Divine reciprocity. The first ellipse

The word was with God and the word was God

In the preceding chapter, on God beyond and God within, we have already found duality which anticipates the divine reciprocity of God beside God. Clement describes this with the help of the Fourth Gospel and Middle Platonism, and with assistance from the two kinds of unity which are found in Plato's Parmenides. Especially valuable is Alcinous, in whose thought the presence of the two divine intellects is clear. Compared with Plotinus, Middle Platonism may appear muddled on the relation between the One and Nous. This difference makes Middle Platonism more useful to Clement.

From Xenocrates onwards, we may see the emergence of a metaphysic of mind. Where there are three principles (God, ideas, matter) God is mind/nous and the ideas are embraced within him. His relation to the ideas is therefore different from his relation to the world. The apophatic God of Middle Platonism derives from Academic tradition and Pythagorean sources. Between the simplicity and negativity of the first God and his definition as mind/nous containing the world of ideas there is a tension which has clear affinity with Clement's God beside God.

A standard work claims as distinctive of Middle Platonism a first and second god, the first being the Good of the Republic and the One of the first hypothesis of Parmenides, and the second being the Demiurge of the Timaeus.