Last week's post in response to James' post garnered an interesting discussion, with Tom entering in towards the end to add the Orthodox perspective. What came out of that was a recognition for me that, while the Catholic Church incorporated Neoplatonic ideas early and then found a way to modify its theology later to accomodate Aristotelian ideas, the Orthodox are essentially applying Neoplatonism's approach to Christianity directly.
This concept that Tom is talking about, theosis, involves using the parts of ourselves that are 'like' God as a road to returning to God. In Greek philosophy, that part is the energia or activity as opposed to the matter: the word form is also sometimes used to translate the concept. Matter is ordered and structured so that it becomes a table or a dog or a particular human being, and the order is a kind of activity imposed on the matter.
(An aside: This 'order is an activity' is really true, too, at least for organisms -- Jonas' point -- because what it is to be an organism is to be an activity of taking matter from the world, as by eating or breathing, and organizing it in to the form that is also yourself.)
Since God is (incompletely) conceived of as pure energia, in that sense we have 'the image of God' in ourselves, and that likeness provides a bridge to the divine which we can follow.
Wikipedia helpfully draws out how this Orthodox concept differs from the strict Neoplatonic approach.
Naturally, the crucial Christian assertion, that God is One, sets an absolute limit on the meaning of theosis: even as it is not possible for any created being to become God ontologically, or even a necessary part of God (of the three existences of God called hypostases), so a created being cannot become Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit nor the Father of the Trinity.
Most specifically creatures, i.e. created beings, cannot become God in his transcendent essence, or ousia, hyper-being (see apophaticism). Such a concept would be the henosis, or absorption and fusion into God of Greek pagan philosophy. However, every being and reality itself is considered as composed of the immanent energy, or energeia, of God. As energy is the actuality of God, i.e. his immanence, from God's being, it is also the energeia or activity of God. Thus the doctrine avoids pantheism while partially accepting Neoplatonism's terms and general concepts, but not its substance (see Plotinus).
To put it even more simply, Iamblicus or Plotinus thought that the matter was just another spun-out emanation from the One, and thus that everything that had proceeded from the One could (would!) return to it. Iamblicus, the later thinker, worked out a mode for attempting to approach the One by seeking grace from those spin-offs that were closer to the One than we are ourselves. This system of seeking grace from an intermediary to help you come closer to the One is obviously readily adaptable to seeking the Father through the Son, whose being is closer to God -- he is God -- but also more like us than the Father because the Son is also man.
The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an excellent article on Neoplatonism that comes from a contemporary, skeptical perspective.
The result of this effort was a grandiose and powerfully persuasive system of thought that reflected upon a millennium of intellectual culture and brought the scientific and moral theories of Plato, Aristotle, and the ethics of the Stoics into fruitful dialogue with literature, myth, and religious practice. In virtue of their inherent respect for the writings of many of their predecessors, the Neoplatonists together offered a kind of meta-discourse and reflection on the sum-total of ideas produced over centuries of sustained inquiry into the human condition....
Today, the Neoplatonic system may strike one as lofty, counterintuitive, and implausible, but to dismiss it out of hand is difficult, especially if one is prepared to take seriously a few fundamental assumptions that are at least not obviously wrong and may possibly be right.
Indeed, Einstein's revision of Newtonian physics began with a return to Plato and Platonic ideas; the problem is always that these ideas strike modern thinkers as 'lofty, counterintuitive, and implausible,' but that they often turn out to be right. Jonas too, as I said in the aside above, is really restating a truth that the Greeks had apprehended, even if Plato and Aristotle differed on how to apply it.
So it might be worth starting with that article on Neoplatonism, so we can get a sense of what the different Christian churches were bringing forward in their two very different ways. It is a very fertile field, one that produces almost every time it is sought.
39 comments:
Just a quick note: Theosis is only possible because of Jesus Christ and the fact that He is fully God and fully human. The incarnation provides the necessary salve for the Fall, allowing the healing of the relationship between God and human beings (i.e., salvation). Best to quote the Orthodox Wiki on the topic:
The statement by St. Athanasius of Alexandria, "The Son of God became man, that we might become god", [the second g is always lowercase since man can never become a God] indicates the concept beautifully. II Peter 1:4 says that we have become " . . . partakers of divine nature." Athanasius amplifies the meaning of this verse when he says theosis is "becoming by grace what God is by nature" (De Incarnatione, I). What would otherwise seem absurd, that fallen, sinful man may become holy as God is holy, has been made possible through Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate. Naturally, the crucial Christian assertion, that God is One, sets an absolute limit on the meaning of theosis - it is not possible for any created being to become, ontologically, God or even another god.
So, the major differences that the Orthodox imposed upon the Neoplatonic view are these:
1) Only one being (Jesus) can serve as the vector for the grace that the pagan Iamblicus thought any noetic 'god' could offer. On the definite need for grace, however, they agree; as do they on the basic idea that the point is to return to God and participate in his nature as fully as possible.
2) The Orthodox project is limited ontologically. Iamblicus thought you could return all the way to the One; Plotinus thought not only that you could, but that it was a natural process and that everything would. On the Orthodox model, the return can only bring you close: you can't fully return to God.
