Part 15

The Pythagorean school had ceased to have a separate existence by the fourth century B.C., but the ideas which the school had cherished were not lost. In the last century before our era these doctrines were revived, and in accordance with the syncretistic spirit of the age were combined with Platonic teachings into a philosophic, or as we may more truly say, a theosophic system. The first representative of this revival known to us by name is Nigidius Figulus, a friend and contemporary of Cicero. Its most famous leader was Apollonius of Tyana in Cappadocia, who lived under Nero. By the third century a mass of marvellous legends had gathered about this Apollonius which is preserved in his life, written about 210 A.D. by Philostratus at the request of the Empress Julia Domna.

The extant evidence shows us clearly that by the second century B.C. the process had begun at Alexandria of reconciling Jewish theology with Greek philosophy. The first, however, to combine the two into a system, known to us as the Judeo-Aexandrian, was the learned Philo, who was born about 25 B.C. He belonged to one of the most prominent Jewish families; in 40 A.D., he was chosen to head a delegation of Aexandrian Jews which was sent to the Emperor Caligula. His purpose in common with the other adherents of this school was primarily religious, and he aimed at a better understanding of his own religion rather than at building up a system of philosophic thought. To accomplish his purpose he took from the Hellenic schools whatever seemed useful, without troubling himself overmuch about the logical relation of the parts which he wove together. The movement actually developed a school which had a large historical significance.

The third philosophy is Neoplatonism, founded at Alexandria, according to tradition, by Ammonius Saccas at the beginning of the third century. Ammonius had been reared in the Christian faith, but on reaching maturity returned to pagan philosophy. His instruction was given wholly by word of mouth. Of his numerous pupils the most famous were Origen, the church father, and Plotinus. The latter and his pupil Porphyry were the chief representatives of the school in the period we have now under consideration.

Obviously in the time at our disposal we cannot consider in detail all the several doctrines of these three schools, but we must focus our attention on certain elements which are of prime importance in the pagan philosophy of the day and most significant because of their relation to Christianity. Before we proceed to this, however, I must ask you to remember that we are now dealing not with rigidly logical systems, but with mystic philosophies, with theosophies. There is much in them, therefore, that we cannot hope to understand clearly, because these philosophers themselves abandoned the path of reason alone and let intuition and emotion guide them in their loftiest experiences.

Let us first examine certain characteristics common to all these schools. They all combine large elements drawn from Platonism with borrowings from later philosophies, especially Stoicism; and, as I have already indicated, Judeo-Alexandrianism shows the influence of Jewish thought. All hold to the dual nature of man, a view which first became of religious significance with the Orphics in the sixth century. Plato, you will remember, emphasized the conflict of flesh and spirit, and we have seen how the Stoics, for all their monistic theory, came finally to the same dualism. Closely connected with this view was the contempt for the world of the senses which these schools show. This was due to a development of the Platonic doctrines of matter and of the descent of souls into corporeal dwellings; these teachings in their turn led to a confirmation of the belief that the ascetic life was the proper one for the philosopher—a doctrine which had been held in considerable degree by the Stoics and Cynics. In theology all maintained the transcendence of God, and postulated between God and this world intermediary powers, which work God’s will and cause all the sensible phenomena with which we are acquainted. Finally all believed in the possibility of a direct revelation of God to man, when in a state of enthusiasm or ecstasy. This belief in direct divine revelation, together with the ascetic tendencies of the several schools, led to the establishment of the ideal of sanctity as that toward which the faithful sectary should strive. Pythagoras was canonized by his later followers, Plato became “the divine”; Apollonius of Tyana grew in tradition to be the model of the saint on earth. He was regarded as one filled with divine inspiration, a worker of miracles. He ate no flesh, but lived solely on bread, fruits, and ordinary herbs; water was his only drink; he practised silence and neglected his person. The same description almost fits Plotinus, as made known to us by his biographer Porphyry. In all the essential practices these pagan saints anticipated their later Christian counterparts.

