History of Dogma, Volume 1

by Adolf von Harnack

Plotinus, as Porphyry relates, attained to this ecstatic union with God four times during the six years he was with him. To Plotinus this religious philosophy was sufficient; he did not require the popular religion and worship. But yet he sought their support. The Deity is indeed in the last resort only the Original Essence, but it manifests itself in a fulness of emanations and phenomena. The Νους is, as it were, the second God; the λογοι, which are included in it, are gods; the stars are gods, etc. A strict monotheism appeared to Plotinus a poor thing. The myths of the popular religion were interpreted by him in a particular sense, and he could justify even magic, soothsaying and prayer. He brought forward reasons for the worship of images, which the Christian worshippers of images subsequently adopted. Yet, in comparison with the later Neoplatonists, he was free from gross superstition and wild fanaticism. He cannot, in the remotest sense, be reckoned among the "deceivers who were themselves deceived," and the restoration of the ancient worships of the Gods was not his chief aim.

Among his disciples the most important were Amelius and Porphyry. Amelius changed the doctrine of Plotinus in some points, and even made use of the prologue of the Gospel of John. Porphyry has the merit of having systematized and spread the teaching of his master, Plotinus. He was born at Tyre, in the year 233; whether he was for some time a Christian is uncertain; from 263-268 he was a pupil of Plotinus at Rome; before that he wrote the work περι της εκ λογιων φιλοσοφιας, which shews that he wished to base philosophy on revelation; he lived a few years in Sicily (about 270) where he wrote his "fifteen books against the Christians"; he then returned to Rome where he laboured as a teacher, edited the works of Plotinus, wrote himself a series of treatises, married, in his old age, the Roman Lady Marcella, and died about the year 303. Porphyry was not an original, productive thinker, but a diligent and thorough investigator, characterized by great learning, by the gift of an acute faculty for philological and historical criticism, and by an earnest desire to spread the true philosophy of life, to refute false doctrines, especially those of the Christians, to ennoble man and draw him to that which is good. That a mind so free and noble surrendered itself entirely to the philosophy of Plotinus and to polytheistic mysticism, is a proof that the spirit of the age works almost irresistibly, and that religious mysticism was the highest possession of the time. The teaching of Porphyry is distinguished from that of Plotinus by the fact that it is still more practical and religious. The aim of philosophy, according to Porphyry, is the salvation of the soul. The origin and the guilt of evil lie not in the body, but in the desires of the soul. The strictest asceticism (abstinence from cohabitation, flesh and wine) is therefore required in addition to the knowledge of God. During the course of his life Porphyry warned men more and more decidedly against crude popular beliefs and immoral cults. "The ordinary notions of the Deity are of such a kind that it is more godless to share them than to neglect the images of the gods." But freely as he criticised the popular religions, he did not wish to give them up. He contended for a pure worship of the many gods, and recognised the right of every old national religion, and the religious duties of their professors. His work against the Christians is not directed against Christ, or what he regarded as the teaching of Christ, but against the Christians of his day and against the sacred books which, according to Porphyry, were written by impostors and ignorant people. In his acute criticism of the genesis or what was regarded as Christianity in his day, he spoke bitter and earnest truths, and therefore acquired the name of the fiercest and most formidable of all the enemies of Christians. His work was destroyed (condemned by an edict of Theodosius II. and Valentinian, of the year 448), and even the writings in reply (by Methodius, Eusebius, Apollinaris, Philostorgius, etc.,) have not been preserved. Yet we possess fragments in Lactantius, Augustine, Macarius Magnes and others, which attest how thoroughly Porphyry studied the Christian writings and how great his faculty was for true historical criticism.

Porphyry marks the transition to the Neoplatonism which subordinated itself entirely to the polytheistic cults, and which strove, above all, to defend the old Greek and Oriental religions against the formidable assaults of Christianity. Iamblichus, the disciple of Porphyry (died 330), transformed Neoplatonism "from a philosophic theorem into a theological doctrine." The doctrines peculiar to Iamblichus can no longer be deduced from scientific, but only from practical motives. In order to justify superstition and the ancient cults, philosophy in Iamblichus becomes a theurgic, mysteriosophy, spiritualism. Now appears that series of "Philosophers", in whose case one is frequently unable to decide whether they are deceivers or deceived, "decepti deceptores," as Augustine says. A mysterious mysticism of numbers plays a great rôle. That which is absurd and mechanical is surrounded with the halo of the sacramental; myths are proved by pious fancies and pietistic considerations with a spiritual sound; miracles, even the most foolish, are believed in and are performed. The philosopher becomes the priest of magic, and philosophy an instrument of magic. At the same time, the number of Divine Beings is infinitely increased by the further action of unlimited speculation. But this fantastic addition which Iamblichus makes to the inhabitants of Olympus, is the very fact which proves that Greek philosophy has here returned to mythology, and that the religion of nature was still a power. And yet no one can deny that, in the fourth century, even the noblest and choicest minds were found among the Neoplatonists. So great was the declension, that this Neoplatonic philosophy was still the protecting roof for many influential and earnest thinkers, although swindlers and hypocrites also concealed themselves under this roof. In relation to some points of doctrine, at any rate, the dogmatic of Iamblichus marks an advance. Thus, the emphasis he lays on the idea that evil has its seat in the will, is an important fact; and in general the significance he assigns to the will is perhaps the most important advance in psychology, and one which could not fail to have great influence on dogmatic also (Augustine). It likewise deserves to be noted that Iamblichus disputed Plotinus' doctrine of the divinity of the human soul.

