Neoplatonism and Christianity

in this series are neoplatonism that me and my dear colleagues have put together so far we have dealt with the topic from various angles and perspectives both neoplatonism itself but also how it has influenced various different religious and philosophical traditions across history but with all that there is still a huge hole in the discussion that has yet to be filled a hole that looks suspiciously like the largest religion in the world Christianity indeed while it hasn't been properly acknowledged earlier in history there is no doubt to Scholars today that neoplatonism had a massive influence on the early history and Theology of Christianity helping to shape some of the core features and Creeds of that religion so let's Trace some of the places where we can find this relationship between neoplatonism and Christianity [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you the first lines of the Gospel of John says quote in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God the word word is a translation of the Greek term logos which is a complicated philosophical word this shows us that even in the gospels themselves Christianity was in dialogue with Greek or Hellenic thought while their religion essentially grew out of Judaism it's also clear that its Origins are intertwined with all the intellectual and religious currents that existed in the Mediterranean region in the first centuries A.D as most of us know Christianity as we know it didn't happen overnight after the death of Jesus there followed many centuries of debates discussions divisions and developments before we reached anything like an Orthodoxy or many of the mainstream beliefs that we associate with the religion today and in all of those developments Christian thinkers remained in dialogue with other currents and schools of thought one of these was of course the major School of neoplatonism while platonism as a whole is of course traced back to Plato who lived several centuries BC neoplatonism or late platonism is a further development of that philosophical tradition the origins of which is usually traced through the 3rd Century philosopher platinus and his successors like porphery iamblicus and proclus if you want a thorough introduction to platinus and neoplatonism as a whole you should check out my previous video dealing with that topic in particular as well as the excellent companion videos by my fellow collaborators but as a very short summary neoplatonism sometimes called blade platonism is a late antique development within platonism primarily associated with again figures like platinus it conceives of existence as consisting of different levels or realities hypotheses in Greek beginning with the highest one tohen which cannot be understood or described in any way being hidden in a radical epiphatic Darkness this one then emanates or you could say flows over into something called the news which is often translated with words like intellect or mind which is the archetype of all things in the world and is also of course the place of the platonic forms news then also emanates into these so-called Soul or World Soul sometimes which in turn creates the world of nature or our physical Universe of time and space the neoplatonists then conceive of a return back from the physical up the ladder of reality and back to the Noose and even to the one everything flows from the one and returns to the one and the goal of the human being is to turn away from physicality and material things traveling Inward and contemplating his true noetic reality thus returning to his home in The Noose and there experiencing a mystical Unity with that noose and even ultimately with the one itself again this is a criminally short and simplified rundown and there is a lot more to neoplatonism and the thought of people like platinus so I really suggest you go watch my earlier dedicated episode first before continuing on well with this episode neoplatonism quickly became an incredibly widespread and influential School of philosophy and came to prominence around the same time that some of the most influential Christian Church fathers and theologians lived and worked and we find in these thinkers clear indications of their engagement with and influence by the late platonist this is perhaps most visible in figures like origin the cappadocian fathers such as Gregory of Nissa Augustine and perhaps of course above all the pseudo dionysius so what are these indications exactly and how have they impacted Christianity as a whole to start off we can discuss the fascinating figure origin of Alexandria a person has had a quite complicated relationship with Christian Orthodoxy he was an incredibly popular and influential figure in his day even being considered the first truly Christian Theologian but in later periods with the formation of Orthodoxy he and his ideas were often criticized and even condemned by the church you might find it kind of weird to talk about origin in relation to neoplatonism after all he died before the founder of neapolitanism itself the timeus so can there really be any connection here at all well one of the things that are so interesting about origin is that he might have had a personal relationship with patanus himself indeed in the life of platinus written by his student porphry we are told that platina studied in Alexandria under a teacher called ammonius sakas he also tells us that platinus's fellow students included a guy called origin while this is a disputed question many signs indicate that this origin and the Christian