I gather that the Orthodox church fathers, who were Greek and part of the Greek tradition in a fuller way than the Romans, adapted what was at the time the standard Neoplatonic model and approach to their Christian theology. People might differ very strongly about whether that makes it the same project but with different theoretical understandings of exactly what you are doing; or if, instead, this makes it a fundamentally different project.
Well, just reading the SEP articles and not knowing really anything else about the Neoplatonists, I would say the entire Judeo-Christian tradition up to Plotinus would be a significant difference. Now, I'll explain some of what I mean by that, but I do so knowing full well I have only the most rudimentary understanding of Neoplatonism and so you'll probably have to set me straight.
So, first off, rather than the most simple principle, the One, the God of Scripture is composed of 3 persons. There is no higher principle than that in Christianity: One God in Three Persons, which is hardly simple. Thus, it would seem that there is no Neoplatonic "One" for us. Following from that, the fundamentally personal nature of relationships between the divine and human would seem to be a significant difference. God isn't just out there as a principle but rather He made covenants with individuals: Adam, Noah, Abraham, etc. God sought us out from the beginning: He created Adam and Eve and He went to the Garden to walk with them and have a relationship with them. And again with Moses and Abraham and Jesus; God sought us out for relationships.
Second, the language of 'return' is interesting. It is the Orthodox belief that we can fully return, as the word implies going back to where we once were (to the beginning) and we can (through grace) return to the state of Adam and Eve (our beginning). This is not what the Neoplatonists mean by a full return because they posit a different starting point. Some Orthodox theologians (and I tentatively agree) say that we can do better than return because the Incarnation made an even deeper relationship possible between a human being and God than Adam and Eve had.
Third, we have Scripture, which doesn't seem to have any corollary in Neoplatonism but which is an essential part of Christianity.
I will stop there for now; if I've misunderstood something it's best to get that sorted out rather than multiply errors.
I would like to say one more thing, though. I believe it is a mistake to posit a one-way influence. Where Neoplatonism and Christianity share ideas, it is possible that the Neoplatonists were influenced by early Christian ideas. They would have been unlikely to say so because Christianity was banned until 325.
This one-way causation ignores the Apostolic Fathers and other Fathers who wrote before Plotinus. For example, Justin the Philosopher lived and wrote in the 2nd century, being martyred before Plotinus was born. And, of course, Scripture was all written before Plotinus. The idea of grace, for example, could have been taken from Christian Scripture or teachings and adopted by the Neoplatonists.
There was more than a century of Christian theology before the Neoplatonists came along. It would seem at least possible that the earlier influenced the later.
I gather that the Orthodox church fathers, who were Greek and part of the Greek tradition in a fuller way than the Romans, adapted what was at the time the standard Neoplatonic model and approach to their Christian theology.
Well, Greek in the sense of being Hellenized Jews, Hellenized Syrians, some actual Greeks, etc.
People might differ very strongly about whether that makes it the same project but with different theoretical understandings of exactly what you are doing; or if, instead, this makes it a fundamentally different project.
Tell me about it. I was a Protestant for much longer than I have been Orthodox, and I hear no end of this from some of my Protestant friends and family members. I have lost at least one Protestant friend just by telling him I'd joined the Orthodox Church. He didn't say anything about it at the time, but I never heard from him again and he never answered email or calls after that.
It has given me some understanding of the anti-Catholicism in this country. I knew about that from my historical studies, but experiencing the hostility of some Protestants when they find out what the Orthodox believe has been a new experience.
That said, I also have Protestant friends and family members who have accepted it with grace and love, which has made me respect and appreciate them even more.
Ok, there's a whole lot to work through.
Let's start with divine simplicity.
So, first off, rather than the most simple principle, the One, the God of Scripture is composed of 3 persons. There is no higher principle than that in Christianity: One God in Three Persons, which is hardly simple. Thus, it would seem that there is no Neoplatonic "One" for us.
There's an ambiguity at work here; what "simple" means in this context is technical rather than as the word is used in natural language. It means that God does not have parts. God's essence does not differ from his existence, his nature from his essence, his goodness from his essence. The Trinity are somehow one, and completely one, even though they are three.
Aquinas explains it here (especially A7):
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1003.htm
(Again, though, he's borrowing arguments from Avicenna that are much more fully explicated in his metaphysics than in the Summa Theologiae.)
It is somewhat mysterious how a trinity could also be a unity, or a thing could be really and completely one but also three. The Jewish philosopher Maimonides rejects Christianity as incoherent because of this point.
Neoplatonism, however, has a rational account of how that works in its number theory. This was not motivated by a desire to give an account of the Trinity; it's an analysis of how concepts like numbers work.
Let's say that you have one -- one orange, one whatever. So you have one, and you have an idea of what it means to have one and not two. But if you have one you could imagine having another one, which would not be the same as the first one. So now the idea of 'one' is necessarily coupled with an idea of 'and not another one,' which is at once two concepts and yet both entailed by the first concept. So now one is two.
