Three, but one, beyond our reach

Like many ancient philosophers, Christian thinkers were convinced that the world was an ordered place, behind which was something divine. While pagan philosophers were usually willing to consider the possibility that there are many divinities, Christians insisted that there is only one, divine Creator - concept of God implied perfection that could not be split among multiple gods. But this idea of monotheism was not specific to Christianity, being something believed also in Judaism.

If one wanted to underline one special characteristic of the early Christianity, it might be the notion of Logos, divine being who embodied itself in the shape of an earthly human being, Jesus. The relationship of this Logos to the Creator was eventually a source of considerable controversy. Tertullian had already criticised people who simply identified Creator and Logos as two roles the same person had taken - beyond material world he was the aloof ruler of the world, but within the world he became a more accessible figure. Tertullian noted that this idea would imply that Creator had been put to death on cross, which he concluded to be impossible.

An apparently simple solution, suggested by Arianus, was to completely separate Creator and Logos - Logos was simply the first creation and divine only figuratively, as being the most eminent figure after Creator. Yet, the suggestion of Arianus went against an important idea that Logos had to be truly divine, so that his death would have enough power to redeem the humanity.

Thus, against Arianus, thinkers like Athanasius and the so-called Cappadocian fathers - Basil of Casearea, his friend, Gregory of Nazansius, and Basil's little brother, Gregory of Nyssa - denied that Logos would have been created by a free choice of God at some point in time. Such a notion, Gregory of Nyssa said, would have tied Creator to time and implied that God had come to existence at the same time as time itself. Instead, Cappadocians said that Logos had existed always, although its existence was based on the existence of Creator, just like in Plotinian philosophy self-thinking intellect was a sort of projection of the energy of a primordial unity.

Some followers of Arianus suggested that this sounded like the existence of Logos would be against God’s will, but Athanasius simply noted that what does not happen from choice of will still isn’t necessarily against one’s will. Still, even thinkers otherwise inclined to agree with Athanasius, like Gregory of Nazansius, suggested that generation of Logos was more like an eternal choice of Creator.

Figuratively, the relation of Creator and Logos had been long likened to a relation of a father and a son. Now, this figure of speech provided another way to understand the relation. Human parents could not just decide to bring children into existence, but these just grew out of their parents, when the conditions were right, Athanasius noted. Similarly, he continued, Creator necessarily had to sustain something - with God, conditions were always suitable, so Creator would in Plotinian fashion necessarily project another entity into existence - or as Gregory of Nazansius would say, Creator has eternally chosen to relate itself to another entity, which was perfect image of Creator. This another person would be a truly different person from Creator, although as the majority of Christian thinkers said, it was also our only source for knowing Creator - it was like a ray of light revealing where the sun is. Logos was a faithful image, in which even Creator recognised itself and rejoiced of this recognition.

Logos was not just a natural self-revelation of Creator, but also a designer of all creation - God’s wisdom personified,with which God communed before willing to create other things. Greory of Nyssa noted that even some pagan thinkers assumed that wisdom or reason was required for governance of the world. Yet, he would note, Christians believed that this wisdom was not just some impersonal force, but as a source of all worldly life it must itself be alive and have consciousness and freedom of choice.

Athanasius criticised followers of Arianus, because in their view Creator appears to have created Logos for the sake of creating other things with his help. Athanasius noted that Creator should have no need for middlemen, and on the other hand, the explanation of Arianus did not explain how Creator then created Logos without any helpers. Athanasius’ reading avoids these problems because it takes Logos to be an inevitable consequence of Creator’s power, which is then just assigned the duty of building the universe. As Basil of Caesarea put it, Creator could choose to use its energy directly, but such an unleashing would be so powerful that no creature could withstand it.

What did Creator then create through Logos? Basil of Cesarea suggested that the answer could be found simply by reading Genesis. With this suggestion Basil wanted to show that all cosmological speculations of pagan philosophers could well be ignored - since they didn’t agree even with themselves, their credibility was low. Furthermore, Basil’s intention was to speak against Origenes’ too allegorical reading of Bible, which had in principle ignored the literal meaning of the divinely inspired book.

Basil’s account of creation followed then closely the Genesis. Firstly, God had created something timeless or immutable - the angelic spirits. Then, in a timeless moment or “beginning” God had created the temporal world, which was required as a place for all temporal entities, such as humans, and which certainly hadn’t existed eternally. Nothing indicated the substances of which the different parts of the world were made - for instance, whether heavens were made of some “fifth element” different from all the earthly elements. Furthermore, no clear explanation of the reason why earth would not fall down could be given. Perhaps it just floated at the center of the universe, where all heavy matter proceeded, like Aristotle had suggested. This was a hypothesis no better than any other, Basil said, but if it were so, it would just show the craftsmanship of God.

The temporal world, Basil said, contained two regions - heavens above and the earth below. Of these, Basil said, heavens did not create any Pythagorean music by their movement - we would definitely have heard it, he insisted. Earth, on the other hand, was at first covered by water and thus invisible. God had then lit the air between them, making things for the first time visible. Next in the order of Genetic account was the creation of the firmament. This second heaven, Basil explained, was no solid structure, but simply a concentration of air or aether that kept a certain amount of water from falling down to earth. This unlimited reserve of water was required, according to him, so that fire used for warming the universe and its denizens could be quenched, if necessary. After the creation of the firmament, Basil continued, God changed the nature of water so that it wouldn’t completely encompass earth, but would remain level in ocean and smaller areas of water.

The creation continued, Basil noted, with the growth of plants. Most of them were simply meant for the benefit of humans, while others, seemingly useless, were for the benefit of animals. Basil suggested that truly harmful plants had grown only after the fall of humans and were degenerates from good plants.

Next phase in Genesis was the creation of Sun, Moon and stars, which, Basil suggested, were just vessels for light existing before them. Like such philosophers as Aristotle before him, Basil thought that the movements of celestial objects had various effects on Earth - e.g. plants grew differently according to the phases of the Moon. Still, Basil did not believe that stars had such effects on human lives as astrologists described. Indeed, endorsing astrology would have been a denial of human responsibility.

With his account of the creation of animals Basil could borrow even more material from philosophers. Although Basil denied the idea that Genesis would be a mere analogy, he did suggest that humans had a lot to learn from the behaviour of various animals. For instance, Basil commended fishes who either stayed put or wandered to new habitations according to their divinely set nature, while humans often were estranged from the demands of their true nature. Bees, Basil also suggested, were a model for a perfect human society, while the capacity of some birds to lay eggs without fertilization was a precursor of immaculate conception.

All these animals, Basil suggested, had been originally generated by Earth, and although many animals now continued themselves their species, he could read from zoological treatises of philosophers that some animals were still spontaneously generated. Because of their source, Basil said, animals were drawn toward earth, while humans gazed toward the heavens. Like humans, animals are animated or they have soul, but they all have a single, common soul, Basil insisted, although their bodies have various capacities. This common animating element of all animals is something irrational, Basil continues, while humans were created as an image of Logos and are thus by their nature rational.

This created world, Gregory of Nyssa noted, was of dual nature. Compared to the divine simplicity, world is mere chaotic non-existence, vanity of vanities. Yet, due to being created and thus originating from divine, it does have some stability and its elements remain and move in a constant fashion. In this duality, world reflects human being, where sensible side is characterized by instability, while reason governs and regulates this instability.

It was commonly held by Christians that something else in addition to Creator and Logos was involved in the act of creation. While Creator was the ineffable source of divine power and Logos the lens through which this power was directed and thus also the lens through which the Creator could be viewed, the outcome of this process flowed, Athanasius suggested, as naturally and eternally from Logos as Logos from Creator, and was also to be reckoned a distinct entity. This “divine breath” or Holy Spirit was the result of the process beginning from Creator - indeed, Gregory of Nazansius noted, it perfected the relation between Creator and Logos. Spirit was, Athanasius suggsted, like energy permeating everything in the world. Basil of Casearea was left to more fully describe its properties - the omnipresent Holy Spirit was felt especially by people more liberated from their bodies and made them attune with the invisible world.

As a perfect image of Creator, Logos shared Creator’s divinity, and similarly Holy Spirit as an image of Logos shared in it. Indeed, Athanasius noted, all three had the exactly same divinity, by which he meant that Creator, Logos and Spirit were part of the same process of power, which made it reasonable to say that there is only one God. As Gregory of Nyssa said, when thinking one entity of Trinity, it is necessary to think of the other entities, making it impossible to discern any clear difference between them. Despite forming just one divinity with one indivisible essence, Gregory of Nyssa noted, the Creator, Logos and Spirit are still distinguishable by their central properties: Creator has no source, Logos has its source in Creator and Spirit is something controlled by Logos.

Followers of Arianus criticised the notion of Creator and Logos sharing divinity by pointing out various Biblical passages where Jesus apparently lacked full divine knowledge and power. Athanasius suggested that when putting on a human form Logos had assumed the nature of humanity into his own person and could thus speak both as a divinity and as an ordinary human being. As Gregory of Nazansius put it succinctly, divinity should not be contracted into a lifeless unity, as if Creator could produce only non-divine, temporal entities.

It was necessary, Athanasius noted, that Logos would assume full humanity, so that it could salvage humanity through its own suffering. God, as the source of all being, had created human being as a mirror of divine perfection, Gregorius of Nyssa taught, controlling a combination of physical elements or body, just like God governed the whole world. But, Athanasius added, humanity had turned away from its connection to the divine and lost its instinctive knowledge about God, becoming enraptured with the sense world and replacing God with false divinities. This falling away from grace, Basil of Casearea and Gregory of Nyssa insisted, had not been instigated by any eternally existing force opposite to God’s will, but had simply been the responsibility of humans themselves and their own free choice. Or as Gregory of Nyssa said, we had ourselves lost the light we were originally made of.

