"Neo-Platonism and Some of its Effects on the Christian Theology of the Trinity" by Stephen Beach

Neo-Platonism and some of its Effect on the Christian Theology of the Trinity 

Introduction 

The infinite abyss of man’s soul calls out to be filled by the infinite abyss of existence, God. “Abyssus abyssum invocat”. In every man, there is a faculty of knowing and choosing that transcends his material being. In virtue of this, it cannot be filled by mere physical things; rather, man’s soul longs for the infinite and the spiritual. Thus, from the beginning of man, he has sought to know the divine, to know God. While this knowledge was revealed to some directly, like the Israelites, others struggled deeply to come to know at least something about God. Plato, and the Neo-Platonists, through their philosophical reflections, did come to know, on their own, quite a bit about God, and impressively so. They built a philosophical system that tried to encompass the whole of creation, as well as the uncreated. This system was so convincing that it has influenced the whole history of philosophy. Consider what the philosopher Etienne Gilson says about their system. 

What is perhaps the key to the whole history of Christian philosophy and, in so far as modern philosophy bears the mark of Christian thought, to the history of modern philosophy itself, is precisely the fact that, from the second century A.D. on, men have had to use a Greek philosophical technique in order to express ideas that had never entered the head of any Greek philosopher. (Gilson 43) 

The Christians of the early centuries were also intrigued by the work of Plato, and his later followers such as Plotinus. In the (Neo) Platonic model of God, the Christians saw a foreshadowing and a correlation to what God had revealed about himself to the Israelites, and what God had revealed through his son Jesus. So figures such as St. Justin Martyr and St. Augustine used as a foundation what they could from Platonic philosophy to help them explain some of the Christian mysteries about God, such as the mystery of the Trinity. The goal of this paper is to re-create some of the Platonic world-view and philosophy, as well as the philosophical climate in which Justin and Augustine lived, in an attempt to point out a few of the influences that (Neo) Platonism had on their theology of the Trinity.  

The Philosophical World of Plato 

To help identify how Platonic philosophy influenced St. Justin and St. Augustine in their theological works, such as that of the Trinity, it is important to understand the philosophical worldview that Justin and Augustine was working off of. A few important areas of Platonic philosophy are explained below. 

The Divine in Plato 

To understand the Platonic “God”, an important aspect to know is Plato’s understanding of what makes something “divine”. The higher form of being for Plato is the spiritual or intellectual. This is because matter is always changing or beginning and ending. “Truly to be means to be immaterial, immutable, necessary, and intelligible. That is precisely what Plato calls Idea. The eternal and intelligible Ideas are reality itself. Not this and that particular man, but their unchangeable essence.” Therefore, when considering the divine, one would be considering the “eternal Ideas”. The most universal and abstracted idea for Plato would be the transcendental idea of “the Good”. In the Republic, Plato says that the Good is “‘the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in the visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual…’”. So, the Good is the ultimate universal divine reality from which everything else descends. Plato does not connect the divine Good necessarily to be a person, as will happen later on, because Plato never calls the Good a god, but rather just divine. “It is a fact, however, that in Plato’s mind the gods were inferior to the Ideas.” More about this will be developed in the section about Neo-Platonism. 

The gods of Plato

Separate from the ultimate principle, the Good, were the lower gods. A god for Plato was a living individual, but one who was “... intelligible, immutable, necessary, and eternal.” In short, a Platonic god is a living individual endowed with all the attributes that belonged to an Idea. The human soul also was a god, and becomes a god again, when it is separated from matter. There are many higher gods though than man. “There are the Olympians … the gods of the state; then the gods below, without forgetting the demons or spirits, the heroes, ‘and after them … the private and ancestral gods who are worshiped as the law prescribes in the places which are sacred to them’”. These gods interact with man and take care of him and affect his destiny.

