Beyond essence — God intelligible to us, not to himself
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Hermes — ἐὰν μὲν οὖν ᾖ θεῖον, οὐσιῶδές ἐστιν· ἐὰν δὲ ᾖ θεός, καὶ ἀνουσίαστον γίνεται. ἄλλως δὲ νοητός οὕτω. νοητὸς γὰρ πρῶτος ὁ θεός ἐστιν ἡμῖν, οὐχ ἑαυτῷ. τὸ γὰρ νοητὸν τῷ νοοῦντι αἰσθήσει ὑποπίπτει. ὁ θεὸς οὖν οὐχ ἑαυτῷ νοητός. οὐ γὰρ ἄλλο τι ὢν τοῦ νοουμένου ὑφ' ἑαυτοῦ νοεῖται·
If, then, it be divine, it is essential; but if it be God, it becomes even beyond essence. Otherwise put, it is intelligible thus: for God is intelligible, in the first place, to us, not to himself. For the intelligible falls, through perception, under the one who thinks it; and God, therefore, is not intelligible to himself — for being nothing other than what is thought, he is thought by himself only... [and here the argument turns].
A knot of negative theology. If the incorporeal is 'divine,' it has substance (essential); if it is 'God,' it becomes even beyond substance (ἀνουσίαστον). Otherwise put: God is intelligible — but only 'to us,' not to himself. For the intelligible is what falls under a knower's perception; and God, being nothing other than what he thinks, is not thought by himself.
This is the treatise at its most vertiginous, and the interlinear earns its keep on the tangle of νοέω-words. Hermes ranks the incorporeal: 'divine' still has substance (οὐσιῶδες); but 'God' is beyond substance itself — ἀνουσίαστον, above being. Negative theology reaches its ceiling: God is not even an essence.
Then the puzzle about knowing. God is νοητός, 'intelligible' — but only 'to us, not to himself.' Why? Because the intelligible is by definition what 'falls under' a knower's perception, an object grasped by a subject. But God is 'nothing other than what is thought' — subject and object in him are not two — so he cannot stand over against himself as an object to be thought. The Greek makes the paradox out of a single root turned every way: νοητός, νοοῦντι, νοούμενον, νοεῖται — intelligible, thinker, thought, is-thought. English scatters it; the reader who watches the Greek sees the knot tied and pulled, God slipping out of the very category of 'thinkable' at the top of the ladder.
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