True, Basil admitted, there had been a figure who had enticed humans from a virtuous way of life, which God had tested by creating a fruit that produced enormous sensual delight. Still, it was the free choice of humans to taste the fruit. The figure provoking humans - Satan or devil - had also freely chosen to oppose God. God had no part in these free choices, Basil insisted, since God was only the source of good things, while evil existed only because of lack of goodness, for instance, lack of a good choice.

Gregory of Nyssa noted that all the entities created out of nothing had an innate tendency to return to this state of nothingness. What kept these entities existing was their connection to God, the source of being. Evil meant turning away from this source, because of e.g. envy toward divinity and its power. All evil required then a perverted use of free will.

Other supposed evil things God had created, like diseases, Basil explained, were just tools for testing the virtue of humans, or as Gregory of Nazansius suggested, they were good from the omniscient perspective of God, which humans could not fathom. Even the possibility of free choice, which enabled evil choices, was a good thing, Basil concluded, because freedom was a necessary condition of virtuous life. In fact, Gregory of Nyssa concluded, as a source of all being God could not be responsible for evil, which was not in the proper sense of the word, but merely was not good.

Turning away from divinity had broken the intrinsic connection between human soul and body, making body eventually waste away. Still, Gregory of Nyssa noted, soul retained the connection to the elements of its body, and with help, it could pull these elements together and reconstitute the body. The soul just had to be purified, so that the bond between soul and body would not be broken again.

Like a doctor seeing sickness, Gregory of Nyssa poetically described, Logos saw the perverted and sick state of the earthly human realm, waited for the moment when body of humankind had excreted the ooze of all various types of evil and at that moment took on bodily form in order to cure humans from their sickness. For this cure, said Evagrius, a disciple of Gregory of Nazansius, Logos had to do something contrary to its divine nature, that is,take on a human form - this act of incarnation was from our human perspective something above our nature or supernatural. By being incarnated in a human body, Athanasius noted, Logos sanctified all human bodies, and by showing the death and eventual rebirth of its body, Logos had created the connection with divine anew.

Because Logos had to assume full humanity, Logos as Jesus could not have had a mere appearance of body. Indeed, Athanasius noted against pagan philosophers, there was nothing strange in Logos assuming body. Furthermore, the body Logos took on could not be just its own creation, because it would then be more perfect than a human body. In other words, this body had to be conceived by a human mother. Because of its humanity, this body did not then form a fourth part of divinity, which remained a trinity even after incarnation.

Assuming human body, Gregory of Nyssa insisted, was not below the dignity of Logos, because natural processes responsible for formation of bodies had a divine root and were thus not evil - indeed, reproductive organs were even the most noble sort, being the only dedicated not to survival of an individual, but of whole human race. Human birth of Logos didn’t even require previous succumbing to sensual pleasure, but was a virgin birth. The divine nature of Logos was also not limited by the body, Gregory continued, as little as human soul was limited by its body in its imaginations. Indeed, divinity of Logos also reformed the link between human soul and body, leading to the resurrection of itself and eventually all humanity.

Logos was not just connected to a mere body, which it would then move around like a mindless automaton, Gregory of Nazansius noted against the followers of Apollinaris. Instead, he insisted, the body of Jesus had to have its own soul, or faculties dealing with such mental processes as sensation, imagination, reasoning and will. Only by being connected to a complete human being could the death of Logos redeem the whole humanity.

The redemption process, Gregory of Nyssa suggested, showed all the positive attributes of divinity. Because God was good and loving, he wanted to save humanity. Because he was wise, he knew all the possible means by which to free humans from the bond of death, and because he was righteous, he chose to do it in a manner that was suited to the conniving ways of the instigator of human death, that is, the devil. Finally, because he had the ultimate power, he could embody divinity in human form.

Resurrection of Logos would ultimately prove to be a salvation for all conscious beings, and indeed, had already changed human condition, Gregory of Nyssa thought, since pagan rituals were almost a thing of the past. Renewed connection to the divine was fortified by baptism. In baptism earthly desires were washed away by water, just like water cleared away Egyptians attacking Hebrews. Divine touch had given ordinary water the power to cause an experience about the effect of death and rebirth of Jesus in submerging, just like divine breath had given liquid semen the power to grow into a living being.

Basil also insisted that one should clear one’s soul of all sin and to begin this one should be baptised. Basil stated that there was no good reason to avoid baptism, since that meant just holding on to one’s old life, tainted by sin. If one fell to sin even after the baptism, Basil instructed them to ask their superiors for a punishment, which would again heal their soul from sin.

Gregory of Nyssa noted also Eucharist as a way to connect human and divine. In Eucharist, a small crumb of bread was sanctified by Logos. This sanctified bread was then enough to stabilise the decay of human body and make it thus more divine.

Full connection required still that human beings should follow, by their free choice, a certain way of life. Evagrius noted that this way of life meant simply following the true nature of humans, while acting contrary to human nature was to be avoided. Similarly, Gregory of Nyssa noted that one should follow the proper measure and time that had been allotted to each thing. Humans were called to live at a time chosen by God, he thought, and they then waited for the moment, when they could leave their earthly existence - it was always a good time for death. If someone failed to purify oneself during one’s earthly life, there was still the possibility of being purified after death. This postmortem purification would feel like cleansing fire, but it was just pain felt by a person who had been enamoured of bodily existence and was then deprived of it.

Gregory of Nyssa also remarked that the proper way of life concerned all the facets of human psychology, described by Plato. Through reason, one should have clear knowledge of what is divine and what is valuable and not be attracted by heresies or superstition. Through desire, one should set one’s eyes to true, heavenly beauty and not be distracted by earthly delights. Finally, through spiritedness, one should bravely fight against vices and not be enraged by trifles. Of these three, only the first, the reason, was completely good, while the other two could lead to impure life, if not governed by reason. Furthermore, only reason would be left after the purification was complete, since at that state there was no reason to desire anything or to feel any anger - only love of divine would be left.

Only the proper way of living really was something, Gregory of Nyssa noted. In comparison, he clarified, all other ways of life lacked something. For instance, someone might not have the sufficient wisdom to understand how one should live or one might lack the fortitude to follow the rules of good life. The properly Christian way of life was embodied in some exemplary figures. These ascetics had often isolated themselves from civilisation and lived either alone or in small communities, regulated by strict rules. Basil of Casearea compared them to an army battling against the forces of evil, although not in a physical manner.

Ascetics could be women, as evidenced by Gregory of Nyssa’s story of the life of his and Basil’s sister, Macrina, who had dedicated her life to God after the death of her husband even before the consummation of their marriage. Macrina showed, Gregory noted, a truly philosophical mindset, which could maintain its self-control and rationality even faced with the sorrowful passions caused by the death of close friends and relatives.

Because of their holiness, these exemplary figures were told to be able to do wondrous things, such as heal sick by their prayers. Athanasius suggested that they also had a power to resist embodied temptations or demons, which encircle human beings constantly and after a person’s death try to prevent her from going toward the divine level. In addition to wonder-works, these exemplary figures were told to show their extraordinariness by their speech. They held conversations with pagan philosophers and won them in debates, showing that mere belief was higher than knowledge.

Evagrius was especially interested to guide new initiates into ascetic life. One should ignore such distractions like married life and try to avoid contacts even with friends - rare meetings would help the friends, without distracting the initiate too much. Even visits to cities should be shunned, and if possible, someone else should be sent for errands.

Yet, Christian way of life was not meant for just monks and nuns, Basil said, but touched upon the life of a common person. The highest rule, which everyone should obey, Basil found in the Bible - we should all love and honour God. Following this highest principle was the command to love and serve our fellow human beings.

Basil was not interested in changing the structure of society around him, but advised people to conservatively follow the rules and regulations of Roman empire. Thus, a slave or a servant was still to serve their master - although Basil added that the master should also treat their subjects fairly - and married persons should stay married, although virginal life was to be respected more.

Despite the fact that Bible admitted some leeway to common people and allowed them to engage in marital relations, this did not mean life outside monastery was simple. Indeed, Basil insisted, monastery was in a sense the easier environment, since it contained less temptations. Life of a human being, he said, was just a road toward their true goal, and this road was filled with distractions luring us from our proper end. We should not be too entangled with things we encounter in our journey, since they were not truly ours, but could easily vanish from our grasp. The only things we really owned, Basil insisted, were our body and our soul and a good use of them both.

Infirmities of human body reminded us that we lived in a fallen state, Basil noted. Yet, he was not against using medicine for curing illnesses. Indeed, he insisted, God had given humans such arts like medicine and agriculture to help humans in this fallen state, where body decayed and required constant sustenance. Basil also held that medicine as healing of body was allegory of similar cleansing and healing of one’s soul.

One of the most stubborn obstacles of our purification, Gregory of Nyssa noted, were sensuous delights. True wisdom would note how fleeting and ephemeral these delights were and how they polluted human reason. Luxurious dwellings just hid the ugliness of personality, while wine intoxicated reason and could lead us to all sort of debauchery. Even such seemingly innocent thing as laughter was like an uncontrolled turbulence, shaking body irrationally.

