7 Cf. Theol. Plat. I 40, 5-13 (with Saffrey and Westerink's notes); In Tim. I 276, 10-14.

This method can appear geometrical to the extent that it is the source of and is imaged in geometrical method. If then the Elements of Theology appears in certain respects to be somewhat geometrical and in other respects not, this may be because the work is not a geometrical theology or metaphysics at all, but something quite different: a treatise of theology or dialectic, whose method is proper to it, while recalling to some degree the derivative but more familiar and accessible procedures of geometry.

To show more fully that the Elements of Theology is an example of theology or dialectic proper it will be necessary to examine what Proclus conceives theology or dialectic to be. For this purpose we will need to refer to Proclus' other theological works. For if the Elements of Theology, as an introductory manual, possesses a certain clarity, it is by no means self-explanatory. Like other manuals it distils and orders the results of a long and complicated development of thought whose assumptions and turning-points can disappear under the surface of didactic exposition. These assumptions in Proclus' way of conceiving theology or dialectic can be detected more easily in his two major theological works, his Commentary on the Parmenides and his Platonic Theology.

2. The Science of Dialectic

Towards the beginning of his Platonic Theology (I 17, 18-20, 25) Proclus presents four different ways of communicating knowledge of the divine: the inspired approach exemplified in Plato's Phaedrus and characteristic of the 'Chaldaean Oracles'; the symbolic approach to be found in Plato's myths and in Orpheus; the use of images, in particular mathematical images, to express the divine that is practised by Pythagoras and Pythagoreans as well as by Plato; and finally the one truly scientific approach, which is to be found only in Plato, in dialectical exposition of the divine in the Sophist and particularly in the Parmenides:

end p.198

The scientific is peculiar to Plato's philosophy. For he alone, as I believe, among those known to us, undertook to distinguish and order appropriately the ordered progression of the divine kinds, the differences between them, the common characteristics of all levels and those proper to each. (20, 19-25)

This fourfold division can be found elsewhere in Proclus. ⁸ 

⁸ Cf. In Parm. 646, 21-647, 16 (on the Pythagorean use of mathematical images as contrasted with dialectic cf. also 623, 29-34; 924, 4-9); Theol. Plat. I 9, 20-7; In Remp. I 84, 26-85, 1; In Tim. I 129, 31-130, 8.

It expresses very clearly the difference between mathematical imagings of the divine and the science proper of the divine. If this distinction is one that Iamblichus himself had made in On Pythagoreanism VII, it takes a form in Proclus that represents, as we have seen in Chapter 7, a new departure: Proclus finds in Plato alone the science of the divine, properly speaking. The subordination of theologizing mathematics to theology or dialectic thus becomes also a subordination of Pythagoreanism to the philosophy of Plato. And this subordination of Pythagoreanism to Plato in turn makes more evident the limitations of theologizing mathematics and the superiority and distinctiveness of Platonic dialectic.

But what then is the science of the divine? Proclus, as noted above and in connection with the Commentary on Euclid, regards Plato's Parmenides as an exposition of this science and devotes his very long Commentary on the Parmenides to showing this. If his Commentary cannot be regarded as a reliable guide to reading Plato's dialogue, it is a rich source of information concerning Proclus' own conception of Platonic dialectic and is testimony of the lengths to which he had to go in order to make Plato's text correspond to this conception. It will suffice then, in order to sketch briefly Proclus' views on the science of the divine, to note some aspects of his interpretation of the Parmenides. ⁹ 

⁹ The following does not attempt to give a complete account of Proclus' concept of dialectic; cf. Beierwaltes (1979), 246 ff.

In connection with explaining the roles of Socrates and of Parmenides in the Platonic dialogue, Proclus describes the ideal attributes of the student (Socrates) and teacher (Parmenides) of dialectic. ¹⁰ 

¹⁰ On Parmenides as teacher ('leader') of Socrates, cf. Steel (1987).

The student must, among other things, have an adequate intellectual preparation, in particular in logic, physics, and mathematics, for these sciences prepare the mind for contemplation of the divine by making the divine more accessible to it through images.

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Thus, in a passage that could also come from the Commentary on Euclid, Proclus suggests that

if he wonders how the many could be in the One, and all in the indivisible, let him think of the monad and how it is shown that all forms of odd and even are in it, the circle and sphere, and the other forms of numbers. ¹¹ 

¹¹ In Parm. 926, 16-29 and ff.; cf. above, p. 161.

The teacher, who leads the student of dialectic, on the other hand,

will not wish to reveal the divine truth with many words, but to reveal many things with few, speaking in unison with thought. Nor will he start from the familiar, but will consider matters from on high, from the most unified principles, since he is removed from what is at hand, and is near to the divine. (927, 38-928, 9)

To these attributes of the teacher of dialectic we should add that of scientific rigour, the strict syllogistic exposition of the subject that Proclus finds in the Parmenides and that he sometimes conceives as 'geometrical' in character, ¹²