Dr Greg Bahnsen - Ancient & Medieval Philosophy: Early Christian Era (Part 16)

Yesterday, when our tape ran out, I was finishing up some remarks about Christianity's interaction with the Roman Empire. I had used Francis Schaeffer as the background for these remarks. And I would remind you, you are responsible to be aware of his discussion. Schaeffer indicates that martyrdom often followed the Christians. And in that day when the church was so small and the Roman Empire was so big and powerful and hostile, you would not have really bet a whole lot of money on the Christian cause. It didn't look like it had much of a future. Why were the Christians able to hold out against Roman persecution? Well, they were able to hold out because they believed that God, the infinite, personal God, had spoken in his word and had come into this world in the person of His Son. And since they believed then in God's involvement in the world and his absolute sovereignty and, and his holiness, since they believed he had inspired the Old and New Testaments, the Christians did not have to give in to the relativistic culture of Rome. They didn't have to say, well, I guess you just have to get along in this world because everything's relative. We might as well do as the Romans tell us to do. Christians had a higher standard. They had a higher law to which they looked not only to justify them in their religious devotion and distinctives, but also a higher standard by which they could judge the state. Now, the Roman Empire did not have that higher standard. The Roman Empire, as Schaeffer points out, had only human beings, finite resources upon which to build the empire and sustain it. And as he dramatically points out in the film series based on his book, Rome or the Roman Empire was like this little humpback bridge that was perfectly adequate for ox carts and so forth, but if you tried to drive a modern diesel truck over it, it would collapse. As long as the pressure was not too great, the Roman Empire could get along. But since it didn't have a sufficient philosophical or religious basis for the culture, when the pressure was applied to the Roman Empire, internal problems and external attacks, Rome collapsed. When Rome collapsed, Christianity did not collapse. The Christians had resisted a syncretism between the Roman approach to life, the Roman outlook, and culture, if you will, a syncretism between the Roman perspective and that of their own Christian devotion. Since they wouldn't mix the two and would not bow to the Emperor cult would not say Caesar is Lord. Since they base their outlook not on the authority of men, but rather on the authority of God who had revealed Himself in the Scriptures, they had universal and absolute values that did not go the way of Rome and Roman culture. But of course, the strength of the Christian Church having universal and absolute values was its social offense. As long as the Church had universal and absolute values based on the revelation of an infinite personal God, the Church was in a position to judge the state and resist the state. They could appeal to the word of God above the state and at the same time maintain the dignity of the individual. They could hold out for compassion and a just treatment toward individuals and still have a higher law by which the state could be judged. But a totalitarian state will never, as Schaeffer indicates, tolerate those who have an absolute by which the State itself can be judged. And so the Church was persecuted, but the persecutor of the Church, because it did not have an adequate philosophical and religious base, the persecutor of the Church failed and died off. The Church did not. It went on as the Roman Empire experienced greater and greater difficulties and there was a loss of social cohesion. Rome was given to violence. It was given to sexual excess, people interested in their entertainments, the carnival atmosphere, the circuses and so forth. And as Schaeffer points out, Rome eventually collapsed, but not because the barbarians, the external forces came against Rome. Rome collapsed because it internally just had no heart, it had no soul, it had no philosophical or religious foundation upon which to stand. Schaeffer does an interesting job of pointing out that apathy was the chief mark of the Roman Empire at the end of its power. Apathy was a cultural characteristic. When Rome fell, there wasn't a great deal of intellectual ferment among the pagans. They had turned to social interest. Art had become decadent, obscene, music, bombastic. People didn't take pride in good work and worse, men. And so apathetic were the Romans that at one point, when the barbarians invaded the city and many people were in the Coliseum watching their games, the word came to them that Rome was being sacked. And they continued to watch their games. It was like they could hardly even rise to defend themselves anymore. Rome at that time had suffered the results of statism. It was a great welfare society. Many people wouldn't work. There are lots of people taking advantage of the public