St.

Augustine and Christian Platonism

A. Hilary Armstrong
The Saint Augustine Lecture Series (1966)

St. Augustine and Christian Platonism

Most people who have studied 5t. Augustine would
be prepared to accept the description of hirn as a
Christian Platonist, indeed perhaps the greatest, and
certainly the most influential, of Christian Platonists.
But this description, when we look at it more carefully,
raises a great many questions. What do we n1ean by
Christian Platonism? It is a term which has been
used, and misused, in a great variety of different
ways, and applied to a great variety of different
people. Even if we confine our attention to the area
of its use most relevant to the theme of this lecture,
that is, to the Christian thought of, roughly, the first
milleniun1 A.D., we shall find too many differences,
and too complex an interaction of manifold and various ideas, to make it possible to give an abstract,
generalized, Aristotelian-type definition of Christian
Platonism which will be either truthful or helpful. 1
We are dealing with the interplay of two great traditions, both of which have an inexhaustible capacity
for stimulating thought of a great many different
kinds. I need hardly remind this, or any other intelligent audience, that 'Christianity' can mean a large
number of different things, and that any statement
that a particular doctrine or attitude to life is 'authentically Christian' or 'essential to Christianity' is liable
to provoke disagreement, even if its context is a scholarly discussion of a limited period in the history of
Christian though1. And 'Platonism' can mean almost
as many different things. The thought of 51. Augustine is, certainly, one kind of Platonically influenced
1

Christian thought. But there are many other kinds,

some very different from the Augustinian. 2 And there
have been, and are, Christian Platonists, especially, I
think, in the Christian East and the Englisll-speaking
world, who feel uneasy with Augustine, and are sometimes led precisely by their Platonism into quite violent opposition to Augustinian ways of thinking. It
therefore seems worth while to explore the question
of where St. Augustine stands within Christian Platonism, to enquire what he has in conlmon with and
where he differs from other Christian Platonists. In
this lecture 1 propose to consider three topics, out of
the nlany which might be chosen, to illustrate the
variations possible within Christian and pagan Platonism, and the place of Augustine in this long and
complex tradition of Christian Platonist thinking. An
investigation of this kind, in the limited time of a
single lecture, can only be a very tentative one, and
I do not wish to claim any sort of finality for any
conclusions at which I may arrive. For the purposes
of tbis enquiry 'Christianity' will be taken to mean
traditional Christianity, something, that is, which
WOILld be recognizable, as aversion of the faith which
they themselves held, to the great Fathers and Doctors
of East and West, to St. Augustine hirnself and his
predecessors, contemporaries, and successors during
the next three or four centuries: though we may need
to look beyond the bounds of the ancient Church for
solutions to some of the very lively and contemporary
problems which our investigation raises. And, though
the name 'Platonisnl' can properly be given to any
way of thinking which originates from a sympathetic
2

reading of those most unusual, baflling, and endlessly

fascinating philosophical documents, the Dialogues of
Plato, we shall be mainly concerned here with that
later Greek Platonism whose rise and development
was roughly contemporary with that of Christianity,
and which entered very early on an intimate, though
at times uneasy and even hostile relationship with the
new religion: the Platonism, that is, whose successive
stages are rather misleadingly called by modern
scholars Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism. 3
The first topic which I propose to discuss is that of
the natural divinity of the soul. The idea that the
human soul is by its very nature in some sense divine
and co-eternal witll God still sometimes finds enthusiastic supporters among Christians both in East
and West. 4 It is one of the central and most important doctrines of the Platonism of Plotinus and Porphyry, though not of all pagan Platonism. For Plotinus and his chief disciple man's soul is not only, as all
pagan Platonists held, naturally immortal, living a
life which had no beginning and can have no end.
It is in its true.. essential nature divine, though in a
subordinate degree, in a sense which excludes any
fundamental chal1ge, any real fall, corruption, sin or
loss of its true nature, and therefore any need or possibility of redemption. The part of us which reasons,
which Plotinus, when he is speaking most precisely,
identifies as our true self, can direct its attention upwards or downwards, can be distracted by the concerns and needs of the body and the body-bound
lower self or turn upwards and open itself to the light,
3

which always plays upon it, of Inte!lect and its source,

the Good, and so become fully and consciously that
universal and eternal divine reality which in a sense
it always is, and rise with it in the movement of selftranscendence in which the divine Intellect eternally returns to its source. The whole object of the philosophic
life is to ensure that we turn the right way, upwards,
and wake to and make our own the glory which is
always ours by right. But it seems that for Plotinus
our true self cannot sin or suffer; it cannot come down
to the level of body or be completely involved in its
life. That in us which sins and suffers and is ignorant
and emotionally disturbed and in general is the subject of what we should regard as ordinary human
experience is the lower self, the 'other man', which
is an image or expression of the higher self on a
lower level." Now, though this doctrine, in much less
nuanced and carefully-limited forms than that in
which Plotinus stated it, occasionally finds Christian
defenders, it seemed to the great Christian thinkers of
the 4th and 5th centuries, as it seems to most Christians today, quite incompatible with any sort of Christianity. They were very conscious of their opposition
to the pagan Platonists on this point, and very careful
to exclude any suggestion of natural divinity from
their often Platonic-sounding accounts of the nature
of man and his way to spiritual perfection and the
vision of God. Here St. Augustineappears as a fully
representative Christian Platonist of his time, in complete accordance with the great thinkers of the Greekspeaking Christian East, and especially with the deepest thinker of them all, and the one most deeply in4

fluenced by Platonism, St. Gregory of Nyssa. Both

Augustine and Gregory give very Plotinian-sounding
accounts of the journey of the soul; and for both that
journey is, as it is for Plotinus, areturn to man's
proper and original state and his own true country
and Father.
Robert J. O'Connell, of Fordham University,
in a senes of extremely interesting articles, of
which the last and most explicit appeared in the International Philosophical Quarterly in September 1964,
has even maintained that Augustine still believed
when he wrote the Con/essions that we are fallen parts
of a Plotinian universal soul, and that some baffiing
features of this great work can only be explained in
the light of the Plotinian doctrine. His evidence and
arguments do not seem to me conclusive, but the possibility that he is right needs a good deal of further
consideration. But Father O'Connell does not maintain, and no one who knows the evidence could seriously maintain, that Augustine, or any other great
Christian Platonist, held that the soul was naturally
divine and intrinsically unfallen. Both Augustine and
Gregory of Nyssa insist again and again that the soul
is a creature, not apart of God, and stress the intrinsic
mutability and peccability which is essential in being
a creature and is to be seen even in the highest, angelic creation. The contrast between the immutability
of God and the mutability of the creature is one of the
great recurring themes in Augustine's thought. Creaturely mutability is not for hirn a defect or imperfection in the creature, an unnecessary falling short of
5

an attainable ideal. It is intrinsie to ereatureliness; it

is the ineseapable eonsequenee of not being God and
so being absolutely and eontinuously dependent on
God for first existenee and eontinuanee in being. And
1 think that one reason why he insists on it so strongly,
especially when he is eonsidering the most exalted
ereated spirits or human souls made perfeet, is that he
was so vividly eonscious of the fundamental opposition here between Christianity and the pagan Platonism whieh he knew so well. G
The division on this point between Christians and
pagans is indeed a fundamental one, and has farreaehing eonsequenees for morality and religious behaviour. But, onee we have clearly reeognized this,
we must be eareful not to make it too sharp or too
absolute: there are a number of neeessary qualifieations to be added to the simple statement of it. First,
we must remember that 'divine' meant different things
to pagans and Christians. For a pagan Greek, to say
that the soul was not merely theios, divine, but theos,
a god, did not neeessarily mean more than that it was
an immortal being. Theos is a word of very vague
and various meaning, and eertainly no pagan Platonist
thought that all beings ealled theoi were identical with
or parts of the Absolute Good, the Supreme Reality,
the Creator (in the Christian sense) of heaven and
earth. There was probably here a good deal of misunderstanding between pagans and Christians. Plotinus, as we have seen, gives his divine souls the qualities of immutability and impeeeability, and regards
their existenee as neeessary. But they are, none the
6

less, eternally created, wholly dependent for their being and well-being on the One and its first expression
or production, the Divine Intellec1. They share, as
parts of Universal Soul, in the production and administration of what is below them, the material
world, but they do so with power .and forms supplied
to them from above: they are essentially derived and
dependent beings. S1. Augustine hirnself recognizes
clearly what the true teaching of Plotinus on this
point is, and states it admirably in a chapter of the
City 0/ God (X, 2) which is a good example of his
generally fair and irenic attitude to pagan Platonism. 7 And, when \ve turn back from Plotinus to
Plato, we find, first of all, that he expresses hirnself
much more cautiously than his great third-century follower. Plato does not call the soul a theos, but at
most asserts a kinship and likeness between it and the
gods. And even if he had thought that man's soul, or
at least its highest part, the intellect, was a theos, this
would not necessarily have meant to hirn everything
which it meant to Plotinus, whose thought at this point
is deeply influenced by the noetic of Aristotle and
later Aristotelians; he endows man's higher self with
the impassibility of the Aristotelian 'separable' or
'active' intelligence. But this is not the Platonism of
Plato, who was deeply influenced by the OrphicPythagorean tradition according to which the soul was
indeed a god or spirit (theos or daimon) , but a highly
fallible al1d peccable one, punished for its primal sin
by a fall into the cycle of reincarnation. And, though
the Phaedo, the Republic and the Phaedrus present
the soul as naturally immortal, we should not forget
7

that the Timaeus shows the Demiurge not only making theoi but telling them explicitly that they, like
everything else which he has made, are not immortal
by nature but only by his unchanging good will
(41 A-B); and, though this is myth, it does at the
very least suggest that Plato did not feel hirnself committed to any doctrine of the natural immortality and
immutability of all divine beings-he does not put
details into his myths which flatly contradict his serious philosophical convictions. 8 Plotinus, then, is not
a safe guide to the thought of Plato on this point. And
the later Neoplatonists, Iamblichus and Proclus, abandoned the uncompromising doctrine of the soul's divinity which they found in Plotinus and Porphyry, and
held that it did 'altogether come down' and was capable
of sin and ignorance. This abandonment of Plotinus
was quite deliberate and conscious, and was closely
connected with the later Neoplatonist development of
Platonic thought about Eros into something very like
the Christian doctrine of Agape and grace-a development which I believe to have started from elements
genuinely present in the thought of Plato and to owe
little to Christian influence. 9
There are, then, good historical reasons for not
making the contrast between pagan and Christian
thought about the natural divinity of the soul too
unqualified and sharp. And we must remember,
too, that the Fathers of the 4th and 5th
centuries, and those Christians since who have remembered and followed their teaching, have always held
that God wills to give men by grace in Christ a created
8

divinity by partlclpation which they do not possess

by nature. This is as true of the Christian West as of
the Christian East; and St. Augustine expresses the
doctrine with his own unsurpassable clarity and conciseness: "God wills to make you a god; not by nature,
as his Son is, but by his gift and adoption." (Sermon
166.4.4) .10 What separates Plotinus and Augustine
here is not a denial on the one side and an affirmation
on the other that all that we are and can be is given
by God. For Plotinus, as for Augustine, we have and
are nothing which we have not received. The differences lie in the ways of thinking about what God gives
and how he gives it. Does he give a fixed and unchanging nature only, or a nature open and unfinished and a freely given life and love above nature
in which that nature can find its real, but unpredictable fulfiln1ent? And does he give his gifts without
Christ, or only in Christ? To this I shall return, in a
different context, later in the lecture.

