1. The Greek-Jewish Philosophy of Philo. The Jews lived in great numbers in Alexandria, and many of them were wealthy and influential. In Alexandria the Old Testament had been translated into Greek, and through it the Greeks had become acquainted with thereligion of the Jews. While the Old Testament contained the philosophy of the Jews, these Alexandrian Jews had learned in Alexandria to admire greatly the philosophy of the Greeks. So great was their admiration that they soon conceived Plato to be in their Law and their Law in Plato. They argued that since the Old Testament was their revelation, all the best Greek philosophy must be in the Old Testament. The Alexandrian Jews used Greek conceptions wherever they found them; and this tendency toward eclecticism appeared as early as 160 B. C. in Aristobulus and Aristeas. At that time these Jews used Greek philosophy in interpreting the Old Testament and employed the “allegorical method of interpretation.” This eclectic tendency was brought to completion by Philo (25 B. C.–50 A. D.), who was the most notable philosopher of this time. Philo was guided in his eclecticism by some such rules as these: (1) Revelation is the highest possible authority and includes the best of Greek thought; (2) Greek philosophy is derived from the fundamental principles of the Old Testament; (3) Jewish revelation is expressed in symbols, while Greek philosophy is expressed in concepts.
Philo’s teaching contains, in unsymmetrical form, both Stoicism and Platonism, and in it can be found the seeds of all that grew up in Christian soil. His philosophy was a bridge from the philosophy of Judaism to Christian theology. It has been called a “buffer” philosophy.
God is the ultimate cause of the world, but He is so transcendent that He can be described only in negative terms. This method of defining God got the name in later times of “negative theology.” It was the commonmethod in these Alexandrian days. God is absolutely inconceivable and inexpressible to man; to Himself He is “I am who am.” The goodness of God impelled Him, and His power enabled Him, to create the world. From this point of view Philo is a monist. But in man reason and sense meet. Man’s soul is from God, but his sense-body is from matter, and from this point of view Philo is a dualist. Matter is outside God. God is so transcendent that He cannot come in contact with matter, and so He created the world and rules the world through mediators or “potencies.” These “potencies” are the same as the Ideas of Plato, the “reasons” of the Stoics, the numbers of the Pythagoreans, the angels of the Old Testament, or the dæmons of popular mythology. The sum-total of God’s activity in the world was called by Philo the Logos. Philo speaks of the Logos in two ways: sometimes as the plural number of teleological forces in the world; sometimes as the unity of these forces, “the first begotten of God,” “the second God,” “the son of God.” The Logos represents the first attempt to overcome the dualism between matter and God. The Logos is the high priest standing between God and the world. It is the everlasting revelation of God’s presence. Philo’s world is made by God and not by others, and is the expression of God’s thought in infinite forms and forces. God is not defiled by coming into contact with matter. God gives orders, the Logos obeys. Philo believed in transmigration of souls, and to him the most important problem is, How the spirit can become like God. The answer is (1) by the acquirement of the Stoic apathy, (2) by possessing the Aristotelian dianoetic virtues, (3) by complete absorption in God.
2. Neo-Pythagoreanism. The history of Pythagoreanism is extremely varied. Its body of doctrine from epoch to epoch was continually changing. The only characteristic common to its entire history was its practical tendency toward asceticism and its affiliation with the Mysteries. Let us review the history of Pythagoreanism down to the time of neo-Pythagoreanism. In 510 B. C., at the battle of Crotona, the early band of Pythagoreans was dispersed, and about 504 B. C. Pythagoras died. His scattered followers formed a school centring at Thebes around the philosophy of numbers, and this school lasted until 350 B. C. In 350 B. C. Pythagoreanism no longer existed as a school, for its members had either joined the Academy or formed one of the Mysteries. In 100 B. C. Pythagoreanism again emerged under the name of neo-Pythagoreanism, and this is the body which we meet in the introductory stage of the Religious Period. Alexandria was its centre, but it drew its disciples from every part of the earth. Among them Apollonius alone rises as a distinct figure. He was widely known, for he traveled everywhere as a religious teacher and wonder-worker. Other neo-Pythagoreans were P. Nigidius Figulus, a friend of Cicero, Sotion, a friend of the Sextians, Moderatus of Gades, and in later times Nicomachus of Gerasa and Numenius of Apamea. Another, and rather numerous group, allied to the neo-Pythagoreans, should be mentioned here. These were the so-called Eclectic Platonists, the representatives of whom were Plutarch (50–125 A. D.), and Celsus (about 200 A. D.), the opponent of Christianity. The only important difference between the neo-Pythagoreans and the Eclectic Platonists was that the former referred to Pythagoras as their religiousmodel, and the latter to Plato. Both were mystical, ascetic, and eclectic.
Neo-Pythagoreanism first became noticeable in the first century B. C., on account of the great number of writings appearing under the names of Pythagoras and Philolaus. About these there arose a large neo-Pythagorean literature,—about ninety treatises by fifty authors. The writings under the name of Pythagoras were, for many centuries, the cause of the misconception of the true teaching of the original Pythagoras. The advent of the neo-Pythagorean literature marks the return at Alexandria to the older systems of thought, and is coincident with the learned literary investigations in the University of Alexandria. The particular revival of Pythagoreanism in the form of neo-Pythagoreanism came at the same time with the renewal of the Homeric form of poetry.
