This is a continuation of my previous post ‘Should I Talk About God or Climate?‘. We will begin from where we left off. Where I asked the question – “If the gods humans worship and serve are not really gods, but there is actually a real god (which they claimed to fully understand), who or what is that God?”
Well, what I am going to attempt to do now is to set out the arguments (logical or philosophical – that is for you to decide) given in a part of the Corpus Hermeticum, actually the second document in that series, titled ‘To Asclepius’ and during which – closer to the end of the discussion than the beginning – Asclepius asks of Hermes: “What, then, is God?”
I will try to use understandable language as an aid to comprehension. A more precise translation of the original is linked above.
Hermes speaks to Asclepius. If Asclepius has anything useful to say, other than general agreement, I will note that.
All things that are moved, are moved in something and by something. The something in which the movement is made, is of necessity greater than the object being moved, and that power by which the movement is enabled has more power than the moved object. Also, the nature of that in which the movement is made must be different from the nature of the moved object.
Hermes now shifts the scene to a specific example – the cosmos – which I expect would be quite well understood.
In the vastness of the cosmos, there exists no greater body (than the cosmos itself). Not only vast but also massive, the cosmos contains all existing cosmic bodies. And yet the cosmos is itself a body. And one that is moved. The size then, of the space in which the cosmos moves must be far vaster than the cosmos itself. Also, the nature of the space in which the cosmos moves must be different from the nature of the cosmos. That is, it must not be a body. The only contrary thing to body is bodiless. Therefore space (outside of and in which the cosmos moves) must either be some Godlike thing (something not generable i.e. not able to be generated) or it must be God. If space is a Godlike thing then it has substance, but if it is God then it transcends substance. Only it is not to be thought of like that, but in this way…
The next part is to me quite illogical but I will try to draw the intended meaning from it.
God is first ‘thinkable’ for us but not for himself, because that would be senseless. God is not ‘thinkable’ to himself because he is thought of by himself as being nothing else than what he thinks. But he is ‘something else’ for us, and so we think of him.
If space is to be thought, then it is not to be thought as God, but space. If God is to be thought, then he is to be thought not as space, but as energy which contains all space.
At this point, Asclepius asks a question which causes the conversation to wander off into irrelevances to the subject, but Hermes eventually brings it back on track. We need not consider that part. It ends up talking of things which are ‘void’ or ‘not void’. The only thing we need to take from this is that emptiness is not ‘void’ and Hermes declaration that the only things which are ‘void’ are those which do not exist. The things which Asclepius referred to as being ‘void’ turn out to be simply empty containers which are actually filled with ‘air’ (which is a body) and therefore also filled with all ‘four’ elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water).
Asclepius than asks a series of questions which bring us right to the point (so perhaps his diversion was not so irrelevant after all).
Asclepius: Your argument, Thrice-greatest one, is indisputable. But what then do we call the space which contains everything?
Hermes: The bodiless.
Asclepius: What then is Bodiless?
Hermes (and this is a truly beautiful rendition): It is Mind and Reason, whole out of whole, all self-embracing, free from all body, from all error free, unsensible to body and untouchable, self stayed in self, containing all, preserving those that are, whose rays, to use a likeness, are Good, Truth, Light beyond light, the Archetype of soul.
Asclepius: And what then is God?
Hermes: Not any one of these is He; for He it is that causes them to be, both all and each and every thing of all that are. Nor has He left aside anything beside that which does not exist; but they are all from things-that-are and not from things-that-are-not. For that the things-that-are-not have naturally no power of being anything, but naturally have the power of the inability-to-be. And, conversely, the things-that-are have not the nature of some time not-being.
Asclepius (not yet satisfied): What do you ever say, then, God is?
Hermes, still unable to de-personalize what he is saying (using the personal pronoun ‘He’), says:
God, therefore, is not Mind, but Cause that the Mind is; God is not Spirit, but Cause that Spirit is; God is not Light, but Cause that the Light is. Hence one should honor God with these two names – names which pertain to Him alone and no one else.
For no one of the other so-called gods, no one of men, or daimones, can be in any measure ‘Good’, but God alone; and He is ‘Good’ alone and nothing else. The rest of things are all separable from the nature of the Good; for they are soul and body, which have no place that can contain the Good. For that as mighty is the Greatness of the Good as is the Being of all things that are – both bodies and things bodiless, things sensible and intelligible. Do not, therefore, impiously call anything else Good; nor at any time call God anything at all but Good alone, for that also is impious. Though the Good is spoken of by all, it is not understood by all, as to exactly what it is. Not only, then, is God not understood by all, but to both gods and some men, out of ignorance they give the name of Good, even though these can never either be or become Good. For they are very different from God, while Good can never be distinguished from Him, for that God is the same as Good. The rest of the immortal ones are nonetheless honored with the name of God, and spoken of as gods; but God is Good not out of courtesy but out of nature. For that God’s nature and the Good is one; one is the kind of both, from which proceed all other kinds. The Good is he who gives all things and naught receives. God, then, doth give all things and receive naught. God, then, is Good, and Good is God.
The other name of God is Father, again because He is the that-which-makes-all. The part of father is to make.
I have omitted what follows that statement. It is, to me, irrelevant to the subject.
Let all that has been said then, Asclepius, be an introduction to the gnosis of the nature of all things.
That, for me, was quite a marathon. However, it does nof answer all the questions, but perhaps that is somehow shielded by the difficulty those who talk about God seem entirely unable to de-personalise whatever concept they are espousing. I recognise that this is not the only part of the Hermeticum which speaks on the subject, but I have no inclination to delve further at this stage, even though now I have finished this, I realise it was not the piece within the Hermeticum that I thought i was covering. Such is life. I take comfort in the one line quoted below.
And, conversely, the things-that-are have not the nature of some time not-being.
Hermes – ‘To Asclepius’ – The Corpus Hermeticum
One other thing which struck me as interesting was the statement about “The rest of the immortal ones”. So Hermes was claiming ‘immortality’ – real or imagined – for himself and the other gods, while we do know they were capable of dying – though that was always an exception, being due to accident or some form of violence. They did not age and die – but fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your view, that was one thing they never did pass on to their human creations.
I don’t, at this juncture, feel that I can now continue with a discussion on ‘climate’ as I mentioned being my intention at the start of the first part of this piece. Maybe tomorrow.
Not Something Else 
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