The two concepts have to be held together somehow to make sense together, since they arise from one thing. So now you have the concept of 'one,' the concept of 'and not another one,' and you have some sort of mental substrate that holds the two separate concepts together as a functional idea. So that's one, two, three ideas -- but it's all somehow contained in the one idea. It's one, but it's instantly three.
This is, by the way, fundamental to how the One in Neoplatonism generates the world: when the One begins to examine itself, it divides itself (conceptually, without dividing itself in any other way) into 'thinker' and 'thought about.' But those two things need a third thing to hold them together, so there's three as soon as there's One thing thinking about itself.
A nun I know once described the Trinity in essentially the same way: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as the love that holds them together. I've also heard it described as three ways of being the God that is; but one way or another, the doctrine originates in Greek philosophy. It might have been avoided -- I imagine that the Church could have adopted another view at some point, like the Arian heresy, and just gone on with that instead.
If you'll pardon a tangent: I've been puzzling around with how to deal with incarnation (generically, e.g. ours), and God as love, and the Divine simplicity you mentioned above. It would seem that we were created to incarnate love--for God, each other, and creation. Insofar as we do (properly ordered), is God present already? I assume there's already a fair body of thought on the matter, and if you can point me to some of it I'd appreciate it. (In English--my French has deteriorated and I've no other languages under my belt.)
Grim, I'm curious what you were thinking about when you wrote, "People might differ very strongly about whether that makes it the same project but with different theoretical understandings of exactly what you are doing; or if, instead, this makes it a fundamentally different project."
The Protestants I mentioned objected to all the things they saw as Catholic -- church hierarchy, Real Presence, icons, etc.
James,
"It would seem that we were created to incarnate love--for God, each other, and creation."
I've not really heard it put this way before. Where did you get the idea from? Could you explain it a little?
I'm not sure exactly where I picked this up from, I'm afraid. I don't claim originality, I just can't recall.
Perhaps the gist can be shown by an example. A big bakery could have a machine that mixed batter and baked cakes, and maybe frosted and packaged them automatically as well. The result is a cake, but it has no intrinsic meaning.
If I love my son and bake him a cake to celebrate his birthday, the cake may be the same as the factory one in all physical respects but it now has meaning and love with it. It's his/our cake, and expresses love(*), and it holds something of me: my time and thought. There's now something in the world (the past is present to God) that has love in it, and me, that would not have had it otherwise.
In a less physical case, though still part of the created realm, I need to dispose my soul in gratitude and love to God who created and redeemed me (and gives the power and grace to do so), and to express that disposition in whatever ways are appropriate at the time: praise, works of mercy, silent adoration. I am to make love present and active in the appropriate way in my response to Him.
At a more attenuated extreme, in my creativity I am willing the existence (and so far the good) of something I've thought of, like a snowman or a poem. It's not as profound an expression of love as the others, but it's a form of love too.
I put myself in the things I do.
We're assured that God is love. Is God therefore present in some way in obedient love on our part?
(*) In this fallen world I may have baked him _my_ favorite cake instead of his, which diminishes it, reflecting diminished love on my part.
Probable influences to have begun my line of thought: Uncle Screwtape on the subject of love in fantasy, or Charles Williams' debatable claim that "in the end all loves must be physical"
The question needs some reflection on my part. The short answer is “yes,” but there’s a lot more to be said and I need to assemble the answer.
Tom, I was thinking that this is the sort of ground where intense theological disputes occur. It makes a difference whether you say, for example, “Well, it’s the same entity whether you call it ‘God’ or ‘the One,’ and people are studying the same reality and going through the process of seeking grace in order to approach it, so there’s little difference between the faiths,” versus “It is fundamental to call on Jesus Christ by name, and thus these other people are damned and fooled somehow in their attempts to approach God.” People kill each other over such things.
I will be very interested to see your answer to James, Grim. I tend toward 'no,' but I've never thought about it really.
On the other hand, Onuki and Yoshimura are solidly on James's side here.
Yes, Grim, it's sad that people kill each other over that sort of thing, even that they get angry over it.
Neither of those positions, whether all faiths are equally good roads to salvation nor the necessity of calling on Jesus by name to be saved, are where I end up, but my position on that isn't quickly explained.
But, maybe the point is that I'm sounding a bit too strident? I haven't gotten angry. I'm very interested in this conversation, and some of the things you've put here don't fit with my understanding of things, so I'm challenging what you're saying. I may be missing your point, but I'm not mad, if that's a concern.
I didn't mean to chide you, or anyone. I was merely putting up a flag whose runes can be read as, "Minefield."
I understand that people have fixed positions about that, and that they are sometimes very devoted to the truth of those positions. What we are engaged in here, however, is philosophy of theology more than it is theology itself. It's not for me to say what the truth about God is; but it is my place to explore the ideas different people have had about it, and to see how they are alike and different.
You'll have to make your own mind up about what is true, but at least you'll know how some of these theological positions evolved and what is behind them. A lot of these fights happened so long ago that we barely remember them, or only a few do; the question of whether Jesus was a half-god (like Hercules, a divine father and a human mother, quite well-known to the Greeks as a concept) or all-god or -- somehow! -- all-god and yet also all-man was the stuff of titanic struggles. So too the question of whether Jesus was begotten in eternity, or uncreated. All of these questions have seen blood spilled over them.
