Elements of Theology

The Elements of Theology is a work by the Greek Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus, written in the 5th century. Together with the Elements of Physics, it forms a systematic manual that differs from his other surviving works in its deductive method and its lack of citations to sources. No secure chronology exists, since the text makes no reference to external events that would allow precise dating.

Unlike most of his commentaries, this work is purely academic and theoretical, with no aim of spiritual edification or religious controversy. It can be read as a comprehensive scheme of the reality that Plato develops in Book VII of the Republic. It is not a complete summary of Neoplatonism, since ethics appears only incidentally, but it is a full system of theology in the Aristotelian sense of first philosophy or metaphysics.

The book consists of 211 propositions arranged in two main sections. The first, from propositions 1 to 112, sets out the metaphysical antitheses typical of Neoplatonism: unity and multiplicity, cause and effect, the unmoved and the moved, transcendence and immanence, eternity and time, whole and part, limit and infinity, being, life and knowledge. The second, from 113 to 221, applies these principles to the three orders of spiritual substance, namely gods or henads, intelligences and souls, and to the relations each bears to the lower levels of reality.