended, I would agree. However, to hold that statement and then posit a multiplicity of unifying excellences within that same realm is incoherent. Either the One transcends these opposites and then admits no distinction. Conversely, it can have these specific elements, but it cannot then also transcend them. Thus, these elements must then be relegated to an ontological level capable of bearing distinctions, i.e., the intellect.

Christians have been wrestling with these ideas in the Trinity for years. The Trinity is very similar to the concept of henads since it posits divine persons (plural) within the one Godhead while insisting it does not violate divine simplicity. However, Catholic theologians have more or less given up on defending the idea on logical grounds. Catholic scholars like Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler say, “The Trinity could not be known without revelation, and even after revelation cannot become wholly intelligible.” This is a kind of dismissal of Christian’s illogical belief by saying, “God is beyond logic.” This is essentially the same argument some Platonists make to defend the gods as henads.

The theory of henads will eventually have to reach this same point and be grounded purely on faith or revelation because it simply can’t hold up under its logical contradictions.

The Logical Incoherence of Henads

Even if we grant that the One and the Many (the ineffable One and henads) can somehow share the hypostases of the One without contradiction, this introduces another problem: it absolutizes the problem of the One and the Many rather than resolving it. Part of the reason to posit such a thing as Henads is to explain how the One can be perfectly simple and One but also explain how that Oneness emanates the vast plurality of all things. While earlier Platonists solved this through appeals to the limit, unlimited, and unified, Proclus goes further in positing the many Gods within the One, creating eternal tension between oneness and plurality. Instead of Monism, we start to move toward a more polytheistic theology. Proclus saves his ideas from pure polytheism by continuing to assert that the Henads are truly just the One. However, it's unsurprising that people like Edward Butler have suggested a purely polytheistic or “polycentric” theology based almost entirely on Proclus. The theory comes dangerously close to removing the One from the ontological schema altogether. As Butler has repeatedly pointed out, “The One neither is nor is One.” This has been taken to its extreme to mean that the One is actually many.

Nevertheless, the necessity for some kind of participated terms between the One and the many remains. How else can we conceive of the One if it is purely and only ineffable? If the One is nothing but a negative theological concept, we can't relate to it at all. We run the other risk of becoming so apophatic in our theology that God disappears altogether. This phenomenon has already run its course in the West, beginning with William of Occam's rejection of Platonic universals and then finally declared by Nietzsche when he said, ‘God is dead.’

The problem in Proclus, then, is not so much the theological construct of a unity or henad as a participable term of the One that connects with the unparticipable, ineffable One in some way. For the universe to have any meaning or continuity, such a mediating force must exist. If it did not exist, we would have no way of participating in the Good or God at all. God would be beyond our grasp. Every term we would use to describe God, be it the Good, the True, or the Beautiful, would be utterly meaningless, and any suggestion that we could attain henosis or union with God would be equally ridiculous. God would disappear entirely from our spiritual and intellectual lives.

The Problem with the Henads as Gods

So the problem in Proclus is not so much the suggestion of a mediating participated term of the One but rather more semantic, and this is the cause of the confusion many have about henads. That problem is that the henads are not gods in any conception of the word. Proclus declares that the henads are gods in prop. 114, but this assertion is not based on any prior reasoning. The necessity of the henads as participated terms makes sense, which is why Proclus is beloved by Platonists because of his highly penetrating logical mind. However, we have nothing but conjecture when it comes to asserting that the gods should be equated to henads. There is no reason to believe that what he describes as henads are gods, especially when they don’t carry any characteristics we know of gods.

We typically understand the gods as unique beings with attributes and character. Many also have had experiences of the gods mystically. Gods are described as having a definite being, with minds and wills of their own. They are also a part of our mystical experience and are worshiped as defined beings distinct from other gods, sometimes radically different. We have to somehow square this knowledge and experience with the theology of henads as beyond any being, intelligibility, and thus any real identity. The gods are at once beyond our comprehension and beyond being itself if we take them as henads and also the most real and perfect beings to whom we experience and worship.

If the gods are beyond being, this begs the question, why should we worship these henadic gods directly via worshipping an idol or any other sacred image of them? These idols would be illusory fiction at best but delusional misunderstandings at worst. We would be more consistent (if the Gods are super-essential henads) in worshipping them as we would traditionally worship the One without any idols or words of praise. Silence would be our best mode of worship to them, consistent with our theological understanding of them. For to attribute distinct idols or characteristics would be worshipping a being, not something beyond being. We would essentially be mistakenly worshipping another divine being like an angel or daimon in the lower chain of the henad but not the henad itself.