We aren't going to do that. We are going to discuss the ideas, recognizing that each of us is interested in understanding the truth and approaching the divine, and that this is a decent business for all of us even if we disagree about some of the details. My own sense, for what it's worth, is that a forgiving God will likely forgive a mistake made in a serious and well-intended effort at understanding and drawing closer to him; but that has also been a controversial position!
James,
First, this discussion was inspired by your post, so there's no reason to apologize for introducing a tangent. We are here because you called us here, as it were.
"It would seem that we were created to incarnate love--for God, each other, and creation. Insofar as we do (properly ordered), is God present already? I assume there's already a fair body of thought on the matter, and if you can point me to some of it I'd appreciate it."
Scripturally, of course, one thinks immediately of Mt. 18:20. In terms of Catholic theology, Aquinas treats this in ST II-II Q184, where charity is treated as a state of perfection and described as a proper sort of love. I know you said you wanted an English answer, but the word that is being translated into English as "love" here is "caritate" and the word for charity is "caritatem." It's versions of the same word, in other words, and as you read you'll find that it is explicitly not carnal love, but love that is -- well, Platonic we might say, but the kind of love that God has for you and that you ought to have for God (and other people, whom he also loves this way so you should as well).
That's the simple and direct answer: love unites you with God, and is the state of perfection for human beings because it does so. Insofar as you and another ('two or more' per the book of Matthew) are so engaged, God is there among you.
Now I'll give you also a more philosophy-heavy answer.
So the Orthodox are here speaking of sharing in God's energia, which is usually translated as "activity." That's what this business of theosis is trying to accomplish. So if the activity of God is love, then you can think of loving in this way as participating in the divine energy; and since creation is also produced by this activity, you can certainly think that God is 'already there' in the sense that his activity is producing all the things around you, which are loved; you are enjoying a kind of enhanced state of participating by attuning your own activity to this divine activity.
This is also a perfectly good Neoplatonic view, although they would warn you that excessive attention to the created things is how we got here in the first place. The proliferation of beings and things that are increasingly removed from the One are all, in fact, emanations from the One and the One's activity. When the conceptual division is made so that the One is thinker and also thought-about, so that there are now two (and thus three!), a process begins that spins out infinitely further divisions. The One finds that he is good, but when examining the good (i.e. the Platonic Form of the Good), he discovers that some parts are good because they are true, and some because they are beautiful. Now examining what it is to be beautiful, we discover many more divisions; and so to for what is true; and each of these produces further divisions.
All of these ideas are Platonic forms, though, which limits them because they are purely active and lack potency: thus, the Form of a Lion is beautiful because he is a magnificent hunter, but he cannot hunt because he is unchanging and perfect (i.e. fully active and without potency). So a further spinning out occurs, which we call the creation of the world, so that physical lions can live and actually hunt. In this way they more fully exercise the activity that is beautiful in their form; but they are 'less real' than the Form of the Lion, their existence temporary and contingent.
So the Neoplatonist will warn you about your exercise of love. Loving the right way brings you unifies you with God; loving the wrong way spins you further out from the divine. (This is similar to the point about the love that is charity not being carnal love: if you're loving the body, you're pointed the wrong way as it were.)
The Catholic answer follows Avicenna's amalgamation of Aristotle to the Neoplatonists, so that you get a version of the Neoplatonic story about creation but Aristotle's metaphysics. (Also, I should tell you, Avicenna has some elegant proofs for the existence of God that are mathematical in nature. You might enjoy working through them; Aquinas only mentions them in passing in ST I Q2a3, but Avicenna spells the arguments out at length.)
So you end up with both of these approaches in Catholic theology. Augustine says that everything created is good because God is all good, and the evils we find in the world are the result of our failure to live up to the full goodness intended by God. So, insofar as you are participating more fully in God's vision, you are achieving a fuller goodness.
Yet goodness -- well, capital-G Goodness -- is the same thing as God's existence: there is no difference between goodness and existence in their divine senses. This is Aristotelian in argumentation, from the Physics and the Metaphysics: the good is what all things desire. What do all things desire? More existence! Every action by plant or squirrel or man is aimed at extending his life or in producing children; thus, existence is the good. In the divine person, they are one and the same, never ending, complete, perfect. For us they are contingent and temporary, unless we are brought back to the divine ground by grace.
But insofar as you attain a kind of perfection of love/charity, you are coming as close to the being of God -- and thus the best sort of goodness, which is the same thing as God's existence -- as it is possible to come. And thus, yes, God is there already: you are approaching his being in this way.
Thank for the assistance, Grim.
For the little I have done, you are certainly welcome.
All of these questions have seen blood spilled over them.
We aren't going to do that.
I should hope not! Especially since you'd most likely win!
My own sense, for what it's worth, is that a forgiving God will likely forgive a mistake made in a serious and well-intended effort at understanding and drawing closer to him ...
I agree entirely. Let me also add that I think this is just as true outside of Christianity as in.