Everyone, Basil noted, should try to disentangle their soul from the cares of material life, and what better way to do that than fasting. Paradoxically, fasting also strengthened body by purifying it, Basil noticed, and heightened sensations and pleasures - the first bite of food after fasting tastes sweetest.

The opposite of fasting or gluttony was then condemned by Basil. For instance, although wine was healthy in small amounts, Basil said, a drunkard devoured it so much that he fell into a mindless stupor, a condition worse than that of any animal, in which a person was prone to all sorts of sinful things.

Even further the idea of gluttony was taken in the writings of Evagrius. He personified thoughts leading us away from divinity as demons that used our senses and brain to imprint distractions in our soul. One type of demon lured humans with food, which then acted as a nourishment for further impure desires. Although eating appeared to quench our desire, Evagrius thought that it would lead us to just wish for more and different kinds of food.

Like Basil, Evagrius also spoke of fasting as means to quench the demonic thoughts binding us to earthly life. Fasting helped us to control the flame of desire and concentrate our attention on what lied beyond our current life. It might not completely destroy gluttonous thoughts, which just took on new shapes, scaring ascetic with notions of hunger causing illnesses. The remedy for these new thoughts, Evagrius said, was to reduce its rations even further, so that even a tiny morsel of bread became a great pleasure.

Evagrius insisted that intake of food and satiety could also open ways for new temptations, such as pleasures of sexual intercourse. Evagrius, probably speaking only for heterosexual men, asked novices to avoid the company of women. Yet, even this was not enough, Evagrius said, since sexual imagery could easily disturb our thoughts even through memories and dreams. Here, Evagrius recommended fasting and especially avoidance of water, which would take the mind of ascetic to other matters.

Bodily pleasures were not the only thing to distract us from proper life, Evagrius said, but all goods and possessions could tie us to imperfect life. Indeed, an important step in purification, he and all the Cappadocian fathers said, was to avoid avarice, which tied human being to earthly riches and instilled a fear of poverty and shame of begging in us. Gregory of Nyssa noted that hoarding riches usually meant stealing them from someone else. Basil condemned even gathering possessions for the sake of children, since that would mean merely enticing innocent youth into the ways of sin.

The best use for wealth, Basil stated, was to give it to those in need, so that the difference between the rich and the poor would be abolished and all would have only as much as they need for their sustenance. In this he was of the same opinion as Gregory of Nazansius, who said that poor and destitute should be helped, as we had no way of knowing whether they were to be blamed of their condition. Evagrius added that we still shouldn’t horde riches for the sake of giving alms, because it was a greater good to give from meager than from abundant means.

The purification of the soul implied that one should thank God daily about one’s life, that is, see all things positively or as having a divine origin. This didn’t mean that one could not feel sorrow or cry for bad things happening in the world. Indeed, Basil said, tears were a natural process, by which humans relieved themselves of melancholic sentiments. Still, Basil insisted, one should not feel overly distressed about such natural events as the death of loved ones, which also meant their relief from the distresses of earthly life.

Even if grief was a natural emotion and sometimes even a godly one, purifying our soul from its imperfections, Evagrius warned that it could be used by the demons. This corruption of sadness could occur when we grieved over losing some earthly good or some occasion for sensual pleasure. The obvious solution was to avoid being attached to any worldly things.

Basil was also against certain negative emotions. Anger - if it was not righteous anger for the condition of good persons or aggression toward thoughts leading us toward imperfection - was something Basil shunned, because it easily made us retaliate and respond to evil with equal evil. Similarly Evagrius warned against careless anger and resentment, which at worst made people lose their reason and fight other people over trifles.

A cure against unrightful anger, Evagrius noted, was to incite compassion. A good means for this, he noted, was music. Gregory of Nyssa also endorsed music as a way to bring us closer to God. He returned to the idea of ancient philosophers that world itself was full of inaudible music, generated by the harmony of celestial spheres. This music, Gregory of Nyssa noted, was designed by God and earthly music could be used to awaken this celestial harmony in our souls. Thus, psalms, Gregory of Nyssa suggested, were songs designed to lead a person from earthly to heavenly life.

If a person managed to avoid lure of both bodily temptations and negative emotions, Evagrius told, the next attack might consist of acedia, in other words, a feeling of emptiness, ennui and boredom, caused by long isolation from other people.Because of acedia, people might search for all sorts of distractions, which would give them an excuse for not continuing ascetic discipline. Such a distraction could be even a beneficial task, like charity work, but a bad motive would taint its goodness. If such thoughts occurred, Evagrius advised, it was best to persevere in one’s practice and not to give in to the allure of acedia.

The most difficult demons to contend with, Evagrius noted, were those of vainglory and pride, because both could deceive us to think that our ascetic practice was working. Vainglory made us care for ascetics only when we could receive honour and reputation for our achievements. It incited a hope for miraculous abilities, like that of curing sick, and when we were not able to do such wonder work, vainglory was replaced by a thought of sorrow. It was difficult to get rid of the thought of vainglory, because getting rid of it once might just awaken a new thought of vainglory. The true remedy, Evagrius said, was to find the joy in the proper way of life, which replaced any need to gain further reputation.

Pride, on the other hand, made us believe that what we had achieved was due to our own strength of mind and fortitude, with no help from divinity. Evagrius advised to counter pride with humility. One should think of one’s former life and note that only through divine help one could have progressed so far.

It was then no wonder that Gregory of Nyssa saw a humble acceptance of the imperfection of humanity as part in the process of avoiding temptation of material world and of becoming divinised. Temptations attacked us through all senses and especially through touch. We should therefore, Gregory suggested, be patient and forgiving with our fellow humans so that God would in turn be patient with us. Gregory particularly implored us to act respectfully toward our subjugates, such as slaves and animals we were meant to guard.

Another negative emotion related to vainglory and pride Basil found unacceptable was envy, which was in itself painful and demanded as relief that bad things happen to others. Envy was thus a starting point for other types of bad behaviour, and indeed, Basil and Gregory of Nazansius pointed out, it supposedly was the reason for devil’s turning against God.

Instead of envying better positions, Basil suggested, one should admit humbly that one had really no reason to be proud of oneself, since all good things ultimately derived from God. Thus, calling oneself wise was foolish, since all wisdom came from God, and boasting of one’s achievements in battling evil was equally foolish, because one couldn’t have done them without God’s help.

Another sort of humility was to accept one’s own position in the hierarchy of Church, Gregory of Nazansius noted. Only some people, after considerable preparation, could rise to the level of understanding the deep intricacies of Trinity, while for others it was sufficient just to agree with the official dogma and help the congregation with manual work. Indeed, Gregory noted, these lower positions were even safer, since people who tried to aim for a more exalted position could too easily succumb into some heretical position.

The goal of ascetic practices, for Evagrius, was to reach impassibility. Impassibility was not a rigid state, Evagrius added, but vigilance against demons was still required. Impassible person just had the expertise to counter demonic thoughts so that these did not prevent anymore thinking about the nature of things: memories of passions no more had any power over an impassible person. Evagrius noted that such philosophical thinking gave an impassible person also new tools for getting rid of the demonic thoughts through conceptual clarification. Suppose, for example, that we had thoughts about gold, creating in us a temptation and longing for this substance. After a clear meditation on the nature of the gold we could conclude that it is not this substance that is evil nor even thinking about it, but the unnatural passion involved. Such clarification could replace demonic thoughts with simple human thinking. In best case, it could lead us to angelic thoughts, where we might see e.g. gold as a symbol of something divine.

Another important tool in guarding oneself from all evil, Gregory of Nyssa said, was discussion with God, that is, prayer. Without regular discussions with and considerations of the ineffable source of everything, human being would quickly be lured by routines of everyday life into forms of behaviour that disconnect them from God. This discussion should not mean, Gregory of Nyssa clarified, that we just asked God to satisfy our desires - although God might sometimes graciously give a gift to us, he would do this only for the sake of educating us about his power, not just to tie us to earthy lives. Similarly Gregory of Nyssa warned us not to pray punishments for our enemies, since the only enemy we should try to eradicate was evil and sinful life.

Indeed, Gregory continued, there was a certain danger in trying to open up a discussion with the Creator, if one’s attitude was wrong. If one started the discussion with the words taught by Logos, initiator of mankind into communion with Creator, by calling Creator one’s Father, one was already assuming that one was or at least was on a way to become like Creator, that is, as perfect as one can be. If, on the other hand, one was still ruled by earthly desires, one blasphemed by suggesting that these desires would have their source in the Creator. In a similar fashion, self-perfection meant for Gregory sanctification of God’s name and building of the proverbial kingdom of God.

Gregory of Nyssa compared the discussion with God to medicine. Just like earthly medicine fixed the bodily disharmonies, the divine medicine or submission to God’s will cured the disharmony of the whole human being - disharmony caused by a sinful turning away from divinity to earthly pleasures. The divine medicine reformed human being and reinstated its position between immaterial or angelic and material realms. It did not thus, at least in this life, mean cancellation of all bodily elements of human being, but merely dropping all luxuries and being satisfied with necessities required by the sustenance of body.

An important step in the purification process, Cappadocian fathers noticed, was trying to understand oneself. Bible was, obviously, an instrument they had in mind for this task, but Basil also recommended reading carefully selected instances of pagan literature, which at their best had at least an inkling of important truths. This appreciation of Greek and Roman cultural traditions was shared by Gregory of Nazansius, who tried to create Christian poetry and perhaps even drama following the example of Greeks and Romans. Gregory of Nyssa noted allegorically that just like Moses, born of a Hebrew mother, was raised by an Egyptian mother, so was Christian, mothered by church, also raised by ancient culture, and just like Hebrews took precious items with them from Egypt, so should Christians appropriate what was best in pagan literature.

