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Neoplatonism and the Antichrist
by John R. T. Lamont
Sebastian Morello's promotion of 'Christian Hermeticism' has met with severe criticism from a number of sources, as promoting occultism (cf. here). Surprisingly, Morello’ views have been defended by a certain number of Catholics. The criticisms that have been made of his ‘Christian Hermeticism’ are substantially accurate, but the accuracy of these criticisms rests upon facts about complex philosophical systems and historical developments that are little known even to the well-educated reader. It is important to fill in the historical background for the average Catholic, in order to show that Morello's views are irrational and cannot be reconciled with Catholicism.
Morello describes his 'Christian Hermeticism' thus; 'When I speak of Hermeticism, I am referring not only to the Corpus Hermeticum that played such a big role in the cultural and aesthetic revival of 15th and 16th century Europe, when the Greek Christians introduced this volume to the West during the Council of Florence, but to the whole intellectual and spiritual enterprise that has orbited this tradition and its inextricable connection—both historical and conceptual—to Neoplatonism.' He claims that 'The mystico-philosophy of Neoplatonism and the revelation of the Christian religion were synthesised in the early Church and together became the foundations of theology, both Latin and Greek, in the Patristic age ... whilst Neoplatonism largely competed against Christianity in the Church’s early centuries, the latter soon baptised the fundamental insights of Neoplatonism, making its metaphysics the vital framework within which Patristic theology developed.' He asserts that 'the Church, in the titanic task of unshackling itself from the modern paradigm, may have to offer a chair at its table to Hermes Trismegistus, perhaps next to Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, and so many other greats whom it has retrospectively baptised. ... the venture of slowly salvaging our crumbling civilisation will start with the death of the Enlightened man and the rebirth of the Hermetic man.' Morello's 'Christian Hermeticism' thus has two components; adoption of Neoplatonist philosophy, and an embrace of Hermeticism proper. 'Christian Hermeticism' is supposed to be both a recovery of an ancient wisdom that is at the heart of Catholicism, and the antidote to the poison of the Enlightenment that is crippling the Church and devastating humanity.
Morello's views on Neoplatonism, Hermeticism and Christianity echo those of the Anglican theologian John Milbank, who has described Neoplatonist theurgy as 'remarkably akin to the sacramental and liturgical practice of Christianity' (Milbank, in Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, p. viii). The general idea that the Enlightenment is evil because of its materialist reductionism, that this evil is the blight of our times, and that it has to be overcome by some sort of return to spiritualism and occultism is not limited to Morello's hermeticism; it is also found in the 'traditionalism' of René Guénon (1886-1951), a French occultist who thought that the advent of modernity was a disaster because of the Enlightenment’s rejection of magic and the occult. Other scholars have simply concluded that Neoplatonism is correct under some interpretation, and that Christianity should either be rejected for it or harmonized with it. These include A. H. Armstrong, Fr. Jean Trouillard, Henry Duméry, Fr. Stanislas Bréton, and Wayne Hankey. The general idea that the Enlightenment is evil because of its materialism and denial of the spiritual, and that the solution to the problem of the Enlightenment is to be found in hermetic and occultist ideas, has been around since the 19th century. It was part of the appeal of Madame Blavatsky's Theosophy. Morello is thus part of a wider movement of thought.
Four questions arise in assessing Morello's position; is he right about Neoplatonism? Is he right about the Corpus Hermeticum? Is he right about the 'Christian Hermeticism' of the Renaissance? Is he right about Hermeticism and the Enlightenment? Each of these questions requires its own treatment, which must necessarily involve some detailed scholarly discussion. Neither Morello nor the wider movement that he belongs to would deserve this detailed discussion, if it were not for the fact that their refutation involves bringing forward truths of profound importance about the Catholic Church and the part she has played in history.
Neoplatonism
Morello claims; 'Whether Hermeticism and Neoplatonism have the exact same genealogy is a question for historians. In any case, they have ever been inextricably bound together. Neoplatonism provides the ontological superstructure within which a theocentric worldview makes sense, and Hermeticism provides practices and disciplines to habituate this theocentric vision. This superstructure is that on which the Church Fathers, the medieval schoolmen, and the Christian humanists of the Renaissance built their civilisational project.'https://europeanconservative.com/articles/essay/can-hermetic-magic-rescue-the-church-part-iii-the-magi-return/ Morello describes St. Thomas as having a Neoplatonic ontology; that is, as agreeing with the Neoplatonists about the character of the basic things that exist.
'Neoplatonism' is the term applied by scholars to the thought of Plotinus (ca. 204 – 270 A.D.) and later philosophers who followed him. It is a modern term; the philosophers themselves simply called themselves 'Platonists', and the Fathers of the Church did the same. The Neoplatonists are part of the wider Platonist school, and their views and relations to Christianity can only be understood in the context of this Platonist school.
The Athenian philosopher Plato (c. 428–423 – ca. 348/347 B.C.) established an official school, the Academy, that survived his death and lasted until 83 B.C.. One of his main positions was the postulation of Ideas or Forms.https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2022/entries/plato-metaphysics/ These Ideas offered an explanation of how different things can be the same; for example, how two different things can both be red, or can both be beautiful. Plato held that different things have the same characteristic by participating in a given Idea. Red things all participate in the Idea of Redness, which does not exist in space or time, and which somehow causes the redness of all particular red things. The Ideas are the only things that fully exist; they are grasped by the intellect, not by the senses, and are the only objects of knowledge. The Idea of the Good is the supreme Idea, the source of all good and the object of all desire. 'What gives truth to the things known and the power to know to the knower is the Form of the Good. And though it is the cause of knowledge and truth, it is also an object of knowledge.' (Plato, Republic 508e).
