Christian Platonism in Early Modernity (original) (raw)
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Platonism and Christian Thought in Late Antiquity
2019
Platonism and Christian Thought in Late Antiquity examines the various ways in which Christian intellectuals engaged with Platonism both as a pagan competitor and as a source of philosophical material useful to the Christian faith. The chapters are united in their goal to explore transformations that took place in the reception and interaction process between Platonism and Christianity in this period. The contributions in this volume explore the reception of Platonic material in Christian thought, showing that the transmission of cultural content is always mediated, and ought to be studied as a transformative process by way of selection and interpretation. Some chapters also deal with various aspects of the wider discussion on how Platonic, and Hellenic, philosophy and early Christian thought related to each other, examining the differences and common ground between these traditions. Platonism and Christian Thought in Late Antiquity offers an insightful and broadranging study on the subject, which will be of interest to students of both philosophy and theology in the Late Antique period, as well as anyone working on the reception and history of Platonic thought, and the development of Christian thought.
Platonismus und Christentum: Ihre Beziehungen und deren Grenzen
Laval théologique et philosophique (LTP), 2025
This volume is the result of a colloquium held on May 6, 2022, which took place in honor of Professor Barbara Aland † on the occasion of her 85th birthday in the Schloss der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster.
For anyone reflecting seriously on the tradition of Christian mysticism in the medieval West, it is hard not to notice the hold that Platonism has exercised on that tradition throughout much, if not all, of the period. Upon closer inspection, it appears there are actually two divergent, be it equally central ways-which I shall call below the inherent and the forensic-in which Platonism has left a lasting imprint on the Christian mystical tradition. The aim of this particular essay on Platonism, which for me will include the wider Platonic influence, is first of all to survey and analyze this twofold impact of Platonism, dwelling on the different approaches to the mystical quest which it yields.
Christianity's Content: (Neo)Platonism in the Middle Ages, Its Theoretical and Theological Appeal
The development of medieval Christian thought reveals from its inception in foundational authors like Augustine and Boethius an inherent engagement with Neoplatonism. To their influence that of Pseudo-Dionysius was soon added, as the first speculative medieval author, the Carolingian thinker Johannes Scottus Eriugena (810–877 CE), used all three seminal authors in his magisterial demonstration of the workings of procession and return. Rather than a stable ongoing trajectory, however, the development of medieval Christian (Neo)Platonism saw moments of flourishing alternate with moments of philosophical stagnation. The revival of the Timaeus and Platonic cosmogony in the twelfth century marks the achievement of the so-called Chartrian authors, even as the Timaeus never acquired the authority of the biblical book of Genesis. Despite the dominance of scholastic and Aristotelian discourse in the thirteenth century, (Neo) Platonism continued to play an enduring role. The Franciscan Bonaventure follows the Victorine tradition in combining Augustinian and Dionysian themes, but Platonic influence underlies the pattern of procession and return — reflective of the Christian arc of creation and salvation — that frames the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Echoing the interrelation of macro-and microcosmos, the major themes of medieval Christian Platonic thought are, on the one hand, cosmos and creation and, on the other, soul and self. The Dominican friar Meister Eckhart and the beguine Marguerite Porete, finally, both Platonically inspired late-medieval Christian authors keen on accomplishing the return, whether the aim is to bring out its deep, abyss-like " ground " (Eckhart) or to give up reason altogether and surrender to the free state of " living without a why " (Marguerite), reveal the intellectual audacity involved in upending traditional theological modes of discourse.
GETTING READY FOR THE PLACE OF THE LION. MEDIEVAL PLATONISM, AN EXTREMELY SHORT INTRODUCTION
Charles Williams’ The Place of the Lion, explicitly treats a central aspect of Medieval Platonism, the “Angelicals,” and its sources. They are the study of Damaris Tighe, and the way she, and the contemporary university usually treat these living gigantic spiritual powers, is a central issue in the novel. Further, and even more importantly, the destructive invasion of the sensible world by this element of the philosophical – theological cosmos of Medieval Platonism is the principal subject of the work. Finally, how the Angelicals are required to return to their sphere and the sensible world saved because, in accord with Genesis 2:19 and 20, they are all within the human comes out. When trying to understand the stages of David’s journey up the mountain by comparing them to steps in the Platonic ascent ( conversion) from the Cave to life in the light of the Sun, image of The Good, we looked at Plato’s allegory of the Line. The level just below the Good belongs to the Forms (see chart below). They are objects of thought for Plato, existing independently. With Aristotle, Philo Judaeus (decisively important), Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas (for example) and Jewish, Christian and Islamic Neoplatonic and Medieval philosophical theologians generally, they become thoughts in the mind of God (the LOGOS, WORD, NOUS, INTELLECT, for Christians the second Person of the Trinity). These thoughts are living (“in Him was life” John 1:4) and have an inherent movement to pass into sensible existence. As living forms of this kind, they are called “Angelicals.” For some of these theologians (for example, the great Jewish theologian, Moses Maimonides), angels are forms, structures of reality, flashes of the divine intellect. The tendency of medieval Platonism is in this direction. The most important medieval philosophic theologian for putting all these elements together and determining Latin medieval theology was John Scottus Eriugena. I quote here a modified version of my text for the Chapter on him for the Cambridge History of Late Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (2010). Drawing upon Gregory of Nyssa, Eriugena came to understand human nature in such a way, that, more than being ‘that in which all things could be found (inerat)’, it became ‘that in which all things are created (condita est)’ Periphyseon, IV 807A). The human is the workshop of creation (Peri. II 531AB, III 733B, V 893BC); it is the medium in which God creates himself and the universe of beings out of his own nothingness precisely because, uniquely among beings, the human possesses all the forms of knowing and ignorance, including sensation. Because everything is through human perception, there are no absolute objects. As in earlier Platonic systems, the forms have become not only thoughts, but forms of apprehension in various kinds of subjects; as Plotinus puts it, ‘all things come from contemplations and are contemplations’ (Enneads III 8 [30] 7, 1-2). In Eriugena, there are ‘thinkers who turn out to be objects of thought…[and] objects of thought which turn out to be thinkers’ (Stephen Gersh). Periphyseon, Eriugena’s great system, is an interplay of diverse subjectivities looking at the universe from different, even opposed, points of view. The divisions of nature are constituted by human perspectives on God. Because God does not know what he is apart from human reason and sense, these perspectives are theophanies even for God in the human, divine manifestations of which God and the human are co-creators.