Theologian might be one and the same person our origin was from Alexandria just like the Titus he lived at around the same time and also seems to have studied under a teacher called ammonius so it is quite possible that platinus and origin studied together and shared the same platonist teacher which might give us Clues as to why we find ideas in origin that certainly appear at least somewhat neoplatonists or at least certainly platonist in nature origin is famous for a number of ideas and teachings he wrote and preached several commentaries on Biblical scriptures where he is famous for his strongly allegorical readings readings where Biblical verses are often given platonistic interpretation in these allegorical readings he drew significantly on predecessors such as the fellow alexandrian and first century Jewish philosopher Philo another very significant platonizing figure scripture always comes first to origin but there is no denying the fact that he interpreted it according to philosophical principles and specifically platonism the story of Adam and Eve seems that he's partly to be a symbolic story depicting how immaterial souls in the noetic world descend into the material Realm quartz and the expulsion of the man and woman from Paradise and they're being clothed with tunics of skins which God because of the transgression of men made for those who had sinned contain a certain secret and mystical Doctrine for transcending that of Plato of the souls losing its wings and being born downward to Earth until we can lay hold of some stable resting place and this brings us to one of those really famous teachings of origin and one of those that he would be greatly criticized for later the fact that he believed in the pre-existence of Souls in true platonist fashion origin holds that Souls exist before they are born into this world there is in other words a kind of hierarchy the immaterial world of pure Souls being above the physical world and our present existence here being a kind of descent downward partly represented by the fall of Adam and Eve indeed when we look deeper into Origins Theology and cosmology we find some clear parallels with platonism and sometimes things are even close to neoplatonism first of all he conceives of God Jose in an apophatic way in other words our human Minds cannot understand or grasp God as he is beyond our conception and things like time and space god is a perfect immaterial and incorporeal unity although he does of course include the Son and the Holy Spirit in the system too there are a few things that are often said to characterize neoplatonism as it emerged around the same time as zevi pointed out in his earlier video on neoplatonism in Kabbalah there are often three particular themes that are used to trace neoplatonism and its influence number one is epiphaticism or apathetic theology number two is the idea of emanation that reality somehow emanates from this one down to this material world and then returns back to it and lastly the idea of Union mystica that one can become one or United with the highest principle in some way this is a core feature in neoplatonism that we are to return from the physical back to the one and become United to the one so in our discussion about neoplatanism and Christianity we're going to keep an eye out for these details of these features in particular at least ideas that are similar or related to these ideas we don't find these exact themes in origin to be clear with the possible exception of his relatively mild epiphaticism and this maybe isn't surprising given the fact that it was an older contemporary of Tinus but there are a few significant similarities between origin and and certainly platonism which no one would doubt but also with neoplatonism origen goes on to talk about the Noose and other key platonic concept and in some spots he seemed to identify God the Father with the news itself in other spots though he seems to see God the father as being higher than the news which is significant and perhaps predicted the conceptions of the one in platinus and his successors origin is also very famous and controversial for supposedly holding the idea of Epic catastes the conception that everything created will at some point return to its origins in Perfection essentially the idea that everyone or everything will eventually be saved hell in this case however it is interpreted is thus not Eternal but everyone there will eventually reach salvation origen was accused of holding this idea even to the point of saying that the Devil Himself will be saved and this was another point that he was strongly condemned for although Scholars will point out that this is somewhat of a misrepresentation Origins views are actually a lot more nuanced than that for sure though he seems to hold an idea close to this which also partly and probably stems back to his platonism if God is infinitely good which origin presumes then can he really allow people to suffer forever it's the age-old question to origin God's goodness seems to preclude that everything will eventually return to its original Perfection here I can't help but see that other characteristic neoplatonic doctrine that everything flows from the one and eventually returns back to the one here in origin everything must similarly return back to the first principle which in this case is of course God so to origin a god that is infinitely good cannot possibly allow people to suffer forever so to origin everyone must eventually be saved in the same way in a sort of platonic language that everything that comes