Under Arcesilaus (c. 315 – c. 241 B.C.), the Academy departed from Plato's own thought and adopted skepticism as its philosophical position. In the first century B.C., Antiochus of Ascalon responded to the challenges of skepticism and the stalemated disputes between Stoics, Epicureans and other philosophical schools by reviving what he called Platonism. The basic idea of this Middle Platonism, as it has been called, was that Plato and Aristotle and indeed all the good philosophers were in fundamental agreement. The eclectic philosophy that resulted gave the highest status to Plato, but incorporated elements from Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Pythagoreans. The synthesis of Plato and Aristotle was produced by moving Plato's Ideas into the mind of Aristotle's First Mover, where they became the exemplars for God's causal activity. The Middle Platonist Alcinous expressed this idea in his Didaskalikos, a textbook of Platonism; 'Form is defined as an eternal model of things that are in accordance with nature. ... For the forms are eternal and perfect thoughts of God. (9.2) The primary god, then, is eternal, ineffable, 'self-perfect' {that is, deficient in no respect), 'ever-perfect' (that is, always perfect), and 'all-perfect' (that is, perfect in all respects); divinity, essentiality, truth, commensurability, (beauty), good. I am not listing these terms as being distinct from one another, but on the assumption that one single thing is being denoted by all of them. ... he is Father through being the cause of all things (10.3)' (Didaskalikos, J. Dillon tr.). The monotheistic creator produced by this synthesis resembled the God of the Christians, which recommended Middle Platonism to the early Church. Middle Platonist ideas may have been adopted by the New Testament. The leading Middle Platonists include Numenius, Plutarch, Alcinous, and Philo. By the end of the third century A.D., Platonism had eclipsed the other schools of philosophy.
The Fathers of the Church took a twofold approach to Plato, whom they generally recognized as the best of the Greek philosophers: they pointed to topics where Plato (or Platonists) agreed with Christianity to argue for the truth of the Christian message, and they pointed to topics where Platonism disagreed with Christianity to argue that because the Christians were right on these points, Christianity was superior to even the best of Greek philosophy. Contra the liberal Protestant historian Adolf von Harnack, Christianity did not import the ideas and concepts of Greek philosophy into its teachings. It already had ideas and concepts of its own, being a religious tradition that was more than a millennium old. Every Christian held that Christianity, being divinely revealed, was superior to Greek philosophy, and not in need of being supplemented or corrected by it. The principal influence of Greek philosophy on Christianity was to give Christian teaching a more precise form, by providing philosophically elaborated accounts of subjects where Christianity and philosophy agreed. An example would be understanding the Biblical teaching that God is changeless and everlasting in terms of the philosophical account of God as timelessly eternal. The influence worked the other way as well; the work of correctly formulating Christian doctrine produced advances in philosophical understanding, as with the development of the concept of a person and the notion of free choice.
Christians making favourable reference to Platonism, and using it to illustrate or defend Christian teachings, took important texts from Plato and later Platonists and gave them the interpretation that best suited Christian doctrine. For example, they took up Plato’s claim that to know God is difficult (Plato, Timaeus 28c), but they turned it to a different purpose, as grounds for asserting the necessity of Christ's incarnation and revelation for the knowledge of God (Origen, Contra Celsum VII 42-43). They were not concerned about Plato and his followers not holding this position, because they thought that even the best philosophers were limited and inconsistent in their understanding of the truth. They also thought that Plato had taken his ideas about God from Moses, and that when Plato got things right it was because he had correctly understood the Mosaic teaching; when Plato was wrong, it was because he had failed to understand Moses or had wrongly rejected Moses' position. This (almost certainly mistaken) view of the sources of Platonic thought helped the early Christians to adopt their strategy of using Platonism in their favour both when they agreed with it and when they rejected it.
We must distinguish between Neoplatonism, the philosophical school founded by Plotinus and recommended by Morello, and the Middle Platonists (and Plato himself).The main Neoplatonists after Plotinus were Porphyry (ca. 234 – ca. 305 A.D.), Iamblichus (ca. 242 – ca. 325 A.D.), and Proclus (412 – 485 A.D.). Plotinus and the later Neoplatonists departed from Plato and Middle Platonism in important ways. All of the Neoplatonists held positions that were incompatible with Christian doctrine, but they differed to some extent in how they disagreed with it. Plotinus never mentioned Christianity as such in the works that have come down to us, but he attacked the monotheism held by Judaism and Christianity. From Porphyry onwards the Neoplatonists openly rejected and opposed Christianity. Much of our knowledge of the differences between Neoplatonism and Christianity comes from Neoplatonist works that were specifically written to attack the Christians and justify their persecution, and from Christian defences against Neoplatonist attacks. The Neoplatonists were in fact the principal intellectual opponents of the Christians, and many of the standard objections raised to this day against Christianity were first proposed by them.
We need to consider the main Neoplatonists individually to see what is at issue between them and the Christian faith. Over the past century an enormous effort has been made by scholars to study Neoplatonism and its relations to Christianity, so the facts on this matter are now well understood.
Plotinus
Plotinus was an Egyptian of Greek culture who was a friend of the Emperors Gordian and Gallienus. His works were collected together in the Enneads. He was a great philosopher who had important insights that were taken up by Christian theologians. The main features of his philosophical understanding of reality are however all incompatible with Christianity.
The fundamental incompatibility lies in Plotinus’s conception of the One, the ultimate principle and cause of everything else – which was Plotinus’s God, or Plotinus’s equivalent for God. Plotinus based his account of the One on the principle that unity is prior to, and the cause of, multiplicity. The conclusions that Plotinus drew from this principle were determined by his acceptance of Plato's assertion that oneness is metaphysically prior to being, and rejection of Aristotle's view that being and oneness are convertible (cf. Metaphysics 1003b23 – 4, Metaphysics 1061a17–18). Plotinus followed Plato in identifying the Good as the fundamental principle of everything else – the role assigned by Christians to God. But since he held that oneness was prior to being (cf. Republic 509b), he maintained that the One was itself prior to being. He identified the Good with the One in Plato’s obscure dialogue Parmenides, where it is stated that ‘there is, accordingly, no way in which the One has being. Therefore the One in no sense “is”’ (Parmenides141e).
Plotinus followed out the logic of this position rigidly. He asserted that since the One is beyond both being and non-being, it cannot have any of the characteristics of being. As well as being timeless and changeless, it has no will, no intellect, no thoughts, no choices, and no actions; in fact it has no attributes at all (Enneads, III.8.10.29–35). The resemblances to Buddhist and Hindu thought are obvious here; the French scholar Émile Bréhier thought that Plotinus had derived his views on the One from India, but the historical evidence does not support this hypothesis. This was a radical departure from Plato, who held, as cited above, that the Good is an object of thought, and that the intellect was the faculty through which men approached and enjoyed the divine. It also rejects the claim that Plato makes the Eleatic Stranger advance in his dialogue Sophist, which follows Parmenides. The Stranger suggests that ‘anything has real being that is so constituted as to possess any sort of power either to affect anything else or to be affected ... I am proposing as a mark to distinguish real things that they are nothing but power’ (Sophist 247d). This down to earth approach asserts that acting on other things and making a difference to them is part of what we mean by being real and existing, from which it follows that it makes no sense to talk about a One that gives rise to everything else but does not exist. Plotinus was happy to reject this approach in favour of the metaphysical reasoning about oneness and being that he found convincing.
