Already in 2015 Anna Marmodoro (with Brian D. Prince) edited a volume entitled Causation and Creation in Late Antiquity (Cambridge). The title of that volume provides a clue as to what might be meant by ‘divine powers’ in the present volume. In a sense, power (Greek δύναμις, Latin potentia) is what makes causation possible. In the introduction to Divine Powers in Late Antiquity, Marmodoro and Viltanioti write: ‘When a power is exercised or manifested, this changes the causal profile of the world’ (2). Divine power, then, is power not exercised by humans or nature. To assume its existence is to assume that not everything in the universe, or indeed the universe itself, is caused by human or natural causes, but that there is a superiority, a hierarchy of being, transcendence.

The 12 contributions to this volume explore this kind of thinking in late ancient philosophy and Christianity. Six chapters are dedicated to pagan and six to Jewish and Christian themes, ranging from Plotinus to Proclus and from Philo of Alexandria to the Cappadocian Fathers. Two chapters, by Kevin Corrigan and Pauliina Remes, discuss the sources and structures of power (17–37) and human action and divine power in Plotinus (38–60). Irini-Fotini Viltanioti writes about divine powers and cult statues in Porphyry of Tyre (61–74), Peter T. Struck about divine power and human intuition in divination according to Iamblichus of Chalcis (75–87). Todd Krulak studies statue animation and divine manifestation in Proclus’ Commentary on the Timaeus (88–107), while Marco Antonio Santamaría Álvarez examines the transmission of divine power in the Orphic Rhapsodies (108–126).

Moving on to Part II, divine powers in Philo of Alexandria’s De opificio mundi (On the Creation) is Baudouin S. Decharneux’s topic, while Jonathan Hill writes about the term dunamis in early Christianity as the ‘self-giving power of God’. Following on from this topic, Mark Edwards explores the concept of the ‘power of God’ in a number of early Christian texts, while Ilaria L.E. Ramelli studies the concept in Origen. The volume concludes with Andrew Radde-Gallwitz’s contribution on powers and properties in Basil of Caesarea’s Homiliae in hexaemeron (Homilies on the Hexaemeron) and Anna Marmodoro’s on Gregory of Nyssa’s teaching on the creation of the world.

Given this broad range of contributions, the volume offers fascinating insights into the concept of divine power in late antiquity across philosophical and Christian thinkers. Readers today may find little therein which they deem relevant, given the fundamental changes in cosmology and anthropology since late antiquity. An analysis of human action according to Plotinus presented by Pauliina Remes in her chapter may still be considered of some use to contemporary investigations on that topic, but a discussion of Gregory of Nyssa’s conception of the creation of the world would have to take into account that Gregory’s ‘world’ and Gregory’s understanding of how it came to be might have been quite different from what is commonly thought of as ‘the universe’ today. But even stranger for readers today may be the three contributions by Viltanioti, Struck and Krulak that discuss the serious consideration by philosophers of animated cult statues and of divination. Yet it may be precisely these topics which best highlight the relevance and significance of this volume for understanding the concept of ‘divine power’ in late antiquity today. In her chapter on Porphyry, Viltanioti draws attention to the fundamental distinction in Neoplatonism between the transcendent world of the soul and the intellect on the one hand and the immanence of the material, cosmic world on the other (65). For Porphyry, cult statues representing gods and divine powers associated with them were part of the latter. Porphyry developed a teaching that reconnected them with the intelligible world, a ‘rational mystical’ approach of contemplating the images of the gods in such a way that the soul became able to ascend to the Intellect and the One (71). Viltanioti contrasts this ‘rational mystic’ with Iamblichus’ ‘theurgic’ approach, but in the following chapter Struck argues that Iamblichus is not that different from Porphyry: for both, the divine may well be present at the material level, but it lacks ontological status and transcendental power at that level. It is ‘an extension of the mundane, human abilities to make predictions about affairs in the material world’ (78). In fact, the more rationally the function of the divine is explained in the material world, the more redundant it becomes (85). Something may as well just be explained naturally. A present-day secularist may find this attractive, but Iamblichus rejected this alternative as reductionist. Struck points out that in this respect Christian Platonists tended to agree with Iamblichus (86). Todd Krulak’s chapter on Proclus reflects similar observations: human beings experienced power in many forms, which could have been dealt with in many different ways, but the practice of divination, the variety of cult objects and the proliferation of cult sites in the ancient Mediterranean suggest a constant expectation of the exercise of divine power (88). As Viltanioti notes with reference to Porphyry’s text (64f.), cult objects (statues) represented gods; they were perceived as gods; they exerted the powers of the gods they represented (for example, Silenus, Cronos, Ares); or the gods themselves could be referred to as powers. But they were at this point ‘lower’, material powers.

Late antique Platonist theurgy engaged with this way of thinking and set out paths for the soul to ascend to the level of the intellect and the transcendent One beginning from the material level. One such path was statue animation, in which a cult image was ritually prepared for illumination by a deity resulting in a mantic, cathartic experience for the ritual expert according to Krulak (90). Attested by Cicero, Plutarch and others, the practice can also be found in Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus 1.330–31 (92) as a rite that would have been performed at the Academy in fifth-century Athens (104). By performing the rite, practitioners would have encountered powers and experienced their light-like manifestations via ritually consecrated objects and locations (106). As a result, the philosopher could access ‘divine oracular insight’. Ultimately, the soul could achieve ‘catharsis’ and ‘liberation from materiality’ (107).

These few brush strokes can only provide a brief glimpse into a well-curated, richly referenced and excellently executed collection of papers that offer illuminating insights into a central area of research in late antique philosophy and theology.