* * *
The investigation of our first topic has shown St.
Augustine as a thoroughly representative Christian
Platonist, in full accordance with other Christian
Platonists of his time, and after, in makil1g a stand
against pagan Platonism which was necessitated by
his Christian belief. The next topic which I propose
to discuss is that of pagan and Christian Platonist attitudes to the body and the material universe. The subject-matter here is very much more con1plex, and I
must inevitably discuss' it at a high level of generaliza9

tion, so that it is important to stress that my conclusions here are very tentative. Both the Platonist and
the Christian ways of thinking about the body and
the world of sense-experience have had in them from
their beginnings, in the Dialogues of Plato and the
New Testament respectively, certain tensions and variations of outlook. But the tensions are never between
completely inconsistent positions, and the variations
are only within certain limits, and it seems to me that,
at least if we confine our attention to 'traditional'
Christianity, as I have earlier described it, these
limits to a great extent coincide: and it was this coineidence which was one of the things which attracted
the early Christians most powerfully to Platonism and
did most to make Christian Platonism possible.
Neither Christians nor Platonists, if they are to be
faithful to their deepest convictions, can be simply
negative in their attitude to the body and the world,
regarding them as wholly evil and alien. Their fundamental belief that the material world, with all that
is in it, is good, and made by a good divine power
simply because of his goodness, prevents them from
becoming Gnostics or Manichees, however much
some representatives of both traditions, and particularly the Christian, might have liked to be. For
there appears in both traditions at certain points a
very strong drive towards an extreme dualism in the
sphere of human life, a rejection and hatred, not primarily of the material universe as a whole, but of the
earthly, anima1 body of man. In the Christians this
sometimes went very much further than in the pagans;
and whatever precisely the origins may be of the ex10

treme ascetlclsm and the tendency to hate and fear

sexual intercourse and even to depreciate marriage
which appear frequently in the early Church, they do
not appear to be Platonic or Hellenic. 11 It is notable
that the great Christian Platonists, from Clement of
Alexandria to S1. Augustine, are generally opposed
to this sort of extremism. Augustine in particular is
often more balanced and positive-and not, as sometimes seems to be assumed, more ul1balanced and
negative-in his attitude to tl1e body, sex and marriage than most of his Christian contemporaries. He
made two advances of special importance towards a
more positive and constructive way of thinking about
these n1atters. By his clear-cut insistence that the
cause of sin lies in the will, not in the body (e.g. City
oi God XIV, 3), he did a great deal to banish fron1
Western Christian thinking the shadow of the Pythagorean-Platonic belief in the dark, recalcitrant elen1ent which is a necessary constituent of the material
world and the source of evil to the soul which comes
into contact with it; a belief which persists in Plotinus,
though the later pagan Neoplatonists abandoned i1.
And by his rejection of the doctrine of that other
great Christian Platonist, S1. Gregory of Nyssa, which
persisted in later Greek Christian thought, that the
division of the human race into sexes was lnade
rattone peccati, with a view to procreation only after
the Fall, and was no part of the original creation in
the image of God, and his insistence that there would
have been begetting and birth of children in Paradise
(City oi God XIV, 21 ff), Augustine took at least
the first step towards that positive, Christian valuation
11

of sex of which our own time has realized the necessity more vividly than ever before.'~
It should be noted that the Christian doctrine of
the resurrection of the body did not make as much
difference between the Christian and pagan Platonist
attitudes to OUf present bodies as is sometimes assumed and as many modern Christians would be inclined to think it should have done. From the beginning the Christian tradition had stressed, not only the
reality of the resurrection, but the difference of the
glorified resurrection body from the body as we know
it in this life (see especially 5t. Paul, 1 Corinthians
eh. 15). And the pagan Platonists believed in astral
or celestial bodies which, like the glorified body for
which Christians hope, were perfectly conformed and
subordinated to the spirit, and many of them thought
that the good and wise man's final destiny would be
permanent embodiment in sueh a body. Here again
5t. Augustine was very well aware of the kinship between pagan Platonist and Christian thought, and
bases on it a very powerful and effective attack on
Porphyry for his total rejection of the Christian doetrines of the Incarnation and Resurrection, a rejection
which he shows to be inconsistent with Neoplatonist
teaching about the soul of the world and the astral
gods (City 0/ God X, 29 and XXII, 26) .13
Neither pagan Platonists nor Christians, then, if
they are to be true to some of their most deeply held
beliefs, can utterly reject or despise the body or the
material universe. But they cannot, either, regard
12

the goods of the body and of this world as all the

goods there are, or the most important goods. For
neither of thenl can the world be self-sufficient or selfexplanatory, the only world or the best world, or our
present state, however much improved and developed
on its own level, that in which we shall find our true
and final happiness. Botll are inevitably 'otherworldly,' though neither should hate this world. H.
Crouzel, in his Origene et la Philosophie, indicates
very weIl the sort of harmony between Platonism and
Christianity which is possible here. Crouzel is much
concerned to show that Origen is not as Platonist in
an un-Christian or un-Biblical sense as he has been
represented to be, but the last words of 11is book are
as foliows:
All the same, there is avision of the world, a
cosmologieal point of view of Hellenic origin, which
really dominates the thought of the Alexandrian.
. . . It is the PIatonie representation of a universe
on two levels, of whieh the higher, that of the
divine, is the model of the lower, its symbol, where
the world of the senses is to be found. This, because
it is symbol, is not self-suffieient al1d has no existence whieh is not a means to an end and derived:
its end, aeeording to God's plan, is to lead the
soul to the divine, and sin eonsists in stopping the
movement of the intelligenee at it, putting it in
plaee of the divine. Into this point of view, borrowed from Platonism, the saeramental strueture
charaeteristie of the time of the Church fits
harmoniously.14
13

It hardly needs demonstration that S1. Augustine,

like the great Greek Christian theologians of the fourth
century, is Platonically other-worldly in this sense.
So far our examination of this topic of the attitude to
the body and the material universe has shown Christian and pagan Platonists rather closer to each other
than is sometimes supposed, with 81. Augustine occupying, again, a central position in the Christian
Platonist tradition. But to leave the discussion here
would, it now seems to me, suggest an altogether unjustifiable con1placency about the satisfactoriness of
the Christian Platonist position which 1 have sketched
so briefly and inadequately, and would not offer very
much possibility of finding in ancient Christian tradition anything which would even begin to help us to
deal with the enorn10usly difficult, if also enormously
hopeful, situation in which we traditional Christians
now find ourselves as we try to bring our ancient faith
into living and redemptive contact with our drastically changed and vastly enlarged contemporary understanding of man and the universe. It does seem
to me that 81. Augustine and, to a great extent, the
other Christian thinkers of his age, missed the chance
of carrying out a much deeper and more dynamic
transfornlation of Platonism than they in fact effected
(they could not, and in my opinion should not, have
broken away froln Platonism altogether): and that, in
one respect, their thought about the material universe
shows a certain regression in comparison with that
of pagan Platonism, or at least fails to make the
necessary Christian advance. For a pagan Platonist,
14

even one as other-worldly as Plotinus, the cosmos

was always religiously relevant. The continuing sense
of the divine presence and power always manifested in the universe, and especially in its upper
part, the region of the heavenly bodies; a vel1eration for those bodies as living cosmic divinities; and
a strong awareness of kinship \vith the Soul of the
World and membership in the living organic unity of
all things; these are a11 essential parts, though for
Plotinus not the most inlportant parts, of Platonic
philosophical religion. The universe for a pagan
Platonist is not only good, but holy. One might almost, using Christianizing terms perhaps for ance not
altogether inappropriately, say that the cosmos is the
one great sacrament for Plotinus and that he has a
doctrine of the mystical body of the universe.l~ Now
the Christians reacted strongly against this cosmic

religion of the pagan philosophers. It provided, in

fact, one of the main grounds of controversy between
pagans and Christians. And I do not wish at a11 to
suggest that the Christian reaction was wholly unjustifiable. Cosmic religion in its strangest form, the Stoic,
was certainly from a Christian point of view idolatry
-the Creator was identified with his creation. And,
though I do not regard Platonist COSlllic religion, in
which star-gods and world-soul are created divinities,
as necessarily pantheist or idolatrous, it was hardly
acceptable to Christians as it stood. There is also a
good deal to be said for Sambursky's view that if
Christians in general, following the lead of John Philoponus in the 6th century, had rejected, not only the
veneration of the heavenly bodies, but the astronomi15

cal belief which went with it, the belief, that is, in the
intrinsic difference and superiority of the Upper
Cosmos above the moon which found its extreme expression in Aristotle's doctrine of the aether or quintessence, the progress of science might have been accelerated and the new astronomy of the Renaissance
might not have met with such bitter opposition in
some Christian quarters. From both the Christian and
the scientific point of view, the cosmic religion of late
antiquity had to be rejected, and it might have been
better if it had left a less deep mark on Christian
thinking about the visible heavens than it did. 16
But none the less, I think that in the rejection of
the cosmic religion something important was in danger of being completely lost, and an opportunity
was, in the 4th and 5th centuries, missed. What was
in danger of being lost was the sense of the holiness, the religious relevance of the cosmos as a whole,
and with it, inevitably, the sense of the holiness of
ordinary human life and bodily activities. It is easy
to find an expression of this more compatible with
orthodox Christianity than the cosmic religion of late
antiquity. The Christian can easily see in the whole
universe the presence and power of the creative and
life-giving Trinity: indeed he must see it if he is to
have a properly vivid sense of the meaning of his own
belief in creation. He can see the play of the Eternal
Wisdom not only in the movements of the heavens
but in the growth-patterns of trees and plants and the
games of his puppy or kitten. He can be aware of
the creative presence in aHlife, not of the World-Soul,
16

but of the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Life-Giver. This

sense of holiness, of an intimate and immediate presence of God in the world, has not been absent from
the Christian tradition, though it has all too often
been much less prominent and widespread than it
ought to have been. S1. Hildegarde expresses it finely
in her Sequence to the Holy Spirit, 'life of the life of
every creature'; and it 11as played a particularly important part in the English and American Protestant
tradition, and, sometimes at least, in the spirituality
of the Eastern Orthodox. 17 But in the period with
which we are immediately concerned it is very much
in the background, when it is there at all. S1. Basil the
Great, in his early treatise De Spiritu, makes a good
deal of use of a passage of Plotinus dealing with the
World-Soul in describing the working of the Holy
Spirit. But in adapting Plotinus to his Christian purposes he is not led to say anything about the cosn1ic
activity of the Spirit. A description of how the WorldSoul gives light and life to the cosmos and all things
in it becomes a description of how the Holy Spirit
sanctifies individual Christians. St. Augustine can
speak magnificently of the beauty and order of the
world as a witness to its Creator. But once this
thought has served its purpose of leading the mind to
the transcendent God, he turns away from the universe to concern hirnself with God's working in the
soul or in the Church. 18 And Western Christianity
has on the whole remained very much too Augustinian in this way. I am inclined to think that the
lack of any broad human and humane interest and
concern with the world around us, which is so often
17