treasury. And the fact of the matter is that though Rome persecuted the Church, the blood of the martyrs proved to be the seed of the Church. The Church had an absolute standard and a basis for knowing it. And because they stuck with that, though they were a small group and often martyred, they flourished. Rome declined. On the one hand, you have a culture built on finite resources, Rome, and then on the other Hand a culture and an outlook that's built on the infant personal God speaking in the Scripture. Now, the Christians suffered persecution for much of the early period the Roman Empire. It wasn't until Constantine was made emperor in the year 312ad that there was a turn of social fortunes for the Christians. In the year 313, the Edict of Toleration was issued, which officially legitimatized Christian worship and doctrine. The Edict of Toleration was the turning point then for the Church not having to fight the hostility of the Roman Empire. Some people have asked, and I'll leave it for you to reflect as you continue your studies, have asked whether the Edict of Toleration proved to be a blessing to the Church or a curse to the Church. Does that seem strange to you? In one sense, it's obviously a blessing. Here the political might of the beast has finally been restrained and the Church doesn't have to worry that it's going to be persecuted and people are going to be put to death for their Christianity. So that's a great improvement. That's a blessing. But along with that came the temptation to compromise with the world, to let your guard down, to think everything is okay. To be a Christian up to that point required a martyr's attitude and dedication. One had to be willing to go to the stake, as we would say. But after the Edict of Toleration, the Church was able to be less diligent, more lazy, and more inclined to get along with the world. So there's kind of a mixed blessing, I guess, in the Edict of Toleration. But from a political standpoint, there's no doubt that this was the step forward. At least the Christians didn't have to face being sent to the lions any further. Okay, so that finishes our discussion of the Advent of Christ and its significance for the history of thought and culture. I'm going to turn now to Roman numeral 13 in our outline, and we'll begin a discussion of the early Christian era. The early Christian era, and we'll cover three subjects under this. A, B and C. A will be Gnosticism in the Mystery Cults. B will be Neoplatonism, particularly seen in Plotinus, And C will be the Ante Nicene Fathers, or what is often called the Patristic period, from the Latin patre meaning Father, the Fathers of the Church. Okay, so a Gnosticism and the Mystery Cults. During this period of time in Roman culture, we can generalize and say people were feeling more and more a need for redemption. There were problems in their individual lives, problems in terms of the political order of the day, and a longing for soulless peace of mind in this world and assurance about the life that is to come. Gnosticism in the mystery cults played upon this desire for redemption and in many cases a search for new life, new life from the dead. Gnosticism is such a broad, we can't call it movement, but covers so many diverse teachers and teachings and so forth. But it's a general term for the notion that salvation comes through sin. Secret knowledge. The Greek word for knowledge is Gnosis. So Gnosticism, the word for knowledge, characterizes these various groups and cults and teachers. What they had in common is as they taught, a supreme Being is over this world with subordinate lesser powers, supernatural powers under it or him. And some of these subordinate lesser powers, supernatural powers are in rebellion against the Supreme Being and are holding men capt. How can man be liberated from the dreadful oppressive power of these supernatural subordinates? Well, Gnosticism taught that salvation came through knowledge, through a special trans rational message that could liberate men from the demonic or angelic or supernatural powers that are underneath the Supreme Being. There is a message that is going to set you free. But the message is beyond normal communication. It's not a simple message using words in the ordinary sense, nor is it something that you could find out by your own investigation. It's a supra rational message, some would say irrational, mystical, but the point is it goes beyond reason and it's a very special and hidden message that liberates myth so that those who know the truth, those who know the gnosis, are limited to a select few, often those who go through extensive initiation ceremonies and work their way up to being able to finally hear the ultimate secret of the universe, as it were. So Gnosticism, I've only said a few words about it, but this is meant to cover a great deal of the culture of Asia Minor and the the Roman world in general. The Gnostics believed in salvation through knowledge, a Gnosis that is secret and only a few the initiated get to benefit from it. If you know the secret, you can be set