from the one or God in this case must return to to God must return to the one so everything must go eventually go back to that original perfection in unity with the one I will admit that these neoplatonic Connections in origin are based on some speculation and stretching things a bit but we can be sure that he was an important factor in the entrance of platonism in general into Christian thought which would later take on the language of neoplatonism in particular just listen to this section of origin talking about prayer and how the practice of prayer can lead to a contemplation and maybe even Union with God and tell me it doesn't sound like a passage straight from platinus quote for the eyes of the Mind are lifted up from their preoccupation with Earthly things and from there being filled with the impression of material things and they are so exalted that they peer beyond the created order and arrive at the sheer contemplation of God and at conversing with him reverently and suitably as he listens how would things so great fail to profit those eyes that gaze at the glory of the Lord with unveiled face and that are being changed into his likeness from glory to glory for them they partake of some Divine and intelligible radiance I mean come on as we said many of these ideas of origin would eventually be highly criticized and condemned and he remains a somewhat contested figure but there's no doubt whatsoever that he still greatly influenced later key Christian Church fathers and thinkers even though they often sort of cleaned up some of the more controversial aspects of his thoughts and he thus had a major impact on Christian theology even if sometimes indirectly even such paradigms of Orthodoxy such as athanasius a key person in the formation of the doctrine of the Trinity was massively influenced by origin another group of Scholars that clearly took inspiration from the ideas of origin and perhaps more directly from neoplatonism where the so-called cappadocian fathers which included basil the great Gregory of Nissa and Gregory of naziensis it's also worth mentioning the sister of the first two macrina as a significant figure in this context these cappadocians are considered some of the most foundational scholars in Christian history and in terms of Christian doctrines especially in the Eastern church or what is often called Orthodox Christianity the most quote-unquote philosophical of the bunch was probably Gregory of Nissa and in his as well as the others writings we continue to see traces of some of those main neoplatonic themes it's interesting to point out that among Scholars it's often considered that the category of Christian mysticism kind of starts with the cappadocians while we see traces of it in writings by origin or maybe even Clement of Alexandria it's really with writers like Gregory of Nissa that mysticism starts to become a thing in Christianity properly and this is perhaps primarily through their discussion of ineffability and apothesis we mentioned in the earlier episode that the language of what we call mysticism owes a lot to figures like platinus in particular and their influence and that is perhaps visible here Gregory of Nissa talks about how God is beyond all human understanding or the ability of our minds to grasp we can never know the essence of God because God is per definition unknowable these discussions were partly in response to arguments made by the Aryans or really the so-called neo-aryans who argue that we can know the essence of God directly through his names since God the father is unbegotten this very name says something directly about the nature of the father that we can thus know it also leads to the conclusion that the father is superior to the sun since the sun is begotten whereas the father is unbegotten Gregory of Nissa and the cappadocians are trying to defend the Nicene or Orthodox conception of the Trinity by rejecting any such claims God is totally unknowable and Beyond us and Gregory really takes this epiphaticism to new heights in his writings indeed earlier figures like origen also spoke of God apathetically but not to as extreme of a degree as Gregory of Nissa earlier God may have been infinite and boundless thus unknowable through the sheer magnitude of God so to say God is infinite in such a way that no human mind can know him but it is conceivable that there could be a human that had a perfect unbounded mind that would be able to know God but Gregory of Nissa takes it further God is completely beyond all categories of knowing altogether he is so utterly Transcendent that our words or Minds simply aren't even in the same ballpark he is not infinite in the sense of extending indefinitely but in the sense that he is beyond all time and space beyond all conceptions of limit in other words Gregory seems to be a bit closer to someone like platinus in his conception of the one but he also makes some interesting Innovations because it is with the cappadocians that we first see the descriptions of God as a Darkness God is the unknowable darkness beyond all things this way of talking about the absolute principle which would perhaps get its most full expression in these pseudo-dionysius has become so famous and widely used to talk about the platonic one that I even use this kind of language in my video on your platonism even though platinus himself never really describes the one in this way earlier the one was talked about in terms of of light more so right but it is with Gregory that we see this language of Darkness God or in plutinian language the one is an