apparent in Christians and has alienated so many

good and intelligent people from the Church and contributed so much to the present general rejection of
Christianity, is due not so n1uch to other-worldliness
as to churchiness. It is not, that is, the result of that
conviction that we are strangers and pilgrims in this
world and that here we have no contin,uing city which
is one of 51. Augustine's great themes and which 1
believe he was right in thinking as essential to Christianity as to Platonism. Plato himself shows how
other-worldliness can be combined with an intense
concern for the reform of the human city. But what,
1 think, is mainly responsible for Christian narrowness
and lack of humanity is the concentration of attention away from God's work in the world and in the
life of ordinary people everywhere and the almost
exclusive focusing on his work for souls in the
Church: so that our personal prayer and the rites and
sacraments of the Churcll have not, as they should,
enhanced our sense of God's presence and work in the
whole of his material creation, but distracted our attention fronl it; and the Church, instead of being, as
she now declares herself in the great Council, the servant of mankind and the sacrament of the world's salvation, has been thought of as an exclusive institution
whose often rather worldly interests are more important than the general welfare of mankind and the
world which has been entrusted to man's care. The
'natural', we have thought, does not matter very
much; only the 'supernatural' does, and there is no
'supernatural' worth considering outside the Church.
18

This churchiness, 1 must regretfully admit, seems

to me generally apparent il1 the great thinkers of the
'golden age of the Fathers.' It is, perhaps, the main
reason why a dynamic Christian transformation of
Platonic thought about the cosmos somewhat analogons to the Christian transformation of Platonic
thought about the soul which we have already discussed, a doctrine of the redemption of the whole universe in and through Christ, took so long to develop
even in the Christian East, and has played very little
part in Westerl1 Christian tllinking until our own tinle.
The foundations for such a doctrine had been weIl
and truly laid in the earliest tradition of the Church.
St. Irenaeus saw it clearly in the New Testament. He
says of Christ: 'For the maker of the world is indeed
the Word of God; and this is our Lord, who in the
last times was made nlan, existing in this world: Who
invisibly contains all things that were made, and is
established in tlle whole creation, as being God's
Word, governing and disposing all things; and therefore into his own he came invisibly, and was made
flesh and hung upon the tree, that he might sum up
all into hirnself' (Adversus Haereses V.18.2 tr. J.
Keble): and of the redemption of all creation: 'For
God is rich in all things, and all things are his. The
creation therefore itself must be renewed to its old
condition and without hindrance serve the righteous;
and this the Apostle hath made evident in the Epistle
to the Romans thus speaking: "For the expectation of
the creature waiteth for the revelation of the sons of
God. For the creature is made subject to vanity, not
willingly, but because of hirn who hath subjected it
19

in hope: because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty
of the glory of the sons of God.'" (Adv. Haer. V.32.1
quoting Romans 8.19-21-again in Keble's translation; ~p. 36.1). This splendid teaching of Irenaeus
attracted all too little attention in the great age of the
Fathers, perhaps because of its millenarian context.
(We, though we cannot be millenarians, might be weIl
advised to pay some attention to the strange, and often
beautiful, imaginings of Book V. They will at least
bring horne to us that our Christian hope is for anew
earth which is still material, however glorified and
transformed, in which none of the goodness and joy
of this present life will be lost, and also that the vision
of God which is our true end is a spiritual vision transcending even the glory of the risen body and the renewed creation.) 19
The idea of cosmic redemption was, perhaps, always
more congenial to the Christian East than the Christian
West. 51. Gregory of Nyssa mentions the restoration of
all things (De Hominis Opificio, chs. 22 and 23) but
does not develop the theme, and it does not seem in
general to play any important part in the thought of
the Cappadocians. 20 The development of the doctrine
in the East is above all due to one of the greatest
theologians of Christian antiquity, 51. Maxirrlus the
Confessor (580-622 A.D.). By constructively criticizing Origen and developing and, where necessary,
correcting the thought of the Cappadocians and
Pseudo-Dionysius, and with a great deal of help at
important points from the 6th-century development of
20

Aristotelian studies in the Greek Christian world, he

arrived at a way of thinking which still seems to me to
llave something of value in it for our contemporary
world. Maximus, here developing Cappadocian
thought but also owing a good deal to Aristotle,
sees movement as the law of creation; but he does
so without losing sight of the eternal and unchanging behind and beyond the movement of the world.
He renlains a Christian Platonist. All created things
for him have to move towards their goal, whicll
is not existent in creation, but pre-exists as a logos
in the Logos, an idea or intention in tlle eternal
Word of God. Christ the Word in creating gives all
things adynamie being 'homed' on him and brings
them (allother things in man) back and on to him
by redemption and deification. In the thought of
Maximus the difference between spiritual and Inaterial

is far less important than the fact that both are created
from nothing and both designed to be brought back
to God (though the material is to return through and
under the leadership of the spiritual). There is no
idea of escaping from the body, but only of reforming
and transforming the carnallusts and passions. There
is nothing in man, body, passions, natural powers, or
even that division of the sexes which Maximus, following Greek tradition, cannot see as part of man's
true nature, which is destined to be destroyed. Transcendence means transformation. Tlle lower is dominated by and brought to cooperate with the higher.
Ultimately the whole of man, body and passions included, is brougllt by the grace of God working on
man through his intellect to a union with God without
21

confusion of created and uncreated. Alld in Ulan, and

through his contemplation, the whole universe is
brought back to God. Man in hin1self ullifies the
material and intelligible, earth and heaven, and brings
it all back and presents it to God in his glorification of
hirn. And this is done only in and through the Incarnation of Christ. All things were created in Hirn, and
man's sin is done away and he is redeemed and deified by Christ's death, and he is brought back with all
things to God by the union without confusion of divine and human in the Incarnation. The driving force
of the whole process is love, first God's for man and
then, and in complete dependence on God's love,
man's love for God.
This is a magnificently dynamic, comprehensive
and progressive view of the nature and destiny of
man and the world, in which the static, self-sufficient
universe of pagan Platonism which, like man's divine
self, needs no redemption, is transformed into the
moving, open, incomplete redeelned universe of Christianity without loss of the Platonic awareness of the
eternal. We should not, of course, try to force it (or
the thought of St. Irenaeus) into an unreal conformity
with our inchoate contemporary theologies of cosmic
redemption. St. Maximus remains very much a Byzantine ascetic. His program for the reform and transformation of human nature is austere: and it is in contemplation and mystic union, not by any sort of human action on the material world, that Christ in us
brings back all creation to the Father: just as in St.
Irenaeus it is by a mysterious and n1iraculous action
22

of Christ, and not as the culmination of a long process

of human action, that the material world will finally
be renewed and glorified. Nor sl10uld we expect to
find a solution in S1. Maximus for the enormous problems which our increased knowledge and inevitably
changed understallding of the universe and of 11un1an
nature bring for traditional Christians. We must not
expect the Fathers and Doctors to do our own thinking for us. But, none the less, there is room, at least
in principle, in St. Maximus' great vision of our life
in Christ for all true knowledge and all true love and
their expressions. 21 It is a tragedy that the theologies
of Irenaeus and Maximus were not better known and
more influential in tl1e West. Much of the best of
St. Augustine's thought, his theology of love and his
theology of history, would fit weIl into a Maximan
framework. And if a doctrine of cosmic redemption
had been a living force in the centre of our theology
and piety, and had gone on developing according to
the new needs and experiences of the centuries, the
history of Western Christianity n1ight have been very
different, and we might not have been so ill equipped
to deal with either Renaissance humanism or modern
thought. And even today our increasing knowledge
and appreciation of 5t. Maximus, and in general, of
Eastern Orthodox thought, in which his influence
seems to be very strong, may help us to deal with our
contemporary problems. If some theologian fully competent to do so were to bring 5t. Maximus and Teilhard
de Chardin together, the contact might be fruitful, and
the older Bastern tradition might help to suggest ways
of correcting the defects, inevitable i11 a pioneer, in the
23

thought of the man who has restored to Western Catholicism a living (though by no means universally
accepted) belief in the holiness of the world and in
cosmic redemption. 22 And, certainly, a study of Eastern Christian theology will prevent us fronl accepting
uncritically the more aggressively activist and thisworldly theologies of Christ's redeeming action, if,
that is, we retain any respect at all for the ideas and
values of traditional Christianity.

My last topic is one which will show the reaSOll

why the thought of St. Augustine and of Augustinians
often arouses uneasiness, and sometimes downright
hostility, in other kinds of Christian Platonists and
in general of those pagans or Christians who have
been influenced to some degree by Greek hunlanism.
It is that of God's universal will to save all mankind.
In his anti-Pelagian writings Augustine, it must be admitted, takes a very dark view of the present state and
future destiny of the great majority of mankind, so
dark a view that his pessimism about man becomes a
pessimism about God. The doctrine of the massa
perditionis, the intense emphasis on inherited and personal guilt and sin, and the insistence that God, for
utterly nlysterious reasons, selects from the mass of
men only a limited number for salvation fronl the deplorable present state with its appalling future consequences into which he has allowed his creatures to
get themselves, as they appear in Augustine's own
thought, even witllout the hardening and exaggeration
24

of later heterodox forms of Augustinianism, are simply not compatible with the conclusions about God
and man to which the great majority of other serious
theist6 have come, especially those influenced by
Plato,nism. 23 For the pagan Platonist God is the Good,
who diffuses his good throughout the universe and to
all mankind, giving it to all to tl1e limit of their capacity to receive it. In the thought of Plotinus (though
not of all pagan Platonists) the gift is given without
love or care, but equally without arbitrariness or favouritism, as the sun shines. The belief that the divine
powers which rule the universe are perfectly good
is the fundamental tenet of the religion of Plato and
his successors. And being good for Plato and the
Platonists means doing good, and doing it with perfect
wisdom and fairness. To theists of this sort, and to
many Christian Platonists who have been led on by
the revelation in Jesus Christ from their Platonic belief that God is good to believe that he is Love, and
who understand this as meaning more, not less, goodness than Plato or any philosopher was able to conceive, the doctrine of Augustine is intolerable, and 110
appeal to mystery can justify it. 24 This rejection of
any form of Augustinian selective predestination has,
I think, been particularly characteristic of the English
non-Calvinist and anti-Calvinist Christian tradition,
which has, at times, been very deeply influenced by
Platonism. The basic reason for the rejection, that
this doctrine presents God as an arbitrary tyrant, and
not really as supreme Goodness, Wisdom and Love,
is magnificently expressed in the anti-Calvinist
polemic of the great Cambridge Platonist, Cud25

worth: and I must say here honestly and openly that,

as a Cambridge man and a Platonist, and in spite of
my genuine veneration for St. Augustine, I am compelled to share this view. It seems to me that any
doctrine which restricts saving grace either to the
elect or to those within the visible communion of the
Church, and does not extend it effectively to all mankind, so that all are saved who do not freely persist to
the end in refusing God's love, is an extreme example
of that Christian narrowness of which I spoke earlier,
which not only fails to pay sufficient attention to the
goodness and holiness of the world and mankind outside the Christian limits, but supposes God to be
equally narrow and selective in his love and care for
his creation, and so presents hirn as a being worse,
not better, than the God of the philosophers. Whenever and wherever the Gospel has been preached in
this way, as very bad news, not good news, for the
vast majority of mankind, it is not surprising that
many pagans have scornfully rejected it and many
Christians, finding it incompatible with their convictions about God's goodness and love for his creation,
have reacted strongly against this presentation of
Christianity, sometimes into untenable theological
positions.
20;