Plotinus logically asserted that the only truthful statements that can be made about the One are negative ones, that say what it is not. This negative theology has been compared to the negative (or ‘apophatic’) theology advanced by Christian theologians, but the reasons for these two theologies are radically different. Christians insist on negative theology because of the limitations of the human intellect, which at least in this life is incapable of grasping the divine nature. They do not think that the divine nature cannot be understood in itself. On the contrary, they held that because being is the object of understanding, the divine nature is in itself the most intelligible thing, as having the greatest degree of being; but that this nature, which is perfectly understood by God Himself, cannot be understood by us because of the weakness of our intellect – as Aristotle said, ‘just as the eyes of owls are to the light of day, so is our soul’s intellective power to those things which are by nature the most evident of all.’ (Aristotle, Metaphysics II 993b). For Plotinus, on the other hand, only negative statements can be made about God because there is nothing there for positive statements to apply to, and nothing for the intellect to grasp. The reason for Plotinus's negative theology is the negative character of the One; the reason for Christian negative theology is the limited character of the human intellect. The difference between Plotinus's conception of the One and the Christian God is so radical that some scholars have coined the term 'henology', the study of the One, to describe Plotinus's thought about the ultimate principle, thereby distinguishing Plotinus's henology from theology, the study of God.
However, Plotinus’s conception of the One is incompatible with the Scriptures, and Catholics have always rejected it. In Exodus 3:14, God says to Moses ‘I am He who is’ (ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν in the Septuagint), and instructs Moses to tell the children of Israel that ‘He who is’ has sent him to them. This is a difficult statement that has been variously interpreted by exegetes and theologians, but it is not compatible with holding, like Plotinus, that the ultimate principle cannot be described as existing.
St. Augustine praises Plato for holding that God is entirely simple – referring to Republic II 380D, where God is described by Plato as ‘simple and less likely than anything else to depart from his own form’. But St. Augustine states of the Good that 'what is meant by “simple” is that its being is identical with its attributes ... the reason why a nature is called “simple” is that it cannot lose any attribute it possesses, that there is no difference between what it is and what it has' (City of God, H. Bettenson tr., book XI ch. 10). He explains this simple divine being by reference to 'what God said by the mouth of his angel when sending Moses to the children of Israel: God said, “I am HE WHO IS”. For God is existence in the supreme degree – he supremely is – and he is therefore immutable. .. to this highest existence, from which all things that are derive their existence, the only contrary nature is the non-existent.' (City of God, book XII ch. 2). He attributes this positions to the Platonists: 'They saw also that in every mutable being the form that determines its being, its mode of being and its nature, can come only from him who truly is, because he exists immutably. ... For him existence is not something different from life, as if he could exist without living; nor is life something difference from intelligence, as in the case of angels – all these alike could come into being only through him who simply is.' (City of God, book VIII ch. 6.) This is incompatible with Plotinus's understanding of the simplicity of the One excluding both being and non-being. It agrees with Aristotle's view that oneness is convertible with being, and was held by St. Thomas.
St. Augustine is the most important single figure in the relationship between Catholicism and Neoplatonism. He was familiar with the works of the Neoplatonists, and Platonism on his own account was crucial to his conversion to Christianity. If Neoplatonism is the basis of patristic and scholastic philosophy and theology, this would be apparent in his works; but in fact, his thought makes clear the incompatibility of Neoplatonism and Christianity, and the Neoplatonists and Hermeticists are the main target of his polemic against paganism in the City of God.
In the City of God, St. Augustine credits the Platonists with having a correct understanding of God, but being mistaken in upholding the worship of many Gods: 'I think I have shown myself justified in selecting the Platonists as my respondents in this present debate on natural theology; the question at issue being this: With a view to future blessedness after death, is it right to worship one God, or many?' (City of God, book VIII ch. 21). But St. Augustine's presentation of the Platonist understanding of God is taken from Middle Platonism and in some texts of Plato himself, not from the Neoplatonist position of Plotinus. He clearly states all the central Christian doctrines about God that Plotinus rejects, but asserts that the Platonists – including Plotinus, whom he identifies by name – hold an understanding of God that agrees with the Christian one.
The great French medievalist Étienne Gilson made heavy weather of St. Augustine’s presenting Plotinus’s understanding of God as agreeing with Christianity, despite the radical differences between the two. The reasons for this presentation are not far to seek. St. Augustine disregarded the differences between Christian doctrine and Plotinus's understanding of God because his strategy in the City of God was to present the most favourable possible account of his pagan opponents' position, in order to show that even when this is done their view is refuted. He therefore gave an account of their doctrine of God that had a basis in Platonist thought and was both philosophically and theologically sound, while concentrating his argument on their claim that more than one god can and should be worshipped. This was the claim that mattered for the City of God, since that work was written against pagans who claimed that the sack of Rome was due to the abandonment of their ancestral gods by the Romans. Most of these pagans would not have known about the details of Plotinus's henology, and would have held Middle Platonist views on God like those of Alcinous cited above. Identifying the Christian doctrine of God with the highest form of Greek thought also flattered pagans and smoothed the path for their conversion to Christianity.
In addition to his controversial objective in the City of God, St. Augustine thought that philosophy was valuable for Christian teachers; hence the substantial philosophical discussions found in his works. But what he thought valuable was philosophical truth as such, not a description of the ideas of pagan philosophers. We should remember that St. Augustine, like everyone else in his time, thought of philosophy as we today think of mathematics and physics – as being a certain source of knowledge concerning unchanging realities. There was no room in this conception of philosophy for accepting contradictory theses or incompatible systems as all being part of philosophy, as we do today. A false statement for St. Augustine could not be included in philosophy; it could be no more than a mistake made by a philosopher. In examining the Platonist philosophy, therefore, he considered his subject to be the philosophical truths espoused by Platonists, and presented the Platonists as a school as holding those truths. He summarizes this account of Platonism in City of God, book VIII, chs. 6-11.