free. In my outline I have gradually together Gnosticism along with certain mystery cults that were active in the early Christian era as well. These mystery cults have often been taken by non Christian scholars as the source of many Christian notions. The basic doctrine of redemption and, and resurrection and so forth that is found in Christianity has been traced to the mystery cult, some of which flourished at some points in the Roman Empire prior to The Church, however, most of them had their heyday after the advent of Christianity. And so there's obviously a question of who influenced whom. But more importantly, it wouldn't surprise me at all, given our view of reality, that with the coming of the true doctrine of redemption, the doctrine of resurrection and redemption in Christ, that many counterfeits would be put out in the pagan world. The evil one would of course, like to keep people from being persuaded to the truth. This whole question of the relationship between them and whether Christianity is just like a Johnny Come. Lately movement that picks up bits and pieces from the mystery cults has been definitively addressed by J. Gresham Machen in one of his best known books, the Origin of Paul's Religion. And I want to encourage you to take a look at that sometimes where Machen dismantles from a historical standpoint the claim that Christianity is just a pale reflection of the mystery cults. Anyway, let me mention three of these cults that were particularly popular. First, the worship of the Great Mother, the goddess Cybele. C Y B E L E the worship of Sibyl as the Great Mother originated apparently in Phrygia, one of the Mediterranean cultures, and it was characterized by sacrifices offered in the spring, sacrifices made to mourn Attis, who was dead and who had been the lover of Sybil. Spring in the natural world is simply the expression of Sybil's joy when Attis comes back to life. Liberal scholars have been especially fascinated by the practice of the tarabolium. Let me spell that for you. T A U R O B O L I U M Taroboleum was the name given to one of the strange practices of the Mother cult, where an initiate would stand in a pit over which then slats of wood would be placed and a bull would be butchered, then above the pit and the blood of the bull would drip down on the initiate. And believe it or not, some people have thought, well, that sounds like the Christian doctrine of Christ shed blood for our salvation. Yeah, I think it takes a real stretch of the imagination, but of course, if you've got an axe to grind, you can pursue that thesis. You have the worship of the Great Mother Sybil mourning for Addis, her lover, and then Springtime being the resurrection of Addis. Another mystery cult of that day was the cult of Isis and Osiris. Isis and then Osiris O S Iris. The cult of Isis and Osiris was a similar cult about death and resurrection. In this cult there was a ritual imitating of the death of Osiris the rites would imitate Osiris being taken away or veiled, removed from the scene. So there's the death of Osiris. Then there would be lamentation among the followers of this cult, imitating the lamentation of Isis over the death of Osiris and then the coming back of Osiris, the resurrection from the dead of Osiris. Interestingly, this cult was for forbidden in Rome in 21 BC and in 19 AD Tiberius actively persecuted those who followed the Isis and Osiris cult. A third mystery cult that I want to mention, this one from Persia and very popular with the Roman army, was the culture cult of Mithra. M I T H R A the Mithra cult was a dualistic cult. There is two ultimate powers, good and evil. And this world is the battleground of good and evil. The soul has been placed in the prison house of the body. And so man has this struggle within him as well. And Mithra, who is associated with the sun and the rising of the sun, then is the coming of the victory of Mithra. And of course the year was divided into the periods of the sun. And often people will point out that the great day of celebration in the mithra cult was 25th December, which is when the sun begins now to come back to power in the world, given the calendar. Mithra associated with the sun, is the judge and the savior of men. It's a naturalistic, moralistic type of salvation that men look for in this cult, Mithra being the final judge. Now, these cults were generally resisted by the Roman Republic. In the days of the Republic, the cults were persecuted, put down, resisted in various ways. But as the empire of Rome, to be distinguished from the the Republic, grew, the empire more and more came to have a lenient and tolerant attitude toward them. Eventually Gnosticism and the mystery cults in general, then we're not being very specific, but if you just take these examples, you see a common thread of seeking for a supernatural deliverance, Overcoming a sense of helplessness and despair, rejoicing in springtime, the rising of the sun, or the strength of the sun at the winter equinox, and so forth. A later development, but one that should be put in the same category