This appreciation of tradition concerned only selected facets of ancient culture and philosophy. What Gregory of Nazansius wanted to especially appropriate from philosophers was a persistent attitude when facing hardships and troubles. Then again, he disparaged the pride of philosophers who supposed they could live a decent life without the help of God. Furthermore, he was somewhat disdainful of intricate and abstruse questions that one could meet, for instance, in works of logic, but could still apply them, if occasion suggested itself - for instance, he noted that since Liar’s Paradox showed that something could be neither true or false, one could also admit that Logos was not generated from a prior state of existence nor from a prior state of non-existence.

Understanding oneself meant for Basil particularly that one should recognise that one was something more than mere decaying body. And from the experience of oneself as immaterial and still as a governor of body, Basil continued, one could understand the notion of something immaterial controlling the material world. Beyond the material world, Gregory of Nyssa said, there was the intelligible world, filled by disembodied angelic powers. Unlike the intelligible realm of pagan Platonists of the time, it was not eternal and pointed to something else beyond itself - that is, God.

This intelligible reality formed in a sense also the limit of what we as finite humans could know, the Cappadocian fathers said, since the infinite power of God and his triune nature were something that eluded our restricted minds. As Basil was wont to say, now we viewed only a reflection or shadow of God. Basil’s implication was that at a later time - when we ourselves perhaps became part of the intelligible world - we would be able to see God in a much clearer light. Yet, both Gregories suspected, even immaterial creatures could not fully understand God.

We should know when to speak, Gregory of Nyssa noted, and essence of God lied definitely beyond what we could say something positive of. God itself did not need language for thinking reality, and while he had given humans the ability to form languages, these were essentially human creations, with no necessary relation to what really existed. Thus, Gregory could easily disprove the notion of some heretics that they knew words that fully expressed the essence of divinity.

Although we couldn't ever fully know God, Gregory of Nyssa suggested that we had some means by which to become better aware of this mystery behind all existence. This awareness, Gregory suggested, required another sort of sensation from the one we were accustomed to. This other type of sensation required us becoming like God, that is, perfecting and purifying ourselves. By becoming pure, he continued, our soul could reflect the perfection deriving from God and let us, as it were, smell the sweetness of divinity in ourselves.

This smell of divinity was not the ultimate in us getting to know divinity, Gregory of Nyssa noted - we could hear his voice, see a glimpse of him etc. All these sensuous analogies revealed the same thing. We could be like mirrors of divinity, as long as we polished ourselves to receive its beams - then we did not just receive divine goodness, but spread it further to other people. Yet, the very essence of divinity escaped us, and when we thought of having captured it, we found out that we had viewed only some of its effects. Indeed, he noted, just like Moses, we had to enter darkness, when we wanted to meet divinity.

A beam of divine light, Gregory said, would make us press for even more, to become even more perfect and more like God. This was a goal which we could never reach, but we could still get closer and closer to it. Even Moses could only see the back of God. In fact, this was even necessary - seeing a back of God meant that we were following and moving toward him. Seeing the face of God meant moving to the opposite direction and thus away from the source of all life.

Changing fates of Platonism

The direction of influence in ancient philosophy went predominantly from East to West. Figures writing in Greek were commented by Latin writers, while Latin writers, even if they might have been original, were rarely considered by Greek thinkers. Indeed, Latin philosophers often seemed to be out of sync with their Greek contemporaries, following trends that had become somewhat old-fashioned in the other part of the Roman empire.

Calcidius can be taken here as a good example. His work - a translation and a commentary of Plato’s Timaeus - is itself an expression of the interest Latin culture showed in Greek philosophy. Furthermore, his commentary shows almost no indication of the ideas of Plotinus and his school - the latest step in the development of Platonism. Instead, Calcidius relies more on discussions on Plato from a time preceding Plotinus (the so-called Middle Platonism).

The aim of Calcidius is to show that Plato’s dialogue is a respectable attempt in describing the physical world. Calcidius tries to argue that some of Plato’s statements have a clear mathematical precedent. For instance, when Plato says that fire and earth as solid bodies need to have two other type of bodies (air and water) to link them, Calcidius suggests Plato is just referring to a fact of geometry that just like two similar parallelograms can be linked with one similar parallelogram, which combines length of one parallelogram with the width of the other, similarly two parallipedes can be linked with two parallipedes, one sharing two sides with first and one side with the other extreme and the second sharing one side with first and two sides with the other.

One might justifiably ask how Calcidius’s explanation fits with Plato’s idea that the four elements consist of differently shaped figures, all of which are not parallipedes. In a move cancelling his previous geometrical explanation, Calcidius explains the link as being qualitative, air resembling in its properties fire more than earth and water resembling earth more than water. He perhaps wants to connect Plato’s idea of four elements with Aristotelian notions, where the four elements were linked by such common qualitative characteristics.

Calcidius is indeed quite anxious to make Plato’s ideas compatible with later philosophical currents. While Plato describes a divinity creating the world in time, Calcidius explains this as a mere metaphor. World, he says, is eternal and eternally changing, although it is dependent on an unchanging paradigm, which the temporal world resembles. Furthermore, while Plato had not considered any further level above the divinity, Calcidius assumes a common idea of later Platonists that divinity is dependent on an indescribable primordial unity.

The world, Calcidius says, is governed by an indivisible entity, that is, a world soul, which still can be linked with the divisible world, perhaps through the mediation of lower forms of soul, more resembling material entities. Calcidius compares Plato’s account here with the Biblical story of God infusing the body made out of clay with a divine breath to control it.

Calcidius also calls the world soul fate. By this he does not mean that all things in the world would be fated to happen in a precisely determined fashion. Instead, he says, this fate is like a law determining what happens from different types of conduct. Thus, humans still have a liberty to decide how they would act, and world soul then performs the role of a judge determining whether this conduct is to be rewarded or punished. Because of these limits of determinism, Calcidius notes, divination is only partially possible and can reveal of contingent matters that they are contingent. Even the creator divinity cannot know all the future things, because some events are determined by free decisions - but the creator does know what is the destiny of a person making certain types of decisions.

Plato already had an interest in Pythagorean number theories, and he had suggested a complex account, in which world soul was like a group of numbers flowing from original unity. Pythagoreanism had continued to interest Platonists, and Calcidius continued this tradition by finding obtuse explanations for various numbers in Plato’s account of world soul. For instance, Plato chose seven numbers, Calcidius suggested, because seven is the only number smaller than 10 (excluding 1), which was both indivisible and not a divisor of other numbers smaller than 10. A more meaningful linking of Timaeus and Pythagoreanism was Calcidius’ suggestion that the numbers constituting the world soul were same as those constituting musical harmonies, making the world soul also harmonious.

In addition to arithmetic and music, Plato’s Timaeus provided Calcidius also with a clear link to astronomy. The world soul with its numerical relations moved the outermost layer of the world with a strictly regular movement, while the more inner layers of planets moved more and more irregularly. The connection with the soul, Calcidius says, makes the world alive, while the ordered and ultimately cyclical movement of the planets makes it an image of eternity.

Just like the whole world, Calcidius continues, so are the stars and planets also alive, and indeed, what the traditional polytheistic religion had called gods. While the stars and planets are, he says, living beings made of fire, there are also living beings made of air and moisture, namely, the demons or angels, who serve as intermediaries between gods and earthly living beings.

Like all these superior living beings, Calcidius notes, human beings also consist of two elements, soul and body. Human souls, he says following Plato, have their origin in the creator divinity, but they also have some affinity with some star or planet, to which they will eventually return, if they live their earthly lives well. Human bodies, on the other hand, have their origin in the celestial divinities and consist of all the four material elements. Body as such would move errantly, and while partially the soul remains untouched by concerns of the body, partially it is affected by them, thus making it difficult for the human soul to govern the body.

Calcidius considers various theories about the nature of soul. He is extremely critical of Epicurean theory that soul is just a special sort of atom, which would make soul no different than body - a mutable, mortal being. Similar deficiency Calcidius sees in Stoic idea that soul is a continuous material substance, like breath - then soul and body would never truly combine, but soul would merely lie in the holes of the body.

Aristotelian notion of soul as the activity specific to natural, living bodies Calcidius regarded more positively. This activity is not body as such, but something received by body and permeating it through and through, although it is centered around human heart as the crux of all processes of life. Yet, Calcidius is not fully satisfied with this account, because such an activity is still too closely linked to the body and dies with it. Indeed, Aristotelian soul, Calcidius suggests, is just a projection of the true soul, which can exist even without a body. This soul is, he says, immaterial and indivisible, but it does have different activities, centered around different parts of human body: reason governs head, emotions enliven the heart, while earthly desires lie in lower parts of body.

Following Plato’s account, Calcidius next turns to the question of how sense organs serve to make humans aware of world around them. He is especially interested of the question of vision - a problem widely discussed in his own time. The main point of contest was whether sensation of vision was produced by light coming out of the eye external light coming from sun or from coloured object and pinging on eye. Calcidius suggests that the truth, already known by Plato, is that all three take part in visual sensation - warmth of human body is transferred to rays of light in eyes, and when these rays are strengthened by the light radiated by warm sun and come in contact with coloured light emanating from an object, we see the colour of the object.

