Numenius of Apamea: The Father of Neo-Platonism

...incommensurable doubleness (or multiplicity) had been organized by that single unity through the following process: this unity receded from its singleness and was transmuted into the form of doubleness. This is wrong. For thus, unity would have ceased to be unity and would have been replaced by a premature doubleness. Thus, matter would be converted out of divinity, and incommensurable and indeterminate doubleness out of unity. Such an opinion would not seem plausible to people of even mediocre education.

Further, the Stoics held that matter was defined and limited by its own nature, while Pythagoras asserted that matter was infinite and unlimited. So the Stoics held that what was by nature indeterminate could not be organized naturally; but Pythagoras held that this organizing resulted from the energy and power of the Only God. For what is impossible to nature is easily possible to God, who is more powerful and excellent than any Power whatsoever, and from whom nature herself derives her powers.

15. PROVIDENCE AS THE CURE OF DUALISM.

On that account, says Numenius, Pythagoras considers Matter a fluid lacking quality; but not, as the Stoics thought, a nature intermediary between good and evil—which they call "indifferent"—for he considers it entirely evil. According to Pythagoras, the divinity is the principle and cause of the Good, while matter is that of evil; and Plato thinks likewise. That would be indifferent which would derive from both the Idea of the Good and matter. It is therefore not matter, but the world, which is a mixture of the goodness of the Idea and the badness of Matter, and which, after all, arose from both Providence and Necessity, which is considered indifferent, according to the teachings of the ancient theologians.

16. THE ORIGIN OF EVIL, ACCORDING TO VARIOUS THINKERS.

The Stoics and Pythagoras agree that Matter is...