Platonism and Its Christian Heritage


Book Description

This collection of essays by John M. Rist deals with Platonism in the Imperial Roman age and with its various and complicated relationships with the growing Christian recognition of the necessity to think.




Christian Platonism


Book Description

Platonism has played a central role in Christianity and is essential to a deep understanding of the Christian theological tradition. At times, Platonism has constituted an essential philosophical and theological resource, furnishing Christianity with an intellectual framework that has played a key role in its early development, and in subsequent periods of renewal. Alternatively, it has been considered a compromising influence, conflicting with the faith's revelatory foundations and distorting its inherent message. In both cases the fundamental importance of Platonism, as a force which Christianity defined itself by and against, is clear. Written by an international team of scholars, this landmark volume examines the history of Christian Platonism from antiquity to the present day, covers key concepts, and engages issues such as the environment, natural science and materialism.




Plato's Parmenides and Its Heritage: Its Reception in Neoplatonic, Jewish, and Christian Texts


Book Description

Plato's Parmenides and Its Heritage presents in two volumes ground-breaking results in the history of interpretation of Plato's Parmenides, the culmination of six years of international collaboration by the SBL Annual Meeting seminar, “Rethinking Plato's Parmenides and Its Platonic, Gnostic and Patristic Reception” (2001–2007).Volume 2 examines and establishes for the first time evidence for a significant knowledge of the Parmenides in Philo, Clement, and patristic sources. It offers an extensive and balanced analysis of the case for and against the various possible attributions of date and authorship of the Anonymous Commentary in relation to Gnosticism, Middle Platonism, and Neoplatonism and argues that on balance the case for a pre-Plotinian authorship is warranted. It also undertakes for the first time in this form an examination of the Parmenides in relation to Jewish and Christian thought, moving from Philo and Clement through Origen and the Cappadocians to Pseudo-Dionysius. The contributors to Volume 2 are Matthias Vorwerk, Kevin Corrigan, Luc Brisson, Volker Henning Drecoll, Tuomas Rasimus, John F. Finamore, John M. Dillon, Sara Ahbel-Rappe, Gerald Bechtle, David T. Runia, Mark Edwards, Jean Reynard, and Andrew Radde-Gallwitz.




The Gospel of Thomas and Plato


Book Description

In The Gospel of Thomas and Plato, Ivan Miroshnikov offers the first systematic discussion of the Platonist impact on the Gospel of Thomas, arguing that Platonism is indispensable to making sense of those sayings that have long remained exegetical cruces.




Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition


Book Description

The rise of modernity, especially the European Enlightenment and its aftermath, has negatively impacted the way we understand the nature and interpretation of Christian Scripture. In this introduction to biblical interpretation, Craig Carter evaluates the problems of post-Enlightenment hermeneutics and offers an alternative approach: exegesis in harmony with the Great Tradition. Carter argues for the validity of patristic christological exegesis, showing that we must recover the Nicene theological tradition as the context for contemporary exegesis, and seeks to root both the nature and interpretation of Scripture firmly in trinitarian orthodoxy.




The Afterlife of the Platonic Soul


Book Description

Plato's doctrine of the soul, its immaterial nature, its parts or faculties, and its fate after death (and before birth) came to have an enormous influence on the great religious traditions that sprang up in late antiquity, beginning with Judaism (in the person of Philo of Alexandria), and continuing with Christianity, from St. Paul on through the Alexandrian and Cappadocian Fathers to Byzantium, and finally with Islamic thinkers from Al-kindi on. This volume, while not aspiring to completeness, attempts to provide insights into how members of each of these traditions adapted Platonist doctrines to their own particular needs, with varying degrees of creativity.




Eros in Neoplatonism and its Reception in Christian Philosophy


Book Description

Showing the ontological importance of eros within the philosophical systems inspired by Plato, Dimitrios A. Vasilakis examines the notion of eros in key texts of the Neoplatonic philosophers, Plotinus, Proclus, and the Church Father, Dionysius the Areopagite. Outlining the divergences and convergences between the three brings forward the core idea of love as deficiency in Plotinus and charts how this is transformed into plenitude in Proclus and Dionysius. Does Proclus diverge from Plotinus in his hierarchical scheme of eros? Is the Dionysian hierarchy to be identified with Proclus' classification of love? By analysing The Enneads, III.5, the Commentary on the First Alcibiades and the Divine Names side by side, Vasilakis uses a wealth of modern scholarship, including contemporary Greek literature to explore these questions, tracing a clear historical line between the three seminal late antique thinkers.




The Christian Heritage


Book Description

The Christian Heritage: Problems and Prospects delves into the history of the western Christian heritage. Challenges to the Christian heritage, a heritage nourished both by Judaism and by the western classics, have been stimulated by the very success of the way of life that is promoted, a way of life that is somehow responsible for the emergence of modern science with its revolutionary technology. The reader is encouraged to reconsider authors prominent in the religious tradition of the West. Guidance is provided for examinations of the fundamental assumptions and the enduring questions by which Western Civilization has been guided and challenged for millennia. The enduring texts that we in the West repeatedly encounter, especially the most challenging of them, are apt to draw upon, and to illuminate the fundamental assumptions and the enduring questions by which Western Civilization has been guided and challenged for millennia. Vital to Western Civilization has long been the Christian Heritage. That Heritage has been taken for granted in our general education, in something as prosaic as the everyday operations of our legal system, and perhaps even in our economic and other social arrangements.




Contemplating God with the Great Tradition


Book Description

Southwestern Journal of Theology 2021 Book of the Year Award (Theological Studies) 2021 Book Award, The Gospel Coalition (Honorable Mention, Academic Theology) Following his well-received Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition, Craig Carter presents the biblical and theological foundations of trinitarian classical theism. Carter, a leading Christian theologian known for his provocative defenses of classical approaches to doctrine, critiques the recent trend toward modifying or rejecting classical theism in favor of modern "relational" understandings of God. The book includes a short history of trinitarian theology from its patristic origins to the modern period, and a concluding appendix provides a brief summary of classical trinitarian theology. Foreword by Carl R. Trueman.




Plato and Theodoret


Book Description

A summary of the late antique Hellenic-Christian conflict regarding the compatability of Platonism and Christianity.