Calcidius also considers another pet question of ancient philosophy, namely, that of the origin of dreams. He again takes a sort of middle position and accepts no single source for dreams. Generally, he says, dreams arise from sensations, emotions, thoughts and other mental states lingering in our soul and arising again in the mind during sleep. During different phases of sleep, different faculties of the soul are more active than others, thus, some dreams are of more earthy nature, while others are more intellectual. Some - although definitely not all of them - might even be generated by the more divine levels of reality.

Although dreams can then tell us something about the divine, Calcidius thinks that vision is still our main connection to higher levels of the hierarchy of being - seeing the movement of planets and stars we come to an idea of something on the basis of this movement. The road to theology or the knowledge of divine, Calcidius says, goes then through physics or knowledge of nature. In addition to these two branches of philosophy, the knowledge of ways of reasoning, which Calcidius identifies with mathematics, is also revealed to us through vision, because we learn to measure and count through looking at the alternation of days and night. In addition to these theoretical disciplines, vision is important also for the practical branches of philosophy, teaching how to guide one’s personal life, life of a household and life of the whole society.

The harmonious order of sensible world, Calcidius notes, is the work of divine source, which imposes on the variable world stable structures, which form the content of divine mind and which we humans could also get to know through non-sensuous thinking. These two principles - God and ideas - are then required for the existence of ordered cosmos, but is that enough? Calcidius notes that many philosophers have assumed also the existence of yet another principle, that is, matter, although they are not unanimous about its properties. Perhaps farthest from the truth, Calcidius appears to imply, are the Jewish traditions that suggest matter to be just another creation of God, depriving from it the status of a true principle. Even among the philosophies which accept the uncreated nature of matter Calcidius finds quite many unsatisfactory views, such as the atomistic idea that matter is divided into distinct units: such atomic bodies are still not the ultimate matter.

Among the philosophers who believe matter to form a continuity, there are various opinions, such as the Ionian idea that all bodies consist of a single kind of moving matter with its own distinct characteristics, for instance, air of Anaximenes. Others, like Parmenides, deny that matter could move, while some, like Empedocles, suggest that matter could appear in many unrelated kinds. The problem with all these suggestions, Calcidius insists, is that they believed matter to have some characteristics of its own, while simple considerations show it could not have such. Calcidius upholds particularly a notion of matter he thinks can be found in Plato’s Timaeus - although it is not certain whether it really was what Plato thought.

Calcidius asks us to consider a process in a sense opposite to what happens when we discover divinity behind the order of cosmos. In effect, we are not combining perceived things into a regulated whole, but stripping away all their characteristics - where they are, what they do, what they are like, how big they are, how they relate to each other. Even their very substantiality or their capacity to take on various characteristics is meant to be thought away. Even after all of these things are stripped from perceptibles, we have an obscure feeling that something remains. Plato called this indefinite something place, which suggests that he was thinking about space, but Calcidius, probably following later philosophical traditions, calls it matter. In any case, it is meant to be like a featureless canvas, on which God projects his ideas or eternal paradigmatic structures of existing things. The projections of the ideas are then like active forces shaping the matter into distinct shapes or perceptible things, which come and go.

Calcidius had written his account of Timaeus at an instigation of a Christian, but his own attitude toward the religion was more ambivalent - clearly his insistence that God had not created matter contradicted the current Christian majority view. Yet, some thinkers were more willing to bridge the gap between Christianity and Platonism. A good example is Marius Victorinus, who was a teacher of rhetorics, and for instance, made commentaries on Ciceronian works on the art. Just to give an idea what his rhetorical works were like, in his book on definition, Victorinus noted how definitions were, on the one hand, based on finding the essential qualities of objects, and on the other hand, how they were the first step in delineating the world of objects that we can speak about. In addition, Victorinus discussed various types of definitions, the paradigmatic one being that where the thing to be defined is separated from a wider genus through a differentiating principle. Victorinus translated also Porphyrius’ works into Latin, being thus aware of more recent trends in Greek Platonism than Calcidius. Furthermore, he converted into Christianity and wrote some of the first Latin commentaries on Paul’s letters.

Victorinus did not compartmentalise his interests, but used his knowledge of Platonist ideas for elucidating such intricacies of Christian teaching as the relationship between the prime source of everything - Father in Christian parlance - and Logos, the only Son of this Father. Victorinus suggests that by Father Christians mean an original abundance of all possibilities, which in a sense is the primary instance of being, but in another sense is so beyond all other beings that it should not be called even being - Father is the light, or as we might say it, energy with the power to create and activate everything. The first among true beings, then, are for Victorinus ideal prototypes, which other beings can at most resemble. Material world, particularly, is for Victorinus just a shadow of these ideal prototypes, shown by the tendency of material bodies to deteriorate after a while. Human soul, then, lies between these two extremes of true, ideal being and apparent, shadowy bodies.

What is the role of Logos in this Platonic sounding hierarchy? Victorinus suggests that Logos means the process of actualising all the possibilities inherent in the primary source. Compared to source, Logos is more active than the quiet repose of Father - indeed, one might say Logos is the prime example of activity. This activity of Logos is based on the abundant source of energy or Father and its activity consists of turning the possibilities within Father into beings or of creating them - it is, as it were, the will of Father. As a source of prime activity, Father can also be called active in a sense, although it is primarily characterised by a quiet repose staying always within itself, just as Logos in all its action is in a sense always same and in repose. Indeed, what is always same in Logos is its stable substance, which is just this eternal abundance of energy or Father - active Logos and quiet primary source are in a sense just phases of the same divinity, Logos being the image or form showing what God is.

Victorinus emphasises more the underlying sameness of Father or source and Son or Logos. There are clear historical reasons for this choice - Victorinus wanted to oppose especially the Arians, who considered Logos to be just the first creation of and similar to God. Yet, there are also more essential reasons for this choice - like world of ideas in Plotinus is dominantly a unity, in which ideas are just different facets of a one self-thinking intellect, similarly God of Victorinus is dominantly a unified substance or energy flowing through different, but connected phases. In comparison, sense world is dominantly a multiplicity or just a combination of essentially separate entities. Then again, Victorinus does admit that Father and Son are in a sense different from one another. Thus, he insists, we cannot say that Father was incarnated, because incarnation belongs to the active aspect of divinity.

Victorinus concentrates his attention to the relation between Father and Son, but he does also consider the third element of the trinity or Holy Spirit. In a sense, Holy Spirit is for Victorinus just an aspect of Logos. Logos as such is the activation of divine potentialities, in other words, it makes these potentialities alive. Victorinus thus calls Logos feminine: it is the mother of all life. Yet, Logos contains also another movement, which is in a sense a return to the original unity or Father - and therefore deserves to be called masculine, Victorinus says. This returning movement is the moment of understanding, when Logos looks upon what it has made alive and finds the divine reflected in its works. This aspect of understanding or wisdom is what is usually called Holy Spirit, Victorinus concludes.

The trinitarian form of divinity, described by terms being, life and understanding, is reflected in the things Logos actualises. An important link in this regard is soul. Souls, Victorinus says, also contain the aspects of being, life and understanding. Just like Logos works as a link of potential power in the Father and created entities, similarly soul transmits divine trinity to the sense world.

If Victorinus was keen to reconcile Neo-Platonic hierarchy of beings with Christian notions, his contemporary Julian wanted to eradicate all signs of Christianity and reinstate Platonically interpreted polytheism as the official religion. Being the current emperor, he had the means to do so, but the project did not last beyond his lifetime and he was then later branded as the Apostate - a betrayer of Church. This was, undoubtedly, a one-sided view, and in Julian’s surviving personal letters, we find a thoughtful person, who worries how he can keep calm in the absence of his friends and who thinks philosophising about the affairs of state is far more rewarding and praiseworthy than actual governance.

Julian claimed that Platonic cosmology, as presented in Timaeus, was simply closer to the truth than the account of creation in Genesis. For instance, the world created and sustained by the Platonic divinity was instantly perfect, while God of Genesis had to make the world in a piecemeal fashion, one day at a time.

Even more imperfections Julian found in the behaviour of biblical God toward his human creations. Why did God want to restrict human knowledge about the difference between good and evil, and how could he condemn them for an act committed before they understood that difference? Similarly immoral was God’s commandment given to Moses that Jews should not worship other divinities, if they did not wish for retribution. Stories like these, Julian suggested, draw a picture of a jealous and petty divinity, who is unsure of his own status.

Biblical God, Julian concluded, was nothing but a divinity appointed to Jewish nation, although they had confused it with the ultimate source of all existence. In addition, Julian implied, it appeared not to be a very good divinity, since Jews had achieved nothing great in comparison with the Greeks - no great philosophers, no great poets, no great mathematicians, no great statesmen.

Christians, Julian thought, were even worse than Jews, since they had created a mongrel of Greek and Jewish cultures, choosing the bad and ignoring the best in both. Firstly, they had rejected the Hellenistic culture of their forefathers and adopted some Jewish manners instead. Then again, they had not emulated Jews in their ritualistic complexity and moral purity, which was most original and noteworthy in that culture. Christians had even ignored the command to keep no other gods and had raised their prophet, Jesus, into a status of second god.

Julian’s own sympathies lie with the whole tradition of pagan Greek philosophy, which, he insists, forms a unified whole, even if individual philosophers might have deviated from this ideal. The main principle of this single philosophy, Julian insists, has been from the start to know oneself and one’s place in the universe. Even such a philosopher like Diogenes the Cynic followed it, in his quest to live a life as close to nature as possible, although his followers had perverted his ideas into a shallow disrespect of all civilized customs. Julian was especially critical of cynics of his time, who used mythical form in their philosophising in a manner disrespectful of the traditional polytheistic religion.