Let us look at the theology of these schools a little more closely. But before we proceed, it is important to define clearly what we mean by the transcendence of God, for the term is often loosely used. A transcendent god is one who is absolutely above the world and above man’s knowledge, a god who is so far removed that man can have no dealings with him directly, nor can he deal directly with man or make his works manifest to man, save through an intermediary. Such essentially was Aristotle’s God, his First Cause. The opposite idea is that of the immanence of God, such as we have seen in the Stoic teachings, in which God is conceived of as existing in all things. Now it is evident that in any system of philosophy or theology which believes in a transcendent God, and yet regards the visible world, including man, as the creation of the divine, some provision must be made for a being or beings, mediary between the transcendent God and the world, which shall express God’s will and make God intelligible to man. If such a being or beings do not exist to serve as mediators between the world and God, then man can have no knowledge of the divine whatsoever, and God cannot express himself in the world. Now in Plato’s philosophy the transcendency of God was at least implicit, it was clearly defined in Aristotle’s thought, and the idea certainly belonged to the Jewish-Alexandrian thought of the last two centuries before the beginning of the Christian era. Philo sets forth the doctrine most plainly. According to him God is so far above all mortal things that he must be defined in a negative way. All that we can say of him is that he is pure being, incorporeal, invisible, without qualities, above all virtue, and above all knowledge. We therefore cannot say that God is good or beautiful, because he is above all beauty and goodness; he is eternal, unchanging, existing in and for himself alone. His perfection is beyond our power to comprehend; our intellect cannot grasp his nature. All that man can know or say of God is that God _is_.[244] Yet naturally Philo is not content with negative definitions, but does attempt to express in a more or less traditional fashion the perfection of God; he speaks of him as that being which includes all reality within himself, or as the only being of whom real existence can be predicated; again as the absolute happy and perfect being; or as the original of all beauty. He likewise pictures God as the source of all activity, as the being to whom endless activity is as proper as it is for fire to burn or snow to chill; God is therefore the cause of all the activity in the world, as he is the supreme cause of all things.

Yet with his view of the transcendence of God, Philo could not say that God is present in the world save in his acts; and these acts he does not perform directly, for if God were to deal directly with the matter out of which the visible world is made, contact with that matter would defile the divine perfection. The creation of the world, therefore, God accomplished by incorporeal powers (δυνάμεις), by ideas (ἰδέαι), which are his servants.[245] The chief of these is the supreme reason, the word, the logos. In this logos all the ideas have their place, as the plan of a city has its place in the soul of its architect. The logos stands midway between God and the created world; it is not eternal as God is, or mortal as we, but occupies a middle position. The indebtedness of Philo to Plato is self-evident. Plato’s absolute and Plato’s ideas have been made mediary between the transcendent God and the visible world. This term, logos, the word, had been familiar not only to Greek philosophy from the time of Heraclitus but it had also a verbal parallel at least in certain Jewish expressions, “the wisdom of God,” “the word of God,” which Philo interprets in terms of the logos.

According to Philo the logos has a double rôle. Through the logos God created the world out of inert and formless matter, and continues to reveal himself through it to the world. The logos also serves as the high priest, the intercessor and advocate of the world with God.[246] Let me here note, however, that in Philo’s thought the logos could not take corporeal form; it could not become flesh and dwell among us, and therefore it was not possible that the logos should be identified completely with the idea of the Jewish Messiah.

