41. Plotinus, The Enneads, V.9.7 and 11; VI1.7.34 (hereafter Enn.). (continued)
INTRODUCTION
ever, that one arrives at that which is beyond thought. Neoplatonic ecstasy follows on the most intense activity of thought.*?
Augustine was also, as we have noted, directed to his interiority by Plotinus. After going from the exterior to the interior, Plotinus had asked: "This centre of the soul, is it what we are seeking? Must one not think rather of something else toward which converge all the centres?" And he answered this question by saying: "By our own centre we are attached to Him as to the centre of all things and it is there that we find our rest.""*?
The reality symbolized by spatial expressions like "within" and "above" is psychological and metaphysical-religious: Leaving the exterior for the interior is purifying the self from the multiplicity of things that have attached themselves to the soul to weigh it down; and leaving the interior for the superior is uniting oneself to one's Source. The soul is a wanderer, midway between the temporal and eternal, able to choose the level on which it lives, giving attention to its own body or acting as providence with AllSoul, or united to Intellect (Nous), poised for becoming dned with the One or Good.
The Augustinian spirituality of metanota or conversion seems to have much in common with the Plotinian spirituality of coming from the One and returning to the One, but there are at least four crucial points of difference. These are found in their doctrines of God, of the soul, of the image, and of the way of conversion.
First of all, if the One is Plotinus's God, then his God is not trinitarian as is the God of Christianity revealed in Scripture and believed in by Augustine. Augustine's God-the-Trinity is not derived from Greek philosophy but from Scripture and from reflection on intellectual experience, illuminated by Scripture. This is explicitly stated in his work On the Trinity, the only book he himself decided to write without pressure by circumstances or by polemic.
Second, Augustine makes use of the Platonic notion of participation in the divine ideas as the basis of likeness to God in all nature. But Augustine identifies the likeness in which all things participate with the Son of God, his perfect Image. Although all
41. Plotinus, The Enneads, V.9.7 and 11; VI1.7.34 (hereafter Enn.). 42. Enn., V1.9.8; cf. Enn. 1V.6.3; 1V.9; V1.4.4; 11.1.5. Augustine, Epistle 140.2.3.