After this vigorously British piece of anti-Augustinianism, it may reasonably be asked whether I am advocating areturn to the position of one of our few
great British theologians, Pelagius. In fact, though I
can sympathize to some extent with the Pelagian and
'semi-Pelagian' reactions against Augustine, I am cer-

26

tainly not a Pelagian, and whole-heartedly accept the

present teaching of the Catholic Church, as magnificently expounded by the Second Vatican Council, and
developed and applied by many contemporary theologians. The long wrestling of the mind of the Church
through the ages with the problem of how to reconcile God's universal will to save all men in and
through Christ, on which she has always insisted, with
the absolute priority of grace and the fact that salvation can only be in some way through Christ in his
Church, seems to nle to have come, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to a successful issue of which
\\Te are only beginning to see and explore the implications. But we can already see how we can remain
fully Augustinian on the most important point, that of
the absolute priority of grace, while satisfying the
legitimate den1ands of pagans and Pelagians.
Let us consider shortly what the main points of
disagreement are between Plotinus, Pelagius and
Augustine. All agree that Ina11 has nothing which
he has not been given, that he is wholly depe11dent
for his being and his well-being upon God. For Plotinus, as we have seen, what God gives is a perfect
higher self, impassible and inlpeccable, of which the
lower self is a reflection or expression on a lower level
of being. There is, therefore, no real question of
salvation and no need for a redeemer. For Pelagius
God gives man a nature equipped with everything
that he needs for salvation in his creation, which is a
real grace, a free and unmerited gift, and the primary
and essential, though not the only grace. This nature
27

is not impassible or impeccable; man can, and most

men do, sin and will have to take the eternal consequences. The Pelagian view of the future destiny of
mankind is nearly as grim as 5t. Augustine's. The
Pelagians were, primarily, austere moralists, concerned to emphasize human responsibility and the
need for 11uman effort in the Christian life. And, like
most ancient moralists, they took a grimly over-simplified, black-and-white view of human freedom and
responsibility. There was no room in their thinking,
any more than in Augustine's, for that proper attention to all the psycho-physical and social causes that
may limit our free will and diminish our responsibility which our vastly increased modern knowledge of

man forces upon us today. But, however disastrously

most men may freely misuse what they have been
given, the fault remains wholly theirs, not God's. He
has given us all we need for our salvation, and given
it to all men. Pelagius insists on the fact of real virtue,
and even 'natural holiness' outside the Church (Epistola ad Demetriadem, chs. 3 and 4). But of course
God can hardly be said to have given it to us through
Christ Incarnate. In the Pelagian way of thinking
Christ is our teacher, leader, helper, example and
judge, but hardly in any real sense our redenleer.:w
It was because they were primarily moralists that
the Pelagians insisted so strongly, as they thought
against Augustine, on human free will. Here their
position (and still more that of the so-called 'semiPelagians') was very close to the Greek-Christian tradition, and especially to 5t. John Chrysostom, who
28

was content, as the Christian East has generally been

content (following in this a very ancient tradition of
Greek thought) to assert both the necessity for God's
grace and the necessity for man to co-operate with it
freely without worrying too much about reconciling
God's initiative and man's freedom. There is a
synergia, a working together of God and 11is free
creatures in the Christian life, and we cannot and
should not investigate further. 27 Anti-Augustinians
both in East and West have often been inclined to
nlake the question of free will their central point of
disagreement with 51. Augustine, but I am prepared
to believe that this may be largely due to misunderstanding and to accept the conclusion of Mother Mary
Clark in her excellent book Augustine, Philosopher 0/
Freedom (Paris, 1958) that Augustine really tried to
maintain in his anti-Pelagian period his admirable
earlier teaching on human free will and was to a great
extent successful in reconciling it with his belief in
predestination. But some recent English studies of
Pelagianism have suggested that among the reasons
for Pelagian opposition to Augustine may have been,
not only the Pelagian and Eastern Christian conviction of the reality of free will, but also that which I
have already suggested as the n1ain point of difference
between Augustine and other Christian Platonists,
that the Augustinian account of God's dealings with
mankind makes God so intolerably unfair. The most
attractive feature of some at least of the Pelagians as
Christian moralists is their passionate concern for
socia1 justice, in which, unfortunate1y, they stand a1most a10ne among the Christians of their period.

29

Pelagian voices are raised in revolutionary protest

against that easy acceptance by C11ristians of the appalling social inequalities, injustices and cruelties of
the late Roman En1pire which is one of the worst
scandals in the history of Christendom, and one fronl
the effects of w11ich we are still suffering. Now J. N. L.
Myres has shown that in the legallanguage of the time
gratia means judicial corruption and favouritism, and
the phrase which Augustine uses of the Pelagians,
inimici gratiae, would have meant to the ordinary
man son1ething like 'opponents of corruption in public
life.' His examination of the Pelagian position in the
light of the facts of contemporary life and language
suggests very strongly that one thing which drove the
Pelagians into suc11 passionate opposition to Augustine was their conviction that God could not be in the
least like a corrupt judge of the Roman Empire, their
belief that the Augustinian doctrine presented the
Lord in an all too human and contemporary light as
a ruler of the most abominable injustice and cruelty.:2S
51. Augustine upheld lnagnificently against pagans and
Pelagians the fundamental Christian doctrines that the
initiative is always and universally with God, that we
can do nothing whatever towards our salvation of
ourselves without or before his grace, and that saving
grace is always and only given in and through the
great redeen1ing act of Christ the Incarnate Word.
But in upholding these doctrines he seems to have
lost sight of, or at any rate failed to maintain, that
simple belief in God's universal and equitable goodness which is the foundation of the faith of pagan
Platonists and Pelagians, and very many more ortho30

dox Christians. The present teaching of the Church

as expounded in the Constitutions of the Second Vatican Council remains fully Augustinian on the vital
points. But it also maintains, with a breadth and
generosity most satisfying to those who cannot accept
Augustine's teaching as it stands because of their belief that God is good, that the grace of Christ without
which we cannot be saved is really offered to all men,
and can be recognized at work beyond the bounds of
the Church alld even of Christianity; and that the
whole universe is to share in the redemption of mankind. 28 We see in this teaching a supernatural giving
as universal as the pagan Platonists conceived the selfdiffusion of the Good. We see man, not as a changeless and self-sufficient eternal self, but as a creature
unfinished, needing and receiving redemption. We
see the universe, not as the static subordinate divinity
of the old cosmic religion but as a great process
guided by the Holy Spirit to share in the redemption
which Christ has won for man. Plenty of problems
and difficulties remain, but I believe that now after the
Council we have a better chance than ever before of
showing our religion as truly universal, free from
narrowness or churchiness, the religion in which
Platonism and all other great aspirations of the spirit
of man to its eternal source and goal can find a glorious resurrection into a truth better than they could
conceive, which offers hope to every man and to the
whole world.

31

NOTES

1. The Cambridge History 0/ Later Greek and Early Mediaeval

Philosophy (Cambridge, England, 1967), of which I am editor, will
I hope, give a fairly adequate idea of the variety and complexity of
the pagan and Christian thought of the period. Parts 11 (by Henry
Chadwick), Philo and the Beginni11gs 0/ Christian Thought} V (by
R. A. Markus), Marius Victorinus and Augustine} VI (by P. Sheldon-Williams), The Greek Christian Platonist Tradition trom the
Cappadocians to Maximus and Eriugena} and VII (by H. Liebeschtz), Western Christian Thought trom Boethius to Anselm}
deal with various phases and aspects of Christian Platonism. Parts
I, III and IV (by P. Merlan, myself and A. C. Lloyd) are concerned with pagan Platonism, and Part VIII (by R. Walzer) \vith
early Islamic philosophy.

2. Eastern Christian and English Christian Platonism are

touched on later in this lecture. One form of Christian Platonism
which it has not been possible to deal \vith here, but which was
extremely influential in the medieval Latin West and made a
notable contribution to the formation of the European mind, is
the simple Platonic Christian theism of the De Consolatione Philosophiae of Boethius. (The most generally accessible edition is that
with English translation by H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand in the
Loeb Classical Library, last reprinted 1953). The central and most
influential idea of this is the great vision of the world as a whole
which makes sense, a coherent unity held together and ruled in all
its motions by an order which is also love, whose existence is due
to and continually depends on the creative goodness of God, the
Supreme Good. This vision, arrived at by reading Plato's Timaeus
with Christian and late Platonist eyes without regard to the considerable divergences between Plato's thought in this dialogue and

32

the Christian doctrine of creation, is particularly finely expressed

in the ninth poem of Book 111 (the famous 0 qui perpetua on
\vhieh so many commentaries were written in the early Middle
Ages) and that great celebration of the love which orders the
stars and the seasons, the sixth poem of Book IV. It is the foundation of the austerely encouraging moralising of the Consolation
about human destiny. The problem of the exact religious position
of Boethius at the time when he wrote the Consolation will probably never be completely solved. (One of the latest and best
treatments of it, by H. Liebeschtz, will be found in the
Canlbridge History referred to in n.l. Ch. 35 D, pp. 550-55).
There seem, however, to be two things worth saying about it
whieh are relevant to our present theme of Christian Platonism.
One is that Boethius, though of course in no way a naive or
unseholarly person, represents, as has been indicated above,
what may be called the 'naive' or 'concordist' kind of Christian Platonist, who finds no difficulty in assuming that Plato
and the Bible are on all important points saying exactly the
same thing. This sort oE naive coneordism has had a long history.
It was prevalent among the Christian Platonists oE the Renaissance.
Marsilio Ficino's commentary on the Symposium (ed. and tr. R.
Mareel, Paris, 1956) provides some odd examples of how far it
could go, notably Oratio IV, ch. 11 (pp. 168-9 Marcel) and Oratio
V, eh. XII (p. 197 Marcel), which are Christianizing interpretations of the Aristophanes myth in the Symposium and the story of
the eastration of Ouranos by Kronos respectively. A belated and
charn1ing, if hardly convincing, example is the litde book Plato
and the Christians) by Canon Adam Fox (London, 1957). It has
perhaps a eertain value, however unacceptable to scholars it may
be as it stands, as a corrective to the polemical exaggerations oE
the differenees between Christianity and Platonism common in
some Christian and scholarly quarters.
The other relevant point about the religious position oE Boethius
is that many Christians, before and after his time, who have came
to know the teachings of the ancient moralists, have found their
ster-n and clear vision of human destiny and true human values a
source of strength and comfort in times of great suffering, and
have turned to them, as Boethius did in prison, without any sense
that they were doing anything eontrary to their Christian profession. St. Augustine himself, who was certainly not a naive concordist, in his last days, during the Vandal invasion, used to comfort