Following Plato and the Stoics Philo teaches that man’s reason, his soul, is a particle, so to speak, of the divine intelligence that has entered into the human body. The human spirit, therefore, is divine, but man’s body is mortal and sinful. Here then, as in most of the philosophies which were influenced by Platonism, a discipline is necessary to subdue the flesh and free the spirit: man must constantly exercise his choice in preferring the things of the spirit, for through the gift of God man is free with power to choose the right or wrong. The moral obligation of man and the path of his salvation is the same as we have seen in earlier Greek thought. To this end Philo lays much weight on practice and education as contributing to advance in virtue; he is fired with a passionate longing for purity. In a notable passage he speaks thus to his own soul: “Haste thee, O my soul, to become God’s dwelling place, pure, holy; to become strong instead of utterly weak, powerful instead of impotent, wise instead of foolish, most reasonable instead of wandering.”[247] Yet he goes beyond his predecessors in teaching that man is so possessed by sin that he can escape from the bondage only by divine help; that his own reason and his own will are insufficient for the task. Knowledge and virtue are not acquired by unaided human effort, but are the gifts of God. Philo outdoes even the Stoics in requiring man to free himself from the passions of the body, and yet he points out that just because man is subject to these passions, because he is a sinner, he cannot unaided follow and imitate God, or make himself God’s holy temple. Man’s goodness then is due to the favor of God; salvation is an act of grace.

The end of man’s effort and hope is to attain to knowledge of God and thereby to find supreme happiness. But man cannot reach this by his own will or intellect, for God is so far removed from the world that he cannot be fully apprehended by one dwelling here, so that the gulf between man and God must be bridged. This is possible, Philo teaches, when the soul in ecstasy passes out of itself, beyond the sensuous world, the realm of ideas and the logos, to be at one with God. This vision of God is the supreme blessing, accorded only to the most perfect and holy among men; in it the human soul finds not only its rest and full satisfaction, but its own consummation.[248]

You recognize at once that we have here philosophy fired with religious emotion, that in Philo’s system at the end reason gives way before a passionate desire for revelation through union with God. Philosophy has become theosophy. The ecstacy which we have hitherto seen, has been connected chiefly with the worship of Dionysus, in which it was stimulated by means which we find offensive. But this ecstasy is not aroused by dance or music, or indeed by contemplation, but is attained in a purely passive condition when the soul is emptied of itself and becomes one with the Absolute.

These same ideas—the transcendence of God, the existence of mediary powers between God and the world, the ascetic life as a means of growth, the dependence of man on God’s grace for his salvation, the possibility of the Beatific Vision—all are common in varying degrees to all the mystic philosophies of the day. In the third century Neoplatonism became the most popular and influential. Through Origen and St. Augustine it passed into Christian theology. The real problem for Neoplatonism, as for the other religious philosophies of this time, was to set forth the way by which the soul of man could grasp the Divine directly and find its happiness and complete satisfaction in perfect unity with him. We have just seen how Philo had conceived of God as wholly transcendent, and had established the logos as the mediator who furnishes the necessary connection between the eternal, transcendent God and the created, temporal world. Plotinus outdid Philo in that he removed his God one stage still farther away. His definition of God is necessarily similar to that of Philo, but he endeavors to give a notion of an Absolute more remote, if possible, than that of his predecessors. God he says is neither reason itself nor can he be grasped by the use of reason, but is above all knowledge and reason.[249] We must conceive of him as absolute unity, as at once pure creative activity, the first cause, the power on which the world depends, and at the same time as the final cause toward which the world is tending. The acts of creation are constant; yet God does not create the visible world directly, but as the sun without effort or loss to itself sends out its rays, so God out of the fullness of his perfection emanates Intelligence (Νοῦς), in which are immanent the Ideas: these are the causes of all things which come into being. The second grade of emanation is that of the World-soul (Ψυχή), which pours itself out, so to speak, into the individual souls. The last stage of emanation is that of Matter, the material which in itself has no characteristics of being. The sensible world is produced by the action of the Ideas on Matter, forming and shaping it through Intelligence.[250] You will note here the four stages, God, Intelligence, Soul, and Matter, as compared with Philo’s three, God, the Logos, and Matter.