But Proclus was Smart

When I have brought up these issues about the henads in the past, one of the common rebuttals is that “Proclus was very smart; I don’t think he would make a mistake.” While this may seem silly on its face, I think this is a valid objection. Everything we know about Proclus suggests he was an extremely logical and thorough person in his philosophy. It does seem that Proclus making a mistake like this is almost incomprehensible. However, the problem is not really with Proclus’ philosophy or logic. The idea of the henads as participated terms is solid and follows from his logical argumentation in the elements of theology. There is a necessity for the participated terms as described in the henads. The only real miss is to attribute these henads to the gods. This redefinition of the gods as super-essential henads is an extreme deviation from all previous and subsequent notions about gods. From it follows a series of confusions that continue to vex Platonists who try to grasp the idea of the gods as henads.

We can speculate on why he connected the henads to the traditional gods. I suspect it is motivated more by a desire to legitimize the worship of the gods in an ever-increasing Christian world. If the gods could be equated with the highest God, then they would be as worthy of worship as the Christian Trinity, which is supposed to be identical to God the same way the henads are. This is purely speculation, however, as we can never know the motivations behind the connection.

What we do know is that up until Iamblichus, no Platonist suggested the gods were above the realm of intellect and thus super-essential except for the One, and even Iamblichus did not put forth the idea of henads but merely hinted at a possible super-essential nature of the gods. Chlup summarizes,

To locate the gods higher than the realm of intellect would no doubt have seemed absurd to Plotinus, and he was no exception in this regard. According to Damascius (De Princ. I 258.1-5), until Iambluchus nearly all philosophers situated the gods at the level of Intellect, claiming ‘that there is one super-essential God, while all the other gods are essential being divinized by illuminations coming from the One.’

Even Damascius, who followed Proclus as the Scholarch of the Platonic academy, diverted from the idea of gods as henads and instead equated the henads with the triad of limit, unlimited and unified. He also retained the divine simplicity of the One by confirming that these henads were symbolic rather than absolute differentiations within the One.

So, while Proclus is undoubtedly a towering intellect within Platonism, his idea of the gods as henads was a very late addition to Platonism and seems to have been disregarded almost immediately. One has to wonder if Damascius wrote his “Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles” as a corrective to realign the platonic tradition from the deviations introduced by his predecessor, Proclus.

All of this should be no surprise to Platonists. Our tradition is rich with disagreements, and students continually challenge past teachers as we try to get closer to the truth. My point is that Proclus is far from being some platonic orthodoxy, and almost all Platonists before him would have rejected the idea of gods as henads, and it appears several after did as well. Unfortunately, the academy was officially closed under Damascius, so the conversation on these topics ended soon after.

Regardless, as intelligent as Proclus is, the attribution of gods to henads is far from settled. Most Platonists would have landed on the ‘against’ side of the argument. So we either have to assert that Proclus made a mistake or nearly every other Platonist going back to Plato did. Fortunately, we don’t settle disputes by consensus but rather by who has the stronger argument, but as we have seen, there are good reasons to doubt that henads are the traditional gods.

The Henads as Energies of the One

So, if the Henads are not Gods, what are they? They are the energies of the One. As mentioned, we need to posit some participated terms of the One, or God will be totally absent from our lives. As God is not wholly absent, we must ask how we know anything about God or how we can sometimes be closer or further from God.

The Christian theologians grappled with these issues for some time following the end of the ancient world and the closing of the philosophical schools. Dionysius the Areopagite used Proclus’ theology to begin outlining how God could have participated terms which are beyond being. However, his idea didn’t reach its full explanation until Gregor Palamas defined the essence vs energies distinction in the 1300s.

The essence vs energies distinction posits two aspects of a single Godhead: the essence of God (which remains completely unknowable and beyond multiplicity) and the energies of God (through which God manifests and acts in the world without compromising His simplicity).

This idea was specifically developed to explain how God can be present in the world without compromising divine simplicity. Now, I think this idea falls apart regarding the Trinity, but it works seamlessly to explain the difference between the One’s ineffable essence, which is unparticipable, and the participated terms.

This concept, unlike Proclus’ henads does not introduce any real ontological distinctions or division within the One itself. These energies have the character of unity. They are only seen as different in the realm of intellect and further down the ontological hierarchy. They are nothing more than the participated terms of the ineffable One.

These energies or henads are purely relational and not distinct from the One in any meaningful way. They are how we relate to the One. For example, the Good as an energy of the One is something we humans can participate in, and we are closer to God the more we participate in the Good. However, our relationship with the Good does not compromise God's ultimate ineffability and knowability in his essence. The One remains ineffable and unparticipable in his nature, but we participate in the henads or energies of the One.

The Energies of the One

To take this idea further, let’s outline some of these energies of the One. The Platonic tradition hints at these energies but never explicitly defines them as energies. Throughout the platonic corpus, we get attributes ascribed to the One, things like the Good or the Beautiful. We also have activities like emanation and unification associated with the One. As much as the One is ineffable, some things allow us to participate in God in some ways. These things are also not particular forms per se but have their essence beyond being. For example, the Good is distinct from the form of the Good. The Good itself is not separate from God in any way. When we discuss the Good as we experience it, we are making a statement about our relationship with God rather than describing a specific being that is Good itself. Since God is beyond being and the Good itself, it follows that the Good itself is beyond being.