of Gnosticism and the mystery culture would be that of Manny and the Manichaeans. Kind of sounds like a rock group, right? Mani M A N I was a teacher that gathered a number of disciples about him. And those who followed his instruction were known as Manicheans. They were troubled, but by the problem of evil how can there be evil in this world if God is good? If God were truly all powerful, he wouldn't allow evil, since he is good. If he had the ability, a good God would eliminate evil. So because there is evil, God cannot be all powerful and simultaneously all good. So here's how they resolved the dilemma. They adopted a metaphysical dualism of good and evil. Where God, the spirit of good, is limited in his power by the power of Satan, the personal evil one, the force of darkness. So God is not infinite, his power is limited. Limited by the work and the power of Satan. Indeed, according to Manny, it's Satan who created the material world and then imprisoned the souls of people in bodies. That's not God's work. The evil one did that. Satan created the world of matter and bodies, and then he put souls in those bodies, imprisoned pre existing souls in those bodies. How are we going to be set free? Manny taught ascetic discipline. For the sake of salvation, one must punish and not indulge his body. One must be pure for the world. Where now pure from the world means pure from matter, not pure from rebellion against God. And such purity is expressed in frugality and how you eat, not engaging in sex or sexual relations, so forth and so on. An ascetic body denying salvation. The Manichaeans are similar to the mystery cults in their ethical dualism. However, they're certainly different in that the mystery cults looking to life in this world and longing for fertility and resurrection and springtime and all that sort of thing, we're not inclined to try to escape this world or the body. Where the Manichaeans, we must get away from this evil domain that Satan created. The perspective of the Manichaeans, this dualism of good and evil, where good is not infinitely powerful, but is hedged in by the power of evil. That perspective has reappeared over and over and over and over and over and over again throughout history. It may not always be called Manichaeism, but this philosophical outlook, this view of the world dividing it into light and darkness, both have an equal, not an equal, but an ultimate power. So one is limited by the other, reappears repeatedly. Let's move on to more philosophical expression of the kind of other worldliness we see in Gnosticism and Manichaeism and so forth. That the philosophical movement known as Neoplatonists. Beyond your outline. Neoplatonism, as the name itself indicates, is a new version of Plato's teaching. It's the upgraded version of Plato, the new and improved Plato. The theme of The Neoplatonic teachers was back to Plato. Let's go back and see what the Masrid said and understand him correctly. This time, the Neoplatonists attempted to reinterpret Plato's dialogues, especially the dialogues where Plato sets forth his metaphysical views. And noting that there were many ambiguities and unresolved problems in Plato, the Neoplatonists tried to upgrade the master or give their own unique slant on what he was saying, so those ambiguities would disappear. The Neoplatonists were especially attracted to Plato's ambiguous emphasis on transcendence, the otherworldly character of his philosophy. You know what I'm talking about, right? The forms which are the objects of knowledge exist outside of the fluctuating world of time and space. That was attractive. This transcendent motif was attractive to the Neoplatonist. And they likewise were attracted to Plato's conviction that conceptual communication is limited in its ability to get the truth across. Conceptual communication has a limited power, added Plato indicate the limitations on conceptual communication first by his method of dialogue or dialectic. One point of view then refined by somebody saying something contrary to it, but then that's refined by somebody answering it. This constant back and forth and attempt to finally get at the truth, understand the ultimate truth takes what we would call a mystical flash of insight rather than a discursive working out step by step of the truth. One has got to see the truth in its wholeness. Well, the Neo Platonists like those two things. Conceptual communication is limited, and the emphasis in our philosophy should be on otherworldliness, the transcendence of reality. The Neoplatonists had a great desire for certainty. They wanted to be able to rise above the skepticism and relativity and arguments among the philosophers. They wanted certainty. They wanted a better mode of knowing that as man's reason, as I've already explained, is somewhat limited. Conceptual communication is not the best mode of knowing. They wanted soulless as well. They wanted to be able to find peace and repose. And they sought purification. Let me mention those four things. A desire for certainty, a better or superior mode of