Abstract
Hartshorne and Reese thought that in the Timaeus Plato wasn’t quite a panentheist—though he would have been if he’d been consistent. More recently, Cooper has argued that while Plato’s World Soul may have inspired panentheists, Plato’s text does not itself describe a form of panenetheism. In this paper, I will reconsider this question not only by examining closely the Timaeus but by thinking about which features of current characterizations of panentheism are historically accidental and how the core of the doctrine might most fruitfully be understood. I’ll argue that there is a polytheistic view that deserves to be called panentheistic and that Plato’s Timaeus describes such a view.
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Notes
Hartshorne and Reese (1953), 38–57.
Cooper (2006).
Tim. 40b8–c3. The exact sense in which the Earth is the maker of day and night is a matter of dispute. On the question of the Earth’s oscillation, see Cornford (1957) ad loc and Aristotle, de Cael. II. 293b30 ff.
Cooper (2006), 27. Cooper’s definition is common to influential reference works in Christian theology.
Cooper notes this very fact (p. 42) in the course of his argument that Plotinus’ view does count as panentheistic.
Baltzly (2003).
The variety catalogued in Towne (2005) provides a good idea of why we might want to have a primarily negative conception of panentheism with different panentheists giving different positive conceptions of how one understands the relationship between god and the universe.
It might be thought, on the basis of Elements of Theology prop. 113, that all and only superessential henads are gods in late neoplatonism. However, ET 134 makes the exercise of providence on the part of things that participate in the henads sufficient for regarding them as gods. Hence every intellect is a god.
Such a characterization of Epicurus depends upon an antecedent acceptance of the idea that the length of the optimally pleasant life is irrelevant (Epicurus, Key Doctrines 19). Given this assumption, Epicurus had the best form of life and so—since gods are just those creatures that live the best life—he was a god.
Baltzly (2008).
Frede (1999).
Proclus’ commentary on this portion of Plato’s text, however, argues that various aspects of the world’s body contributes to its divinity. Cf. Baltzly (2007).
Cf. Tim. 33d1–3
Walker (2009) asks a similar question: why should a morally perfect god make human beings rather than gods? The complaint here is not Walker’s. The Demiurge makes humans, as well as every other species, because he wishes to make is visible living creature resemble the intelligible Living Thing Itself. The complaint is rather, why don’t creator gods make subordinate gods as well? Wouldn’t that clearly be better?
Michael Fagenblat has suggested to me that ‘elohim hayim’ in the Old Testament is generally used to contrast the reality of the Hebrew God with those false gods who are merely ‘wood and stone’ (e.g., Jer. 10:10). Alternatively or perhaps additionally, it is used in context where God’s real presence and activity is manifest (e.g., Deut. 5:26). Among Greek writings, the phrase
is confined to Christian authors and probably depends upon the earlier Hebrew equivalent, as when Paul evokes Hosea 1:10 at Romans 9:26.The other factor is the non-uniform speeds of the seven circles that describe the orbits of the planets (36d), but this need not concern us here.
Leg 898.a.3–6
I have made Saunder’s translation far more literal in order to allow the reader to better judge the grounds adduced for the comparison between intellect and circular motion. Leg 898.a.8–b.3
The introduction of the visible gods does not actually end the population of the cosmos by instances of this species of living being. There are further divinities—whom Timaeus describes both as gods and as divine messengers or daimonēs—and they are said to come to be just as Hesiod says in the Theogony.
Note the doubling up of the language of kinship and community in Plato’s use of 
and 
While the connection between eudaimonia and daimôn can be brought out, we should not overlook the connection between the participle 
and cosmos either. The cosmos plays an important role as a paradigm for us becoming ‘well ordered’.Tim 90.c.7–d.7
. I have provided my own translation here because I think that Woodruff and Nehamas’ translation in Cooper goes a bit too far. They translate ‘In fact it is a pure fiction, based on neither observation nor on adequate reasoning, that is a god is an immortal living thing’ etc. But ‘pure fiction’ surely overtranslates 
Cf. the relevant parallels cited in LSJ, Rep. 420c, 466a where the relevant sense seems only to be focusing on a certain segment of the population within the ideal state. Hence the LSJ gloss, ‘to form an image of a thing in the mind; to imagine’. The absence of empirical evidence or good argument for thinking of gods as immortal living creatures does not yet show that this conception is a fiction. Such a conception might be vouched safe by the gods themselves or by tradition and thus lack the kind of logical or observational basis here discussed.Epin 984.d.3–e.1
… It is unclear what position ether occupies, if air is third and middle. Thus it is unclear what is the reference of 
–those visible gods which are the heavenly bodies, or does this refer all the way back to Hera and Zeus?Epin 985.a.3–7 [sc. daimones]
I here assume that the Epinomis comes before Xenocrates who also contributed to the theory of daimones, cf. frag 23 ap Plutarch, On the obsolescence of oracles 416cd. Cf. Brenk (1986).