Additionally, I see Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox all as Christians. I'm not claiming any special place or knowledge because I belong to one and not the others ... except I think I do have more knowledge of Orthodox Christianity itself than people who haven't experienced it. That, of course, is true across the board. Catholics will have more knowledge of Catholicism than I ever will just by virtue of their experience (I have never been Catholic). Ditto for Presbyterians, etc.
I'm afraid today and tomorrow are especially busy for me, so I'll come back to this Friday.
If you, or anyone else, are still interested, I'll post a few questions I'm interested in, though of course no one is obligated to take them up. Also, I'll go back and re-read the SEP articles on Neoplatonism, Iamblicus, and Plotinus, just so I can follow the argument better. I really just skimmed the latter two, so I probably missed some important things.
My questions are:
1. I have never looked at this before, but it seems likely that where Christian ideas and Neoplatonism shares concepts, like grace, that it's possible Christianity influenced Neoplatonism. The Scriptures were all written before Plotinus, and there were a number of Christian writers and theologians before him, although much of what they wrote has been lost. Christianity was both a competing worldview and legally banned, so there are good reasons the Neoplatonists might not have claimed Christian sources.
2. Similarly, I'm interested in how much the Neoplatonists influenced 3rd and 4th century Christianity. Can anyone recommend good sources for that?
3. I don't understand how Aquinas's explanations of the simplicity of God and of the Trinity are compatible. I read the bit Grim linked, then searched that site for discussions of the Trinity and read two of them, but to me they seem ... disconnected? It could make sense if I thought of the simplicity of God as "the simplicity of God's essence," since the Trinity are one in essence. (Maybe my review of the SEP articles will answer this?)
Here are the links to Aquinas:
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1003.htm#article3
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1031.htm
4. Also, I am still interested in this question, copied from above: Grim, I'm curious what you were thinking about when you wrote, "People might differ very strongly about whether that makes it the same project but with different theoretical understandings of exactly what you are doing; or if, instead, this makes it a fundamentally different project."
Well, I'll check back in Friday.
Let me take these in reverse order.
4. I had thought I answered that question, so you must be interested in it in a different sense than is occuring to me. What are you asking me to discuss?
3. The issue was a problem for Aquinas as well. One of the stories about him is that he had a dream in which he was told by an angel that he would never be able to make sense of how the Trinity was logical. Prima facie it isn't: as I said, Maimonides considered Christianity to be incoherent because of claims like '3-in-1 but all-1 and yet also 3.'
Avicenna gives the arguments for divine simplicity much more directly and strongly than Aquinas (as with the proofs of God's necessary existence), partly I think because as a Muslim he is committed to the idea that 'God is One/There is only one God.' The arguments are logical and straightforward: things like, "There can only be one ultimate ground of reality, because if there were two or more basic entities driving reality something would have to exist that held them together and let them interoperate, and then that thing would be the ultimate ground of reality." The logic of the proofs he gives for divine simplicity is clear and, once you've worked through it, not obviously wrong on any point.
That doesn't mean that the Trinity is false, however. It may be that the rules of logic themselves only pertain to the extended, created reality we live inside of and do not apply to things outside of this created reality. In that case the appearance of contradictions is not necessarily a proof of the falsehood of what was being argued. As a matter of Christian faith, you can simply hold that somehow it must be true even if logic says it's false.
The best philosophical arguments for this possibility, however, lie in Neoplatonism. In fact they begin with Plato himself. If you go back to the Parmenides commentary on the sidebar, you'll find that it is a similar feast of contradictions. The ancient Greeks -- Socrates had this conversation when he was young, so he is thought to have reported it to Plato many years later -- ran into similar basic contradictions even when they tried to describe a single First Mover or First Principle of reality. It turns out that you run into contradictions on that ground both if you assume that there is such a principle, and if you assume there is not. The dialogue shows them running the traps both ways, and coming up with basic contradictions either way.
The Neoplatonists, at the end of that tradition of Platonic thought, worked out a way in which the concept of one produces a need for three concepts. I described that above. Their arguments actually do make a kind of logical sense, even though they are not strict logic: they require also a sense of what it means to be a thinking being and to hold concepts. You could say it is phenomenological logic rather than strict logic like Avicenna uses and like Aquinas wanted.
2. Start with the introduction of this book, which is here online: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Neoplatonism_and_Christian_Thought/HigxLxjK2hgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA37&printsec=frontcover
As he points out in that introduction, the influence of Platonic thinking is clear from the Gospel of St. John onwards. They're using concepts like logos and its centrality to creation already in that gospel. You see the influence strongly ever after, most especially in Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine (who is trying to walk away from Neoplatonism, but started there and borrows from it even as he tries to leave it).
1. I'm not aware of any back-flow from Christianity into Neoplatonism. For one thing, Neoplatonism was summarizing and reformatting its understanding of the most productive period of human philosophy in history; even the modern period (Newton-Kant-Hegel) is even arguably a competitor, but it drew so heavily on the eariler period that I don't think it can be said to be an equal. They weren't responding to a problem in the philosophy, as the Moderns were when they began to discover that Aristotelian physics had basic problems that extended then to every feature of Aristotelian thought. Rather, Plotinus showed them a new way of conceiving of what they already knew, and they were working out the ramifications and systematizing it. By the time of Proclus and Iamblicus, the systems have grown quite complex.