knowing, thirdly, a desire for solace, tranquility, and thirdly, purification. That led them then to a search for the mystic vision of a better world. The Neoplatonists were characterized by promoting and searching for a mystic vision of a better world that lies beyond this one. And it led them as well to an ascetic depreciation of the body. The body is very low in value and thus it should be depreciated. It should be denied, not indulged. So the Neoplatonists are not the same as Manichaeans, but much of what they had to say is running parallel to Manichaean is. I want you to understand this general period of time, the early Christian era was rife then with Gnosticism, special secret knowledge, Manicheanism, deny the body, so forth. It's evil. Then Neoplatonism comes along and says, yes, we need a Gnosis, a special kind of knowledge, a mystical insight into the world that goes beyond ordinary experience. We need to deny our bodies and purify ourselves to gain that. The best known Neoplatonist teacher, the one who is really the father of the movement, is Plotinus. P L O T I N U S plotin his dates 204 to 270 A.D. plotinus was well trained in the classical schools of thought. He had looked at what the world had to offer, what the Greek philosophical traditions were. He went on a visit to the east, asking to go along in a military expedition, apparently so that he might be exposed to the thought of the Eastern world. He came back and began to teach orally in the city of Rome. I should have mentioned, by the way, that he was born in Alexandria and got his early training there. That's important because Alexandria is going to be a center, an intellectual center. In the days of early Christianity, many of the Patristic fathers will be said to belong to the Alexandrian school of thought. Well, Alexandria had not just a Christian influence there, but also a Neoplatonic influence. Plotinus grew up there and then, as I've indicated, traveled, eventually came to Rome and taught. However, he taught orally. It wasn't until the age of 50 that he tried to reduce his philosophical system to writing, and the works that he wrote came to be called the Aeneid's. E N N E A D S E N N E A D S the Aeneid. Plotinus offered a reinterpretation of Plato's form of the good. Let's go back to the divided line with Plato. Remember that you have the 2/3 division of the divided line is this world with its images and its objects in the other part of reality, the transcendent part of reality. You have the forms, the ideas of all things, but they are all grouped under the form of the good. Now Plotinus reinterprets Plato's form of the good and emphasizes that the good must be beyond, beyond being and beyond knowledge. The good is the ultimate reality that unifies all things. It's beyond even the concepts or ideas. And so it's beyond knowledge in the rational sense. And it is an all ultimate and utter unity. There can be no division within the good. Now then, if ultimate reality, the good is undivided, expresses absolute unity, but all the knowledge that we gain from this world is fragments. Does anyone have absolute undivided knowledge in this world? Of course not. All of our knowledge is limited. It's conditioned, it's fragmented. Well, if our knowing process is tied to fragmented objects of knowledge or truth, and the good is unfragmented, it's the absolute unity, then our knowing process, this is not adequate. To know the good, Rational thought is inadequate to know ultimate reality. That's a crucial part of Neoplatonism. Rational thought then, is inadequate to know ultimate reality. How then can we know this ultimate reality? We need a mystic vision where the truth will be grasped completely, unconditionally and instantaneously. We need to have a mystical experience that brings us an inner conviction about the final meaning of the universe. Now, if rational thought and conceptual communication are inadequate to this experience of the ultimately real, then of course it can't be expressed, can it? It's ineffable, as we say, it's beyond words. That's how you know ultimately reality. Then obviously the knowledge of ultimate reality is limited to a very few people. To a select few. And those select few, not only is it that only a few people have that experience, the mystical vision, you have to remember that what they experience is private. It cannot be put into words. It cannot be rationally communicated. Does this sound like a good foundation for philosophy? Sounds like the death of philosophy, doesn't it? Rational thought cannot communicate or put you into contact with ultimate reality in your mystical vision. Not many people have that vision, and the few that do, it's essentially a private experience. There goes philosophy. Certainly there goes the objectivity of philosophy, and in a sense the universality of anything that could be said to express the truth. Now, Plotinus said, we cannot attribute any specific properties to this ultimate reality, because if you could attribute specific properties to it, then it would not be ultimate, would it? It would not