Neo-Pythagoreanism, as its history shows, is the philosophy of a half-religious sect with ascetic tendencies. Its transcendental philosophy was better suited to a people under an autocratic government, and ruled by Oriental traditions, than was the ethical teaching of the four Schools. The system of the ethical Schools arose out of the needs of the individual; but at this time the cry was for an absolute object which transcends both the individual and nature. The demand was for a god who could be served not by sacrifice, but by silent prayer, wisdom, and virtue. There are many points of similarity between the doctrine of Philo and neo-Pythagoreanism. The neo-Pythagoreans were monotheistic, but at the same time they accepted within their monotheism the hierarchy of the gods. They held to the commonly accepted doctrines of their time, viz., the transmigrationof the soul, the dualism of the mind and body, the mediation of a graded series of celestial beings between man and God. They interpreted God in a spiritual way, but they conceived the ideas in God’s mind to be the Pythagorean numbers—just as Philo conceived them to be the Old Testament angels.
The Development Period of Hellenic Religious Philosophy (250–476 A. D.). The Turning to the Present for Spiritual Authority. Platonism and Neo-Platonism. Neo-Platonism is the final statement of Hellenic culture, and the question may be asked, In what form did it present Hellenism? The answer is, It sets forth the Hellenic feeling as mysticism. The contribution of Plotinus was the destruction of the classic Greek ideal with its definiteness of form, and was the substitution of a new ideal of soaring spiritual exaltation. One has only to look back to the art, science, and philosophy of the Periclean Age to appreciate how far this last survival of Greek culture had drifted from its original moorings. Nevertheless, neo-Platonism is not so very far distant from that powerful ascetic principle in the Greek mysteries which is one aspect of the doctrine of Plato himself. Neo-Platonism was Platonism exaggerated on this mystic and ascetic side. Plotinus said that he was ashamed that he had a body; that the soul looks on and weeps at the sinfulness of the body; that it is not enough to regulate the body, but that the body must be exterminated. As the voice of Hellenism, neo-Platonism is speaking in an age when consciousness is weighed down with the sense of the enormity of evil and the need of salvation. Neo-Platonism feels that the moral conflict in the human soul is repeated in the universe; that the eternal struggle between matter and spirit goeson in the macrocosm as well as the microcosm. Plotinus held to the ancient Greek conception of the personification of the powers of nature, of the derivation of happiness from activity, of the supremacy of the intellect over the other faculties. But in accepting the ancient Greek doctrine of the subordination of man to the universe, he conceived man to be absorbed by the universe.
Neo-Platonism and the Two Introductory Philosophies. Neo-Platonism, therefore, shares in the mysticism of the philosophies of Philo and the neo-Pythagoreans. All three teach the transcendence of God; all three were metaphysically monistic and ethically dualistic; all three conceive the existence of intermediaries between God and man. The introductory philosophies sought to build eclectic doctrines, while neo-Platonism became eclectic only in its last phases. Plotinus constructed a positive and original philosophy, and among the three systems the teaching of Plotinus is carefully worked out. Indeed, Plotinus is by far the greatest thinker of this religious period. In the philosophy of Plotinus the relations between man and God are given a more æsthetic character, and the doctrine of immediate experience is more carefully discussed and has greater importance than in neo-Pythagoreanism and the teaching of Philo.
Neo-Platonism and Christianity. Neo-Platonism and Christianity have one thing at least in common. They have the same problem,—how to spiritualize the universe. This was the problem that both Plotinus and Origen attempted to work out. With the development of the consciousness of spiritual personality and the need of a revelation, the Divine seemed to both to be correspondingly farther away. God is unknown andincomprehensible, and so pure that He cannot come in contact with earthly existence. What, then, is the bond between the heavenly and the earthly? From the point of view of cosmology and of ethics, neither succeeded in overcoming the dualism. The sensuous was regarded as alien to God, and as a thing from which the spirit must free itself. Metaphysically their efforts to construct a spiritual monism were more successful, but their efforts were along different lines. The Christian conceived the universe of God and matter to be bound together by the principle of love; the neo-Platonist, by a series of countless grades of beings in diminishing perfections from the All-perfect. Then again, to the neo-Platonist the question of the return of man to God was a question of the personal inner experience of the individual; to the Christian theologian it was included in the larger problem of the historical process by which the whole human race is redeemed. Thus the metaphysical solution of each works out differently and with different factors.
Both neo-Platonic and Christian theology tried to prove that their respective religious convictions were the only true source of salvation. Both originated in the Alexandrian School. Christian theology was preceded by the fantastic system of the Gnostics, as Plotinus was preceded by the Pythagoreans and Philo. In their development the differences between the two appear. Christianity was supported by a church organization which had an internal vitality and a regulative power; neo-Platonism was supported and regulated by individuals, without organization, who had assimilated every faith. Christian theology was founded on a faith that had already expanded, while neo-Platonism was at thebeginning an erudite religion that tried to develop an extended faith and, incidentally, later to assimilate other cults. Outwardly neo-Platonism, as the final stand of the pagan world to save itself from destruction, was unsuccessful in that it failed to perpetuate itself as an organization. Really it achieved a marked success. Not only did it live a long life of two hundred and fifty years, but it also lived in the development of its antagonist, Christianity. For neo-Platonism, by the irony of fate, was one of the important factors that entered into the building up and strengthening of Christianity. In its lingering death-struggle Hellenism was creating the conceptions that the Christian, Augustine, later employed in shaping Christian theology for the Middle Ages.