Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Nonetheless, the major differences between Plotinus and Gnostics can be summarized as follows: [12] [13] Plotinus felt Gnostics were trying to cut in line in what he considered a natural hierarchy of ascension, whereas Gnostics considered they had to step aside from the material realm in order to start ascending in the first place.
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.
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 ...
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.
Page from the Gospel of Judas Mandaean Beth Manda in Nasiriyah, southern Iraq, in 2016, a contemporary-style mandi. Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek: γνωστικός, romanized: gnōstikós, Koine Greek: [ɣnostiˈkos], 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among early Christian sects.
Plotinus, 204/5–270 AD. Plotinus (204/5–270 AD) was the founder of Neo-Platonism. [24] In the Neo-Platonic philosophy of Plotinus and Proclus, the first principle became even more elevated as a radical unity, which was presented as an unknowable Absolute. [21] For Plotinus, the One is the first principle, from which everything else emanates ...
Gnostics believed that by acquiring esoteric knowledge and understanding their divine origin, individuals could transcend the material world and reunite with the divine. This process of gnosis involved recognizing the world soul's entrapment in the material realm and working towards its liberation.