utter darkness of Unknowing and this is the first time we see this language and this will become incredibly influential very popular especially in the Eastern Orthodox Church this way of talking about God and in mysticism so to say is incredibly widespread and popular and it kind of starts with the cappadocians and with Gregory in particular the cappadocians were greatly influenced by origin even though they cleaned up many of the more controversial aspects associated with him whether they were directly influenced by neoplatonism perhaps having read platinus or porphyry is more uncertain a lot of the ideas definitely seem to remind us of someone like platinus but this could very well have been indirectly through for example the platonizing Tendencies of origin there is no clear direct evidence that they read the original Pagan neoplatonist even though many want to argue for this position but for example they seem to pick up on the idea of apocatastises especially Gregory of Nissa just like origen he seems to argue that everything comes from God perhaps even emanates from God but that it must eventually also return back to God this means that everyone or everything will be saved right punishment is not Eternal for anyone rather being a kind of purification but in true neoplatonic fashion he argues for the idea of the outflow and inflow going out and returning back that is such a key feature of neoplatonism so already we have found two of those main characteristics that we mentioned earlier the epiphaticism and the emanation although slightly modified of course but we can even find that third feature the idea of union mystica or mystical Union indeed a very central theme for the cappadocians and for much of later theology especially in the Eastern Orthodox Church is the concept of theosis or literally becoming God Gregory of naziensis together with figures like athanasius like to say quote God became human so that we might become God theosis is a complex topic and one that can often be misunderstood but in short terms it's basically the idea that the ultimate goal is one of uniting with God which has been a prominent feature of Orthodoxy throughout history the Russian Orthodox Theologian vladimiryloski wrote quote the theological doctrines which have been elaborated in the course of these struggles can be treated in the most direct relation to the vital end that of Union with God to the attainment of which they are subservient this uniting with God has been interpreted in many different ways by different people and theologians but generally it does not mean that the person becomes directly United or become one with God in his Essence but rather that he somehow participates in the Divine Life as some would put it indeed this very point was the source for the so-called hesicast controversy in the Eastern Orthodox Church that erupted in the Middle Ages where great thinkers like Gregory palamas would formulate a very influential distinction between God's Essence and his Energies now this is a complicated Topic in itself and I've dedicated a full previous episode to that if you want to check it out nonetheless the theme of fiosis or uniting with God has become a key feature of Orthodox Christianity and we can find this idea already in the cappadocians quote in the unfathomable Darkness one communes with God through faith Gregory of Nissa talks about faith as the faculty of Union as opposed to platinus's emphasis on the higher news or intellect and Gregory has a fascinating perspective on Union one that teaches that this experience is one that never ends since God is infinite the person in faith never stops traveling in other words the journey never ends quote This truly is the vision of God never to be satisfied in the desire to see him No Limit would interrupt growth in the ascent to God since no limit to the good can be found nor is the increasing of desire for the good brought to an end because it is satisfied but all these themes of apathetic Darkness emanation and mystical Union find their most dramatic expression in Antiquity with the absolutely fascinating figure of pseudo-dionysius here my job gets kind of easy because finding neoplatonic themes in pseudo dionysius isn't exactly much of a challenge he is one of the most significant and interesting characters in the history of mysticism apophaticism and esotericism and what makes this extra juicy is that we don't even know who he was he took on the name or claimed to be dionysius the areopagites an obscure figure in the Bible that became a Christian when Paul visited Athens he is literally mentioned once in passing in the New Testament and the author that we are talking about claimed to be this figure and to have witness significant events in the Bible such as seeing the thunderstorm that happened as a result of Jesus's crucifixion we know with pretty strong confidence that he isn't who he says he is though and that is widely accepted that the so-called pseudo-dionysius wrote his Works hundreds of years after the biblical stories in particular Scholars argued that he must have been active around the year 500 A.D why are we so sure about this well because in his writings he seems to borrow a lot directly from the neoplateness writer proclus who died in 485 and the first instances were pseudo-dionysius writings are mentioned by others are a few decades into the 6th century so he must have written his Works somewhere in between those States after proclus because he seems to be so heavily influenced by the writings of proclus but before of course when the first