You may well ask at this point why these later philosophers with their desire to know God, should still lay so much emphasis on his transcendence, apparently vying with one another in pushing the Divine beyond the universe, which they still regarded as his creation. Now we have already seen that Plato implied that his material principle was imperfect and thereby the source of evil, and that his Absolute, the supreme Idea, was separate from matter. In the period we are now considering all schools which owed ultimate allegiance to Plato or the Pythagoreans held to a clearly defined dualistic view of the universe. Conscious that the visible, material world is imperfect and full of evil, unstable and decaying, they argued that God cannot be immanent in the world, for if he were, he would be subject to evil, imperfection, and change, whereas we must conceive him to be good, perfect, and unchanging unity. Therefore the motive which prompted all these theologians was their desire to save the unity and perfection of God by removing him from all possible contact with matter, to which some like the Neoplatonists, following Plato, absolutely denied all the attributes of being. And the doctrine of divine transcendence was the more natural for Philo and all who had come under the influence of Jewish thought, since the Old Testament constantly affirms the absolute exaltation and perfection of God. In like manner the doctrine of mediary powers was helped by the Jewish idea of the wisdom of God and the popular post-exilic belief in angels.

Yet when the theologians had removed God beyond the confines of the world, beyond all knowledge, they had still to deal with the passionate longing for knowledge of God and for assurance of salvation which was strong in large numbers of the uninstructed, as well as in the philosophic élite. This knowledge and assurance could only be supplied by a belief in the direct revelation of God to man. Such a belief was traditional in the Old Testament; on the Greek side it was fostered by the feeling that the great teachers Pythagoras and Plato were divinely inspired; and in the popular Oriental religions which we shall consider in a later lecture, divine revelation was a fundamental article of faith. But let us return to Plotinus.

The second grade of emanation in the Neoplatonic system is the World-soul (Ψυχή),[251] which, though inferior to Intelligence (Νοῦς), is nevertheless divine and immaterial. It stands midway between Intelligence and Matter and is related to both. Within the World-soul, which is the highest of all souls, corresponding to Plato’s idea of the Good, are all individual souls.[252] These descend into matter and, pervading bodies in all their parts, give them sensation, reason, and all their life. But even as the sunlight descending into darkness is dimmed or wholly lost, so by their descent and birth into corporeal forms souls are made to forget their divine origin. They wish to be independent; like children who leave their parents and dwell apart from them, the souls of men forget their own nature and their divine father; they lose their freedom; they honor that which is not honorable, and so fall deeper into sin. The sinner therefore must be turned from his ways, must be made to remember his divine race, to honor the things of the spirit, and to cease reverencing those things which are not the soul’s concern.[253] The soul’s return is to be accomplished by an asceticism with which we are now familiar. This the leaders illustrated in their own lives. Porphyry tells us that his master remained unmarried, abstained from animal food, lived in the simplest fashion, and so despised his body that he seemed ashamed of its possession.[254] The pupil laid even more stress on the subjugation of the flesh that the soul might be free and return toward God. “The more we turn toward that which is mortal,” he says, “the more we unfit our minds for the infinite grandeur, and the more we withdraw from attachment to the body, in that same measure we approach the divine.”[255] He taught that men must regard their bodies as garments, which not only burden but actually defile them, and which they like athletes must lay aside that naked and unclothed they may enter the stadium to contend in the Olympia of the soul.[256]

Plotinus, however, held that men would not all rise above the plane of the senses, but that many would remain caught by them, thinking that the good is identical with pleasure and pain with evil; others are more capable, he said, but they cannot turn their gaze upward, and so they devote themselves to the virtues of the practical life. But there is a third class of divine men of greater strength and keener insight, who can see and follow the gleam from above, so that they rise beyond the mists of this world to their true and natural abode, like men returning to their native city after long wandering.[257]

The soul’s final aim in its flight from evil Plotinus defines in Plato’s words: it is likeness to God.[258] That is the sum of all virtue. But the master distinguishes grades and degrees of virtue in practice. There are the social virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, which serve to regulate the passions and help man to form right opinions. At this stage these cardinal virtues are related solely to external objects, and serve primarily to better man in his mundane activities. Next come those virtues which purify the soul from the pollution of the body, the activities which have nothing to do with the body but belong wholly to the soul; they are concerned with thought and reason. But in the highest range the virtues of the lower stages are no longer related to external objects, but have to do with the Intelligence (Νοῦς) alone. This is the contemplative life, man’s highest activity, in which he becomes himself divine.[259]