be absolute, it would would not be all encompassing. For instance, not that anyone would want to call their God concept hot or cold. If you use hot as a specific property, then you're denying that it's cold. Now you fragmented the ultimate unity. So the ultimate reality, the absolute, the unity that lies beyond our conceptual ability cannot have specific properties. Now, Plotinus said that. Yet, on the other hand, this is showing some of the rationalism Irrationalism in his philosophy, on the other hand, he gave many names to the ultimate reality. Those names, of course, are all in one way or another, telling us something specific about the ultimate reality that's beyond conceptual communication. Plotinus advocated purifying our souls in the way that we think about the ultimate, our absolute reality. And the way we purify our souls is not saying anything definite and based on our temporal experience about the absolute. We can only deny that the absolute is this kind of being or that kind of being. The ultimate reality is not this and it's not that, it's not the other. Now, this method of denial, that is not asserting any positive property about the ultimate transcendent reality, but only denying this it is certain things, is often called the via negativa. You will see it over and over again. In philosophy, especially medieval philosophy, the via negativa means the way of negation. The only thing you can say about the transcendent is what it's not. You cannot say anything positive based on human experience. Well, like I said, there was a kind of irrationalism there. You can't say anything about it. And yet Plotinus ended up saying a great deal about this ultimate reality. So there's a rationalism in his philosophy as well. And what did he say about the Absolute? I'm going to slip into calling the absolute God. But you have to remember to call the absolute God, if you think in personal terms, means you've attributed something to the Absolute that's specific, personal, rather than impersonal. We have to be real careful here. We not Christianize these men while they're expressing their philosophy. God is, for Plotinus, the overflowing plenitude of being. The overflowing plenitude of being. The Absolute or God is an energy that overflows, an overflowing energy, a plenitude of being. Now, because it's mystical, we're going to have to eventually give up rational communication about this. But let me see if I can try to take you at least up to the door of Plotinus philosophy. What if you thought that chocolate milkshakes were good? In fact, as far as you're concerned, they are the ultimate good. I mean, it's not just that they're better than vanilla or strawberry milkshakes. Chocolate milkshakes are better than anything. Better than pizza, better than the Chinese food, better than the best steak that you could grill. Chocolate milkshakes are the highest form of dietary good. Now, if you had that view of chocolate milkshakes, and I have a cup Here, for illustrative purposes, if half this cup were full of chocolate milkshake, then that would be good, wouldn't it? However, if three quarters of the cup were full of chocolate milkshake, that would be better. And if it were filled up right to the rim, the brim here, it would be even better than that. Now, what would be better than a full cup of chocolate milkshake? If that's your view of what is good, well, you know where we go next. The overflow flowing plenitude of being is what you would have. Remember that being in Platonic philosophy is the same as good. Ultimate reality is the good. So if you want to have a plenitude of the good, then like a full cup of chocolate milkshake, if you try to make it even more good than that, it's going to overflow. Now, of course, there can't be any deficiency or lack. There's got to be a plenitude of being in the ultimate reality. And I realize that's a pretty limited analogy. But what you have in Plotinus is the idea that God or the Absolute is so stuffed full of goodness that it just overflows this energy of good, finally, without it being a personal choice, overflows so that there are successive levels of existence under the plenitude of being. Okay, now if we were. Let's take our milkshake analogy and run into little bit further. I have this cup sitting on a table, and if I fill it up with milkshake and I keep going until it overflows, then of course, we would naturally see that we're making a mess and stop. But let's say we don't have that tendency just to stop. We say, no, it's the plenitude of milkshake being. And so we keep pouring and pouring. Now, what happens is when I have this milkshake overflowing, it forms another area of milkshakeness, right? Like on the outer cup, the milkshake. Now, some people love milkshakes so much, they've been inclined to come and just lick it off the outer side of the cup. But you know, that's not where it ordinarily belongs. It belongs in the cup, right? Well, but if you have the overflowing milkshakeness, then you have another level of milkshakeness here on the outside of the cup. Not altogether