In fact, St. Augustine's version of Platonism is no farther from the actual texts of Plato than the different Platonism of Plotinus. They simply developed these texts in different ways, one to support monotheism, and the other to support polytheism. St. Augustine can justly claim to be truer to the deeper inspirations of Plato.
Consistently with his denial of being and all properties of being to God, Plotinus asserts that the One has 'no perception of itself and is not aware of itself and does not know itself' (Enneads, Gerson ed., V.3.13). It has no perception or awareness or knowledge of anything at all. Therefore, the One doers not know or think of the rest of reality. It has no plan for what it produces, and it does not choose to produce anything (cf. Enneads III.2.2). Since to love someone is to will their good, and the One has no knowledge or will, it does not love anything it produces. This is incompatible with Catholic teaching on God, which asserts that God chose to bring everything else into being by a free act of will, which He could have refrained from making (cf. St. Augustine, Ad Orosium ch. 3, and Vatican I, dogmatic constitution Dei filius); that He knew the individual things he was creating, loved them, and judged them to be good (Genesis chs. 1,2); and that He governs everything He has made by His providential will, which directs everything that happens to the end that He has chosen according to the plan pre-existing in His mind and will (Dei filius). In addition to not having being, there is no reason, substance, or nature in the One according to Plotinus. This is incompatible with the Christological and Trinitarian dogma of the Church, which asserts that Christ is the Logos (the thought or word) of God (cf. John 1), that the Persons of the Trinity are one divine substance, and that there is a divine nature, since Christ possesses that divine nature and shares it with the other Persons of the Trinity.
Since the One does not produce the rest of reality by conceiving and implementing a plan for creation, it must do so in some other way. Plotinus calls this other way 'emanation'. He bases this emanation on the notion that goodness necessarily spreads itself and expands itself by producing other things; 'We see whatever comes to perfection, generating, and not holding back so as to remain self-contained, but rather making something else' (Enneads V.4.1. 27-9); 'all things, as soon as they are perfected, generate. That which is always perfect always generates something everlasting, and it generates something inferior to itself.' (Enneads V.1.6 37-9). Scholastics expressed this idea in the maxim 'bonum est diffusivum sui'. St. Thomas knew about this Neoplatonic position; he was familiar with Neoplatonism through reading Proclus and Muslim Neoplatonists. He rejected it on the grounds that God's perfection, being infinite, cannot have anything added to it, and that any creation, being finite, falls infinitely short of expressing the perfection of God; he therefore held that there could be no necessity for God to express his goodness by producing something else. The ultimate expression of perfection already exists in God, in the Holy Trinity, and it neither needs nor permits of further expression (St. Thomas, De potentia q. 3 a. 15, Summa contra gentiles II, 42).
Emanation differs from Christian creation not only in being necessary and not involving thought or will, but also in operating stepwise. The only thing that emanates from the One is the being immediately under it (Enneads V.4.1 1-5), which Plotinus calls the Intellect; 'there is the One which transcends Being ... next in line is Being and Intellect; and third is the nature that is Soul.' (Enneads V.1.10 2-4). Everything in the emanated hierarchy of being is produced only by the thing immediately above it in the hierarchy. But the existence of things aside from God can in Christian doctrine only be caused by the direct and sole action of God. Characteristics other than existence are caused by God acting directly or through secondary causes, but there is no necessary hierarchy of secondary causes through which God must work, and He can directly produce any effect that a created cause can produce. For the Christian, the characteristic of divinity is the power to create ex nihilo. There is only one Creator, and therefore only one divine being who is worthy of worship. The Christian conception of divinity thus does not exist in Neoplatonism.
Although the One produces only the Intellect, it is nonetheless the principle of all being and determines the character of all being. This is possible because of the necessary character of emanation. The One necessarily produces the Intellect; the Intellect, due to the nature given to it by the One, necessarily produces the Soul; and so on down the chain of being. The One, by necessarily producing the Intellect, thus necessarily gives rise to and determines the character of everything else. Neoplatonism is a determinist system with no room for free choice or contingency. The necessary and eternal character of emanation means that it is impossible for reality outside the One to have a beginning in time. Neoplatonists attacked Christians for claiming that the universe and time had a beginning, something they held to be impossible. Plotinus held the Stoic conception of cosmic cycles, in which the same events in the same order recur in cycles that repeat themselves endlessly with no beginning or end (Enneads IV.3.12).
Plotinus's postulation of emanation rather than the Christian notion of creation makes it possible for him to espouse polytheism. He states; 'what those who understand god's power do is not to reduce divinity to a single god but to show that divinity is as profuse as god himself shows it to be when he, remaining who he is, makes all the numerous gods who depend on him and derive their existence from him' (Enneads II.9.9. 3-9). Plotinus considers the cosmos, the sun and stars, and human rational souls that detach themselves from matter to be gods (Enneads V.1.2. 40-45).
There is nonetheless a distinction among the rational beings that emanate from the One. Since the One cannot think, it cannot have Plato's Ideas as its thoughts. Plotinus gives the role of thinking the Ideas to the Intellect, the first being to emanate from the One. The Intellect exists outside of time and space, and contemplates the Ideas, which are its thoughts. It rests in this contemplation and does not act. The task of changing and causing change is given to Soul, the third being emanating from the One. The Soul is outside of space but not of time. It has the characteristic of seeking what it does not possess in itself, and as such is changing in its thoughts and activity. As a result it produces, organises and gives purpose and direction to the material world. The One, Intellect and Soul are the three principles that govern all reality. We can see that Plotinus's account departs from the simplicity of the Christian God. Instead of postulating a single being that originates all other existence, contains the ideas of all reality in its mind, and causes all change, Plotinus postulates three distinct beings that are unlike each other and arranged in a hierarchy of subordination to do all these jobs. The Neoplatonic structure thus cannot be said without qualification to put a higher value on simplicity than Christianity does.
