I
"Neither Aristotle’s concept of an “aitia,” nor any scholastic concept of a “causa,” actually corresponds to what we—following our early modern predecessors—mean when we speak of a “cause.” A better rendering of “aitiai” or “causae,” in the ancient or mediaeval sense, might be “explanations,” “rationales,” “logical descriptions,” or (still better) “rational relations.” The older fourfold nexus of causality was not, that is to say, a defective attempt at modern physical science, but was instead chiefly a grammar of predication, describing the inherent logical structure of anything that exists insofar as it exists, and reflecting a world in which things and events are at once discretely identifiable and yet part of the larger dynamic continuum of the whole. It was a simple logical picture of a reality in which both stability and change can be recognized and designated.
And these aitiai or causae were intrinsic and indiscerptibly integral relations, distinct dimensions of a single causal logic, not separated forces in extrinsic relation to one another. A final cause, for instance, was an inherent natural end, not an adventitiously imposed design; and this was true even when teleology involved external uses rather than merely internal perfections (as in the case of human artifacts); it was at once a thing’s internal fullness and its external participation in the totality of nature. In a sense, a causal relation in this scheme is less like a physical interaction or exchange of energy than it is like a mathematical equation, or like the syntax of a coherent sentence. Admittedly, this is a picture of reality that comes from ages in which it was assumed that the structure of the world was analogous to the structure of rational thought. But, then again, this was an eminently logical assumption, if only because there appears to be a more than illusory or accidental reciprocal openness between mind and world, and because the mind appears genuinely able to penetrate the physical order by way of irreducibly noetic practices like mathematics and logic and systematic observation." (https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/plan-for-a-book-on-the-science-of-mind/)
Take this seriously enough, and you get to the point where this description of the Good becomes clear:
"The Good is the unity of each thing"
You might say the Cosmos causes itself, but you'd have to understand it in a different manner from the atheist.
From one angle, arguing from the ordo essendi, from instantiation to form to Logos of Being, you get to the typical Monotheist conclusion.
From another angle, each thing is self-explained, the entire causal structure of the thing's existence can be seen as the structure of the thing itself as "One thing". The reason for this is that every individual thing is always many things at once. A man is also made of carbon. He can be a father. He can be beautiful. All instantiations of forms inherent in an individual. That individual as that causal structure, temporal and eternal, is what is a Soul is. That Soul is an individual in a world of individuals. The forms do not exhaust it (the number of possible forms is not exactly possible to know). DBH's point is that even the world is incomplete except as a Soul, whose summit is in, and Simply is eternal spirit. Its Intelligibility is the root of what makes it what it is, and the individuals who are many things at once are what preserve it in place. Individuality is unexplained and unexplainable. There is no such thing as something being less "one thing" than another. This principle, which is not a form above others (since that breaks the logic of individuality), but simply is all things and each thing in its individuality, is the first Principle, "the One".
Ofcourse there's more, like how to explain the mutability of things with their individuality, especially "inanimate" things, but my goal here is to demonstrate that the "ground" language is not supposed to be extrinsic to the things itself such that it is possible they "do without it". They are it.
II
The places of Gods are often dangerous places, not because these places are evil, but because we cannot easily handle the sheer excess of their being, for their being is good and is from the good. Gods manifest in these places as icons of themselves. Volcanoes, fires, Stars, Mountain tops, rivers, etc. Gods do not exclusively manifest there, but they do manifest a whole lot there or at least using symbolism gotten from these places.
III
Evil despots are as much a victim and a perpetrator of evil. While eternal principles are good, as well as those measured by the whole of time, mutable entities can be slowly or quickly destroyed by the power that flows through them on account of their frailty or weakness. Thus the phenomenon of evil despots, human and beyond.
IV
On the idea that the Gods are completely determined and conditioned by a higher ontological principle, their ontological "positions" should completely define their identity. So, a God X (X is a proper name) is completely determined by its place in the chain of being. But, it is the case that the same God subordinate in this myth is supreme in another, even in subordination. It is also the case that Gods change positions in relation to each other in myths.
If they are completely ontologically determined, then there is nothing common between God X in this myth subordinate to God Y and God Y subordinate to God X in another myth. They cannot, qua the names "X" and "Y", be the same Gods. The only thing they have in common is that ontological principle. This entails that these Gods' names are completely irrelevant.