The Physics of Plato 

In Plato’s view of the earth, you have the earth itself, followed by the air (or space in between the earth), and then the aether. The air is where the demigods of souls of good men inhabit the surface of the air. Then at the edge of the air is the moon, which is the boundary of the aether, where the gods dwell. Also in between the earth and the aether were the “daemons” or “spirits”, being a middle nature between the gods and men live. Socrates talked about how a god spoke to him through a daemon. These daemons were material beings, but a material so fine that it was not visible, even finer than cloud. The gods too had a material “‘vehicle’”, but not the One God. It was through these messengers that mortals interact with the gods. These daemons were immortal, yet lower than the gods who lived in the aether. Some of them were actually once men, but not all of them. “Some, such as Sleep and Love, were never human.” Every man was assigned one of these daemons to be his “‘witness and guardian’ through life”. Also “every time we see a living thing and self-moving thing, quickened from within by a spontaneous power of operation, we can be sure that such a things has a soul; and since every soul is a god, each living thing is inhabited by a god.” Interestingly, matter, in the Platonic mind was uncreated material chaos. It is form the Good that form and intelligibility are impressed into matter. So in the Platonic world there are lots of different levels, gods, interaction. A visual representation would look like this. 

The Good 

__________________________________________________ The Aether boundary

        |

           The Intellect 

        |

The Anima

        |

The gods

__________________________________________________ The Moon boundary

       |

The Daemons and the air

       |

       Man and Nature 

Knowing and Human Nature in Plato

Another aspect to understanding the Platonic worldview has to do with learning and human nature. Learning for Plato was in a sense remembering. The human soul is an “…intelligent, intelligible, and eternally living substance” which preexisted its incarnation in a body. One’s soul comes from the “Nous”, the “Anima”, and the realm of the pure intelligible forms. The goal for man is to transcend the matter and return back to the contemplation of the forms. “… We also know, and contemplate, by and in the light of the supreme Intellect who eternally emanates from the One.” For Plato, a “salvation” was achieved by remembering to be a god through the contemplation of the forms.

The Principle of the Triad

A last important principle in Plato that will be mentioned here is that of the “triad”. Plato in the Timaeus says “‘it is impossible that two things only should be joined together without a third. There must be some bond in between both to bring them together’”. Therefore God and man do not directly interact, there is always an intermediary. 

The Philosophical World of Plotinus 

The Neo-Platonic “Trinity” 

Neo-Platonic philosophy was a later revival of Platonism from the third to sixth century A.D. One of its principle authors was a man named Plotinus or Plotinos. Plotinus was a synthesis of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. In the Neo-Platonic view of God, one could see clearly a type of “tri-unity” to God. 

Plotinus emphasizes the ultimate principle of “the Good” rendered as “the One”, which Plato seems to mention in his later writings. The One is the first principle from which everything else exists. The One is unspeakable because it contains all being in it, and therefore cannot be described without doing damage to its nature, and classifying it as less than it is. There is a dividing line between the nature of the One and everything else; it is beyond all else. There is a “sheer transcendence” and “incommensurability” between this God and the gods.

Everything eternally flows from him as a radiation which he himself does not even know, because he is above thought, above being, above the duality of being and thought. In Plotinos’ own words: ‘As to the unbegotten principle, who has nothing above him, who is eternally what he is, what reason might he have to think?’ 

From the One, another principle comes into being, the “Intellect” or “Nous”. The Nous is inferior to the One and comes from the One, but in an eternally begotten way from the One. The Nous knows itself, and in itself are all intelligible forms and knowledge. Another important principle relating to the Nous or Intellect in (Neo) Platonic philosophy, is that something comes into being when it is known. “When can we say of anything: It is? As soon as, by an act of understanding, we apprehend it as distinct from something else. In other words, so long as nothing is actually understood, nothing is; which amounts to saying that being first appears in, by, and with this Intellect…” So from the Intellect grasping the totality of the forms in itself they flow into existence. Thus “… he is a god and the father of all the other gods.” 