There is an obvious analogy with the Christian Trinity here, the One corresponding to the Father, the Intellect to the Son, and the Soul to the Holy Spirit; there is also an obvious difference, since the Neoplatonic principles are distinct and unequal beings. St. Augustine, following his policy of harmonizing Platonist thought about the divine with Christian teaching, blandly assimilated Plotinus's three originating principles to the Persons of the Trinity. The differences between the Neoplatonic conception and the doctrine of the Trinity were however a cause of great turmoil in the Church. The Fathers of the Church before the Council of Nicaea in 325 often, under a generally Platonist or specifically Plotinian influence, described Christ in a subordinationist fashion as inferior to the Father. The Neoplatonist conception of One, Intellect and Soul provided the motivation and justification for the Arian and Semi-Arian heresies that denied the divinity of Christ, and for the heresy of the Macedonians and the 'Pneumatomachi' that denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. The titanic struggle to establish the Trinitarian and Christological doctrine of the Church that went on from the Council of Nicaea to the First Council of Constantinople in 381 was a struggle to reject and condemn Neoplatonist understandings of the divinity. The Fathers knew of the links between Platonism and heresy. Tertullian referred to the philosophers as the patriarchs of heresy (De anima ch, 3). St. Cyril of Alexandria, assimilating Plato to the Neoplatonists, pointed out that Plato resembled the Arians in postulating three gods subordinate to one another (Against Julian, book I, 58); although he thinks that Plato knew better than to really believe this, and introduced this polytheistic idea out of fear of the accusers of Socrates, and of the hemlock that Socrates was made to drink.
Plotinus's account of evil and human salvation contradicts Christian teaching. He holds that the cause of evil is matter (Enneads I.8). This does not mean that the material world is evil, because the material world contains form as well as matter, and form is intelligible and therefore good. The material world is however the lowest level of reality. It exists because goodness must produce things, and this production must continue until it reaches the lowest possible level of being and therefore cannot go any further. Matter is complete formlessness and unintelligibility, and hence the material world is this stopping point that is the lowest possible level for the expansion of goodness. Since matter exists by metaphysical necessity, evil exists by metaphysical necessity as well. In Christian theology, evil is not due to matter, but to the privation of some good that should belong to a thing by its nature. Creation exists by a free choice of God's will, so any evil exists because God permits it for the sake of some good that justifies its existence. Plotinus thinks that human suffering is punishment for sins committed in a past life, but both sins and punishment are necessary and not willed or permitted by God.
Human evil results from the descent of the soul into the material world. Human rational souls are immortal and have no beginning in time. They descend into material bodies out of rashness and bad judgment, and acquire both a material body and a sub-rational soul. Human corruption arises from the rational soul giving in to the influence of matter; Plotinus had no conception of sin as an offence against God. Plotinus accepts the usual virtues of temperance, fortitude and so on upheld by the moralists of his time, but he sees these as overcoming the evil influence of matter, which prevents contemplation. Consistently with this position, he rejects the resurrection of the body – 'real awakening is a rising up from the body, not with it' (Enneads III.6.6.) The first step in achieving happiness is an ascetic concentration on philosophical reflection, which enables the rational soul to rise to a contemplation of the Ideas in the Intellect. This is a solitary activity, and the soul that reaches contemplation in the world of the Intellect has no memory of anything and no awareness of its own existence. The final step in ascent, after this contemplation has been attained, is union with the One. This is not an intellectual activity, since being is the object of this intellect and the One is above being. It is a sort of non-intellectual, non-conceptual mystical event; as attainment of the Intellect requires turning away from the body, so attainment of the One requires turning away from the intellect and rejecting all knowledge and understanding – a self-annihilation of the reason. This idea of the denial and rejection of reason appealed to the French writer Jacques Derrida, who saw it as anticipating and warranting his own repudiation of reason.
These claims all contradict the Christian faith. St. Augustine pointed this out in detail in his attacks on the Platonists in the City of God. On the view that human corruption is due to matter, for example, he stated: 'Our belief is something very different. For the corruption of the body, which weighs down the soul, is not the cause of the first sin, but its punishment. And it was not the corruptible flesh that made the soul sinful; it was the sinful soul that made the flesh corruptible.' (City of God, book XIV ch. 3).
The return of the soul to the Intellect and the One exemplifies a basic Neoplatonist principle, which is that everything that is produced by something seeks and returns to the thing that produced it. Aristotle had expressed a related idea when he stated that God is both the first efficient cause that causes all effects, and the ultimate good that is the final cause that all things seek to reach (Aristotle, Metaphysics book II ch. 2). This Aristotelian idea differs from the Neoplatonic idea of return, which, being the converse of the Neoplatonic idea of emanation, works stepwise, with the return proceeding back up the steps of the ladder of emanation, beginning with the level of being immediately above – as with the human soul's return to the Intellect before proceeding to the One (cf. Proclus, Elements of theology, props. 31, 34.) This Neoplatonic principle of return, of 'exitus' and reditus', is sometimes presented as the basis for St. Thomas's metaphysics and theology. In fact St. Thomas uses the Aristotelian principle, rather than the Neoplatonic one; and, like St. Augustine and all the Fathers, he conceives of the return of the soul as the conversion of the will away from sin and towards God based on faith in Christ the Redeemer, and responding to the grace given by Christ. It is a free choice rather than a metaphysical necessity.
Later Neoplatonists followed the main outlines of Plotinus's metaphysics while making some changes to it. They generally added more entities to Plotinus's already complex system. Iamblichus postulated an Ineffable that came before the One. Proclus rejected the Ineffable, but postulated fourteen Henads that came between the One and the Intellect, which he identified with the pagan gods. Some of these changes or innovations were improvements that Christians made use of, as with Proclus's rejection of Plotinus's view that matter is responsible for evil. All Neoplatonists however preserved the essential features of Plotinus's philosophy that were incompatible with Christianity; an ultimate principle that was beyond being and had no knowledge or love of the rest of reality, the automatic, necessary and eternal production of everything by this being, a commitment to polytheism backed up by their metaphysics, and a conception of human salvation that consisted in turning away from the material world and seeking a mystical contact with the One rather than a turning away from sin and a love of the Redeemer. In addition to this common adherence to unChristian tenets held by Plotinus, subsequent Neoplatonists held individual positions that were anti-Christian and that demand our attention.