Likewise, Emanation is not a particular being anywhere in the cosmos but rather how God relates to all things as constant and eternal energy acting on the cosmos. We can’t point to a particular thing, which is emanation itself, except God.

There are a few of these particular energies that share these relational qualities with God or the One. We participate in them and form our relational bond with the One. We become closer to God by participating in them; they are always available to all people. This is not an exhaustive list, but these following energies share this quality in some way or another:

• Emanation, through which all things flow from the One,

• Goodness and unification, which orders and harmonizes the cosmos,

• Intelligible Forms, as expressions of the One’s perfection,

• Providence, which sustains and directs beings,

• Love (Eros), as the force drawing souls back to unity, and

• Beauty, as the ordering and attractive power of the divine.

These energies, rather than being gods, are beyond the gods. They transcend any distinct being, yet all beings participate in them. This harmonizes the ideas that Proclus presents with the entirety of the Platonic tradition. It even takes one of the better Christian theological ideas and adapts it to explain a particularly vexing problem in Platonic theology.

Establishing the Intellectual Gods

Situating the henads as energies of the One allows us to establish the gods in their traditional place within the intellectual realm. From this, we can draw a series of conclusions about them, which will be handled later. For now, we can discuss the implications of their relationship to the One.

If the gods are situated in the Intellectual realm, they are the highest ontological beings in reality. They also possess the qualities characteristic of that realm. Thus, they have life, being, and intellect. This makes the gods divine, living intellectual beings. They have a will and personhood with their own distinct mind and can be participated by all beings below them.

The Damascius quote from Chlup above explains how these intellectual gods relate to the One.

‘that there is one super-essential God, while all the other gods are essential being divinized by illuminations coming from the One.’

This confirms that the Gods have being as their essence but more importantly that they are ‘divinized by illuminations coming from the One.’ These illuminations are another energy of the One. In this sense, the gods become a particular reflection of the divine in the realm of being. The analogy we could use is the relationship of light to a prism. In this analogy, the One is the pure white light of illumination and is split using a prism representing the demiurge. This then creates a vast array of different colors. Each of these unique colors is analogous to a god. The highest gods are the Olympians, equivalent to the main colors of the rainbow, and each shade within being other gods, angels, and daemons in the chain of the leader god. Each god is distinct, but they are ‘divinized by illuminations’ and are particular expressions of the higher divine unity.

Worshipping these gods is thus to worship a particular aspect of the divine. It’s fair to say that as we worship one aspect, we also worship the source and the whole unity in a roundabout way. As we learn to participate in more aspects of the total divine character, we become closer to all the gods and, thus, closer to God. The gods are essential pathways to our participation in the divine life, and as we unite with them, we enter into the divine dance and become more like the gods themselves. After all, these gods are not so beyond us that we cannot understand them. They, like us, have being, life, and intellect. They have these purely and perfectly, whereas we have them only imperfectly and partially.

This means the gods are not impersonal forces, archetypes, or henads. Instead, they are the most supreme persons in the cosmos, and we can relate to them in ways we relate to others because they, like us, are persons. Personhood applied to the gods means they have a distinct identity, will, and personality and can enter into a relationship with other persons and be known by them. The highest level of this relationship and knowledge is total ecstatic union with the god. Our desire for this ecstatic union becomes our chief reason for developing loving devotion and worship of the gods, as love is the divine energy that drives opposites to unity.

Conclusion

As we have seen, several issues exist with the concept of the gods as henads. Introducing henads compromises divine simplicity while also obscuring the gods from us by making them less personal. Far from being a necessary explanation of the gods, this idea is a later addition to platonic thought that confuses more than clarifies first principles and the gods themselves. By placing the gods back in the intellectual realm as nearly all other platonists did, we open ourselves up to review the idea of participated terms of God and understand them in a way that does not compromise divine simplicity and the understanding of the One going back to Plato.

Casting these henads then as energies, we retain divine simplicity while explaining how we relate to God and how God is present in our lives in a very real, meaningful, and direct way. We can have a relationship with the highest God and participate in His divine energies. This opens a pathway often closed to platonists, which is viewing God as something we have a personal relationship with. We usually only speak of the ineffable and unparticipable aspect of God, but through God's energies, we enter into a direct relationship with God and, thus, open a pathway for our ultimate divine union.

Through this adjustment to the henads, we reestablish the gods as divine, living, intellectual beings. These gods are not abstract principles, archetypes, or vague forces. They are beings with personalities and wills and can enter into relationships with their devotees through worship and prayer. They hear prayers, answer them, offer divine graces to their devotees, and perform their divine functions perfectly. They become the most divine exemplars of the highest beings we can aspire to integrate into our lives. This makes them worthy of our worship and explains why worship is both necessary and meaningful.

In my subsequent work, I will explain more about the hierarchy of the Gods and their procession through the chain of being.

For the Glory of Jove.