Neo-Platonic Fall/Creation

In Neo-Platonism creation is a type of “fall”. There is God, the One, who is immutable and unaware of anything. Then there is Mind, which is the “offspring of and procession from the Highest, wherein dwell the archetypal Forms of things which are called Ideas.” When the mind is focused on the Good she is like it, but when she does not, she creates from her the “Soul” or “Anima” (incorporeal). When the Anima loses focus on the mind, she falls into creating the corporeal world which is how nature comes into being. “Thus from the very beginning, where Christianity sees creation, Neo-Platonism sees, if not exactly a Fall, yet a series of declensions, diminutions, almost of inconstancies. The universe seeps, as it were, into existence at those moments…” Creation here is a negative thing. It is because the mind and the soul lose focus on the higher beings that lower ones are created. Differing from Christianity. Yet it is still the glory of The Good that shines forth in creation. Also, there is not necessarily a temporal procession here in the begetting of the Nous and the Anima.

The Intermixing of Christian and Neo-Platonic Worlds  

Mutual influence of Neo-Platonism and Christianity

Now that the basic tenants of Platonic and Neo-Platonic philosophy have been briefly explained, one can now easily see how the early Christians could have been influenced by it when trying to explain the Christian mysteries, especially as they would have wanted to evangelize the pagan world. In the period from 205 – 533 AD, there was actually a great competition and mutual influence between Christianity and Neo-Platonism. “… the influence of the one upon the other was very great.” This was partly because they shared the same education, their basic tenants of belief sounded very similar, and third because Neo-Platonism was a religious movement with a spiritual aspect to living it out. Consider these quotes from C.S. Lewis. 

Cultured people on both sides had had the same education, read the same poets, learned the same rhetoric. … social relations between them were sometimes friendly. The leaders on both sides were monotheists, and both admitted almost an infinity of supernatural beings between God and man. Both were highly intellectual, but also (by our standards) highly superstitious. 

A world-renouncing, ascetic, and mystical character then marked the most eminent Pagans no less than their Christian opponents. It was the spirit of the age. Everywhere, on both sides, men were turning away from the civic virtues and the sensual pleasures to seek an inner purgation and a supernatural goal. … Both alike would have … stories of visions, ecstasies, and apparitions.

(Neo)-Platonic One/Good as the Christian God? 

While not taking Neo Platonic philosophy on its exact terms, one can intuit in its system a foreshadowing of the Trinity. The “One” is eternal Father who begets the eternal Son, the “Intellect” or “Logos”. Then it is through the “Logos” or “Word” all the intelligent forms exist and come down into creation. But then the “Logos” begets the “Anima” or “Soul” or “Spirit” through which all the forms turn into the created world. There is almost a tri-unity with the One, the Intellect, and the Anima (again while not taking Neo-Platonism on its exact terms) from which all else comes. 

For the Christian who studied the philosophy of Plato, it was clear, the one divine principle from which everything emanates is God. It is the God who revealed himself in salvation history.

Any Christian convert who was familiar with Greek philosophy was then bound to realize the metaphysical import of his new religious belief. His philosophical first principle had to be one with his religious first principle had to be one with his religious first principle, and since the name of his god was ‘I am,’ any Christian philosopher had to posit ‘I am’ as his first principle and supreme cause of all things, even in philosophy.

This was the atmosphere in which the Christian theology of the time developed. It was an atmosphere of synthesis. They had their new beliefs divinely revealed through Scripture and through the Apostolic Tradition. At the same time many of them in the Greek world had a whole philosophical heritage. And thus the desire to make sense of the two. This philosophy gave them a language or vocabulary to help them explain what had been revealed to them in Christianity. Of course there were elements of the Platonic philosophy which are absurd to Christian theology and so those were put aside, but what was usable, was used. So while some rejected any influence of the pagans on Christian theology, there were those like St. Justin Martyr and St. Augustine who embraced it and put it to the service of the Gospel. 