Porphyry
Porphyry was Plotinus's disciple and the editor of his works. Although not on Plotinus's level, he was a considerable philosopher in his own right. His Isagoge, an introductory work on logic, was used throughout the Middle Ages and gave rise to the medieval debate on the problem of universals. He rejected many of Plotinus's criticisms of Aristotle. Porphyry's rehabilitation of Aristotle for Neoplatonism meant that Aristotle's works became the first part of the Neoplatonist philosophical curriculum, the second part being the works of Plato. Part of Porphyry's reason for doing this was to mobilize the entire Greek philosophical tradition in favour of paganism and against Christianity. This upgrading gave Aristotle a readership and a centrality in philosophy that he had not possessed before, and laid the foundations for future Aristotelianisms. Porphyry held that subsidiary gods existed beneath the supreme God, and that they should be worshipped with the traditional pagan rites. https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/porphyry_marcella_03_revised_text.htm
Porphyry, unlike Plotinus, was an open enemy of Christianity. His work is the most substantial and important anti-Christian polemic of antiquity. St. Augustine's attack on Platonism in the City of God accordingly takes Porphyry as its target. He wrote Against the Christians, a work in fifteen books, to attack Christian belief as false and denounce Christianity as destructive and hostile to the common good. It probably appeared between 298 and 303 AD. It was taught in the schools as anti-Christian propaganda until the deaths of Galerius and Maximin, the last emperors to persecute Christians, in 311AD and 315 AD respectively. This use of his work reflected his personal commitment to the persecution of Christians. Since the time of Nero (d. 68 A.D.), Christianity had been illegal in the Roman Empire, and Christians who were denounced to the Roman authorities were required to sacrifice to the emperor or die. Porphyry's book was written to justify this policy and to call for its enforcement. Porphyry was an associate of the Emperor Diocletian (reigned 284-305 A.D.), and played an essential role in persuading Diocletian to launch the Great Persecution, the last and most bloody persecution of Christians by the Rome Empire (on this see Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, A Threat to Public Piety).
Porphyry had a good knowledge of the Christian Scriptures, and many of his arguments anticipate the views of modern biblical scholars. He denounced Christian belief in divine revelation as irrational, and claimed that the description of Christ given in the Gospels is historically valueless. He asserts that the evangelists and disciples falsified Jesus's teaching, and that the teaching contained in the New Testament is childish and contradictory. He criticised Christianity for denying the Neoplatonist beliefs in the eternity of the universe and the pre-existence of the soul, and for its belief in miracles, the Incarnation, and the resurrection of the body.
Iamblichus
Iamblichus was a Syrian disciple of Porphyry and a talented philosopher, although very little remains of his philosophical work. He was important for introducing two departures from earlier Neoplatonism; acceptance of divine revelation and belief in its importance, and a commitment to theurgy. These changes were so consequential that Iamblichus has been called the second founder of Neoplatonism, after Plotinus. The divine revelation that Iamblichus promoted was the Chaldaean Oracles, a collection of pagan oracles that is now lost. His promotion of divine revelation was in tune with the times, and was carried farther by later Neoplatonists. Proclus wanted to withdraw from general circulation all books except Plato's Timaeus and the Chaldean Oracles, in order to prevent the spread of error.
Theurgy, as E.R. Dodds stated, can be defined as 'magic applied to a religious purpose and resting on a supposed revelation of a religious character. Whereas vulgar magic used names and formulae of religious origin to profane ends, theurgy used the procedures of vulgar magic primarily to a religious end' (Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, p. 291). Plotinus had maintained that the rational soul never fully descends into the material world, which is what enables it to turn back to the intelligible world through contemplation; the soul is compared to a floating man whose head remains above the level of the water. Iamblichus denied that the head remained above the water, and asserted that the soul is completely submerged in the material world. As a result, it is incapable of rising to the higher levels on its own. It can only do so with the help of the gods who dwell in the intelligible world and can bring the human soul up to their level. Intellectual and moral purification are needed to make this ascent, but they are not sufficient. The gods must intervene to raise the soul, and the way to obtain their intervention is through the magical ceremonies of theurgy, which use the symbolic character that magic attributes to material things to attract and engage the gods. After Iamblichus, theurgy became central to Neoplatonist practice. The thought of Iamblichus was embraced by the Emperor Julian the Apostate (ca. 331- 363 A.D., reigned 361-363 A.D.), who had been raised a Christian but rejected Christianity for paganism. Julian was considered by the Fathers and by John Henry Newman as a precursor or type of the Antichrist, a 'type and earnest of the great enemy' https://www.newmanreader.org/works/arguments/antichrist/lecture1.html https://www.newmanreader.org/works/arguments/antichrist/lecture2.html. Julian forged the theurgic Neoplatonism of Iamblichus into a state religion that he intended to eliminate and replace Christianity, a project that was aborted by his death in war.
St. Augustine attacks theurgy at length; his criticism of it takes up most of book X of the City of God. Theurgy was well known to Porphyry, who raised a number of (well-founded) doubts about it in his ‘Letter to Anebo’ – ‘Anebo’ allegedly being an Egyptian priest who was an expert in these mysteries. Iamblichus wrote a rebuttal of Porphyry’s criticisms in his De mysteriis, a work that connects theurgy to the Corpus Hermeticum by citing Hermes as an authority. The Renaissance Neoplatonist Marsilio Ficino translated the De mysteriis into Latin in 1497. The work became a basic authority for the Renaissance Hermeticists that Morello promotes. St. Augustine uses Porphyry’s account of theurgy as the basis for his criticism of it. He argues that we can either believe the angels who brought the Law of God that demands that we should pray to the one God alone, and give worship and sacrifice to Him alone, or else we can believe the beings that ask that prayers and sacrifice be made to them through the rites of theurgy. He cites Porphyry as admitting that ‘theurgy is a science capable of achieving good or evil, whether among men or among gods’ (City of God book X ch. 9). He concludes that both the authority of the Divine Law and the worldly or morally dubious character of many theurgical rites means that we should accept the Law and reject theurgy as inspired by malignant demons. He contrasts theurgy with the miracles of Christianity;
Those miracles and many others of the same kind – it would take too long to mention them all – were intended to support the worship of the one true God, and to prevent the cult of many false deities. They were achieved by simple faith and devout confidence, not by spells and charms composed according to the rules of criminal superstition, the craft which is called magic, or sorcery – a name of detestation – or by the more honourable title of ‘theurgy’. For people attempt to make some sort of a distinction between practitioners of illicit arts, who are to be condemned, classing these as ‘sorcerers’ (the popular name for this kind of thing is ‘black magic’) and others whom they are prepared to regard as praiseworthy, attributing to them the practice of ‘theurgy’. In fact, both types are engaged in the fraudulent rites of demons, wrongly called angels. ... What a wonderful art is this 'theurgy'! What a marvellous way of purifying the soul, where foul envy has more success in demanding than pure benevolence has in obtaining a result! The whole thing is in fact an imposture of malignant spirits. We must beware of it; we must abhor it; we must listen to the teaching of salvation. Porphyry relates that those who engage in those polluted rites of purification, with their blasphemous ceremonies, have some marvellously beautiful visions, whether of angels or of gods, after the supposed purification. But even if they do in fact see anything of the sort, it is just as the Apostle says: ‘Satan transforms himself to look like an angel of light’. For it is from the Devil that these phantoms come. The Devil longs to ensnare men's wretched souls in the fraudulent ceremonies of all those false gods, and to seduce them from the true worship of the true God, by whom alone they are purified and healed.(City of God, book X ch. 9).
