 How does Nicholas’ Neoplatonism aid his thinking about God? One advantage is that Nicholas can take the basic asymmetry between paradigmatic Platonic Forms and the perceptible realm of particular things that are images of the Forms and apply that asymmetry to the way the First Principle, God, is related to all other created realities. In working out this relationship, Plato proposed that what results for individual Forms is that all particulars “participate” in the relevant Form just the way an image reflects and depends on its original. That is to say, the Form does not require the particulars but is prior ontologically. The relation between Form and particulars is not one of reciprocal dependence. Applied to the first ontological principle, or to the Christian God, the result is to let all the multiple, complex creatures participate in their ultimate Source while the divine Creator remains simple, unparticipated and unchanged. As Christian medieval thinkers (even the Aristotelians agreed on this point) were accustomed to express it, creatures depend on God while God is not at all dependent on creatures. All the dependence is one-way.