The last, and neo-Platonic, wave of Paganism which had gathered up into itself much from the preceding waves, Aristotelian, Platonic, Stoic, and what not, came far inland and made brackish lakes which have, perhaps, never been drained. Not all Christians at all times have detected them or admitted their existence: and among those who have done so there have always been two attitudes. There was then, and is still, a Christian ‘left’, eager to detect and anxious to banish every Pagan element; but also a Christian ‘right’ who, like St. Augustine, could find the doctrine of the Trinity foreshadowed in the Platonici, or could claim triumphantly, like Justin Martyr, ‘Whatever things have been well said by all men belong to us Christians’.  

St. Justin Martyr 

Life and Conversion

St. Justin Martyr lived in the first half of the second century A.D. He was born in Samaria to Greek or Roman parents, and thus in a Pagan household without any teaching in Judaism or Christianity. He began to search for answers to life in the different Greek philosophies; dabbling in the Stoics, the Peripatetics, and the Pythagoreans. He finally though settled and found peace with the Platonists. Justin though was introduced to the Hebrew Scriptures and Prophets through a conversation he had with an old man. As he began to read he found there truth and began to believe. Justin ultimately converted to Christianity. Justin spent many years traveling and preaching. Some of his works are also some of the Church’s earliest insights into the Christian life and theology of that time. Finally he was martyred in the year 165 A.D.

Justin’s Theology of the Trinity

As a Christian apologist, Justin struggled with explaining how Christians retain monotheism, yet worship Jesus, the Son, as God too. Justin draws upon his philosophical background, and says that the Father is before all and unnamable. He says that Jesus, the Son, is begotten eternally from the Father before the universe was created. Justin also calls the Son, “the Word”. He says in one of his Apologies “‘God has begotten of himself a certain rational Power as the beginning before all other creatures.’” Justin also claimed that the Son was consubstantial to the Father, they shared one substance.

While Justin does not directly incorporate all of the metaphysical import of Platonic philosophy, thereby denigrating the Son to being lesser than the Father, it is clear that there is a parallel to Plato and the order of procession of the divine beings. The Father is first; the son, while eternal, is begotten from the Father. Also, there is not much of a jump that has to be made to go from the One-Nous relationship to answering Justin’s question about monotheism. It was not weird that the One and Nous were so interrelated. Why could God the Father not beget an eternal Son who was one with Him? 

Another aspect of Platonism that can be seen in Justin’s writings would be the principle of the mediation of Christ. Justin talks about how everything was created through the Son (like St. John mentions in his Prologue). Justin wants to protect the Father transcendence, and so therefore says that even in the Old Testament it was Christ who was really interactive with God’s people. He gives Jesus the title of “angel”, which is Greek for messenger. “Justin drew on the OT tradition in which the Angel of the Lord could interchange with YHWH or the Lord…”

This too is very similar to Platonic philosophy. The One, who is like the Father, is utterly transcendent and does not communicate with creation, even though it flowed from him. Rather it is through the Nous and the Anima that everything is mediated down. Also this fits with the above-mentioned Platonic principle of the Triad, that communicated or interaction between two things must be mediated by a third. The Father’s interaction with creation is mediated through the Son and the Spirit, and thus the unlikely term “angel” for Jesus. 

Just like one’s goal was to contemplate and to know the Nous, and thus to reacquire or remember one’s divinity, the same idea could be seen as Christianized in Justin. Jesus is the Nous, the intellect that has given form to the world, and planted seeds of truth in all peoples. Christians have the full knowledge of the Son, and through this knowledge acquire divinity and a sharing in the divine life. Consider what Justin says in his second Apology: “…all those writers were able, through the seed of the Logos implanted in them, to see reality darkly. For it is one thing to have the seed of a thing and to imitate it up to one’s capacity; far different is the thing itself, shared and imitated in virtue of its own grace.”

Finally, from his writings it is clear that Justin clearly holds to a Trinitarian formula of God. The Father is truly God, the Son is truly God, and the Holy Spirit is truly God. Yet, there is a sense of “Subordinationalism” is his theology where the Son and Holy Spirit are subordinated to the Father. In Justin, it is because he holds to the Father being akin to the Platonic idea of the Good being utterly transcendent, and thus not interacting with creation. Justin still holds, though, that the Son and the Spirit are of one substance with the Father, and that they are eternal with him. With Arius, a few centuries later, “Subordinationalism” will take on a more radical meaning; namely, that Jesus is not the same substance to God the Father. 