Nevertheless, if you're looking for a way to make a name as an academic in the field, sketching out an argument for a back-flow of ideas from early Christianity into Neoplatonism would be an ambitious project. I think a scholar could win a great deal of fame if he made such an argument well.
Thanks for the replies, Grim.
It's been a fortuitous 24 hours for me. Unexpectedly, Friday turned out to be busy -- rather randomly I ran into a friend from Europe, which in Oklahoma is a bit uncommon. What is more, once we got to talking, it turned out she knows something about a blank spot in my research that I'd been trying to figure out how to approach. Quite happy about that.
Then, the Scripture reading for today is relevant to our discussion here. It includes 2 Corinthians 4:16:
"Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day."
This is one of the passages the idea of theosis is based on. The comment from the Orthodox Study Bible on this verse is:
"The Orthodox Faith teaches that salvation in Christ includes: (1) a passage from death to life, from darkness to light (Jn 3:1-6; Col 1:13, 14), through repentance, faith, and baptism ('I have been saved'); (2) a process of spiritual growth and maturation (2Pt 1:2-8) through ongoing repentance, faith, and communion, often called deification ('I am being saved'); and (3) a promise of eternal life (5:9-11, Jn 14:1-6), calling us to perseverance and righteousness ('I shall be saved'). It is this second element, the process of our salvation, that Paul describes here, saying that our inner life is being renewed day by day."
Deification is a synonym here for theosis.
I'm curious how to understand the Neoplatonic idea of participating in the energies / activity of God. Theosis changes the believer, as we think all of the sacraments do. Does the concept of participation for the Neoplatonist also include that idea of change?
I am afraid I did not have time to review the SEP articles, so have little to add this morning. I'll have time to do that this weekend, though, and will comment here after that.
"I'm curious how to understand the Neoplatonic idea of participating in the energies / activity of God. Theosis changes the believer, as we think all of the sacraments do. Does the concept of participation for the Neoplatonist also include that idea of change?"
Of course, along with alignment with the divine as the pagan Greeks imagined it. Plotinus' daemon was said to be a god, according to a surviving story in his biography; an Egyptian priest who summoned it found that a god appeared instead of an ordinary daemon spirit (similar to the Roman 'genius').
Grim: 4. I had thought I answered that question, so you must be interested in it in a different sense than is occuring to me. What are you asking me to discuss?
Ah yes, you did. I took that for a different thing altogether; my mistake.
Thank you for the reference to "Neoplatonism and Christian Thought." That looks like just what I was looking for.
I have several related questions:
Grim, you wrote: Let's say that you have one -- one orange, one whatever. So you have one, and you have an idea of what it means to have one and not two. But if you have one you could imagine having another one, which would not be the same as the first one. So now the idea of 'one' is necessarily coupled with an idea of 'and not another one,' which is at once two concepts and yet both entailed by the first concept. So now one is two.
Here, just to be clear, I assume the 'one' which is 'not another one' would be this particular orange and not another particular orange. Is that the right way to think about this? So, our two concepts now are 'this particular orange' and 'not another particular orange'?
The two concepts have to be held together somehow to make sense together, since they arise from one thing. So now you have the concept of 'one,' the concept of 'and not another one,' and you have some sort of mental substrate that holds the two separate concepts together as a functional idea. So that's one, two, three ideas -- but it's all somehow contained in the one idea. It's one, but it's instantly three.
At the end, though, you only have one orange, not three oranges. There are three concepts: this orange, not other oranges, and orangeness, but there is only one orange.
Of course, all analogies fail to capture the Trinity, so I'm just trying to see where this one seems to fail.
Similarly with james's analogy, there is still only one person, but three functions or modes or aspects. Here, too, like oranges, it seems there are three concepts but one person.
Both of these seem like they may help us conceptualize the Trinity, if not taken too far.
In relation to these, I am intrigued by the Neoplatonic One, Consciousness, and Soul. Although again this isn't exactly the Christian Trinity, they are three "hypostases." Of course, there is a kind of linear development where the Consciousness "falls out of" the One (to quote the article) and the Soul falls out of Consciousness. This seems close.
If we use the Neoplatonic term "procession" this seems similar to what we see in the Creed, where the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (and, for Catholics, et Filioque). Very interesting.
It's also interesting that the Neoplatonists see the Soul as the connection point between the divine and material worlds, where the outer activity of the Soul produces the material world. Jesus in a sense fulfills this role in Christianity, so that's another similarity, even if it's not the same.
Likewise, another similarity is that the material world is good for both Neoplatonists and Christians. So neither are Gnostics, for whom the material world is evil.
Overall, the Neoplatonic system seems quite elegant.
I assume the 'one' which is 'not another one' would be this particular orange and not another particular orange. Is that the right way to think about this?
Or even more simply, "this one" and "not this one." I introduced the orange as a thing to think about, but it's not necessary; the concept is more basic.