The numerous disciples of Iamblichus (Aedesius, Chrysantius, Eusebius, Priscus, Sopater, Sallust and especially Maximus, the most celebrated) did little to further speculation; they occupied themselves partly with commenting on the writings of the earlier philosophers (particularly Themistius), partly as missionaries of their mysticism. The interests and aims of these philosophers are best shewn in the treatise "De mysteriis Ægyptiorum." Their hopes were strengthened when their disciple Julian, a man enthusiastic and noble, but lacking in intellectual originality, ascended the imperial throne, 361 to 363. This emperor's romantic policy of restoration, as he himself must have seen, had, however, no result, and his early death destroyed ever hope of supplanting Christianity.

But the victory of the Church, in the age of Valentinian and Theodosius, unquestionably purified Neoplatonism. The struggle for dominion had led philosophers to grasp at and unite themselves with everything that was hostile to Christianity. But now Neoplatonism was driven out of the great arena of history. The Church and its dogmatic, which inherited its estate, received along with the latter superstition, polytheism, magic, myths and the apparatus of religious magic. The more firmly all this established itself in the Church and succeeded there, though not without finding resistance, the freer Neoplatonism becomes. It does not by any means give up its religious attitude or its theory of knowledge, but it applies itself with fresh zeal to scientific investigations and especially to the study of the earlier philosophers. Though Plato remains the divine philosopher, yet it may be noticed how, from about 400, the writings of Aristotle were increasingly read and prized. Neoplatonic schools continue to flourish in the chief cities of the empire up to the beginning of the fifth century, and in this period they are at the same time the places where the theologians of the Church are formed. The noble Hypatia, to whom Synesius, her enthusiastic disciple, who was afterwards a bishop, raised a splendid monument, taught in Alexandria. But from the beginning of the fifth century ecclesiastical fanaticism ceased to tolerate heathenism. The murder of Hypatia put an end to philosophy in Alexandria, though the Alexandrian school maintained itself in a feeble form till the middle of the sixth century. But in one city of the East, removed from the great highways of the world, which had become a provincial city and possessed memories which the Church of the fifth century felt itself too weak to destroy, viz., in Athens, a Neoplatonic school continued to flourish. There, among the monuments of a past time, Hellenism found its last asylum. The school of Athens returned to a more strict philosophic method and to learned studies. But as it clung to religious philosophy and undertook to reduce the whole Greek tradition, viewed in the light of Plotinus' theory, to a comprehensive and strictly articulated system, a philosophy arose here which may be called scholastic. For every philosophy is scholastic which considers fantastic and mythological material as a noli me tangere, and treats it in logical categories and distinctions by means of a complete set of formulæ. But to these Neoplatonists the writings of Plato, certain divine oracles, the Orphic poems, and much else which were dated back to the dim and distant past, were documents of standard authority, and inspired divine writings. They took from them the material of philosophy, which they then treated with all the instruments of dialectic.

The most prominent teachers at Athens were Plutarch (died 433), his disciple Syrian (who, as an exegete of Plato and Aristotle, is said to have done important work, and who deserves notice also, because he very vigorously emphasised the freedom of the will), but, above all, Proclus (411-485). Proclus is the great scholastic of Neoplatonism. It was he "who fashioned the whole traditional material into a powerful system with religious warmth and formal clearness, filling up the gaps and reconciling the contradictions by distinctions and speculations," "Proclus," says Zeller, "was the first who, by the strict logic of his system, formally completed the Neoplatonic philosophy and gave it, with due regard to all the changes it had undergone since the second century, that form in which it passed over to the Christian and Mohammedan middle ages." Forty-four years after the death of Proclus the school of Athens was closed by Justinian (in the year 529); but in the labours of Proclus it had completed its work, and could now really retire from the scene. It had nothing new to say; it was ripe for death, and an honourable end was prepared for it. The words of Proclus, the legacy of Hellenism to the Church and to the middle ages, attained an immeasurable importance in the thousand years which followed. They were not only one of the bridges by which the philosophy of the middle ages returned to Plato and Aristotle, but they determined the scientific method of the next thirty generations, and they partly produced, partly strengthened and brought to maturity the mediæval Christian mysticism in East and West.

The disciples of Proclus, Marinus, Asclepiodotus, Ammonius, Zenodotus, Isidorus, Hegias, Damascius, are not regarded as prominent. Damascius was the last head of the school at Athens. He, Simplicius, the masterly commentator on Aristotle, and five other Neoplatonists, migrated to Persia after Justinian had issued the edict closing the school. They lived in the illusion that Persia, the land of the East, was the seat of wisdom, righteousness and piety. After a few years they returned with blasted hopes to the Byzantine kingdom.

At the beginning of the sixth century Neoplatonism died out as an independent philosophy in the East; but almost at the same time, and this is no accident, it conquered new regions in the dogmatic of the Church through the spread of the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius; it began to fertilize Christian mysticism, and filled the worship with a new charm.

In the West, where, from the second century, we meet with few attempts at philosophic speculation, and where the necessary conditions for mystical contemplation were wanting, Neoplatonism only gained a few adherents here and there. We know that the rhetorician, Marius Victorinus, (about 350) translated the writings of Plotinus. This translation exercised decisive influence on the mental history of Augustine, who borrowed from Neoplatonism the best it had, its psychology, introduced it into the dogmatic of the Church, and developed it still further. It may be said that Neoplatonism influenced the West at first only through the medium or under the cloak of ecclesiastical theology. Even Boethius—we can now regard this as certain—was a Catholic Christian. But in his mode of thought he was certainly a Neoplatonist. His violent death in the year 525, marks the end of independent philosophic effort in the West. This last Roman philosopher stood indeed almost completely alone in his century, and the philosophy for which he lived was neither original, nor firmly grounded and methodically carried out.