Metaphysics of the Divine Intellection in Marius Victorinus and its Possible Philosophical Sources

Abstract

The article deals with the doctrine of Marius Victorinus (ca. 281/291‒382/386) on the Divine thinking or intellection, and provides a reconstruction of its possible philosophical sources. In the beginning the author after a breaf mentioning of Aristotle’s noetic theory in his “Metaphysica” emphasizes an important role of the neoplatonic doctrine of the “intelligible triad” in the Trinitarian doctrine of Victorinus, in which God is seen as the unity of the three Divine attributes, potencies or acts: being, life and thought, which correspond to the persons of the Christian Trinity. It is noted that the relationship between these Divine acts has a dynamic character, based on the logic of the eternal process of self-determination of God as the pure Being (Father), which defines himself as the Life (Son) and returns to himself as the Intellect (Holy Spirit), by which the fullness of Divine self-knowledge is achieved. This process Victorinus also connects with the idea of God as an absolute Spirit –a Substance that exists, lives and thinks of itself. Further the author consideres Victorinus’ concept of two actions and movements in God: one is internal, characterizing God the Father, the other is external, characterizing the Son-Logos. It has been argued that this doctrine goes back to the similar doctrine of Plotinus, which he applies to the One and the Intellect. It is noted that Victorinus in the light of the Neo-Platonic dialectics of the One and the Intellect reconsidered an Aristotelian theory of Divine intellect, which thinks of itself. He not only applies it to the Son-Logos, but also joins to it a Plotinian-Porphyrian conception of the “super-thinking” of the One, as a result of which Divine thinking according to Victorinus has two different forms: an internal, potential, hidden and unmanifest thinking (or “super-thinking”) of God the Father, and an external, actual and manifested thinking (or “self-thinking”) of the Son-Logos; the latter initially dwells in the internal thinking of the Father, and then was genereted from it as a Divine thinking that thinks both of the Father and of itself, becoming self-knowledge or self-thinking.