NEO-PLATONISM

Even if no one had gone beyond Clement in love of heathen philosophy, and in lowering the standard of Christianity toward the level of paganism, the results would have been fatal to the church. For let it be remembered that Clement stood at the head of the great theological seminary at Alexandria, where the young men who were to be the teachers of the heathen received their instruction. But the matter did not stop here. It has been well said that “apostasy is like the descent of falling bodies; it proceeds with ever accelerating velocity.” It was not enough that the church should teach the heathen that their pagan philosophy was a system especially devised by the Lord for the purpose of preparing them for Christianity; the next step was to teach them that they were in reality Christians already, and had always been such. How this came about we shall let Mosheim tell in the following paragraphs:SOOCC 47.1

“This [eclectic] mode of philosophizing received some modification, when Ammonius Saccas, at the close of the century, with great applause, opened a school at Alexandria, and laid the foundation of that sect which is called the New Platonic. This man was born and educated a Christian, and perhaps made pretensions to Christianity all his life. Being possessed of great fecundity of genius as well as eloquence, he undertook to bring all systems of philosophy and religion into harmony, or attempted to teach a philosophy, by which all philosophers, and the men of all religions, the Christian not excepted, might be joined into one concordant body. And here, especially, lies the difference between this new sect and the eclectic philosophy which had before flourished in Egypt. For the eclectics held that there was a mixture of good and bad, true and false, in all the systems; and therefore they selected out of all what appeared to them consonant with reason, and rejected the rest. But Ammonius held that all sects professed one and the same system of truth, with only some difference in the mode of stating it, and some minute difference in their conceptions; so that by means of suitable explanations, they might with little difficulty be brought into one body. He moreover held this new and singular principle, that the prevailing religions, and the Christian also, must be understood and explained according to this common philosophy of all the sects, and that not only the fables of the vulgar pagans and their priests, but also the interpretations of the disciples of Christ, ought to be separated from their respective religions.SOOCC 48.1

“The grand object of Ammonius, to bring all sects and religions into harmony, required him to do much violence to the sentiments and opinions of all parties, philosophers, priests, and Christians, and particularly by allegorical interpretations, to remove very many impediments our of his way. The manner in which he prosecuted his object, appears in the writings of his disciples and adherents, which have come down to us in great abundance. To make the arduous work more easy, he assumed, that philosophy was first produced and nurtured among the people of the East; that it was inculcated among the Egyptians by Hermes, and thence passed to the Greeks; that it was a little obscured and deformed by the disputatious Greeks; but still, that by Plato, the best interpreter of the principles of Hermes and of the ancient oriental sages, it was preserved for the most part entire and unsullied; that the religions received by the various nations of the world were not inconsistent with this most ancient philosophy; yet it had most unfortunately happened, that what the ancients taught by symbols and fictitious histories, according to the oriental fashion, had been understood literally by the people and the priests; and thus the ministers of Divine Providence, those demons whom the Supreme Lord of all had placed over the various parts of our world, had erroneously been converted into gods, and had been worshiped with many vain ceremonies; that, therefore, the public religions of all nations should be corrected by this ancient philosophy; and that it was the sole object of Christ to set bounds to the reigning superstition, and correct the errors which had crept into religion, but not to abolish altogether the ancient religions.”—Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History, century 2, part 2, chapter 1, sections 7,8.SOOCC 49.1

The reader will have no difficulty in agreeing with Mosheim that no set of men ever occasioned greater evils and calamities to the Christian church than did these Neo-Platonists. In Neo-Platonism there was the germ of every evil. Monkery, Spiritualism in the church, purgatory, prayers to and for the dead, and, in short, Jesuitism,—an utter deadening of the moral perceptions,—sprang from this Egyptian philosophy like the frogs which at one time defiled the land. But that which led to all these unchristian and abominable practices was the unprincipled manner in which Ammonius and his disciples handled the Scriptures and to this we direct our attention.SOOCC 49.2

It had long been a recognized principle among philosophers that the end justified the means, and that truth was valuable only as it would bring about certain desired results. But if there was a certain point which they thought it was necessary to make, and they could gain it better by telling a falsehood than by telling the truth, they did not scruple to lie. It was only by the application of this principle (or, rather, lack of principle) that Ammonius was able to construct his system of philosophy. In order to make it appear that all systems of philosophy, together with Christianity, were really one system, he had to distort those systems, putting upon the teaching of philosophers a construction which the words would not warrant. But it is manifest that none of those systems of philosophy could suffer so much by this process as Christianity did.SOOCC 50.1

The difference between them was only technical, while Christianity had nothing in common with any of them. It is evident, therefore, that in the general average, Christianity had to stand really all the loss. The case is thus stated by Mosheim:—SOOCC 51.1

“When once this passion for philosophizing had taken possession of the minds of the Egyptian teachers and certain others, and had been gradually diffused by them in various directions throughout the church, the holy and beautiful simplicity of early times very quickly disappeared, and was followed by a most remarkable and disastrous alteration in nearly the whole system of Christian discipline. This very important and deeply-to-be-regretted change had its commencement in the century now under review [the second], but it will be in the succeeding one that we shall have to mark its chief progress. One of the earliest evils that flowed from this immoderate attachment to philosophy, was the violence to which it gave rise in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. For, whereas, the Christians had, from a very early period, imbibed the notion that under the words, laws, and facts recorded in the sacred volume, there is a latent sense concealed, an opinion which they appear to have derived from the Jews, no sooner did this passion for philosophizing take possession of their minds, than they began with wonderful subtilty to press the Scriptures into their service, in support of all such principles and maxims as appeared to them consonant to reason; and at the same time most wretchedly to pervert and twist every part of those divine oracles which opposed itself to their philosophical tenets or notions.”—Commentaries, century 2, section 33.SOOCC 51.2

As stated in another place: “This great design of bringing about a union of all sects and religions, the offspring of a mind certainly not destitute of genius, but distracted by fanaticism, and scarcely at all under the dominion of reason, required, in order to its execution, not only that the most strained and unprincipled interpretations should be given to ancient sentiments, maxims, documents, and narratives, but also that the assistance of frauds and fallacies should be called in; hence we find the works which the disciples of Ammonius left behind them abounding in things of this kind; so much so, indeed, that it is impossible for them ever to be viewed in any other light than as deplorable monuments of wisdom run mad.”—lb., section 28. This is exactly in harmony with Romans 1:22: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”SOOCC 51.3