Julian himself was very appreciative of traditional divinities, especially as they were incorporated in the Neoplatonic hierarchy of entities. He was particularly interested of Sol or Helios, god of sun, to whom his family had been dedicated, before turning into Christianity. For Julius, Helios held a sort of dual place in the hierarchy. The physical sun was the counterpart or manifestation of the central entity in immaterial realm, which Julian also identified with Cybele, the mother of gods: physical sun gives life to the physical world, just like its immaterial or divine analogue radiates its power to all immaterial entities. Furthermore, this immaterial Helios was an image of the primordial unity beyond all existence and thus held a mediating position also between the source of and the rest of existence.

This mother of gods, Julian notes, radiates its power to the sensible world and especially to the aetherial realm, which moves forever in a circle. Julian likens aetherial realm to Attis, the mythical beloved of Cybele. According to the myth, Cybele was enraged by Attis being wedded to a mortal and made him go mad and castrate himself. This story, Julian suggests, is a symbolic account of the imperfection of sense world, where even the relatively stable aetherial sphere is characterised by constant change and yearning.

Julian's attempt to turn the tide of history didn't have a lasting effect: Christianity had become too strong. This still did no mean the end of Platonism, since it continued its existence within Christianity.

Cicero Christianised

While Greek-speaking Christians had a long tradition of applying philosophy to religious questions, Latin-speaking Christians were slower to take advantage of it. If we ignore the rather antiphilosophical Tertullian, the first Latin Christian philosopher of note, Lactantius, discoursed especially with the Latin tradition of philosophers, such as Cicero and Seneca. Like them, Lactantius endorses the idea that world was made for a purpose. He especially extols the symmetrical, beautiful and intricate structure of human body and the materialistically insolvable wonder of life processes as proofs of the existence of a divine designer. A major point of his criticism is the Epicurean idea that gods in their perfection would have nothing to do with lesser beings. Lactantius instead notes that a truly powerful being would essentially use its power and not remain passive.

Although Lactantius sympathises with the Stoic idea that the organiser of the world cared providentially for other entities, unlike them, he believes that God would also punish those behaving against the rules of good life - in addition to love, God could also experience anger. Of course, Lactantius admits, this divine anger is not be blind rage or fury, but a will for a just retribution against subjects who ignored the commands of their superior. Thus, emperors who had persecuted Christians were eventually punished by God.

Lactantius insists that only a single designer could be behind the world around us. If there would be several creators, he argues, their creations would essentially limit one another, thus making it impossible that world would form a unified whole. Hence, he rejects the polytheism inherent in Roman religion. Supposed divinities, Lactantius speculates, had been mere mortal human beings. Statues and images were made of them, originally just to make their memory last. Due to their fame, they had finally been relegated to the status of gods, and images made of them were worshiped in hope of rewards. They were thus no true gods, and even their fame was often due to quite wrong reasons, such as their physical prowess.

The falsity of Roman gods, Lactantius believes, had been known by philosophers, but they still could not find true religion with mere human reason. Some of them, like Cicero, still followed the common rituals, out of respect for tradition. Yet, Lactantius thinks, previous generations had been not wiser than current generations, so it would have been better to cease such futile traditions altogether, since they were contrary to reason. He has no respect either for philosophers who called natural things, like planets, gods. Planets do follow regular courses, unlike earthly objects with quite fortuitous movements, Lactantius admits, but this is no sign of their divinity - it just shows that God had ordained their movements.

The ultimate source of the errors of polytheists, and indeed, the ultimate source of everything evil, Lactantius suggests, is a creature which had rebelled against God, because it was jealous of perfection it did not possess. Lactantius is somewhat ambivalent of the status of this adversary. On the one hand, he says, the choice of the adversary had been free and God had merely given it the ability to err. On the other hand, Lactantius also insists, God requires opposite forces, that is, both good and evil, for creation of the world.

Although Lactantius speaks as if God required good and evil to make the world, he does not mean that God was in need of pre-existing material for his creation, like pagan thinkers had believed. Instead, Lactantius is certain that God was able to create, in addition to conscious beings, also something that has no consciousness at all, namely, matter. Indeed, he continues, if matter had existed eternally, it must have been incapable of being changed in any fashion and so utterly unsuitable for the role of material to be shaped.

Lactantius’ account of creation shows a rather old-fashioned view of the world, even in the context of ancient philosophy. Just like good and evil are the two forces governing the world, Lactantius says, the world also contains two regions - the heavenly abode full of light and essentially dark earth underneath it. The region of earth is also characterised by the same duality - East is where sun rises and light begins, while West is where the sun sets and darkness begins. Lactantius is obviously speaking about a flat earth, and to complete the account, he notes that cold North is close to dark West and warm South to light East. The geographical duality, he continues, is linked to a temporal duality, where day is filled with a single light of Sun, while dark night is only feebly lighted by the plurality of stars.

In addition to world in general, Lactantius notes, God designed also living things, which again require duality - divine heat in them is tempered by wetness of water. Lactantius explicitly notes that animals could not have been born without the help of divinity. He especially disparages the Epicurean notion that earth would have spontaneously been filled with the first individuals of all animal species and that it would have produced milkish sustenance to all these animals. Lactantius argues that world could not have been so different in the beginning, and if it were, animals could not have survived to adulthood without divine guidance.

The duality of animals, Lactantius believes, is augmented by another duality in human beings - the human body is infused by divine breath or soul. Although these two parts are necessary components of a human being, Lactantius notes that the soul is meant to be the controlling part of this combination. A person who lets his body control his soul will then be evil.

Lactantius continues then with details taken out of Biblical stories. First human beings had lived in eastern part of the world, which symbolises the goodness of the whole world. The adversary tricked humans into breaking God’s commands, which led to them being expelled from the paradise. Humans lost their immortality, but retained long lives, until God flooded the world because of the wicked ways of humankind. After that event, the humans who had remained alive filled all the corners of the earth, and the true religion faded away from their memories.

God had created guardians for the human race, Lactantius writes, but the adversary seduced some of them to succumb to temptation of bodies and to produce children with human beings. These fallen guardians and their offspring became then henchmen of the adversary, according to Lactantius, and they spread various false teachings over the earth. God allowed them to do this, Lactantius conjectures, because he was willing to test the worth of human beings.

If pagan religions are for Lactantius just deceptions of demons, pagan philosophy as mere love of wisdom is for him no true wisdom. It consists, Lactantius says, either of an admission of human ignorance or of a collection of opinions masking itself as knowledge. The former, he notes, clearly does not deserve the name of wisdom, while the latter ignores the inevitable source of error inherent in the bodily constitution of a human being.

Lactantius is especially critical of the opinions of philosophers about ethics - physics and logic concern only frivolous issues, while ethics should guide our very behaviour. He considers particularly the supreme goals philosophers had suggested for human life and finds them all wanting: pleasure is a goal good for pigs, while knowledge and virtue are only good as means for further goals. True goal of human life, Lactantius suggests, has to be a reward for the worship of God, namely, an eternal life without the shackles of bodily restrictions.

Like many early Christian thinkers, Lactantius thinks that true wisdom is revealed to humankind through Logos, the first creation of God and in so intimate connection with him that it should be called the son of God. Logos could even be called God itself, without destroying the unity of divinity - it is the necessary manner in which God appeared and revealed itself and without it no knowledge of God was possible. Logos had taken a human form, Lactantius continues, in order to show the humankind an example of a perfect life. This perfect specimen had to be God, in order to have authority over all humans, but it had to also be a human, so that it would prove that human body was no complete obstacle for perfect life.

Pagan religion, Lactantius states, did not just block our connection to God, but it also undermined the whole society. Pagans worshiped Jupiter, who had rebelled against his father Saturn and thus destroyed the idyllic past. No wonder then, Lactantius continues, that the Roman society rewarded thugs and militaristic leaders. Christians, on the other hand, are willing to share their fortune with people of less means, and during a shipwreck they would gladly give the last plank to another person, because they know a true reward waits them in the afterlife. The injustice of pagans, Lactantius argues, can even be seen in that they will not argue for their religion, but persecute Christians, who decline to follow its rituals, while Christians force no one to convert to their religion.

The rituals of Christians, Lactantius points out, involve no animal sacrifices, but just living the life as it should be lived. This way of life is narrow and difficult one. Indeed, Lactantius goes even so far as to suggest that one could not naturally live a truly good life, unless one had the certainty given by God’s revelation that an immortal life would be its reward. Still, unlike some pagan philosophers had insisted, it is not enough just to know what one should do, if one does not really do it. Even the purging of sins by Logos is not enough, if one still continues to live a sinful life.

The life following this vision of divinity, Lactantius insists, should be a life dedicated to others and especially to those most in need. Lactantius notes that we have an innate way to recognise those needing our assistance, through the feeling of pity, and unliked Stoics insisted, we should follow this feeling, at least when done in moderation. Indeed, Lactantius notes that all feelings, even the seemingly negative ones, could be useful. We should not fear earthly pains, but we should fear divine punishments, and we should not be angered by evil works made against us, but we should use anger to control the urges of growing youngsters.

What one requires, according to Lactantius, is to control all emotions and sensations, so that their excess will not lead one away from one’s duties. Thus, Lactantius states, we should not use vision to watch brutal gladiator fights or rowdy theatricals, we should not use hearing to listen poems without moral teaching, we should not smell flowers or eat delicacies and we should not engage in sexual frivolities. While one might wonder why God then gave us the capacity to use all the senses in a manner we shouldn’t, Lactantius has a simple answer - good life requires battle against desires. Still, he does not think that one error would be enough to condemn a person, but honest repenting followed by good behaviour could still purge them.