outside authors mention his writings and this puts him somewhere around the year 500 A.D so we don't know who he was and we don't know really when he lived although we do have a pretty good idea of the general period what we do know is that he wrote some works that are incredible and that would be massively influential not only did he Pioneer apathetic Theology and take it to a whole new level played a massive role in how we use the word Mystic and mysticism today but he also basically invented the word hierarchy through his use of the turbine works like the celestial hierarchy and the ecclesiastical hierarchy ecclesiasticus where he Maps out the well hierarchy of the angel Realms and worldly church but he is perhaps most famous at least in connection to our discussion today for two other works the Divine names Theon honomatom and the mystical theology Mystic case theologies these are two true masterpieces of epiphaticism and mysticism that would have a lasting impact until today indeed the word mysticism which we often contest and question is broader use comes of course out of a Christian framework in particular and in a way it is here with the mystical Theology of pseudo dionysius but the term starts being used in a way that we would recognize today so the whole concept of mysticism as we know it in some ways can be traced to pseudonymysius when we read the mystical theology which is a rather short work some very short work actually we find an author that is primarily concerned with the unknowable nature of God with a strongly apathetic theology where God cannot be grasped by the mind but rather only experienced through going into the darkness beyond all things where God dwells and in fact one of the things that struck us the most about his writings is just how neoplatonic he is indeed his neoplatonism is so strong and prominent that many scholars are unsure whether to characterize him as a neoplitanizing Christian or a christianizing neoplatonist in particular he seems to follow and adapt very closely in the form of neoplatonism associated with the aforementioned proclus author of works like the elements of theology in any case pseudo-dionysius whoever he was is clearly working from a neoplatonist philosophical framework and is using that framework in service of a Christian theology which he uses to interpret scripture in all of this it is that apophenicism and divine darkness that is at the core of his teachings as Vladimir lovski writes when talking about pseudodynesius quote now God is beyond all that exists in order to approach him it is necessary to deny all that is inferior to him that is to say all that which is if in seeing God one can know what one sees then one has not seen God in himself but something intelligible something which is inferior to him It Is by unknowing that one may know him who is above every possible object of knowledge proceeding by negations one ascends from the inferior degrees of being to the highest by progressively setting aside all that can be known in order to draw near to the unknown in the darkness of absolute ignorance God is utterly beyond anything created or anything that can be imagined basically identical to the platinian one to quote unquote No God one has to abandon all forms of knowing the only path to God is through unknowing where we enter into the darkness of Unknowing within ourselves and there God is Union with God is a process of removing all things until only that Divine Darkness remains again as we said with Gregory of Nissa this talk about God as Darkness was incredibly revolutionary and would be taken up by thinkers for the rest of History it is a brilliant way of talking about these near platonic Concepts that has become very popular across the board in the mystical theology dionysius uses a fastening example from scripture to talk about and justify this conception of the Divine namely the story of Moses's Ascent of Mount Sinai in the book of Exodus this event while it may have happened in a literal sense too is read allegorically or esoterically as a description of an inward ascent when Moses goes up the mountain he is really going inward away from all people or outside Concepts contemplating The Depths within himself or rather going through the gradual process of Unknowing of casting off all conceptions or knowledge as we usually Define it eventually he reaches the peak and at the book of Exodus very tellingly says quote then the people stood at a distance while Moses Drew near to the thick Darkness where God was dionysius thus finds the language of Darkness here directly in the Bible and it does finds perfect parallels with his new platonic philosophical leanings he talks about this peak of Moses's journey and the mystical path in a very platinian way quote but then he Moses breaks free of them away from what sees and is seen and he plunges into the truly mysterious darkness of Unknowing here renouncing all that the Mind May conceive wrapped entirely in the intangible and the invisible he belongs completely to him who is beyond everything here being neither oneself or someone else one is supremely United to the completely Unknown by an inactivity of all knowledge and knows beyond the Mind by knowing nothing pseudo-dionysus is a really fascinating figure he was both incredibly criticized and even called a heretic shortly after he lived but he has also become one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Christianity especially in the Eastern Orthodox Church where his ideas are basically part of mainstream theology he had a few rough centuries