Yet the Neoplatonist held that there is a still higher stage. When man’s soul has mounted upward to Intelligence and lives the contemplative life, the space between Intelligence and God is yet unbridged. This gulf can only be crossed when the soul in ecstasy, forgetful of all thought and of self, rises to complete knowledge and union with the One.[260] This supreme privilege, according to Porphyry, was vouchsafed his master four times in the years he was his pupil; and once he too had seen the Beatific Vision.[261]

It is evident that Neoplatonism, the last stage of Greek philosophy, is no isolated or strange phenomenon. On its metaphysical side it is the consummation and final synthesis of the whole course of Greek thought from the sixth century to its own day; likewise in ethics it combined the views of its chief predecessors as its leaders understood them; and finally in the doctrine of the soul’s union with God it only carried the mystical tendencies of previous centuries to their natural conclusion.

If time allowed, we might consider the way in which the Neoplatonists reconciled their theology with the polytheism and demonology of popular belief, but that would lead us too far; indeed it would take us away from our own proper subject and from the main interest of the great leaders of this school. They were most concerned with finding out and showing men the true path to the soul’s peace and happiness, and we are chiefly interested in the history of their thought on this high theme. They found their object not in the exercise of the reason or the will alone, but in mysticism.

FOOTNOTES:

[225] _De vita beata_, 17.

[226] _Diss._, I, 1; II, 5, 13; and often.

[227] Stob. _Ecl._ I, 1, 12 = SVF, I, 537.

[228] Diog. Laërt. VII, 149 = SVF, I, 175.

[229] Aetius, I, 27, 5 = SVF, I, 176; II, 974 ff.

[230] _Gnomol._ Stobaei 31 Schenkl; cf. _Diss._ 4, 1 (_On Freedom_) entire.

[231] Cf. Cic. _de Fin._ III, 64 mundum autem censent (Stoici) regi numine deorum eumque esse quasi communem urbem et civitatem hominum et deorum; et unumquemque nostrum eius mundi esse partem, ex quo illud natura consequi ut communem utilitatem nostrae anteponamus. Sen. _Ep._ 95, 52 membra sumus corporis magni, etc.; cf. Epict. I, 3 (_How one should proceed from the fact that God is the Father of all men to the conclusions therefrom_).

[232] Sen. _de Ben._ 3, 18, 2.

[233] _Ibid._ 20.

[234] _Ibid._ 28.

[235] _Dig._ I, 1, 4. 5, 4; XVII, 32.

[236] _De otio_, 4, 1; cf. _Epist._ 68, 2.

[237] Stob. _Flor._ 40, 9.

[238] VI, 44; and often.

[239] _Ep._ 95, 50; 115, 5.

[240] _Diss._ I, 16, 15-21.

[241] IV, 41.

[242] II, 2.

[243] _Diss._ I, 14, 6; II, 8, 11: σὺ ἀπóσπασμα εἰ τοῦ θεοῦ ἕχεις τι ἐν σεαυτῷ μἐρος ἐκείνου.

[244] It is impossible to give here all the numerous references to Philo’s works on which these and the following statements depend. The most important of Philo’s works bearing on the nature of God are _de allegoriis legum, de somniis, de opificio mundi, de Cherubim, quod deus sit immutabilis_. For detailed references consult Zeller, _Phil. d. Griechen_, III, 2^4, pp. 400 ff.

[245] _De special. legib._ I, 329; _de vita Mosis_, II, 127 ff.

[246] _Quis rer. div. her._ 205 f.

[247] _De somn._ I, 149. Wendland’s transposition and choice of text are not followed here.

[248] _De alleg. leg._ III, 29 ff.