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Neoplatonism was a major influence on Christian theology throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages in the East, and sometimes in the West as well. In the East, major Greek Fathers like Basil, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus were influenced by Platonism and Neoplatonism, but also Stoicism often leading towards asceticism and harsh treatment of the body, for example stylite asceticism.
Plotinus (/ p l ɒ ˈ t aɪ n ə s /; Ancient Greek: Πλωτῖνος, Plōtînos; c. 204/5 – 270 CE) was a Greek Platonist philosopher, born and raised in Roman Egypt.Plotinus is regarded by modern scholarship as the founder of Neoplatonism.
Plotinus believed the followers of Gnosticism had corrupted the original teachings of Plato and often argued against likes of Valentinus who, according to Plotinus, had given rise to doctrines of dogmatic theology with ideas such as that the Spirit of Christ was brought forth by a conscious god after the fall from Pleroma.
John D. Turner, professor of religious studies at the University of Nebraska, and famed translator and editor of the Nag Hammadi library, stated [58] that the text Plotinus and his students read was Sethian Gnosticism, which predates Christianity. It appears that Plotinus attempted to clarify how the philosophers of the academy had not arrived ...
The Christian New Testament makes mention of the nous or noos, generally translated in modern English as "mind", but also showing a link to God's will or law: Romans 7:23 , refers to the law ( nomos ) of God which is the law in the writer's nous , as opposed to the law of sin which is in the body.
Many Platonic notions were adopted by the Christian church which understood Plato's Forms as God's thoughts (a position also known as divine conceptualism), while Neoplatonism became a major influence on Christian mysticism in the West through Saint Augustine, Doctor of the Catholic Church, who was heavily influenced by Plotinus' Enneads, [3 ...
Plotinus argued that God should be everywhere according to Gnostic teachings, and thus they were being contradictory in claiming that matter is evil, whereas Gnostics differentiated soul from substance, the latter not necessarily having God in it, or having a considerably lesser amount.
Hellenic Christians and their medieval successors applied this form-based philosophy to the Christian God. Philosophers took all the things they considered good—power, love, knowledge, and size—and posited that God was 'infinite' in all these respects. They then concluded that God was omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent ...