 If this asymmetry is rethought in terms of the presence required for the creatures to be all that they are by nature, it will turn out that God (or the One in non-Christian Neoplatonisms), the greater and prior reality, must always be there if creaturely reality is to be forthcoming and to continue. Now creatures as created images can stand for manifestation and reflection of (and for Christian thinkers, likeness to) as well as for dependence on God, for the divine presence penetrates and encompasses each and all creatures without ever being limited or captured by any of them. While Plato’s Forms play a definitive role in the perceptible realm as responsible for the determinate characteristics of things, they count as a kind of present absence. No less determinative is the ongoing presence of the Christian God and that, too, has become a kind of absence. How should we attempt to understand this?