Anaxagoras Origen And Neoplatonism

Origen has been always studied as a theologian and too much credit has been given to Eusebius’ implausible hagiography of him. This book explores who Origen really was, by pondering into his philosophical background, which determines his theological exposition implicitly, yet decisively. For this background to come to light, it took a ground-breaking exposition of Anaxagoras’ philosophy and its legacy to Classical and Late Antiquity (Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, Origen, Neoplatonism), assessing critically Aristotle’s distorted representation of Anaxagoras. Origen, formerly a Greek philosopher of note, whom Proclus styled an anti-Platonist, is placed in the history of philosophy for the first time. By drawing on his Anaxagorean background, and being the first to revive the Anaxagorean Theory of Logoi, he paved the way to Nicaea. He was an anti-Platonist because he was an Anaxagorean philosopher with far-reaching influence, also on Neoplatonists such as Porphyry. His theology made an impact not only on the Cappadocians, but also on later Christian authors. His theory of the soul, now expounded in the light of his philosophical background, turns out more orthodox than that of some Christian stars of the Byzantine imperial orthodoxy.

Origen has been always studied as a theologian and too much credit has been given to Eusebius’ implausible hagiography of him. This book explores who Origen really was, by pondering into his philosophical background, which determines his theological exposition implicitly, yet decisively. For this background to come to light, it took a ground-breaking exposition of Anaxagoras’ philosophy and its legacy to Classical and Late Antiquity (Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, Origen, Neoplatonism), assessing critically Aristotle’s distorted representation of Anaxagoras. Origen, formerly a Greek philosopher of note, whom Proclus styled an anti-Platonist, is placed in the history of philosophy for the first time. By drawing on his Anaxagorean background, and being the first to revive the Anaxagorean Theory of Logoi, he paved the way to Nicaea. He was an anti-Platonist because he was an Anaxagorean philosopher with far-reaching influence, also on Neoplatonists such as Porphyry. His theology made an impact not only on the Cappadocians, but also on later Christian authors. His theory of the soul, now expounded in the light of his philosophical background, turns out more orthodox than that of some Christian stars of the Byzantine imperial orthodoxy.

This book presents the first modern critical edition of the work of Gregory of Nyssa, On the Human Image of God (formerly known as On the Making of Man, De hominis opificio) and the first English translation since the nineteenth century. This treatise is one of the most important of Gregory's texts. Paralleling the structure of Plato's Timaeus, Gregory's work begins by offering two analyses of the human being. The first presents the human being as the culmination of the ascent made by nature through the various levels of life, and as made, body and soul, in the image of God. The second considers why this is not immediately apparent, the need for time to be able to grow, individually and collectively, to this status, as the body of Christ, the image of God, and the role of sexuality within this growth. The third part of the work brings both analyses together, to see the same movement in the life-span of each person. The extensive introduction provided in this volume examines the philosophical and theological background of Gregory's text, beginning with Anaxagoras, Plato (the Timaeus), Philo, and Origen, and also compares aspects of Gregory's work with that of Irenaeus of Lyons and Maximos the Confessor.

Philosophia facta est, Quae philologia fuit. "It is indeed disastrous that of those earlier philosophic masters so little has remained, and that we have been deprived of anything complete. Because of that loss, we unintentionally measure them in wrong proportions and allow ourselves to be influenced against them by the merely accidental fact that Plato and Aristotle have never been short of praisers and copyists. . . . Probably the grandest part of Greek thought, and of its expression in words, has got lost." Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote these sentences in 1873,* is quite right (save that he takes for an accident what certainly was not one). Plato, our great Plato, is really but an imposing synthesis, the ad mirable architect of a grand building, practically none of the stones of which come from himself. And Aristotle, as far as his philosophy is concerned, is apparently little else but a Plato deprived of his poetical make-up, those ostensible differences notwithstanding which Aristotle himself is given to emphasizing. The truly great ones, the giants, the really original thinkers, the pure philosopher types, these are in the time before Plato. Again: Nietzsche is right.

"Since 1986, Professor Panayiotis Tzamalikos he has argued that Origen was an anti-Platonist in many respects, and all of the clauses in Origen's official anathematisation in AD 553 were based on nefarious adulteration by unschooled and fanatical drumbeaters. The author's pertinent books heretofore have uprooted all of those charges and demonstrated that they had nothing to do with Origen's real thought. Therefore, Tzamalikos' work constitutes a peripeteia in the Aristotelian sense of the term, referring to tragedian plays of classical Athens, which points to the moment when the hero learns that everything he knew was wrong. This book (like the author's previous ones) brings to light and critically discusses Origen's Greek philosophical background, which he put to full use upon composing his Christian works. Consequently, the author insists on the need for engaging in the onerous task of ascertaining Origen's endowments and feat: whereas he was a Greek 'apostate' who forsook his ancestral religion and converted to Christianity when he was well on in years, nevertheless, he implicitly made ample use of his patrimonial lore upon composing his ground-breaking work which paved the way to Nicaea. The author's thesis is that, in the quest for discovering the real Origen, scrutinised perusal of this illuminating background is inexorable. For in the history of philosophy, Origen ipso facto is an uncategorised author, whose thought constitutes an unexampled chapter of its own, revealing a perfect match between Christian exegesis and Greek philosophy, which imparted the later episcopal 'orthodoxy' the gravamen of its anti-Arian doctrine"--

This is a collection of essays on the sources, interpretations, and influences of Neoplatonism.

This volume explains the inadequacy of the sources and methods used to establish Jesus’ historicity, and how agnosticism can reasonably be upgraded to theorising about ahistoricity when reconsidering Christian origins.

Reading Proclus and the Book of Causes, published in three volumes, is a fresh, comprehensive understanding of the history of Neoplatonism from the 9th to the 16th century. This third volume gathers contributions on key concepts of the Platonic tradition (Proclus, Plotinus, Porphyry or Sallustius) inherited and reinterpreted by Arabic (e.g. Avicenna, the Book of Causes), Byzantine (e.g. Maximus the Confessor, Ioane Petritsi) and Latin authors (e.g. Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Berthold of Moosburg, Marsilio Ficino etc.). Two major themes are presently studied: causality (in respect to the One, the henads, the self-constituted substances and the first being) and the noetic triad (being-life-intellect).