HISTORY CHRISTIAN AND NEO-PLATONIC VIEWS ON DIVINE REVELATION

BY

E.P. MEIJERING

Introduction. In the controversies between orthodox Christians, Gnos- tics and Platonists everybody attacked everybody. The orthodox Chris- tians attacked the Gnostics and the Platonists, the Platonists attacked the Gnostics and the orthodox Christians, and the Gnostics are bound to have disapproved of both the orthodox Christians and the Platonists. The present paper intends to compare Irenaeus' polemics against the Gnostics with ' attack on them. Since it is obvious that Irenaeus could not have known about Plotinus, and since the possibility that Plotinus read Irenaeus is extremely remote, we are not concerned with tracing any kind of dependence. We shall deal with the question in how far Irenaeus directed or would have directed the objections which he had against the Gnostics, against the Platonists as well and in how far he would have been justified in doing so. We shall also deal with the question in how far Plotinus would and could have directed the objections, which he has. against the Gnostics, against the orthodox Christians as well. It is im- portant to discuss the question in how far the Platonists and the orthodox Christians would have been justified in their attacks on one another, since the controversies in the second, third and fourth centuries (and in the following centuries down to our ) were conducted at a low level, where one was not interested in whether one was fair to one's opponent. We choose Irenaeus since he can be regarded as the father of orthodox Christian , and Plotinus, since he is obviously the greatest thinker in the Platonic tradition. Furthermore, both have extensively dealt with the same problem: the refutation of the pessimistic of the Gnostics.

1 I want to express my gratitude to Professor A. H. Armstrongfor advising me on the relevant treatises of Plotinus which ought to be taken into consideration for the purpose pursued in this paper. 249

The relation between Platonism, orthodox Christianity and Gnosticism has often been dealt with and it would be the kind of insolence which both Plotinus and Irenaeus so strongly dislike2 to suggest that we can come forward with an entirely new vision. But there is enough divergence between the scholars to justify the hope that we may be able to illuminate a few points. According to Harnack3 the orthodox Christians of the second and third centuries show in their polemics against the Gnostics that they were strongly influenced by contemporary . This is clear from the fact that they argue in favour of the Gnostic demiurge and assert that he is the highest God, and that they never argue the other way round, namely that the Gnostic highest God is the Creator. This means that the orthodox Christians wanted to give a kind of 'Welterkldrung' and were unaware of the qualitative difference between the realm of creation and the realm of redemption. According to von Ivanka4 the orthodox Christians objected to both Gnostics and Platonists because they denied that the was created by the decision of God's . Furthermore, Christians detected the Gnostic pessimism also in the Neo-Platonists, since they did not believe that human life is meaningful in itself. According to the Neo-Platonists every step further away from the One is a deterioration, and human life emerges in the course of this deterioration. The Neo-Platonists to the orthodox Christians because their emphasis on God's free will and their rejection of a necessary projection out of the One leads to the contingency of the world, an which Plotinus regarded as outrageous. In a recent paper A. H. Armstrong takes a different view.5 According to him Plotinus would have opposed the orthodox Christians in the same way as he opposed the Gnostics. The core of Plotinus' polemics against the Gnostics is that the world is a theophany. He strongly dislikes the confinement of God's revelation to a man, Jesus Christ, and to the body of the church. The orthodox Christians, too, say that the world is good, but this is not the heart of their religion. The heart of their religion - and here there is great similarity with the Gnostics - is the revelation in Jesus 2 See infra 269, 270 f. 3 See Lehrbuch der DogmengeschichteI (41909)568ff. 4 See Christianus. Übernahme und Umgestaltung des Platonismus durch die Vater (Einsiedeln 1964) 132f and 128f. 5 See his paper, Man in the Cosmos. A Study of some Differences between Pagan Neo-Platonism and Christianity, Romanitas et Christianitas. Studia J. H. Waszink ... oblata (Amsterdam-London 1973) 5-14.