proper, but now what if we keep pouring, it's not just running down the sides of the cup, but now we're making a puddle on the tabletop. Right. That's another level of milkshakeness. And if I keep pouring so that it's not just a little puddle on the table, but it runs down the edges of the table, I've got another level. And then finally a puddle on the floor, and on and on it goes. Because being is so good and so full, absolute reality overflows and creates successive levels of being, successive levels of existence, which, and this is the interesting twist on what we've been saying, these successive levels decrease in their degree of reality. They decrease in their degree of reality as they are further and further from the source of all being. So you have the overflowing plenitude of being and then a successive level of existence. We'll call it level two, then level three, then level four, as it keeps emanating. That was what Plotinus called these emanations. We'd have emanations of the good overflowing downward. But the further you get from the source of the overflow, the less reality you have. That's what makes my milkshake analogy very poor. Because even the milkshake puddle on the floor is still milkshake. Equally milkshake. It's just milkshake. Not in the situation or circumstance that we're accustomed to or that we desire. All right? But for Plotinus, as you have successive levels of milkshakeness or existence, they become less milkshake, like they become less existence, like they tend toward unreality or non being. It's kind of like light. If you have light that's very, very bright. I have one outside my window at my motel. It's really terrible at night, and it's just so bright, okay? To me, it's intolerable. It's so bright, it illuminates the whole building and the swimming pool area and so forth. And so that has to be close to my window. And so to me, it's just so bright. But, you know, if I were to go. Go down the street to one of the restaurants nearby and look back toward my motel, it would still be light, but it wouldn't be so intolerably bright. If I were to go across town and be up on a hill, I might be able to see the light at my motel, that bright light that's right outside my window. But again, it would be even less dramatic. And now, if we were to go out into, you know, the recesses of space, that light would eventually trail off into, be not just a dull haze, but then to darkness. Now, since Plotinus thought metaphorically, and he thought of the good as like light, then maybe it's easier for us to understand why he thought, as the light emanates downward, this is the milkshake overflowing. Then it gets less like light and more like darkness. There are degrees then of existence, the fully real, the somewhat less than that, and on and on and on until we finally get almost completely unreal. And then finally you drop off the chain of being into nothingness. Now, this view of Plotinus, which recurs in mystical thought and all kinds of metaphysical speculation throughout the Middle Ages, is called, has been called very appropriately, the great Chain of Being. The great chain of Being. You have ultimate reality, that is the plenitude of being and goodness and light. It emanates downward in chains of existence that are, if you will, less and less real. Follow it. Let me give a spatial metaphor. Let's say that reality is this wide, this is fullness of reality. Then the next level down would have to be this wide. So we bring in the parameters a bit. The next emanation down, since it loses a little reality, is just this wide. It's going to be narrower than the previous two levels. And then down, down, down, down. So you have a narrowing of being, a decrease in being. There's a great chain, big link at the top, smaller link, smaller link, smaller link. So you get finally down to this really, really, really infinitesimally small link of being, and then off the chain is non being. And everything in the world. You see, of course, you have to remember there's all these levels that are way beyond our level of human existence. But everything in the world, for Plotinus, is on that chain at some level, greater or lesser reality. What is the first emanation, the first link of the chain down from the overflowing plenitude of being. He called it nous N O U s. The Greek word for mind, Being or existence was identified with goodness by Plotinus, identified with value. And just as there are degrees of value, there are degrees of being. The highest value, and the greatest being before you reach the ultimate is mind. And there's kind of like a universal mind here. We're not talking about man's mind here at the second level, but there's an affinity between man's mind and the universal mind as the second emanation, or, excuse me, the first emanation down from the absolute being. And for that reason he stressed the life of intellect and contemplation. Now, we've talked about the overflowing milkshake emanation of being. Downward. The chain of being downward. Well, it turns out Plotinus taught that the life of the universe is