but by the Middle Ages people like Thomas Aquinas were commenting on his works as a major Church Authority thus cementing him as a key figure in the history of of Christian thought we also find clear influences from Dionysus in one of the most famous medieval Christian Catholic Mystics maester Eckhart Eckhart similarly talks about how God's ground and the ground of the soul is identical and that this ground is a kind of Darkness deep within the reality of the soul and of all things in general the thought of Meister Eckhart is greatly neoplatonic in nature not only does he adopt the radical epiphaticism of pseudodionesius but also talks about the creation of the world through outflow and inflow usgank and ingonk in Middle High German literally going out and going in God emanates or overflows into the universe which eventually must always return back to its origins in the Divine ground the goal of the human being is to detach from all created things and break through into the ground where God and the Soul are one and the same ground quote now no all of our Perfection and our Holiness rests in this that a person must penetrate and transcend everything created and temporal and all-being and go into the ground that has no ground or in the words of the scholar Bernard mcginn quote eckhart's mystical way will be an invitation to the soul to give up the nothingness of its created self in order to become the Divine nothing that is also all things this language of Eckhart is not only very neoplatonic as you can clearly see but also strongly pseudo-dynesian in its emphasis on the Divine as a kind of nothingness or Darkness and we continue to see this influence in thinkers connected to or similar to Eckhart such as his students Henry suso and Johannes Taylor or layer thinkers like Nicholas of kuza and speaking of Catholicism some of its most foundational figures also had a connection to neoplatanism while the Catholic and Orthodox Churches generally share the same church fathers and key figures different ones often play different roles in these two branches the cappadocians and pseudo-dionysius are more emphasized in the Orthodox Church for example even though they are of course very important for the Western Branch too but perhaps the most significant early figure for Catholicism or the western church is after all Augustine whose works and thought would lay the groundwork for much of the Latin church for the rest of History he was as many of you will know originally an admirer of the religion of manichaeism founded by the prophet Mani in the 3rd Century later though he also deeply studied neoplatonism and was devoted to that philosophical school before converting to Christianity and even as a Christian while he would of course strongly disagree with and criticize much of quote-unquote pagan philosophy we can also see that it brings a lot of his neoplatonism with him and applies it to his new understanding of the Christian faith indeed in his famous confessions he basically states that it was studying The Works of the neoplatonist that led him to the truth of Christianity thus affirming that figures like platinus and porphyry had reached certain truths about the Divine even though they never accepted Christianity and could be saved so to say Augustine's neoplatonism is definitely there even though it is often modified and can be seen works like on the Trinity where he talks about the Mind as a kind of well as a trinity we can see clear similarities here with figures like patinas and other platonists and their idea of Mind firstly the idea that we are ultimately immaterial Souls that survive the body but also in the more particular ideas about how the mind works in a metaphysical sense but while platinus would conceive of the mind or intellect The Noose as twofold it is a mind that is contemplating itself thus being both that which contemplates and that which is contemplated Augustine Builds on this model but creates his own version based on his Christian faith since humans are made in the image of God as the Bible says this means that the Trinity can be found or reflected in the constitution of the human being specifically in the mind he presents various ways in which the human mind or Soul can be said to be a trinity landing on a Division into memory understanding and will now just like in the episode on neoplatonism in Islam we should remember that figures like Augustine and other Scholars we have talked about don't see themselves as taking neoplatonism and applying it to Christianity or of trying to fit Christianity into a neoplatonic framework or the other way around rather they saw philosophies like platonism as rational ways of talking about or thinking about what they already believed through scripture of explaining rationally things that they could already find in scriptures it was a useful language that could lead to certainty on the intellectual plane but it was always secondary to revelation nonetheless we can clearly see Titanic or perhaps new platonic influence on Augustine and his anthropology epistemology and even theology in general though the later Middle Ages and the rise of scholasticism in the Catholic West to generalize saw a move away from platonism and more strongly toward a kind of rationalizing aristotelianism represented Above All by figures like Thomas Aquinas this cannot be said to the same degree in eastern Orthodoxy which always kept these features as core aspects of their tradition but in the Catholic and later Protestant churches there was less emphasis on platonous thinking and thus