Morello never attempts a defence of theurgy against the criticisms of St. Augustine. This is perhaps not surprising.
Dionysius the Areopagite
A crucial test for Morello's claim that the Fathers accepted Neoplatonism is Dionysius the Areopagite. This writer claimed to be the personage mentioned in Acts 17:34, where it is stated that after Paul addressed the Areopagus in Athens, ‘some men joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Areopagite’. His real identity is unknown, although he must have lived in the 5th or early 6th centuries. His supposed connection to the apostle gave his writings great authority in the Middle Ages. His significance for our purposes is that he was more influenced by Neoplatonism than any other of the Fathers; this influence extended to his including long passages by the Neoplatonist Proclus in his own works without attribution. If any Christian thinker was a Neoplatonist, it was Dionysius.
It is apparent from his works that he rejected the Neoplatonic understanding of reality. These works are the Divine Names, and the Mystical Theology, on the ways in which we can truthfully describe God; the Celestial Hierarchy, on the angels; and the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, on the Church and the sacraments. Dionysius asserts that God exists, knows, and loves. He says of God that ‘It is, and it is as no other being is’ (Divine Names ch. 1), and says that the name of being is rightly applied by theology to him who truly is (Divine Names ch. 5). He understands God as the proper object of worship and sacrifice; the Neoplatonists do not dream of worshipping or sacrificing to the One, and direct worship and sacrifice to the pagan gods. He holds orthodox views on the Trinity and the Incarnation, rejecting all subordinationism and tritheism, and believes in divine providence, which means that God possesses an intellect and understands and wills the things He creates. The Neoplatonists make the immortal immaterial intelligences, which they describe as gods, the intermediaries between men and God. Dionysius does not place the angelic hierarchy between God and humanity. The angels are used by God to help and communicate with mankind, but their hierarchy is a separate one that is not connected to or placed above the ecclesiastical hierarchy. This ecclesiastical hierarchy is what brings salvation, and its membership is entirely human; its head, and the source of divine influence, is Christ. The saving action of Christ is communicated through the hierarchy of the Church by the sacraments. The saving knowledge of God is found in the Scriptures, and only there. Dionysius's theory of symbolism is not the magic symbolism of Iamblichus, but an account of the meaning of the language of the Holy Scriptures.
Dionysius uses the term 'theurgy', but he reverses the meaning of this term. The theurgical rites promoted by Iamblichus do not seek to reach the One or to be granted assistance by the One. They prompt the gods beneath the One to communicate their own grasp of the intelligibles to the theurgist; taking the place of the philosophical activity proposed by Plotinus as the first and necessary step in ascent to the One. As with Plotinus, there is no idea of repenting for sin and turning away from it as the path to purification. The action of the gods in giving illumination is prompted by the rites practised by the theurgist, who thus initiates the action of the gods.
For Dionysius, theurgy is something God does to draw us to Him – primarily the Incarnation, and then the sacraments, in which Christ is the agent. They come directly from God, the ultimate principle, and they bring us directly to God. That is why the symbolism of the sacraments is completely different from the symbolism of theurgy; the symbolism of the sacraments conveys the action and character of the ultimate Principle that is above all, and as such is incompatible and indeed incommensurable with the symbolism of pagan theurgy. The entire ecclesiastical hierarcy of the Church – not just the activity of the individual theurgist – is the instrument for Christ’s action. Dionysius's whole theology is in fact a Christian response to Neoplatonism, that works by replacing or reversing Neoplatonic concepts with a Christian content. Dionysius clearly states this when contrasting his Christian belief with Neoplatonism;
I do not think of the Good as one thing, Being as another, Life and Wisdom as yet other, and I do not claim that there are numerous causes and different Godheads, all differently ranked, superior and inferior, and all producing different effects. No. But I hold that there is one God for all these good processions and that he is the possessor of the divine names of which I speak and that the first name tells of the universal Providence of the one God, while the other names reveal general or specific ways in which he acts providentially. (On the Divine Names ch. 5, Luibheid tr.).
Neoplatonism vs. Christianity
Neoplatonism developed after the time of Christ, and the Neoplatonists all knew of the existence of Christianity. Plotinus had Christian and Jewish monotheism in mind when he rejected monotheism, and from Porphyry onwards the Neoplatonists had a good knowledge of the Christian religion, of which they were determined enemies. They identified the divine beings below the One in their philosophy with the gods of the pagans, which the Scriptures identify as demons; and they knew about this Scriptural teaching, since it was the reason given by Christians for refusing to take part in pagan sacrifices, and by the Christian emperors for suppressing pagan worship. Plato and Aristotle, who lived before the time of Christ and had no knowledge of the Scriptures, may have been legitimate seekers after truth who did their best as far as possible. Aristotle indeed was a philosophical monotheist, who seems to have considered polytheism to be the creed of the ignorant masses; Plotinus's opposition to monotheism was opposition to Aristotle as well as to monotheistic religions. But the Neoplatonists were not seeking the truth in any adequate sense. They were indeed interested in philosophical truths, insofar as these truths could fit in to their false overall picture, and they made contributions to philosophical knowledge through their zealous efforts to furnish a strong philosophical buttressing for their views. Julian the Apostate saw clearly when he took Neoplatonism as the basis of his anti-Christian religion. It is the strongest form of religious and philosophical opposition to Christianity that has yet been devised, and any such opposition in the future will have to resemble it. The Antichrist will espouse some form of Neoplatonism.