33

himself with a quotation fron1 one of the finest exan1ples of

Stoic-Platonic Inoralising on hun1an destiny, the treatise On WellBeing of Plotinus (TIEpi EuOqlOV(Oc.;: I 4 [46]. According to his
biographer Possidius, 'an1idst these calan1ities he used to cOl1sole
himself with the maxim of a certain wise l11an \vho said 'no great
man will think it a great n1atter when sticks and stones fall and
n10rtals die' (et se inter haec lnala cuiusdanl sapientis sententia
consolabatur dicentis: 110n erit nzagnus nlagnum putans quod
cadunt ligna et lapides et lnoriuntur nzortales). Possidius, Life of
St. Augustine ch. 28, tr. F. R. Hoare in Tlle Western Fathers
(London, 1954) - a free translation of Plotinus I 4 7. 23-4.
Koi OUK O:v E'tL 0110UOO'l0<; Elll E,uA'O Kai A(SOU<; Kal v~ (a
8avo:'tou<; SVYJ'twv ~Eya ~YOU~EVO<; . . . .

3. The tern1S of Middle Platonism and Neoplatonisn1 are usually applied to the revived Platonism of the Roman Imperial period
before Plotinus and to Platonism fron1 Plotinus onwards respectively. But there is no breach of continuityT between the two.
Professor Merlan, in Part I of the Canzbridge History referred to
in n.1, shows dearly thc dose relationship of the thought of Plotinus
to that of his predecessors. It is also in1portant to remen1ber that
the influence of Platonisn1 on Christian thought began \vell before
the time of Plotinus (204-5-270 A.D.). Philo of Alexandria, the
precursor and to a great extent the source of Christian Platonic
thinking, \vas dead by 50 A.D. Justin and Clement of Alexandria
belong to the second century (Clement \vas probably dead before
215 A.D.), and Origen \vas a considerably older contemporary of
Plotinus (born c.184-5, died about 254 A.D.). The pattern of
Christian Platonism was ~Tell established before there can be any
question of Plotinian influence. This does not Inean, of course,
that Plotinus had no influence on Christian thought. There has
been a tendency in some recent scholarship to play down his influence on later Christian Platonists, and even on later pagan
Neoplatonists, unduly. But it is probable that philosophical teaching in the great Platonic schools of Athens and Alexandria was
hardly influenced at all, directly or indirectly, by Plotinus till, at
earliest, weIl on in the fourth century A.D. The philosophical education received by the Cappadocian Fathers, St. Basil of Caesarea,
St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Gregory Nazianzen, was pre-Plotinian in character: which is not to say that they did not at some
time read hirn and were not affected by what they read.

34

4. The idea that the human soul is in some sense by nature

divine is to be found in Vladimir Solovyev (cf. his Lectures on
Godmanhood-English translation, London, 1948--especially lecture
8) and Nicolas Berdyaev (cf. especially chapter 8, Manhood, of his
The Divil1e and the Human-English translation, London, 1949);
and it is sometimes asserted with remarkable recklessness by
Western followers of the latter. It seems, as I have remarked below, incolnpatible with orthodox Christianity as this has been
universally understood both in East and West: but I do not think
that for this reason the whole thought of either of these two great
Russian thinkers about God and man can sin1ply be dismissed
fr0111 serious consideration by Christians. There are in both of
then1 son1e very profound insights, partially obscured by great
an1biguity and lack of clarity in thought and expression. And
Berdyaev's idea oE divine humanity is very remote from the static
incorruptible divinity of the Plotinian soul.
5. On this see further Part III, chapter 14 oE the Cambridge
History referred to in n.1. A rather different view of Plotinus's
doctrine of the soul, presenting it as a good deal more compatible
with the Christian position, will be found in Eudaimonia, by "Vilheln1 Hin1n1erich (Forschungen zur neueren Philosophie und ihrer
Geschichte, neue Folge XIII, Wrzburg, 1959). Here are a few
il11portant passages from the Enneads dealing \vith man's higher
self, in my own translations (from Plotinus, New York, 1962 and
Plotinus, Loeb Classical Library, London and Cambridge, Mass.
1946-).
I 1[53] 10, 5-15. So \ve' is used in two senses, either including the beast or referring to that vvhich even in our present
life transcends it. The beast is the body which has been given life.
But the true man is different, clear of these experiences: he has the
virtues which belong to the sphere of Intellect and have their seat
actually in the separate soul, separate and separable even while it is
still here below. (For \vhen it withdraws altogether, the lower
soul \vhich is illulnined by it goes away too in its train.) But the
virtues \vhich result not from thought but froin habit and training
belong to that which is common to body and soul: for the vices
belong to this, since envy and jealousy and emotional sympathy
are located there. Eut \vhich man do loves belong to? Some to
the lower, some to the n1an within.

35

11 9[33] 2, 5-10. One part of our soul is always direeted to the

intelligible realities, one to the things of this world, and one
is in the middle between these: for sinee the soul is one nature in
many powers, sometimes the whole of it is carried along with the
best of itself and of real being, sometimes the worse part is
dragged down and drags the middle with it; for it is not lawEul
for it to drag down the whole.
III 4[15] 3, 21-27. For the soul is many things, and all things
both the things above and the things below down to the limits of
all life, and we are eaeh one of us an intelligible universe, making
contaet with this lower world by the powers of soul below, but
with the intelligible world by its powers above and the powers of
the universe; and we remain with all the rest of our intelligible
part above, but by its ultima te fringe we are tied to the world
below, giving a kind of outflow from it to what is below, or rather
an aetivity, by whieh that intelligible part is not itself lessened.
III 6 [26] 5, 13-22. But what eould the 'purifieation' of the seul
be if it had not been stained at all, or what its 'separation' Erom
the body? The purifieation would be leaving it alone, and not
with otllers, or not looking at something else or, aga in, having
opinions whieh do not belong to it-whatever is the eharaeter of
the opinions, or the affeetions, as has been said-and not seeing the
images nor eonstrueting affeetions out of them. But if there is
turning in the other direetion, to the things above, away from those
below, it is surely (is it not?) purifieation, and separation too, when
it is the aet of a soul whieh is no longer in body as if it belonged
to it, and is being like a light whieh is not in turbid obseurity. And
yet even the light whieh is in obscurity remains unaffeeted.
V 14 [22] 14, 16-31. But we-who are wer Are we that higher
self or that whieh drew near to it and eame to be in time? Before
this birth eame to be we existed There as men different from those
\Ve are now, som/' of us even as gods, pure souls, intelleet united
\Vith the whole oE reality, parts of the intelligible world, not
separated or eut off, belonging to the whole; and indeed we are not
eut off even now. But now there has eome to that higher man
another man, wishing to exist and finding us; for we were not
outside the universe. He wound himself round us and fastened
himself to that man that eaeh one of us was then (as if there was
one voiee and one word, and someone else eame up from else-

36

\"here, and his ear heard and received the sound and became an
actual hearing, keeping that which made it actual present to it) and
we became a couple, not just the one member of it we were before;
and sometimes we became even the other member which we had
fastened to us, when the first man is not active and in a different
sense not present.
6. On the Christian opposition to the Plotinian doctrine of the
divinity of the soul see E.L. Fortin, Christianis1Jle et Culture Philosophique au seme Sieeie (Paris, 1959) chapter ii; R.A. Markus and
P. Sheldon-Williams in the Ca1rlbridge History (see n.l.) Part V
ch.22 and Part VI, ch.28. The articles by Fr. Robert J. O'Connell
referred to in the text are:
'Enneads VI 4 and 5 in the works of St. Augustine.' Revue des
Etudes Augustiniennes IX 1-2 (1963) pp. 1-39.
'The Enneads and St. Augustine's Image of Happiness'. Vigiliae
Christianae 17 (1963) pp. 129-164.
'The Plotinian Fall of the Soul in St. Augustine'. Traditio XIX
(1963) pp. 1-35.
'The Riddle of Augustine's 'Confessions': a Plotinian Key'
International Philosophical Quartel'ly IV 3. (1964) pp. 327-72.
On St. Gregory of Nyssa's doctrine of creaturely mutability see
Hans von Balthasar, Presence et Pensee (Paris, 1942) and J. Danielou, Platonis111e et Theologie Mystique (2nd edn. Paris, 1953).
It is clearly stated in the following passage, ,,,hich deals ,vith the
creation of man in the in1age of God:
What difference do we see bet\veen the Divine and that
which is n1ade like the Divine? They differ in that one is
uncreated, the other caiDe into existence though creation.
This difference of essential character produced a sequence
of other characteristic differences. For it is agreed everywhere and in every way that the uncreated nature is also
unchangeable, but it is in1possible for the created to remain
without change. For the actual passage from non-being to
being is a sort of Inovement and change, when non-being
passes into being according to the vvill of God. . . . the
uncreated is always the san1e, but that ,,,hich came into
existence through creation had the beginning of its beiog
fron1 change and has a kinship \vith this kind of muta-

37

bility, (On The Cl'eation 0/ Man (De Hominis Opificio)

ch.16. PG 44, 184; my own translation).
The dynamic character of his thought about created, mutable
human nature is weil illustrated by the following:
That which is in the process of change is always in a way
being born. In the realm of changeable [i.e. created] nature
one could never observe any things which are always the
same as themselves. But in this case [that of the human
spirit] being born is not the result of another's impulse, as
it is with corporeal beings which engender casually, but
birth of this kind is the result of deliberate choice. We
are in a way our own parents, bringing ourselves forth as
we want to be, and by our own deliberate choice fashioning ourselves on whatever model we choose, male or female, on the pattern of virtue or vice. (Li/e 0/ Moses Ir,
3, p. 32 in the edition of J. Danielou [Sources Chretiennes
Ibis, Paris, 19551-PG 44, 328 B: my own translation.) The
development of this doctrine by St. Maximus the Confessor is touched on later in this lecture (pp. 7-8).
One of the finest expressions of the doctrine of creaturely mutability to be found in patristic literature is the following, from St.
Augustine's Con/essions. St. Augustine is speaking here of the angelic creation, described in terms clearly reminiscent of the Neoplatonic intelligible world, which makes the contrast with Plotinus
all the clearer:
With astrang voice thou toldest me likewise in my inner
ear; how that neither is that creature co-eternal unto thyself, whose desire thou only art, which with a most persevering chastity, greedily drinking thee in, does in no
place and at no time put off its natural mutability, which
also, thyself being ever present with it, (unto whom with
its whole affection it keeps itself) it having neither anything in future to expect, nor conveying anything which it
remembereth into the time past, is neither altered by any
change, nor distracted into any times. 0 blessed creature
(if any such there be) even c1eaving so fast unto thy blessedness: blessed in thee, the eternal Inhabitant and Enlightener thereof. Nor do I find what I am more glad to call
the Heaven of Heavens which is the Lord's, than thine
own house, Lord, which still contemplateth that delight

