I've been thinking about the ways in which my current understanding of Neoplatonism helps me understand the different ontologies behind models of God.
In a sense, nothing has changed, I still think these models of Deity describes aspects and modes of being that are complementary and important to theism today, especially if one wants to be thinking in the same spirit as certain traditions (anyone who uses Platonism for instance). It is ironically important to give more space for (say) process theism in our theology if we want to be in the spirit of the many Platonisms. This is the approach of someome like Khalil Andani, from an explicitly Ismaili Muslim Neoplatonism.
But, in another sense, everything has changed, especially in the way I understand this symbiosis and/or synthesis. My approach demurs from the strict hierarchicalism of Andani's model, in a different understanding of Neoplatonism that doesn't see only the highest God in an ontology as worthy of worship.
I don't think I like the term "Classical Theism" because it collapses so many theisms into one umbrella due to reifying some attributes of the various first principles of a set of philosophers. I disagree that (for instance) Thomas and Plotinus had the same first principle. But, based on my limited understanding of the various Thomisms and several other Christian ontological theologies, I can still place them together.
The guiding principle for me is the primacy of individuality and its expression as the many Gods. The language I prefer (for now) is the Proclean, where the Platonic doctrine of Gods as supraessential unities present prior to him is first systematized for the Greeks to a toweringly rich level. One thing I would like to state is that the "transcendence" of the Gods over Ontology is expressed as the possibility of them transgressing any particular ontology, the possibility of them establishing (to us at least) other ontologies, and also, the fluidity of ontologies in general, which makes the evaluation of divinity independent of ontological place or structure. As Butler says in his paper "Plotinian Henadology":
"Plotinus argues that even if there is a God who, as a “natural” matter, either rules or even creates the other Gods, this does not affect the “nature,” so to speak, of being a God. Plotinus warns against reifying such a hierarchy as an intelligible structure. For if, as in the essay on intelligible beauty, “each God is all the Gods coming together into one” (V.8.9.17), and this clearly is Platonic technical doctrine, as we can see from its elaboration in subsequent Platonists, then the creative moment of which Plotinus speaks when he speaks of a God “abiding who he is, makes many [Gods] depending upon him and being through that one and from that one” (II.9.9.38‑40), must exist as a phase in the activity of a God simply qua God, and not limited to some one God to the exclusion of others, in which case there would no longer be a manifold corresponding to Unity, a “numerical” manifold." (Pg 151)
Thus, the argument against the full divinity of entities based on ontological place is void here. Sorry Pseudo-Dionysius.
The implications begin for us with the process theists and the Gods that "become". Based on Proclus' arguments, all Henads are irreducible and beyond even eternity. They are the basis of all other modes of individuality, insofar as the entities in question are Individuals. Or, as Vargas puts it:
"a god is a self-complete unity together with the beings that incorporate (μετέχει) it. So it would be wrong to point to the sun and say “Look, a divine unity!”, but it is correct to point to it and say “Behold, a god!”."
In this case then, there is a place for process theism of a sort, although my aim is synthesis rather rejection of the classical theism its proponents usually avoid. It is infact talk about Gods, but the Platonist in me would call them "Psychic Gods", "Daimonic Gods", or even "Material Gods", depending on their perceived ontological place. Monotheism is out the window, so instead of one model of "God", let's have all of them. The distinction between existence (hyparxis) and essence (hypostasis) holds here: each God is existentially irreducible and ultimate, while their hypostases are limited and derived in some sense. To consider a God, even a Process God, in its hyparxis is to consider them as all things converge in their existence. It's an omnipotence that is not absolute force. Ofcourse, this is my reading, a way of incorporating their concepts into my schema.
There is not much else I want to say about the other models here. Andani places the divine object of WLC's Kalam as World Soul, then the divine object of the various divine conceptualist arguments to the universal intellect, and the object of the contingency argument as "the One".
Formally, I agree with most of this, the exception being that I'd quibble on what exactly forms were for the first Neoplatonists, and that the positive content of "the One" is simply each God qua Hyparxis/Existence. However, a deeper analysis of Pagan Neoplatonism would perhaps show these hypostases as less a hierarchical pyramid than nested a forest of relationships. So, for instance, there are many divine intellects, of various kinds and relationships, all participants of Henads who they manifest. All of them are Gods that are worshipped. There are many Divine Souls. Most importantly, there are many divine absolutely simple Henads, that manifest as these entities. Perhaps inadvertently, in the arguments for these deities, we discover them. But, due to some unfortunate history, we fail to see the ecosystem of divine activity they hint at.