The Fathers of the Church understood this; they rejected as false the philosophical and theological picture put forward by the Neoplatonists, and denounced their magical and religious practices as blasphemous and idolatrous. This rejection can be found in the extensive patristic writings that attack pagan Platonists and respond to their criticisms of Christianity; notable among these are the Oratio ad Graecos and the Cohortatio ad Graecos attributed to Justin Martyr, Origen's Contra Celsum, Theophilus of Antioch's To Autolycus, Arnobius's Against the Heathens, St. Athanasius's Against the Heathens, Eusebius's Praeparatio evangelica, Lactantius's Divine Institutes, St. Augustine's City of God, and St. Cyril of Alexandria's Against Julian. The contents of Neoplatonic metaphysics were opposed by them in their many writings against Arianism and other Christological and Trinitarian heresies, notably in St. Athanasius's Against the Arians and St. Augustine's On the Trinity. Neoplatonism was both the early Church's main (if not only) real intellectual opponent, and its most dangerous threat – as being the only religious and philosophical ideology that offered a serious alternative to her, and as being determined on the forcible eradication of Christianity.
We can now see what Morello's programme of adopting Neoplatonism would involve. Morello upholds Neoplatonic metaphysics as true, but rejects Plotinus's view that ascent to the higher intelligible realm ‘can be accessed only by those who, using reason alone, undertake the intellectual journey required to ascend towards it.’ Instead, he recommends an approach like that of Iamblichus, on the grounds that it ‘possesses the double advantage of overcoming the problem of “ascent” in classical Platonism, by presenting a conception of the world as disclosing by emanation the Eternal Mystery here and now in the concrete complexus of experience, and of providing mystical practices by which to spiritually unite oneself—or better, allow oneself to be united—with this Mystery.’
The spiritual practices of the Neoplatonists are polytheistic, and any involvement in them is a sin against the First Commandment. If Morello were to say that he is not recommending the actual Neoplatonic theurgical ceremonies, but only the practice of the Christian liturgy and sacraments, it would remain the case that the acceptance of Neoplatonic philosophy that he favours means rejecting Christian doctrine concerning the divine nature, man, and salvation, and embracing polytheism. One might say that Morello is not advocating this apostasy, because he is either ignorant of the contents of Neoplatonism or is not advocating the components of Neoplatonism that are incompatible with Christianity. But the components of Neoplatonism that are incompatible with Christianity, both philosophical and theurgical, are the essential tenets of Neoplatonism itself. And they are incompatible with Christianity on purpose, because Neoplatonism from Iamblichus onwards – precisely the form of Neoplatonism that Morello recommends – was designed to be a religious and philosophical system that would combat Christian doctrine and replace the Christian religion. If Morello is ignorant of the content of Neoplatonism, or rejects its contents, how can he recommend it in any way, let alone give it his enthusiastic endorsement?
In response to the above description of Neoplatonism and its philosophy and theurgy, Morello might say that he is not recommending that Catholics actually adopt Neoplatonist ideas or practice Neoplatonist theurgy; he is simply saying that Neoplatonism and theurgy may help people to understand Catholic belief and practice, give them an imaginative appreciation of this belief and practice, and help draw them to Catholicism thereby. This would be a pious interpretation of Morello's writings, since on the face of it he is actually recommending Neoplatonist philosophy and theurgy as something good. But let us suppose that this interpretation is correct, as we should hope it to be. Neoplatonist philosophy and theurgy are fundamentally opposed to Christianity. They are things you believe and do instead of Christianity, things you believe and do if you reject and oppose Christianity. They therefore cannot cast light on Christian belief and practice, and they can only serve to draw people away from Christ. What partnership have righteousness and iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols?
The Christian basis of philosophical theism
Since Neoplatonism was fundamentally hostile to Christianity, and Aristotle's philosophy is in my ways closer to Christianity than Platonism, one may wonder why the Fathers did not make more use of Aristotle – especially since the scholastics, particularly St. Thomas, based their philosophical account of God and creation much more on Aristotle than on the Neoplatonists. Aristotle's understanding of God is not a fundamental contradiction of the Christian understanding, as is the case with Plotinus. It agrees with the Christian understanding in many respects, and can be harmonized with it by some additions, clarifications, and changes. Aristotle's conception of the soul as the form of the body harmonizes with Christian anthropology, while the Platonist conception of the soul does not. His belief in the worth and goodness of the physical universe agrees with the Christian doctrine of creation, while the Neoplatonists see the material world as something to escape from.
The reason is that Aristotle was inaccessible and consequently almost entirely unknown to them. The work of Aristotle was completely unknown to Latin speakers before Boethius's translations of some of his logical works in the sixth century. St. Augustine thought he had to remind his readers who Aristotle was (City of God IX, 4). Aristotle's works are rebarbative and difficult, unlike Plato's dialogues, and for most of antiquity they were either unavailable, or obtainable only in a few locations where their readership was limited to small circles of professional philosophers. It was the Neoplatonists who brought Aristotle to the attention of a wider audience, by including him in their syllabus and by writing most of the commentaries on his works that made his ideas comprehensible; but this only had a real effect from the fifth century onwards.
One hopes that Morello's enthusiasm for theurgic Neoplatonism will remain a niche phenomenon. Showing that theurgic Neoplatonism is false and must be rejected is nonetheless worthwhile. But the refutation of these antique errors, a task that has already been carried out by the Fathers of the Church, is not the most valuable lesson to be learned from an examination of Neoplatonism. What emerges from our study is that the Christians were the first to develop a correct and coherent philosophical account of God and man. Aristotle was certainly superior to the Platonists in many respects. But he did not think that God caused matter, he rejected the idea that the universe had a beginning in time, he seems not to have believed in divine providence (at least he was universally believed by the Fathers to reject divine providence), and he held that men cease to exist when they die. It was the Christian Fathers who were the first thinkers to produce a correct philosophical account of God and of human nature. Most of the materials for these accounts were to be found in pagan philosophers, but none of these philosophers had combined these materials to produce a coherent and accurate understanding of reality. Such an understanding was the work of Christians. This fact casts light on the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity; the philosophical superiority of the Christians over their pagan opponents would have played a role in this conversion. The fact that it was Christians who developed the right philosophical understanding of reality is the important lesson that is learned from examining Morello's claims about Neoplatonism.