God had made the world, Lactantius says, for the purpose of testing whether humans are capable of good life, which deserves then immortality for its prize. Human being is conjoined of good and evil - immortal soul and earthly body, with contrary desires pointing to different directions. In the state of innocence, the first human being did not yet understand the difference between the two. Lactantius suggests that fall was in a sense necessary step, because then human beings received the ability to understand the difference of good and evil in their own constitution. With this understanding, human beings became responsible for their evil nature and they were then appointed with the duty to purge themselves.

The final purification from all evil would require separation of soul from the evil of body. Lactantius suggests that this is in a sense a reason to believe in the immortality of soul - if we don’t assume it, it would make no sense to live a good life against the instigation of body. Against Epicureans, who thought that soul would instantly disperse when body collapsed, Lactantius insists that body is more like a container holding soul down. Thus, the slow collapse of the body can affect mental faculties, as long as soul is confined by the body, but when separated from the body, the soul would quickly return to its senses.

Once the purpose of the world is fulfilled, Lactantius notes, world in its current shape is not required and God as its creator has the power to undo it. For numerological reasons, Lactantius suggests that God has chosen number seven for this purpose. When world will have existed for six thousand years - something Lactantius thinks would happen in couple hundred years - Rome, which was already old, requiring the mastership of one person, will collapse in a civil war and finally its remnants will be assaulted by a king from north. Lactantius continues that the world will be in a state of upheaval, with land not bearing any fruit and all sorts of cosmological signs, like comets and eclipses, being commonplace. A final prophet will rise and do wonders, but will also be killed by an eastern tyrant, who will also have power to do all sorts of magic and who will pretend to be Logos. This state of constant warfare, Lactantius notes, will end when the real Logos returns to take up the governance of the world.

This will still not be the end of the world, Lactantius says, but it will continue existing for another thousand years. All the good people who had lived from the dawn of the world will rise from their graves and will go on to live and procreate - and some evil persons will also have survived, to be used as slaves. This millennium will be, Lactantius pictures, an era of prosperity, when world will spring honey and delicacies everywhere and the prince of evil would be chained. After thousand years, this source of all evil will be let free and he will incite nations of the world in a final assault against the fortification of Logos. This seems like a desperate attempt, since the end result, according to Lactantius, will be just God destroying the world as it is, with the remaining good persons surviving in caverns. The world will be made completely anew and the good human beings will receive new, purer bodies.

Strangely enough, Lactantius notes that all the evil people will also receive a kind of immortality, after all. They will be resurrected at this final moment and they will also receive new bodies. Yet, the purpose these bodies, Lactantius says, is just to make the evil persons suffer - they will be put to an everlasting fire, which while destroying flesh also renews it, thus making the bodily pain never-ending. And while Lactantius earlier disparaged people watching brutal fights, he somewhat inconsistently remarks that the just persons will go on watching the pain of their fellow human beings.

School of Plotinus

While Plotinus was still joined with mortal body, his philosophy was constantly going through slight alterations - although the broad details remained same, there were always uncertainties in details, which Plotinus hadn’t decided upon. When the soul of Plotinus returned to its pure state, time stopped also for the natural development of his philosophy. Instead, reinterpretation began almost instantly. Plotinus was regarded as an almost mythical figure, who had an instant line to the more divine levels of reality. One of his disciples, Porphyry, rearranged his philosophical texts, often dividing continuous essays into separate texts. His aim was apparently to systematise the philosophy of Plotinus. He put first texts dealing with ordinary human life, then through the study of corporeal world rose to the levels of soul and intellect. The final texts in Porphyry’s reordering should have concerned the primordial unity, but perhaps because there is so little to say about it, he also appended Plotinus’ discussion of categories and numbers to the final part.

Porphyry himself was a true polymath, who could both interpret Homer’s writings and follow Ptolemy’s account of musicology. In addition, he also combined all he knew into a worldview with clear Platonist origins. Thus, when reading in Homer a description of a cavern of water nymphs with two entrances, Porphyry regarded it as a symbolic representation of Platonic cavern or world, water being linked to impurities of embodied life, and two entrances marking the journey of soul both to and from world. And Ptolemian account of the study of musicology inspired Porphyry to discuss the general method for true knowledge: a reasoning being used perception (such as perceived sounds) as a tool for covering universal patterns (such as quantitative relations behind different melodies), which the reasoning being in its highest state could recognise as belonging to an immaterial realm of paradigmatic models.

Mostly just fragments of purely philosophy works of Porphyry have survived, but he was clearly influenced by Plotinus. Like Plotinus, Porphyry spoke of a hierarchy of body, soul and intellect, in which body was enlivened by and served soul and soul was enlivened by and served intellect. But whereas Plotinian intellect was something clearly removed from embodied soul - a state of pure self-reflection - with Porphyry it seems to be closely linked to soul as its controlling force.

Furthermore, Porphyry calls the highest point of his hierarchy God, thus linking his ideas more to a religious context. His God appears to be also quite active force, taking care of the physical world, yet, unlike Christian God, Porphyry’s God was not interested of punishing anybody. Now, Porphyry noted that God was helped by a real hierarchy of lower spiritual entities, such as demons and heroic souls. Some of these lower entities might be less helpful and even work against the common interest.

The connection to the spiritual entities and especially to God is the only method for stable happiness for human soul, Porphyry says. Despite the religious connotations, Porphyry notes that traditional forms of worship have little to do with establishing this link, and many religious ceremonies he considered to be even harmful. For instance, it makes no sense to sacrifice food for God, who as an incorporeal entity does not eat anything. Especially to be avoided is animal sacrifice, which at most attracts malevolent gaseous entities (that is, demons) that devour smoke rising from burning flesh. Besides, animals take part in the common rationality of living nature and should therefore not be killed vainly.

Similarly, Porphyry is mostly skeptical of conventional means for receiving messages from God. God himself would not even feel a need to contact anyone, so such messages would at most come from beneficial incorporeal entities and in worse cases from the delusions of oneself or deceptions of evil entities.

Instead, Porphyry emphasises the importance of lawful behavior. Law in question is not conventional law of some community, but, firstly, the natural law governing the affairs of physical world, and secondly, the divine law, connecting natural world with higher realms of existence, when soul gets rid of its bodily shackles.

The rule of behaviour in natural law emphasises healthy use of one’s bodily and mental faculties and its aim is to stifle unbridled passions. The divine law, on the other hand, means severing the ties between soul and body, through such practices like abstinence. The universe of material bodies is in a sense just a projection of souls, when they have lost their connection with their innermost selves - souls project these vanishing bodies into the barely existing canvas of matter, which as completely featureless cannot change into anything. Bodies governed by souls can generate other bodies, which at first lived in womb like plants, with no motion of their own and nourished by an umbilical cord. When such a body finally leaves the womb, another soul, which feels an interest on the newly born body, will voluntarily connect itself with the body and control it. While in itself an indivisible unity, in connection with body it might be said to have parts, because it attends to different parts of its body with its different capacities.

The aim of the practices severing the tie between soul and body, according to Porphyry, is to return soul to itself, to its original unity with itself. Soul cannot be said to exist in a place, except in the sense that it is inclined to something which has a place. In its earthly state, soul is interested in body and objects impinging on it. At this state, soul then directs its sensation to these objects and projects a life force to direct the body. Soul cannot change the basic character of the body, such as whether it is male or female, but it can guide the body to a healthier life. For instance, dietary choices, like abstinence from meat, weaken the link between soul and body.

Depending on the life lived, soul can choose a new life for itself and thus go through many personalities. When it turns more and more toward its own non-vanishing nature, it combines with more starry bodies. Finally, at the moment of its perfection, soul becomes intellect, which timelessly thinks perfect models of all entities, all at the same time, and in this world of perfections it also contemplates itself. Through this self-thinking intellect soul can finally unite with divinity, which for Porphyry is the truth of all existence.

Although his ideas resemble Christianity in some measure, for Porphyry it is just one sect among many others. He is quick to note that the history of Christianity had been coloured by internal strife from the start, when Peter and Paul had debated about letting uncircumcised into the church - how could single truth be found among these contentions? Porphyry is also skeptical about the various ways in which Christians had interpreted their holy writings. He is especially wary of Origen’s creative readings, which have in his eyes almost no connection with Bible itself.

Still, Porphyry is also critical of more literal readings and holds the opinion that Christians are completely wrong about the supposed high age of such biblical figures like Moses. Furthermore, Porphyry raises doubts towards the prophecies in Old Testament - for instance, he thinks that prophecies in book of Daniel were actually no tales of times to come, but histories, written in a form of prophecy to raise the credibility of the book.

Porphyry’s criticism is not restricted to questions of exegesis. He also notes that it makes no sense that God would have punished people for eating fruits that gave people knowledge - not just of evil, but also of good. Indeed, even the act of planting such a deadly tree he holds to be beneath the character of divinity.

Porphyry also criticises the Christian notion of Logos. Either this Logos is just some internal aspect of divinity - its “reason” - and then no independent entity, or it is like a literal word, that is, an expression of the power of divinity, but thus also something evanescent in comparison to the divinity, in other words, not God itself. Indeed, he thinks that Jesus, this supposed incarnation of Logos, was at most a person who because of his pure behaviour was in contact with God, but still was no God.