things like mysticism but of course remember that we are greatly generalizing now too we do see a can of flatness Revival in Western Christianity during the Renaissance with figures like marcilio ficino and pico de la mirandola which is definitely a topic that can be explored in another fourth episode but neoplatonism was for a long time ignored as a major influence on Christianity including in a scholarship and its role has of course been significantly decreased in the last few centuries it's only relatively recently that Scholars have once again realized just how influential neoplatonism really was not just on Christianity but on Western thoughts and religion in general returning to the earliest centuries it isn't just true that significant Church fathers and early theologians employed platonist Concepts and thinking in service of Christian theology a lot of the very theological language that was used in the great debates and councils were heavily flavored by the philosophical language at the time all the debates about the Trinity or the nature of Christ could not have been had in the same way that it was without the philosophical basis of schools like neoplatonism to frame those discussions in just consider the basic doctrine of the Trinity as it became canonized in its Orthodox form in the accounts of the nicaea and of course in subsequent developments after that including the important works of the cappadocians which we talked about in conceptualizing how the Trinity Works mainstream Christianity decided that God is one in substance or Essence using the Greek word usia but he is three in hypotheses which is usually translated as persons but the term hypotheses the singular witches hypothesis is the term used by platinus to talk about the three realities of his metaphysical system the one The Noose and the soul in other words Christian Theology and Dogma was formed using Concepts and words from schools like near platonism today as we said it isn't talked about as much as it maybe should be there are Christians who take influence from neoplatonism either directly or indirectly the platonizing doctrines of figures like these pseudodionesius and Gregory of Nissa continue to be foundational for the Eastern Orthodox Church whose mysticism and apathetic theology remind us a lot of this larger tradition in the western churches its presence is harder to see but with the increased popularity of figures like Meister eckhart's among some people today we can see neoplatonic ideas popping up here as well this has inevitably been a very brief and inadequate introduction to this topic just a way of looking at the some of the general ways that neoplatonism and Christianity have interacted throughout history especially in the earliest developments of the church of course many of these topics that we have discussed including people like pseudo dionysius all definitely deserve and maybe will get dedicated episodes that we can go through them more properly and in depth but I hope this episode has at least peaked your interest a little bit and for sure the many ways that neoplatonism has influenced and interacted with Christianity shows us once again just how influential and important this school if we can call it a school our philosophy has really been throughout history in no way are we done talking about neoplatonism on this channel of course but now we have together covered the three major abrahamic religions in their relationship to near platonism I've done one on Islam and now Christianity and zevi of course did his uh episodes on on neoplatanism and Judaism or Kabbalah in particular so definitely go check out his videos about neoplatonism and Kabbalah as well as all the other videos by my fellow collaborators Angela puka from Angela Symposium John vervaki from his channel and Justin Sledge from esoterica and of course Dana trell from the modern hermeticist they've all made incredible videos on on this topic really we've kind of created as danatrell once said in the comment and kind of made a whole free course about neoplatonism together here on YouTube which is just amazing so go check out their amazing videos as always of course I would like to thank all my patrons for supporting this Channel and I would not be able to do any of this without you so return on the grateful and humbled that you want to support me I would highly appreciate of course if anyone else wanted to become a patron and support this channel I will leave links to that in the description you can also support this channel through a one-time donation on PayPal you can also just simply like comment and subscribe to the channel uh I really appreciate all of you watching engaging and and and yeah just engaging with with these videos it's an honor for me to share all this wonderful uh knowledge to to share this passion for Learning and studying things with you guys in the audience so I I'm so thankful to be able to do this um thank you again I'll see you next time [Music] thank you

Channel: Let's Talk Religion

Views: 147,339

Keywords: Neoplatonism and christianity, neoplatonism, platonism, christianity, church fathers, early christianity, influences on christianity, philosophy, greek philsophy, plotinus, origen, cappadocian fathers, gregory of nyssa, dionysius, mysticism, mystical theology, augustine, meister eckhart, mystical christianity, platonist christianity, lets talk religion, neoplatonism explained, origins of christianity, trinity, the one

Id: wA5Vnoa2GuY

Length: 42min 13sec (2533 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 11 2023