38

which in thee it finds, without any forsaking thee to go

into other; a most pure mind, most harmoniously continuing one, by that settled estate of peace of those holy
spirits, those citizens of thy city in heavenly places; which
are far above those heavenly places which we see. (Confessions XII, ch.11. tr. W. Watts revised W.H.D. Rouse, in
Loeb Classical Library, St. Augustine's Confessions II, London and Cambridge, Mass., 1946).
7. The beginning of the chapter is as follows:
But there is no conHict on this point between us and
these philosophers of the beuer sort. For they saw and put
into their writings, in many ways and at great length, that
they [the 'gods' or higher souls] derive their blessedness
from the same source as \ve do ourselves, from the casting
of an intelligible light, which is God to them and is something other than they are, by which they are illuminated,
that they may shine and by participation in it exist as
perfect and blessed beings. Plotinus asserts often and
strongly, explaining Plato's meaning, that even that soul
which they [the Platonists] believe to be the soul of
the universe, does not derive its blessedness from any
other source than ours, and that its light is something
which is not itself, but that by which it is created and by
the intelligible illumination of which it shines intelligibly.
(City of God X.2; my own translation).
Augustine is probably thinking here of passages like the following
from the late treatise V 3 [49], in which this side of Plotinus's
thought is very much in evidence; the first deals with the illumination of the soul by the Second Hypostasis, Intellect, the second
with its illumination by the One or Good:
This light [of Intellect], shining in the soul, illumines
it: that is, makes it intelligent; that is, makes it like itself,
the light above..... Yes, truly, this illumination gives the
soul a c1earer life, but not the life of generation; on the
contrary, it turns the soul to itself, and prevents it from
dissipating itself, and makes it be satisfied with the glory
in Intellect. (V 3 [49] 8, 22-4 and 27-31; my own translation).

39

One must believe one has seen, when the soul suddenly
takes light; for this light is from Him, and He is it. We
must think that He is present when, like another god
whom someone called to his house, He comes and brings
light to us; for if He had not come, He would not have
brought the light. So the soul which does not see him is
without light: but when it is enlightened it has what it
sought, and this is the soul's true end, to touch that Light
and see Ir by Irself, not by another light, by Itself, Which
gives it sight as well. Ir must see that Light by which it is
enlightened; for we do not see the sun by another light
than his own. How then can this happen? Take away
everything! (V 3 [49] 17, 28-38; my own translation from
Plotinus, New York, 1962).
There is ample evidence in the Enneads that Plotinus is not a
pantheist, that he thought of the One or Good (which corresponds
in his thought to what we mean by God) as the Wholly Other,
totally different from the things which he produces. Perhaps the
most striking passage is in chapters 9 and IO of the treatise On
Contemplation (III 8 [30]), where we find Plotinus not simply
stating that the One is the Wholly Other, but demonstrating this at
some length. Ir is also an inadequate and misleading account of his
thought to represent the production of all things from the One
as an automatie and necessary process of 'emanation': on this see
my contribution to the Cambridge History (see n.l.), Part III,
chapter 15. And when Plotinus, in the great treatise On F"ee-Will
and the Will 01 the One (VI 8 [39]) brings himself to consider
seriously whether the One is free, self-positing and with something
analogous to (though far transcending) what we mean by will and
persona li ty, he answers firmly that he is, and speaks about him in
fully theistic language.
Ir is relevant to quote here Plotinus's answer to Gnostic, and
orthodox Christian, accusations that Hellenie philosophers are
polytheists and idolaters; the sort of accusations, in fact, which
recur frequently in St. Augustine and the other Fathers. It is in
the great treatise Against the Gnostics, which is the concluding
section of a major work, split up by Porphyry for his own editorial
purposes, of which III 8, referred to above, is the first part. The
essential sentence is as folIows:

40

It is not contracting the divine into one but showing it

in that multiplicity in which God himself has shown it,
which is proper to those who know the power of God, inasmuch as, abiding who he is, he makes many gods, all
depending upon himself and existing through hirn and
from hirn. (11 9 [33] 9, 35-39; lny own translation froul
Plotinus II, Locb Classical Library, 1966).
8. As ahvays in dealing 'A,ith Plato, I feel some doubt whether
the general statements in the text, or any general statenlents, are
not too dogmatic and absolute. There are tensions and possible
contradictions in his thought as expressed in the Dialogues on this,
as on all other points. But it does seenl to lue that a conviction of
the fallibility and peccability of the human soul is basic to Plato's
moral teaching (hence some of Plotinus's difficulties) and runs
through all the great nlyths about the soul's nature and destiny in
the Gorgia.f, Phaedo, Phaedrus and Republic, which are ilnaginative presentations of the 'Orphic-Pythagorean' doctrine of man as a
being fallen froln the divine world as a result of some primal sin
or flaw and needing purification and relnedial punishment before he can return to his proper place. An earlier \vriter in the
same tradition, Elnpedocles, cOlnbines, in his poem Purificatiol'ls
(Kaeap~o() the strongest possible assertion of his own divinity
with a sense of personal sin unparalleled in pagan Greek philosophical litera ture:
I go about al110ng you all an inl1110rtal god, Inortal no
lllore, honoured as is Iny due, crowned \vith garlands and
verdant wreaths (fr.112).
Of these I too anl now one, a fugitive from thc gods
and a wanderer, \vho put ll1y trust in raving strife (fr.l15).
Alas that the pitiless day of death did not first destroy
me before I contrived the wretched deed of eating flesh
with my lips (fr.139; all translations by J.E. Raven).
I also think that the influence of Aristotelian noetic resulted in
a certain stiffening and hardening of the thought of Plotinus about
the unchangingness and impassibility of thedivine soul. (On this
influence see P. Merlan in the Cambridge History (see n.1.), Part I,
chapters 3A and 6B). The passage of the Tin'laeus referred to in the
text is as follows:

41

Gods, of gods whereof I am the maker and works the

father, those whieh are nlY own handiwork are indi960luble
save with n'lY eonsent. Now, although whatsoever bond
has been fastened may he unloosed, yet only an evil will
eould eonsent to dissolve what has been well fitted together and is in a good state; therefore, although you,
having eome into being, are not immortal nor indissoluble
altogether, nevertheless you shall not be dissolved nor taste
of death, finding my will a bond yet stronger and more
sovereign than those \vith whieh you were bound together
when you eame to be. (Tinlaeus 41 A-B; translation by
F.M. Cornford).
9. The doctrine of the total deseent of the soul is elearly stated,
in eonseious opposition to the teaehing of Plotinus, in the last
proposition (211) of the Elements 0/ T heology of Proclus (pp. 1845 of E.R. Dodds, Proclus, T he Elements 0/ T heology, 2nd edition,
Oxford 1965). I t is as follows:
Every partieular soul, when it deseends into temporal
proeess, deseends entire: there is not apart of it whieh
ren1ains above and apart whieh deseends (translation by
E.R. Dodds).
Cp. Proclus In Parmenidem 134 A (V. p. 948, 14-20, ed. Cousin
1864). On the doetrine of 'descending' or 'providential' Eros in
the later Neoplatonists see n1y article 'Platonie Eros and Christian
Agape' in Downside Review No. 255 (Spring, 1961), pp. 115-121,
and John M. Rist Eros and Psyche (Toronto, 1964), Epilogue pp.
213-220.
10. Deus enim deum te vult /acere: non natura sicut est ille
quem genuit; sed dono suo et adoptione.
COlnpare e.g. St. Irenaeus' Against Heresies III.19.l: For to this
end the Ward of God was made man, and he who is the Son of
God, Son of Man, that man blended with God's Ward, and reeeiving the adoption might beeome the Son of God. Translation by
J. Keble).
St. Athanasius, Orations against the Arians 11.70:
Just as we should not have been freed fron1 the sin and
the eurse if it had not been natural human flesh whieh the
Logos put on (for we should have had nothing in eommon

42

with what was alien to us): so man would not have been
deified (E8Eon:ol~ell) if He who became flesh had not
been by nature from the Father, and His own true Logos
(my own translation).
Roman Liturgy, Preface of the Ascension:
Who after his resurrection appeared openly to all his
disciples, and was lifted up to heaven before their eyes,
so that he might grant us fellowship in his Godhead (ut
n05 divinitatis suae tribueret esse participes-translation
from Roman Missal) ed. J. O'Connell and H.P.R. Finberg,
London, 1962).

11. There should be no need to quote passages from the Bible

and th~ Fathers to confirn1 that orthodox Christians have always
believed that the material world is good. On the Platonic side the
basic text is, of course, the Timaeus. For the attitude of Plotinus
to the material world see n1y contribution to the Cambridge History (n.l.) Part III, chapter 14, pp. 230-2. The following passage
from thc treatise Against the Gnostics illustrates the positive side of
it:
But if someone who sees beauty excellently represented
in a face is carried to that higher world, will anyone be
so sluggish in n1ind and so imn10vable that, when he
sees all the beauties of the world of sense, all its good proportion and the mighty excellence of its order, and the
splendour of form which is Hlanifested in the stars, for
all their remoteness, he will not thereupon think, seized
with reverence, 'What wonders, and from what a source?'
(Il 9 [33] ]6, 48-55; Iny own translation from Plotinus II,
Loeb Classical Library, 1966).
On extreme dualism and hatred of the body among Christians
and pagans in the later Ron1an En1pire see E.R. Dodds, Pagan and
Christian in an Age 0/ Anxiety (Cambridge 1965), chapter I. For
SOlne possible dues to the origin of this sort of extremism, especially
in n1atters of sex, an10ng orthodox Christians as weIl as Gnostics,
see J. Danielou, History 0/ Early Christian Doctrine Vol.I, The
Theology 0/ Jewish Christianity (London, 1964) pp. 369-75 (Encratism) and the criticism of Danielou's views by R. Murray in the
Heythrop Journal Vol. IV No. 4 (October, 1965) pp. 412-33 (Recent
Studies in Early Symbolic T heology; see especially pp. 424-5 on the
carly Syriac Church). The Evil Female Az, the principle of desire,

43

especially sexual desire, \\'ho appears in Iran not only in Manichaean but in classical Zurvanite Zoroastrian theology, mayaiso possibly be relevant here. She is fuHy discussed by R.C. Zaehner in
The Dawn and Twilight 0/ Zoroastrianism (London 1961) Part 11,
chapter 10, pp. 224-33. But the whole subject of the remoter origins
of these attitudes to sex in some forms of Judaism in New Testaluent times and in early Christianity needs considerable further
research.
12. The teaching of Augustine on sin and the body is surnlned
IIp in this sentence.