Porphyry also ridicules the notion that Jesus would have been born in order to save all humanity. Why, he asks, did Jesus then come to world so late, when a number of people could have had no chance of hearing about him? Because of all these contradictions Porphyry notes that Christianity is not a doctrine fit for philosophers, but suitable only for people of low intellectual talent. In a rather misogynistic fashion he implies that it is all due to women having such a big role in Christian societies.

Despite - or perhaps because of - this criticism, Christian writers commented quite a lot on Porphyry’s writings, explaining how Porphyry had understood their sacred writings completely wrong, Still, the greatest influence Porphyry had in the history of at least western Christendom occurred in the area of logic, as his Isagoge, an introduction to works of Aristotle, happened for a long time to be almost the only work on logic surviving the fall of Roman empire in the Western Christendom.

Isagoge is essentially just a clarification of some basic concepts. Just like lines can be drawn from forefathers to their ascendants, forming a sort of tree, a similar tree could be formed starting from highest genus. The lines would descend, always dividing into two, according to differences like rational and irrational, which shape the genus like material into lower genera. This tree goes all the way down to lowest species, which are just above individuals. In addition to genera, differences and species, Porphyry mention salso various characteristics, some of which (properties) characterise certain species, like capacity to laugh characterises humans, while others are accidental to the species, either because we can conceptually distinguish them (like blackness from crows) or because they really are just accidental features (like walking is something we are not always doing).

Although this simple scheme itself was important to medievals, perhaps even more important was what Porphyry left out. He specifically mentions he won’t deal with the nature of these genera and species. Are they perhaps something that exists only in our thoughts? Porphyry would probably have said that they are something more real, but are they then something material? Again, Porphyry would most likely have denied this, but might they exist only within and as completely dependent on individual things? Although he doesn’t say it, it is probable Porphyry thought that they existed independently of individuals.

Followers of Plotinus were more and more inclined to provide an alternative to Christianity. This was evidenced by an interest in Pythagoras, who is a topic of a biography with both Porphyry and his student Iamblichus and who is presented by them as a purer type of sage than Jesus. Just like Jesus, Pythagoras is told to have instructed fishermen to get a good catch - but unlike Jesus, Pythagoras apparently convinced them to release the fishes. 

Pythagoras is also viewed as an exemplar and instigator of all virtues, who was acquainted with all the divine secrets, taught wisdom to selected students, disciplined his followers to withstand all bodily temptations and act bravely in all circumstances, and created a just society which nurtured harmonious relationships between its members. Iamblichus goes even further and points out statements suggesting Pythagoras was an embodiment of some divinity like Apollo. Furthermore, Iamblichus tries to interpret obscure elements in Pythagorean cult as allegories, with profound truths hidden behind metaphors - thus, command to not urinate toward sun is seen as a reminder that divinities (metaphorical sun) do not enjoy bodily crassness.

In addition to Pythagoreanism, Plato’s dialogues were seen as a route toward higher knowledge. These dialogues, Iamblichus says, are organic wholes, where each element serves a single purpose, that is, the theme of the dialogue. Indeed, Iamblichus considers in his commentaries not just the strictly philosophical content of the dialogues, but also the external setting of the dialogue as information of hidden knowledge.

An important thing for Iamblichus is also the order in which the dialogues should be read. One should start from Alcibiades, because it urges the reader to study oneself and to raise oneself above the concerns of everyday life. The ending point is Philebus, a dialogue about what is good in all levels of being and also what is the ultimate paradigm and source of goodness. Or then one could just read Timaeus and Parmenides, two dialogues summarising the whole of Plato’s philosophy, first describing Plato’s view on temporal world and second describing things beyond temporal world.

Iamblichus is also eager to regard common religious rituals as containing important truths about reaching the divine realm, thus taking Platonism into a direction Porphyry was not willing to take it. Just like Porphyry and Plotinus, Iamblichus speaks of a hierarchy of entities, adding that rungs of this hierarchy were described by different parts of Plato’s Parmenides. Like with his predecessors, Iamblichian hierarcy begins from the Primary source or primordial unity. Just below the unity is the self-conceiving intellect or the proverbial Creator, which provides being among other things also to itself. Together with Creator, there are other immaterial entities or divinities, which are completely removed from the realm of matter and embody some abstractions, working in a similar role as Platonic ideas, for instance, the sources of sameness and difference.

Between the realm of wholly immaterial deities and sense world, Iamblichus places the realm of mathematical entities, which interested the Pythagorean school. These entities share characteristics with both the more immaterial entities (such as non-temporality) and sensuous beings (such as being divisible) and thus work for human beings as a road from the one to the other. While sensuous beings fluctuate even as we view them and the same finger might seem both a unity and a multiplicity, mathematical entities are stabler. They also are controlled by the abstractions of the more ideal realm - for instance, mathematical entities could be either similar or dissimilar with one another - and control sensuous entities, which also have their quantities.

Because of their mediating place, Iamblichus notes, mathematical entities cannot be perceived, but they have to be thought of, while this mathematical manner of thinking cannot reach ideal divinities. Still, they at least form the first stepping stone that lead us to think the ideal realm. The mathematical entities are derived from various unions of unity and multiplicity and are either combined sets of diverse units (objects of arithmetic, which have a natural lower limit, but no highest limit) or unities divisible into multiple parts (objects of geometry, which have a natural highest limit, but no lowest limit).

Below the immaterial realms in Iamblichean hierarchy is time, which is an image of eternity and which confers to temporal entities a kind of being, which is divided into what was and what is and what will be. Highest of these temporal entities are souls, which Iamblichus thinks are a sort of mix of ideal and material realms. In other words, souls as such have their own, immaterial activities, but in contact with matter they produce new activities, such as bodily memory.

Iamblichus notes that some souls are less material than others. Of the souls, the least connection with matter have divinities which rule over the most general entities of temporal world or stars. Below these is a being who fashioned the earthly realm and is thus connected with the earthly matter or ultimate lack of being, but also gazes upon the immutability of the heavens and the immaterial ideas and tries to replicate this immutability in its own works - Iamblichus compares it to a sophist, who tries to fool people with his imitations of truth.

Below gods are demons, which transform the invisible effects of divinities into visible goods to be used by lower entities. Next after demons are heroes or demigods, which appear to be human souls of the purest kind, capable of better life than ordinary humans. Some of them might be people like Pythagoras, who have been able to raise themselves permanently above the human condition through their heightened awareness, although they might occasionally have to enter the lower world because of preordained rules. In practice, Iamblichus seems to have suggested even further levels of entities between gods and human souls - archangels, angels and various archons - but it is unclear what their role in the hierarchy is.

The lowest rank in the hierarchy is held by ordinary human souls, which have took on more and more material and solid encasings, being finally encased in human bodies, which they try to control, although at the same they are completely overwhelmed by bodily urges. The human soul still have a reason or capacity to look upon the higher realms and thus a possibility to improve itself. If purified enough, at the time of death the human soul will rise again to more heavenly realms and control the sensible world with the higher entities, leaving only an irrational shadow behind it.

Unlike Plotinus and Porphyry, Iamblichus emphasises that purification of human soul is of religious nature. All the entities higher than human souls, Iamblichus notes against Porphyry, have to be beneficial, because they have been generated by the very source of goodness. All of them have to be also celebrated with proper rituals, Iamblichus says, and indeed, one could not straightaway move to the highest level of the hierarchy, before becoming tuned with its lower rungs.

Iamblichus does not completely deny the possibility of evil entities fooling people taking part in false religious rituals. Yet, with proper rituals no such deception is possible. Even if divinities contacted with such rituals might appear to act in an evil fashion and hurt people, there always is a good reason for such a behaviour. For instance, these divinities might punish humans because of crimes they have committed in previous lives. Furthermore, the seeming divine punishments might actually be beneficial, although our inferior human souls cannot comprehend this. Another possibility is that the seemingly evil actions are caused by some intermediary material cause muddying the original beneficial purpose - or they were the result of our soul turning away from the beneficial influence of gods.

Now, religious rituals seemingly speaking to highest ranks of divine hierarchy, Iamblichus insists, are not meant to command entities in these highest ranks, unlike Porphyry disparagingly suggested. Instead, they are meant to open up the soul to an occasion in which a divinity or some other higher entity has freely chosen to connect with the mundane level. Through such a connection divinities can reveal truths more important than those known by scholars of mundane matters. Thus, although someone with knowledge of the seasons could foretell the weather, this is nothing in comparison to an oracular divination.

Unlike Porphyry, Iamblichus is not critical even of animal sacrifices. Indeed, he says, higher beings might well come in contact with material things, without losing their own purity, just like some of these beings controlled stars. Of course, they do not need matter for their sustenance, which would have made divinities and demons ridiculously dependent on their worshippers. Instead, the idea of sacrifice is to purify matter with fire and thus raise it to the level of higher beings. Even the crassness of some mysteries have their purpose, Iamblichus noted. A sexual imagery is meant to be taken as a symbolism of generative forces of life, while even more radical rituals are supposed to shock and so sever soul from its material connections.

Divine knowledge revealed by religious rituals is then, according to Iamblichus, something profoundly higher than mere scholarship, which is based on mere human cognitive faculties. Just like beyond self-aware Creator is the primordial unconscious unity, Iamblichus thinks that beyond cognitive faculties is a higher activity connecting us mystically to all of existence. Indeed, innocent youth might well have a more intimate connection with divine reality, because of the purity of his soul. Some religious rituals are just supposed to purify the soul to a more divine level. With the connection to divine established, human being might have the ability to command and threaten lower powers, which would normally be above her level.