Flight From Humanity is a revealing look into the nature and effect of neoplatonism on contemporary Christian thought, and it offers sound Biblical solutions for the believer who desires to fully serve God.
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Similarly, although Augustine now thought of Manichee dualism as "an abomination," he still had no solution to the problem of evil. He even reached the point of suspecting (after listening to other Catholics) that human free will causes evil, but was left with the question of why humans can choose evil at all. How could it even be an option to choose something other than God, if God is omnipotent?
Aristotle and his works became the basis for the both religion and science, especially through the Middle Ages. In religion, Aristotelian ethics were the basis for St. Thomas Aquinas' works that forged Christian thought on free will and the role of virtue. Aristotle's scientific observations were considered the last word in knowledge until about the 16th century, when Renaissance thought challenged and eventually replaced much of it. Even so, Aristotle's empirical approach based on observation, hypothesis and direct experience (experimentation) is at least part of the basis for scientific activity in nearly every field of study.
Plotinus' starting-point is that of the idealist. He meets what he considers the paradox of materialism, the assertion, namely, that matter alone exists, by an emphatic assertion of the existence of spirit. If the soul is spirit, it follows that it cannot have originated from the body or an aggregation of bodies. The true source of reality is above us, not beneath us. It is the One, the Absolute, the Infinite. It is God. God exceeds all the categories of finite thought. It is not correct to say that He is a Being, or a Mind. He is over-Being, over-Mind. The only attributes which may be appropriately applied to Him are Good and One. If God were only One, He should remain forever in His undifferentiated unity, and there should be nothing but God. He is, however, good; and goodness, like light, tends to diffuse itself. Thus from the One, there emanates in the first place Intellect (Nous), which is the image of the One, and at the same time a partially differentiated derivative, because it is the world of ideas, in which are the multiple archetypes of things. From the intellect emanates an image in which there is a tendency to dynamic differentiation, namely the World-soul, which is the abode of forces, as the Intellect is the abode of Ideas. From the World-Soul emanates the Forces (one of which is the human soul), which, by a series of successive degradations towards nothing become finally Matter, the non-existent, the antithesis of God. All this process is called an emanation, or flowing. It is described in figurative language, and thus its precise philosophical value is not determined. Similarly the One, God, is described as light, and Matter is said to be darkness. Matter, is, in fact, for Plotinus, essentially the opposite of the Good; it is evil and the source of all evil. It is unreality and wherever it is present, there is not only a lack of goodness but also a lack of reality. God alone is free from Matter; He alone is Light; He alone is fully real. Everywhere there is partial differentiation, partial darkness, partial unreality; in the intellect, in the World-Soul, in Souls, in the material universe. God, the reality, the spiritual, is, therefore, contrasted with the world, the unreal, the material. God is noumenon, everything else is appearance, or phenomenon.
Man, being composed of body and soul, is partly, like God, spiritual, and partly like matter, the opposite of spiritual. It is his duty to aim at returning to God by eliminating from his being, his thoughts, and his actions, everything that is material and, therefore, tends to separate him from God. The soul came from God. It existed before its union with the body; its survival after death is, therefore, hardly in need of proof. It will return to God by way of knowledge, because that which separates it from God is matter and material conditions, which are only illusions or deceptive appearances. The first step, therefore in the return of the soul to God is the act by which the soul, withdrawing from the world of sense by a process of purification (katharsis), frees itself from the trammels of matter. Next, having retired within itself, the soul contemplates within itself the indwelling intellect. From the contemplation of the Intellect within, it rises to a contemplation of the Intellect above, and from that to the contemplation of the One. It cannot, however, reach this final stage except by revelation, that is, by the free act of God, Who, shedding around Him the light of His own greatness, sends into the soul of the philosopher and saint a special light which enables it to see God Himself. This intuition of the one so fills the soul that it excludes all consciousness and feeling, reduces the mind to a state of utter passivity, and renders possible the union of man with God. The ecstasy (ekstasis) by which this union is attained is man's supreme happiness, the goal of all his endeavor, the fulfillment of his destiny. It is a happiness which receives no increase by continuance of time. Once the philosopher-saint has attained it, he becomes confirmed, so to speak, in grace. Henceforth forever, he is a spiritual being, a man of God, a prophet, and a wonder-worker. He commands all the powers of nature, and even bends to his will the demons themselves. He sees into the future, and in a sense shares the vision, as he shares the life, of God.
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