St. Augustine of Hippo 

Conversion 

While Augustine searched through many philosophies in his youth, when he becomes Christian he also becomes a Platonist. The two in his mind were not exact matches, but they were related. “…they did not represent alternatives but always a unit.” Augustine read the Enneads, and saw there in Plotinus’ God, the Christian God. He saw the Father in Plontinus’ One, and the Son in Plotinus’ Nous, and creation in the creation of everything by the Nous. Augustine Struggled to explain Christian metaphysics and God, and the closest thing to help him was Plotinos. “Such also were the main data of the problem which Augustine boldly undertook to solve: how to express the God of Christianity in terms borrowed from the philosophy of Plotinos?” 

Influence of Neo-Platonism on Augustine’s Theology of the Trinity

While Augustine was not necessarily affected by any type of subordinationalism like Justin or Arias were, the Neo-Platonic world view still indirectly affects Augustine and his theology. One way in which it informs Augustine’s theology of the Trinity is through the Neo-Platonic theory of knowledge which Augustine still held on to. 

For Plotinus, learning consisted of purifying the material images from the mind to fix solely on the immaterial form and thus come closer to contemplating the Nous. Also, working with the philosophical understanding of man from Plato, Augustine had to reconcile the presence of intelligible truth in man while holding that man is not divine because immaterial truth or forms were something divine for Plato, not something from the material world. So how does man have the ability to contemplate, and yet he is not a god remembering his divinity? Augustine sees a connection with the beginning of St. John’s Gospel where the light, or Jesus the Word, comes into the world and is the true light which enlightens every intellect. “Why should not men use this constant presence of the divine light in their souls as an always open way to the Christian God?” Thus Augustine emphasizes seeking truth within oneself in the soul. God teaches man from within.  

So Augustine saw that the “divinity” within man, namely his intellectual powers, must be from God. God has given it to man, and it is through the Son that God allows us to know. Augustine sees this image of divinity in man as an image of what the Trinity must be. Within man there is the person, then there is their act of thought, and third there is their act of will. The mind can know itself, and the mind can love itself. This is one method that Augustine uses to describe the Trinity. He talks about how the Father knows himself, which is the divine intellect and is therefore the Son. The Father also loves himself, which is the divine will and is therefore the Holy Spirit. So from the divine nature which has been put into man, Augustine works back to understanding about the Trinity. This is one way in which Neo-Platonism seemed to have helped Augustine in the development of his theology. 

Conclusion

While the (Neo) Platonic philosophical worldview as a basis for expounding Christian doctrines would eventually fade out with the discovery of Aristotle by St. Thomas Aquinas, during the historical period in which the Church was formulating its’ belief about the Trinity, Platonism did play a part in influencing some major theologians. This paper has laid out some of the fundamental aspects of Platonism and Neo-Platonism to help better illumine the philosophical tools that theologians like St. Justin Martyr and St. Augustine of Hippo had a their disposal. For St. Justin it showed how while changing Platonism to fit with the Christian belief that God the Father, Son, and Spirit are all co-eternal and consubstantial, he did slip into a minor form of subordinationalism by holding to the Platonic view of the absolute transcendence of the Good or the Father. Also it showed how making the jump to a God who was a tri-unity was not that hard for a Platonist because of the similarity of the Christian Trinity to the Good, the Nous, and the Anima. For Augustine, the paper has shown how while he did not fall into subordinationalism, he was still affected in other areas by holding a Neo-Platonic worldview and philosophy. One of which was that of his theory of knowledge, and how Augustine saw what, in a Platonic sense, was divinity in man, and therefore attributed this to being gifted to man by God, and therefore a reflection of the nature of God himself; namely, that God thinking about himself is so real that the thought becomes another person, the Logos; and God loving himself is so real that the love becomes another person, the Anima or the Sprit, thus creating a Trinity of persons in one spirit/substance.  

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