It's also weird, right? The orange is an event as much as it's anything else; and the kind of event that it is, is a collection of chemicals which are bound in certain ways by electromagnetic forces. These chemicals are reducible to molecules that are composed of atoms, and they are all organized in a particular way. And the reason they are organized in a particular way -- to return to Jonas -- is that they were part of an organism, which took other things from outside itself and ordered it that way as part of its own life process.
So it's one thing, and it's many things; it's an object, but it's also an event; it's a process, but the reason the physical object exists at all is because of a logos entailed by and contained within its DNA. (The ancients would have framed it slightly differently, understanding 'atoms' to be the most basic stuff and not having a fully fleshed-out account of how organisms work, but understanding -- as Aristotle says in the Physics -- that somehow wood is produced by trees and therefore if you could make dead wood grow a tree is what it would grow.)
But it's one, not two or ten; this one and not that one. We talk very readily about 'one orange' in a way that elides everything and makes it sensible to discuss. Those basic operations of thought are part of what this philosophy is wrestling with; Neoplatonism's language was often incorporated because it is a sophisticated way of sorting all of that out.
Or even more simply, "this one" and "not this one." I introduced the orange as a thing to think about, but it's not necessary; the concept is more basic.
Ah, I see.
And the orange-as-event makes sense, too, although it seems to be more than just an event as well. I dunno; how is an orange similar and different from a football game? A simple answer might be that there is no material substance of a football game, but there is for an orange. However, both have a logos, both have a process for development (beginning, middle, end).
A football game isn't a single material substance -- it is various players, equipment, a field, referees, etc., whereas an orange seems like it does. But, if we take an orange to be its parts, skin, pith, flesh, seeds, etc., and the players, equipment, field, etc., to be similarly the parts of a football game, maybe they are the same.
Interesting
The Orthodox Study Bible (OSB henceforth) has an essay on deification which offers an interesting analogy for it. The Church Fathers used the analogy of a sword in a fire. The sword slowly heats and grows orange with the energy of the fire, but it never becomes the fire.
Christian Wildberg's article on Neoplatonism in the SEP ends up discussing its later revival in the 14th and 15th centuries, and:
"It may even be true to say that even more than the writings of Plato and Aristotle themselves Neoplatonic ideas have continued to influence Western thinkers of the idealist persuasion, such as the Cambridge Platonists (who were really Neoplatonists), Leibniz, Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, Bergson and Teilhard de Chardin, to name but a few."
Marx, then, and maybe materialists in general in the 18th and 19th centuries, were reacting against forms of Neoplatonism, if Wildberg is right. So it actually is relevant today.
The article concludes:
"Perhaps another reason that this kind of thinking strikes the general public as arcane and alien may be that the Abrahamic religions, even if they too posit a single divine principle as the source of all being, conceive of this principle as a person and maker. This vestige of pre-philosophical anthropomorphism bypasses the difficult questions that the last pagan thinkers so arduously struggled to answer when they sought to explain the existence of the diverse and complex physical world from a non-material principle that they assumed to be nothing but One."
The term "vestige of pre-philosophical anthropomorphism" seems a bit pejorative. But, the Christian God's identity as person and role as maker are indeed essential differences.
Iamblichus's philosophy has some other similarities w/ Christianity. Holding the writings of authoritative figures to be sacred, he claimed to only be interpreting them, so there is an analog to Scripture. Although he deals with the Greek gods, he brings theology and "theurgy" (co-action with the gods) into Neoplatonism.
He also talks about angels (although he wasn't the first Neoplatonist to do so), but I really have no idea what angels are outside of an Abrahamic religious context. That's just weird to me right now.
He claims the soul can reach toward perfection, but not on its own; it needs help / grace from the gods. This help / grace is possible for virtuous people and comes through ritual, prayer, offerings, sacrifices, etc. This is 'theurgy' -- the human does these things and the gods help / offer grace; so, "co-action".
What intriguing similarities!
Iamblichus (ca 242 - ca 325) was Syrian, studied in Rome, and at one time had an estate in Antioch, which was also a major center of Christianity in that time. Although it quite possibly can't be proven, it would seem strange if there was no influence either one way or both ways during that time. The theological ideas he brings into Neoplatonism have enough similarities to established Christian ideas that I do suspect he was influenced by them.
“ Marx, then, and maybe materialists in general in the 18th and 19th centuries, were reacting against forms of Neoplatonism…. So it actually is relevant today.”
Insofar as it is true, it’s relevant today regardless of what 19th or 20th century people it influenced or didn’t. The parts imported to Orthodox Christianity might be true even if Marx had never heard of them.
You’re welcome to pursue the question of backwards influence. It is likely to produce interest if you can get beyond inference to proof.
Yes, truth is always relevant. I'm deep in Marx right now, though, so I was thinking more close to home.
As for importation into Orthodox Christianity, at the time we're discussing, it was just Christianity. These Fathers are all of our Fathers. At least, I think the Catholic Church recognizes them as well. I'm saying this because I prefer to think of them as common ground.
As for the influence issue, I am very interested, but this means books and I don't have the time, alas. There are other books I must read, and then books I must write.
I think that, over the last 50 years, there has been a lot of new scholarship, new texts from the Second Temple period discovered, new understandings and interpretations of the history. I am not sure how much influence from Greek philosophy there actually was on Christianity. Certainly some, but maybe less than previously thought.
