Nicholas of Methone
Twelfth-century Byzantine bishop who wrote a point-by-point Refutation of Proclus's Elements of Theology. His objection to Eustratius — that the Son and the Spirit are not from the Father in the same way, one begotten and one proceeding — turns out, in modern terms, to be exactly the right repair.
Nicholas of Methone wrote a proposition-by-proposition refutation of Proclus at a moment when Byzantine theology was worried about how much Neoplatonism had got inside it. He also objected to Eustratius, and his objection reads like a piece of pious hair-splitting until you look at what it does.
Eustratius needs the Son and the Spirit to be perfectly co-ordinate. Methone answers that they are not from the Father in the same way at all: one is begotten and one proceeds. That single asymmetry breaks the reflection symmetry of the isosceles triangle — and a structure with no non-trivial symmetry has no indiscernible positions in it.
In the vocabulary of modern structuralism, Methone was rigidifying the structure to make its positions discernible. He was right, and for a better reason than he could have known.
Where this comes up
Sources
- Nicholas of Methone, Refutation of Proclus's Elements of Theology, ed. Angelou 1984, p. 135
- Lourié, Scrinium 16 (2020), p. 355