really a double movement. It's not just the overflowing downward, but it's also a return upward to the Absolute. The universe flows down, then flows up. What if we had been pouring the milkshake into the cup, let it overflow down the side, puddle on the table. Puddle gets so big, it runs down the table, finally forms a puddle on the floor. And on a. And on. Now we have done that, but we had a video camera and we were. We were taping all of that. If we were to take the video camera and play it backwards, you know, put it on reverse, then we'd see the puddle on the floor come up to the table, come up to the puddle on the table. Then finally up the sides of the cup. And then finally a cup would be full again and everything's fine. The life of the universe like that. Emanation overflowing and then a sucking back up into being. Now, man is part of this double life of the universe. Man has been exiled from the Absolute, from good. Man is somewhere down the chain of being, and what he desires is to return home. Now, how can man return home? You have two choices. You have the long way and the short way. The long way home is through successive cycles of reincarnation. Man will eventually complete the process, going back up the chain of being to God through reincarnation. But that, of course, takes thousands and thousands of years, as we might say, the long way, the shorter way, through mystical intuition. If one can achieve the mystical vision that will bring union with the Absolute that doesn't require all the reincarnation cycles. And how do we gain this mystical intuition and metaphysical union with the Absolute? Please remember in your notes that when you achieve the vision, that is, when the intellectual thing takes place, then metaphysically you become one with reality. There's union with the absolute achieved. Well, you can prepare for that intuition, that mystical flash and metaphysical union with the one by contemplation of nature and beauty. There is the route of contemplation of outward things, the natural world and beauty that's found in the natural world or in the artifice of man. Or better yet, you can prepare for mystical intuition and union by contemplation of your own inner self that has shut out the external world and follow the inner path. The inner path amounts to contemplation of your own personal, inner, private self. And in so doing, you find God. Isn't this remarkable? The God within that you can find through the inner path, mystical intuition that brings union with the absolute. Well, what can we say about the Neoplatonic philosophy? It incorporates things that we've seen a lot of different places. Pythagoreans had reincarnation, for instance. It has something to do with Plato and the super rational form of the good. It obviously has affinities with Eastern Hinduism. The whole idea of escaping reincarnation, the wheel of life through yoga and meditation, and finally the intuitive insight, the enlightenment that brings you to oneness with the whole of reality, the absolute, undivided, ultimate reality. And this comes through an inner path. There's a God within. Sounds very much New Age, doesn't it? To jump forward to our own day. In sum, the Neoplatonic view is one of otherworldly mysticism seeking union with the absolute oneness of reality. Otherworldly mysticism seeking union with the absolute oneness of reality. There's a dualism of spirit and matter. Matter is at the bottom of the chain of being and everything that's above matter, non being is on the chain and is in one form or another, part of spirit, part of the emanation from the absolute one. The sense world is evil then, and we need to be extricated from it. Our spirit, our noose, needs to rise up the chain of being to be extricated from the evil realm of matter. And this comes about through mystical contemplation and intuition. Let me give you three later Neoplatonists to remember. We're not going to say anything more about this school of thought, but I'd like you to have these three in your notes. Port Porphyry, who lived from 230 to 300 AD. P O R P H Y R Y Porphyry. Porphyry. He edited the Aeneids written by Plotinus and put them into six major sections. Another Neoplatonist later on that's important is Plutarch. P L U T A R C H who died somewhere after 430 AD. He taught at Athens, is an Athenian Neoplatonist teacher. And then Dionysius the Areopagite, who flourished around 500 AD. Dionysius the Areopagus. I'm sorry, what was his. He flourished about 500 A.D. right. Okay, so that completes our discussion of Neoplatonism. The early Christian era has a lot of weird stuff in it, right? You have the Gnostics, you have the Manichaeans, you have the mystery Cults, you have the Neoplatonist, very unusual age. And sadly, some of that weirdness rubbed off on some of the patristic fathers to one degree or another. But there is progress in Christian doctrine and we should thank God for and we just don't want to read back into the patristic age complete agreement with the concepts and insights that we've been privileged to have in our own generation.