Anyway, there's no time for me to chase this down; someone else will have to take it up, if in fact there's anything to my intuition on this.
Thanks for a stimulating discussion!
Well, I thought we had wrapped this up well, but something still troubles me about this topic. I'll come back to it tomorrow.
In the meantime, the Wikipedia article on theosis you linked ends with the following interesting tidbits:
Pope John Paul II said Catholics should be familiar with "the venerable and ancient tradition of the Eastern Churches", so as to be nourished by it. Among the treasures of that tradition he mentioned in particular:
"the teaching of the Cappadocian Fathers on divinization (which) passed into the tradition of all the Byzantine Churches and is part of their common heritage. This can be summarized in the thought already expressed by Saint Irenaeus at the end of the second century: God passed into man so that man might pass over to God. This theology of divinization remains one of the achievements particularly dear to Byzantine Christian thought."
Some Lutherans argue that theosis is compatible with Lutheran theology.
There are two aspects to what troubles me.
The first is that an academic sub-field of mine is American nativism, and the earliest burst of nativism was Protestant anti-Catholicism. Reading the nativists' writings, there is a consistent theme that there was a pure, primitive Christianity in the first century that was corrupted by pagan philosophy and practices in the 4th century. This allows them to condemn what they don't like in Catholicism as perversions of "real Christianity." Thus, these Protestants can claim that they are just returning to the pure, un-paganized Christianity of Christ and the Apostles. And for those early American nativists, it was part of their justification for legal discrimination against Catholics.
That background makes me wary of statements that tie major Christian beliefs or practices to pagan sources. It's not that I don't think there was any influence, but in the back of my mind I always have to wonder whether the historical sources the claims come from are good scholarship or biased propaganda.
I don't think you were doing what those Protestants were doing, of course, but, as I've read a lot of that sort of stuff, you can see why I would be a bit wary of how the topic is approached.
Second, theosis is part of my faith, and the presentation of it as applying Neoplatonism to Christianity is alien to my understanding as an Orthodox Christian. Now, I'm a layman and have no academic background in this, so I'm in no position to confidently engage on the topic of Neoplatonism and theosis. I can't confirm or contradict what you're saying about it. However, in what I've read in Orthodox sources and in how it's been explained to me by Orthodox priests, no Greek philosophy ever comes up. We look at the New Testament and some of the early Fathers for our understanding of it.
That said, just looking at the bibliography on the Wikipedia article shows that clearly there is a lot of scholarship on this and I'm only familiar with this on a very beginning level. Still, it just feels weird.
I guess, then, that my question for you would be, what do you think was the nature of the influence of Greek philosophy on early Christianity?
I had a feeling that you were having an internal objection of that sort.
Obviously I feel that the influence of Greek philosophy on Christianity was wholly positive. This was the most important non-religious tradition of thought and understanding in human history. The Neoplatonists stood at the end of it, and as the article we started with notes, incorporated reflections on the most productive period of human thought into a powerful set of doctrines about what must be true about reality and the universe.
That is a tremendous wealth to have inherited. The Catholics, I think, benefitted from it perhaps less than the Orthodox because they got it in waves: a Roman version of Neoplatonism, which was later modified with Avicenna's approach in order to incorporate the Aristotelianism that had been long lost in the West. The Orthodox preserved the understanding of their elders in a purer form, and it sounds like they were better able to incorporate its lessons.
Iamblicus was the most important philosopher of his age. The SEP article on him, which describes the absorbtion of his ideas by early Christians as "Christian appropriation," was largely written by one of the leading scholars in the world on the subject -- Adrien Lecerf, who cites his own work throughout. If you prefer a view on which there was more of a dialogue than a Christian appropriation of Neoplatonic ideas, you might start with his writings (some of which are in French only, others in translation).
Ultimately I could not care less about the criticisms of what you call 'nativists,' who are the least interesting of thinkers and offer the least plausible versions of Christianity in my opinion. If they think they are purer, well, Pakistan translates as 'land of the pure.' You can have that kind of purity and its consequences. I prefer the fellowship of Tolkien, Malory, and those who found room for beauty and joy within their purity -- which was, I gather, the argument that convinced Vladimir I of Russia to convert his empire to Orthodox Christianity rather than the more dire German Catholicism he encountered.
Thank you for answering my question. That makes a lot of sense.
You know, I had just assumed that since the Catholic and Orthodox were one Church for the first thousand years that Catholics had similar ideas on theosis and many other things from that time. I never thought theosis was particularly an Orthodox thing. Of course, the Catholic Church still has access to all of that, and as Pope John Paul II points out, can still use all of it.
As for the nativists, in their defense, they are sometimes unintentionally hilarious. But mostly they were deeply misled and in turn misleading. There is no reason for you to care about their claims, per se. And, no, 'nativist' is not really a good term for them, but I'm not sure I'm ready to pick that fight with the rest of the academic world. Maybe in my dissertation.
I myself never intended to focus on nativists, but that's where the central research question in my MA work led me, and I should be turning that into an article in the near future. Summer, maybe? Assuming I survive the semester.
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