There may be something of an argument for the existence of divine beings native to the ether in a fragment of Aristotle’s On Philosophy (fr 23 Rose = Cicero, De Natura Deorum II.42). Historians have long noted the parallels between some of Aristotle’s early dialogues and the content of the Epinomis.
Festugière and Massignon (1944), especially Chapter 6.
Of course, it is thought that Aristotle’s dialogue On Philosophy was an early work and perhaps represents more of Plato’s thought than his later views on the unmoved mover. But Cicero reports that even Book III of On Philosophy muddies the waters by saying that, on the one hand, the world is god, but then ascribing divinity to mind, to another god over the world, and even to the heat of the heavens. Cf. frag. 26 (Rose) = De Natura Deorum I. 33.
On this subject, there are two bright spots with regard to Plato’s claim for the divinity of the heavenly bodies within the cosmos. First, the author anticipates an objection to the arguments of the Timaeus and the Laws and answers it. A critic might well ask, ‘Why is constant motion in a circle a sign of life, much less divine intelligence?’ After all, the motile living things with which we are best acquainted move in much more complicated ways than in a circle. The author of the Epinomis replies that, far from being a sign of the absence of life and intelligence, always repeating the same motion is a sure indicator (982b). When a mind is convinced of the truth of something through the best evidence, it is unalterable. The thought, I suppose, is that we cannot but see certain truths as truths and cannot ‘wander’ from them. The regular movements of the heavenly bodies are motivated by a similar awareness that this is the best course of action. In addition, the Epinomis invokes an argument from the size of the heavenly bodies. Because of the distances involved, we know that they are absolutely huge. No force associated with a body could move such massive bodies constantly in the same manner (983a–d).
Reydams-Schils (1999).
The possible exception is Civ. Dei VII.28 where Augustine tells us that Varro equated Jupiter with the sky, Juno with the earth and Minerva with the Platonic forms. We are not told what role these forms might play in relation to the cosmos. As Reydams-Schils points out, it is perhaps more likely to be one according to which the forms depend upon Jupiter (active principle and god) since Minerva is sprung from the forehead of Jupiter (op. cit. p. 131; cf. the literature on the topic of the forms in Antiochus surveyed in her n. 41 on the same page).
At Civ. Dei IV.31 Augustine criticizes Varro for making his immanent World Soul god and not the maker of the soul. A presumption of dialectical fairness on Augustine’s part would suggest that Varro and Antiochus did not subscribe to the view that there was a transcendent being upon whom the soul of the world depends (beginninglessly or temporally) for its existence.
Dillon (1999).
10.2.1–5
10.3.2–4
14.3.4–9
10.3.15–18
[sc. of the primary god] 
10.7.1–14
15.3.1–4
is confined to Christian authors and probably depends upon the earlier Hebrew equivalent, as when Paul evokes Hosea 1:10 at Romans 9:26.
Note the doubling up of the language of kinship and community in Plato’s use of 
and 
While the connection between eudaimonia and daimôn can be brought out, we should not overlook the connection between the participle 
and cosmos either. The cosmos plays an important role as a paradigm for us becoming ‘well ordered’.
. I have provided my own translation here because I think that Woodruff and Nehamas’ translation in Cooper goes a bit too far. They translate ‘In fact it is a pure fiction, based on neither observation nor on adequate reasoning, that is a god is an immortal living thing’ etc. But ‘pure fiction’ surely overtranslates 
Cf. the relevant parallels cited in LSJ, Rep. 420c, 466a where the relevant sense seems only to be focusing on a certain segment of the population within the ideal state. Hence the LSJ gloss, ‘to form an image of a thing in the mind; to imagine’. The absence of empirical evidence or good argument for thinking of gods as immortal living creatures does not yet show that this conception is a fiction. Such a conception might be vouched safe by the gods themselves or by tradition and thus lack the kind of logical or observational basis here discussed.
… It is unclear what position ether occupies, if air is third and middle. Thus it is unclear what is the reference of 
–those visible gods which are the heavenly bodies, or does this refer all the way back to Hera and Zeus?
[sc. of the primary god] 
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Baltzly, D. Is Plato’s Timaeus Panentheistic?. SOPHIA 49, 193–215 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-010-0170-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-010-0170-z