But these Gods' names are relevant to their practitioners, and many allow for the multiplicity of myths where these transformations take place. They acknowledge that these are the same Gods qua the names. In the former unqualified monism, Gods are frankly superfluous. In the latter, they are irreplaceable. In the latter, they are not completely ontologically determined. It is not the case that the ultimate ontological monad determines these entities. Their identities not being determined ontologically means it escapes any particular ontological organization, and even the ultimately ontological monad. Instead, their identities unite all these different instantiations of themselves. In short, their identities determine ontology, which implicates the original monad. For this possibility, one must separate a doctrine of being from a theology of Gods. The unity of Being does not dissolve the Gods, apparently. Here, their being in a particular cosmos is one way they determine it, and indeed "create" it. Because of this, it is the case that they, these Gods, determine the highest ontological monad, since they dictate what emerges from such a monad and how this emergence happens.
TL;DR: the God/gods distinction requires a type of ontological subordination that does not hold for many traditions it claims to help explain.
V
One can reinterpret the Calvinist "Limited Atonement" as a peculiarly Christian articulation of the limitations of a form-matter system, such that it cannot account for every person and every instantiation of persons. This resistance to formalization is expressed in Neoplatonism as "Matter", but the very "edge" of formalization can be also described in "hellish" terms.
In other words, the prevalent Calvinist system can be read as "theologia", in the original sense, detailing the fact that not every person can be Christian, even in the eschaton. The "hatred" of the God towards the "non-elect" can then be seen as the activity of the Christian Demiurge qua Demiurge (Christ) its formal role of exclusion, not a psychological and pathological hatred. "Hell" is then a perspective on the "outside" of this (particular) Christian mythotopoi, as anything the formal regime looks like "Chaos", even if it is not the case for the subjects outside these regimes.
There is potential here for this reinterpretation of the Calvinist mythos to oppose a specific brand of universalism, one that would infact want the particular Christian mythotopoi to eclipse and absorb all others, all in the name of "love" that discards particularity. In doing so, one might affirm a more expansive universalism, one that doesn't require Christian revelation and categories to work. It is a scandal to most Christians, I guess, but no less than the fact that Christ was no imperialist. This might in fact make sense of their rejection of certain classical doctrines such as absolute divine simplicity, since a formal regime cannot be absolutely simple. It is unified and singular and indissoluble, but not absolutely simple. It's energeia are numerous.
VI
Insofar as any single entity either has participants or is participated or both, it in its own way “existentiates” everything it is connected to in this way. It is a centre to which all of those proceeding from it or preceding it, or both, are peripheral. Insofar as this “existentiation” is considered centre to periphery, it is considered as “the One”, insofar as it is considered periphery to centre, it is considered as “the Good”. This is how the “vertical” and “circular” aspects of Neoplatonic “emanation” meet. This is also one way every God is in each God, among others (including quite simply existentiation itself rather than existentiation qua some activity). See Proclus (also from Vanderkwaak’s dissertation):
“The highest term, having the most unitary potency of the three, communicates its unity to the entire order and unifies the whole from above while remaining independent of it. Secondly, the middle term, reaching out toward both the extremes, links the whole together with itself as mediator; it transmits the bestowals of the first members of its order, draws upward the potentialities of the last, and implants in all a common character and mutual nexus—for in this sense also givers and receivers constitute a single complete order, in that they converge upon the mean term as on a centre. Thirdly, the limiting term produces a likeness and convergence in the whole order by reverting again upon its initial principle and carrying back to it the potencies which have emerged from it. Thus, the entire rank is one through the unifying potency of its first terms, through the connective function of the mean term, and through the reversion of the end upon the initial principle of procession” (El. Theo. § 148).
What is the “prime matter” but the indefinitude of Being itself? If Being itself is not a totalizing monad but the most basic singularity of each thing, and really, each God, then we can read Vanderkwaak’s “receptivity” in Butlerian terms as the inability of even Being to exhaust the unit/unity/henad. It’s receptivity is another name for its infinitude viewed from “centre to periphery”, while “power” is the name of this same activity viewed from “periphery to centre”. This is also applied to the more specific beings and so the more specific “matters” or “materials” and “receptivities”. Prime matter is pure “receptability” of “Intelligible” or “Primal” Being itself, while the “universal receptacle” is the particular “receptacle” of a particular pantheon of Gods in their divine activity, the other side of Intelligible-Intellective activity.
It seems Proclus is doing what may be called a “field theory” here, with implications for today’s physics, for one who wants to take it up into theological inquiry without violating its integrity as a discipline.