According to Plato there is a God with a big letter G and a small letter g. What this ancient philosopher referred to the god with small g is exactly the same as we would refer to as creation in a modern sense.
Within this context of distinguishing the small letter g god and the big letter, G, God, Plato brings up the Demiurge (god with a small letter g) or ’’universal mind’’ (nous) as a symbolic metaphor for the creative principles in the universe. Another word for this would be ’’awareness’’. These principles are basically the forms which are infinite in and of itself. So there is a world of mind that can be known by anyone. But this reality is basically an illusion, a way for the Demiurge the first emanation from being (awareness) to experience its own reflection.
But according to Plato and Sokrates in the dialogues put forth by Plato, the discussion of God with a big letter G is futile because as Sokrates summed it up thus ’’when you define God you defile it.’’. Nevertheless these great philosophers gave us a clue to the mystery, a clue that would give us a better way to approach the ’’principle of principles’’. Their description of God was a triad ’’the one, the beautiful and the good.’’
According to Proclus one of the earliest neo-platonists which probably had in his keeping, some of the last remnants of a complete Platonic theology. In the eyes of Proclus, Plato took the position that God with a big letter G was a being beyond mind. Because being was beyond mind, Plato attacked both science and philosophy. Which relies their field of study to reasoning and to the mental faculty.
Plato tried vehemently show with most of his analogies and symbolic metaphors, ’(’the theory of forms, the analogy of the divided line, the allegory of the cave, and in the analogy of the sun) that there was a conceptual nature in the universe that went beyond thought. Not only human thought but ’’nous’’ the mind of the universe.
And as you are probably aware of already, in the allegory of the cave, Plato tries to show that the Good (symbolized as the sun) is the cause to everything and is completely unknown to the cave dwellers (human beings) living inside the cave (the reality of becoming). The good is only known to them by an artificial light (symbolized as the fire in the cave).
Here Platonism follows Buddhism saying that; the state of ’’absolute reality’' is something to experience not theorizing. And the moment you theorize it you get lost in the world of shadows. To reach that state according to Plato we sojourn on an ascension towards that state from illusion towards the good. Which means that Plato stands for a ''positive idelaism'', this means that everything and everyone is in a constant growth towards the good. And that is awesome!
The question is then; what is it that our soul must experience to understand? What is the end purpose for every single human being? What is the formlessness within the forms themselves?
More Plato in our lives :) :)
RE: Two Radically Different Versions of God (As Told By Ancient Philosophers)