The corruption of the body, which \veighs down the

soul, is not the cause but the penalty of the first sin. It
was not the corruptible flesh which made the soul sinful,
but the sinful soul which made the flesh corruptible.
(City 0/ God XIV, 3, 4-7; my own translation).
Sr. Gregory of Nyssa's doctrine of the 'double creation' is fully

expounded in his De Hominis Opificio chapters 16 and 17 (PG

44, 177-191). It had a deep and lasting influence on Greek Christian thought. St. Augustine's lengthy refutation of it occupies chapters 21 through 24 of Book XIV of the City 0/ God: cp. St. Thomas
Sumlna T heologiae I. 98.2. St. Thomas here follows St. Augustine
closely, with the significant addition that the pleasure in sexual intercourse feIt by unfallen nlan would have been greater, not kss
than that feIt by fallen rnan, though renlaining under perfect
rational control (lc. ad tertiuln.).
13. On resemblances between pagan Platonist thought about
astral bodies and the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the
body see further my chapter 5 of Christian Faith and Creek.
PhilosophYJ by A.H. Armstrong and R.A. Markus (London 1960paperback edition 1964; New York, 1965) pp. 47-9.
A characteristic passage fronl St. Augustine's polenlic against
Porphyry on this point is as follo\vs:
But whatever they [our resurrection bodies] rnay be like,
since they are declared to be completely incorruptible and
irnmortal and in no \vay to hinder the contenlplation of
the soul which is fixed on God, and you too say that there
are in the heavens ilunl0rtal bodies of beings immortally
blessed; why is it that \ve must escape from all body in

44

order to be blessed, so that you may seem to have a sort

of reasonable pretext for escaping Christian belief, unless
that is true which 1 repeat: Christ is humble, you are
proud? (City 0/ Cod X, 29; my own translation).
COlnpare Plotinus 11 9 [33] 8, 30-37:
Why, then, are not the stars, both those in the lower
spheres and those in the highest, gods moving in order,
circling in well-arranged beauty? Why should they not
possess virtue? What hindrance prevents them from acquiring it? The causes are not present there \vhich make people
bad here below and there is no badness oE body, disturbed
and disturbing. And why should they not have understanding, in their everlasting peace, and grasp in their
intellect God and the intelligible gods? (lny own translation from Plotinus 11. Loeb Classical Library, 1966).
The human astral body was of little importance to Plotinus,
though he believed in it. On this and on the whoie history of the
idea oE astral bodies in Platonism see E.R. Dodds, Appendix 11
(The Astral Body in Neoplatonism) to Proclus: The Elements 0/
T heology (2nd edition OxEord, 1963).
14. H. Crouzel, Origene et la Philosophie (Paris, 1962) p. 215.
SOlne important differences, as weIl as resemblances, between pagan
and Christian Platonist other-worldliness are weIl brought out by
P. Sheldon-Williams in Part VI oE the Cambridge History (see
n.l.) chapters 28 (Creek Christian Platonism) and 29 (The Cappadocians). On Platonic otherworldliness in St. Augustine see R.A.
Markus in Part V oE the same work, chapter 22 (Augustine, Man:
body and soul). See also my chapter 5 of Christian Faith and Greek
Philosophy, referred to in n.l3. St. Augustine's own criticism of
certain aspects of pagan Platonic other-worldliness is based on his
insistence that the origin of sin lies in the will, not in the body
(see above, p. 4 and n.l2). It is concisely stated in City 0/ God
XIV 5.
15. Plotinus speaks of the universe as 'holy' in a remarkable
passage oE the late treatise 1 8 [51], which is his fullest exposition
of his doctrine that matter is the principle oE evil. In speaking oE
the presence of soul to matter (which is the cause of its 'fall') he
says:
'All the place is holy' (n<xc; OE 6 xwpOC; lEp0C;) and
there is nothing which is without a share oE soul. (I 8

45

[51] 14, 36-7, my own translation from Plotinus I, Loeb

Classical Library, 1966).
The quotation is from Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 54 (cp.l6),
and if Plotinus fully remembered the context of what he was quoting, the loving celebration of the holiness of Colonus with its many
deities present in their local shrines, it is a very strong affirmation
of his constant belief that the material world is not only the
dwelling-place but the expression or manifestation of soul (admittedlyon the lowest possible level of being), and therefore holy,
since soul is a god. For cosmic religion in Plotinus see further the
passages quoted in notes 11 and 13. His polemic against the
Gnostic despising of the material world in II 9 [33] and his theory
of beauty (for which see I 6 (l] and V 8 [31]) are based on his
'sacramental' view of material things (which are good and holy,
though matter is evil, because all their limited reality is form and
the activity of soul).
16. On pagan cosmic religion and the Christian opposition to it
see my chapter 4 of Christian Faith and Creek Philosophy (n.13),
a chapter which now seems to me to need a great deal of correcting and supplementing on the lines of the following paragraphs of
this lecture. On the radical criticism by John Philoponus of the
astronomical theories which were an integral part of pagan cosmic
theology see the very full treatment of this important and neglected Christian thinker in chapter VI (The Unity 0/ Heaven and
Ear.th) of S. Sambursky, The Physical World 0/ Late Antiquity
(London, 1962).
17. The Sequence of St. Hildegarde is printed in J. S. Phillimure,
The Hundred Best Latin Hymns (London and Glasgow, 1926)
pp. 58-9. The text is as folIows:

o Ignis Spiritus Paracliti,

Vita vitae omnis creaturae,
Sanctus es vivificando formas,
Sanctus es ungendo periculose fractos,
Sanctus es tergendo foetida vulnera!
o spiraculum sanctitatis!
o ignis caritatis!
o dulcis gustus in pectoribus,
Et infusio cordium in bono odore virtutum!
o fons purissimus,

46

In quo consideratur
Quod Deus alienos colligit
Et perditos requirit!
o lorica vitae
Et spes compaginis men1brorun1 on1nium,
o cingulum honestatis,
Salva beatos!
Custodi eos qui carcerati sunt ab Inimico,
Et solve ligatos quos divina vis salvare vult.
o iter fortissimum
Quod penetravit on1nia
In altissimis
E t in terrenis
E t in omnibus abyssis,
Tu on1nes con1ponis et colligis.
De te nubes fluunt,
Aether volat,
Lapides hun10ren1 habent,
Aquae rivulos educunt,
Et terra viriditatem sudat.
Tu etiam semper educis doctos
Per inspirationen1 sapientiae laetificatos.
Unde laus tibi sit,
Qui es sonus laudis
Et gaudiun1 vitae,
Spes et honor fortissin1us,
Dans praemia lucis.

fire of the Spirit, the Paraclete, life of the life of every

creature, you are holy in giving life to the forms; you are
holy in healing us w hen we are dangerously broken;
you are holy in staunching OUf stinking wounds!
o breath of holiness! 0 fire of love! Delightful taste in
our inward parts; perfume poured in to our hearts with
the good sn1ell of virtue!
o clearest spring, in whose waters we contemplate God's
gathering of those estranged from him and seeking of the
lost!
o breastplate of life, and hope of the joining together of
alllin1bs,
o girdle of honour, keep safe the blessed, look after those
who are imprisoned by the Enen1Y, and free those in chains

47

\v horn the divine po\ver \vills to save.

Strong journeying \vhieh has gone through all things, in
the highest heaven and on earth and in, all the depths, you
join together and gather all things into one.
You make the clouds streanl past, the air fly, the rocks
store water, the \vaters flo",r out, the earth break into green.
You too always train us to learning, gladdening us by
your inbreathing of \visdolU.
So praise be to you, \vho are the sound of our praise, and
the joy of life, strongest hope and splendour, giving the
prize of light. (My o\vn translation).
The best expressions of this sense of the holiness of the \vorld in
Christian literature are to be found in the spiritual writings of the
17th century Anglican clergyman Thomas Traherne (1637-1674).
There are two good recent editions of these, the two-volume Centuries, Poems and ThankJgivings} ed. H.M. Margoliouth (Oxford,
1958) and the one-volume Poems} Centuries and Three Thanksgivings, ed. Anne Ridler (Oxford, 1966). The only work of
Traherne's published in his lifetime was a polemical one entitled
Roman Forgeries-a reminder that Traherne was vigorously Protestant, like the Cambridge Platonists, to whose thought his is in
nlany \vays closely related. It is difficult to give an idea of the
total effect of the work of this young Herefordshire country parson
(\vho in some ways anticipates Teilhard de Chardin) by a fe\v
isolated quotations, but the following may give some idea of the
quality of his thought and language:
Your enjoyn1ent of the \vorld is never right, till you so
esteem it, that evry thing in it, is more your Treasure,
then a King's Exchequer full of Gold and Silver. And
that Exchequer yours also in its Place and Service. Can
you take too much Joy in your father's Works? He is Himself in evry Thing. Som Things are little on the ou tside,
and Rough and Common; but I remember the Time, when
the Dust of the Streets \vere as precious as Gold to my
Infant Eys, and no\v they are more precious to the Ey of
Reason.
You never Enjoy the World aright, till you see how a
Sand Exhibiteth the Wisdom and Power of God: And
Prize in evry Thing the Service \vhich they do you, by

48

Manifesting His Glory and Goodness to your Soul, far

more then the Visible Beauty on their Surface, or the Material Services, they can do your Body. Wine by its Moysture
quencheth my Thirst, \vhether I consider it or no: but to
see it flowing from his Lov \vho gay it unto Man, Quencheth the Thirst even of the Holy Angels. To consider it, is
to Drink it Spiritually. To Rejoice in its Diffusion is to
be of a Publick Mind. And to take Pleasure in an the
Benefits it doth to all is Heavenly: for so they do in
Heaven. To do so, is to be Divine and Good: and to imitat
our Infinit and Eternal Father.
You never Enjoy the W orld aright, tin the Sea itself
floweth in your Veins, till you are Clothed with the Heavens and Crowned \vith the Stars: and perceiv your self
to be the Sole Heir of the whole W orId: and n10re then
so, becaus Men are in it \vho are evry one Sole Heirs, as
\vell as you. Tin you can Sing and Rejoyce and Delight in
God, as Misers do in Gold, and Kings in Scepters, you
never Enjoy the WorId.
(Century I 25, 27, 29)
But above all, 0 Lord, the Glory of Speech, whereby
thy Servant is enabled \vith Praise to celebrate thee.
For
All the Beauties in Heaven and Earth,
The melody of Sounds,
The sweet Odours
Of thy Dwelling-place.
The delectable pleasures that gratify my Sense,
That gratify the feeling of Mankind.
The Light of History,
Admitted by the Ear.
The Light of Heaven,
Brought in by the Eye.
The Volubility and Liberty
Of Iny Hands and Members,
Fitted by thee for all Operations,
Which the Fancy can imagine,
Or Soul desire:
From the framing of a Needle's Eye,
T 0 the building of a Tower:

49

From the squaring of Trees,

To the polishing of Kings Crowns.
For all the Mysteries, Engines, Instruments, wherewith
the World is filled, which we are able to frame and use
to thy Glory.
For all the Trades, variety of Operations, Cities, Temples,
Streets, Bridges, Mariners Compass, admirable Picture,
Sculpture, Writing, Printing, Songs and Musick; wherewith the World is beautified and adorned.
(Thanksgivings for the Body, 100-127)
On the very unexpected part which the sense of the holiness of
the world, already present in the Puritan Calvinist thought of the
17th century, may possibly have played in the evolution oE ideas in
New England, see Perry Miller's essay From Edwards to Emerson
(New England Quarterly XIII, December, 1940, pp. 589-617; reprinted in Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge, Mass., 1956:
paperback edition New York, 1964) pp. 184-203). On its importance
in Eastern Orthodox spirituality see chapter V (L'hre cree) of
Vladimir Lossky's Theologie Mystique de I'Eglise d' Orient (Paris,
1944: English translation, London, 1956).
18. On St. Basil's use in the De Spiritu of the first five chapters

oE Plotinus V I [10], and particularly the famous meditation on

the activity of the World-Soul in chapter 2, see H. Dehnhard Das
Problem der Abhngigkeit des Basilius von Plotin (Patristische
Texte und Studien 3; Berlin, 1964). The parallel passages from
Basil and Plotinus which Dehnhard prints on pp. 6-13 show c1early
the way in which Basil adapts Plotinus to Christian purposes by
substituting sanctification for creative activity in the cosmos.
The strong and vivid sense oE the goodness of creation at which
St. Augustine arrived when he rejected Manichaeism is weil illustrated by the following passage horn the Confessions:
I perceived therefore, and it was made plain to me, that
all things are good which thou hast made, nor is there any
substance at all which thou hast not made. And because
all which thou hast made are not equal, therefore are all
things; for each is good, and at the same time all together
very good, because thou our God hast made all things
very good.

50

And to thee is there nothing at all evil: yea, not only to

thee, but also not to thy creatures in general; because there
is not anything which is without, which can break in, or
discompose, that order which thou hast settled. . . .God
forbid now, that I should ever say, These things ought not
to be; for should I see nothing but these [the things of
earth], verily I should want the better, yet even only for
these ought I to praise thee; for that thou art to be praised
these things of the earth do shew: dragons and all deeps,
fire, hail, snow, ice and stormy wind, which fulfil thy
word; n10untains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars;
beasts and all cattle; creeping things and flying fowls;
kings of the earth and all people; princes and all judges oE
the land; young men and Inaidens; old men and children
let them praise thy name. Seeing also these in heaven
praise thee, praise thee, 0 our God, in the heights, thine
angels and all thy hosts, sun and moon, all the stars and
light, the heaven of heavens, and the waters that be above
the heavens, seeing that these praise thy name, I did not
now desire better, because I had now thought upon then1
all: and that those superior things were better than these
inferior things, but yet all things together were better than
those superior by themselves, I resolved upon in Iny
bettered judgement.
They are not weil in their wits, to whom anything
which thou hast created is displeasing, nor more than I Inyself was, whereas n1any things which thou hadst 111ade, did
not like me. (Confessions VII, ch.12 (end) -14 (beginning)-quoting Psalm 148-tr. W. Watts, revised W.H.D.
Rouse, in Loeb Classical Library, St. Augustine's Confessions I, 1946).
19. For the splendid materiality of the new earth according to
St. Irenaeus, see especially his account of what the 'Elders' had
heard the Apostle John say:
Wherefore the aforesaid blessing relates unquestionably
to the times of the Kingdoln, when the Just shall reign,
rising again from the dead; when also the creature, being
rene\ved and delivered, shall bring forth plenty of all kind
of nourishment, of the de\v of Heaven, and of the fatness
of the earth: as the Presbyters who had seen John the

51

Lord's disciple remembered that they had heard of him,

how the Lord used to teach concerning those times, and to
say 'Days shall come, wherein vineyards shall grow, having each 10,000 main shoots: and in one main shoot 10,000
branches, and in one main shoot [or branch) again 10,000
sprigs, and upon every sprig 10,000 clusters, and in every
cluster 10,000 grapes, and every grape when pressed shall
yield twenty-five measures of wine. And when any one
of those saints shall lay hold of a cluster, another cluster
shall exclaim, I am a better cluster, take me, by me bless
the Lord.' (Against Heresies V 33.3).
The idea that even after the Resurrection and the renewal of
creation we shall need further growth and training for the final
vision of God appears in two passages:
In which Resurrection the just shall reign upon earth,
growing by their sight of the Lord, and by Hirn shall
be accustomed to comprehend the glory of God the
Father. ... (V. 35. 1).
For as He is truly God, who raiseth up man; so also
man truly riseth from the dead, and not in a figure: as we
have shown at such length. And as he truly riseth, so will
he likewise truly rehearse incorruption, and will be increased and flourish in the times of the Kingdom, that he
may be made capable of the glory of the Father. After
that, all being made new, he shall truly dweil in the city
of God. (V. 35. 2; all passages in Keble's translation).
20.

The passage in chapter 22 is as folIows:

When the generation of men has reached its completion,

with its end time also comes to a stop, and so the restoration (avaO'TOlXEICLlOlV) of the universe happens, and, with
the change of the whole, humanity is changed, from the
corruptible and earthy to the impassible and everlasting.
(De Hominis Opificio 225, PG 44, 205C; my own translation; eh. 23, PG 44, 212C).
This shows c1early that the idea of cosmic redemption was present to the minds of the Cappadocians, even if it is not very prominent in their thought; so that the thought of St. Maximus is, as
he himself believed, a genuine development of the earlier Greek
patristic tradition.

52

21. The latest, and so far the best, work on the thought of Sr.
Maximus is Microcosm and Mediator: the Theological Anthropology
0/ Maximus the Con/essor by Lars Thunberg (Acta Seminarii
Neotestamentici Upsaliensis XXV: Lund 1965). This is an admirably complete and clear presentation, amply documented,
with a full bibliography and an interesting survey of earlier
literature in the Introduction. Two good short accounts of Maximus are to be found in Polycarp Sherwood's introduction to his
translation of the Ascetic Li/e and the Foul' Centuries on Charity
(Ancient Christian Writers 21: Westminster, Maryland, and London 1955) and the chapter in the Canlbridge History (see n.1) by
P. Sheldon-Williams (Part VI, chapter 32). St. Maximus is a verbose and voluminous writer, in his theological works, who does not
lend himself easily to quotation: and modern critical editions of at
least his major theological writings, the Quaestiones ad T halassium
and the Ambigua, are very badly needed: they are at present only
available in the two volumes of Migne's Patrologia Graeca devoted
to his works (90 and 91). It is, however, worth quoting a few
short passages which may do something to illustrate the breadth of
his thought, to which I have drawn attention. The first, from the
Ad Thalassium, on the presence of the Holy Spirit in the whole
created universe and in all mankind, should be compared with the
Sequence of St. Hildegarde (see n.17):
The Holy Spirit is not absent fronl anything that exists:
he is especially present in all who have in any way a share in
reason. For he it is who preserves in being each and every
thing which comes to be (OUVEKTlKOV yap uno:pXEl
T~C; EKO:OTOU yEVEOEU>C;), because it is God and the Spirit
of God who is moving through all things in his providential power and stirring to life in each its natural formative
principle (or reason, AOYOV), and through it moving
that which has perceptive power to a perception of transgressions of the laws of nature: that is, the man who has
a will well adapted to receive the right reasonings which
come from nature. For we certainly find many among
extremely uncivilised people and nomads who can lay
claim to human excellence (KoAoKayoe(ac;) and reject the
beastly customs which have been dominant among them
from of old. In this way the Holy Spirit is present in all
in a simple and ordinary way (cXnAwc;) .
. . . He is therefore in all things simply, in that he con-

53

serves and takes thought for all things, and stirs to life in
them the seeds of natural growth. He is in a special way
in those subject to the La\\', as indicating to them their
transgressions of the commandments, and illuminating the
prophetic announcement of Christ. He is in all Christians,
besides the ways which have been mentioned, as the
cause of their adoption as sons.
(Quaestiones Ad Thalassium XIV, PG 90, 297 B, D: my
own translation).
My second and third quotations illustrate the importance in St.
Maxituus' thought of the contelnplation of the created universe as
the way by which n1an returns to God bringing all creation with
hilU. The counsel which Maximus gives here was adn1irably followed by Traherne (see n.l7) and in a manner appropriate to aUf
O'vvn tin1es by Teilhard de Chardin:
Both statements [that the white garments of the Transfiguration signify Scripture spiritually understood or the
created \vorld seen in the contemplation of the purified
mind] will suit the Logos . . . \vho is present as Logos
in the words of Holy Scripture and as Creator, Maker and
Craftsman in the creation. Whence I assert that he who
wishes to go the straight way to God without blame inevitably needs both the knowledge of Scripture in the Spirit
and the natural contemplation of things according to the
Spirit: so that the two laws, of nature and of Scripture,
are equal in honour and teach the same as each other, and
neither is greater or less than the other, and they are able
to show, it is probable, the man who desires wisdom perfectly how to become a lover of perfect wisdom. (Ambigua
VI, PG 91, 1128 C-D; my O\\Tn translation).
When the mind is stripped of passions and illumined by contemplation of creatures, then it can be in God and pray as it ought.
(Centuries on Charity I, 100; tr. Polycarp Sherwood-see above).
22. The following passage weIl illustrates the contemplative side
of Teilhard's thought which links hirn with St. Maxirnus and
Traherne:
Where are the roots of our being? In the first place
they plunge back and down into the unfathom.able paste

54

How great is the mystery of the first cells which were one
day animated by the breath of our souls! How impossible
to decipher the welding of successive influences in which
we are for ever incorporated! In each one of us, through
matter, the whole history of the world is in part reflected.
And however autonomous our soul, it is indebted to an
inheritance worked upon from all sides-before ever it
came into being-by the totality of the energies of the
earth: it meets and rejoins life at a determined level.
Then, hardly has it entered actively into the universe at
that particular point than it feels, in its turn, besieged
and penetrated by the flow of cosmic influences which
have to be ordered and assimilated. Let us look around
us: the waves come from all sides and from the farthest
horizon. Through every cleft the world we perceive
floods us with its riches-food for the body, nourishment
for the eyes, harmony of sounds and fullness of the heart,
unknown phenomena and new truths, all these treasures,
all these stimuli, all these calls, coming to us from the four
corners of the world, cross our consciousness at every moment. What is their role within us? Whatwill their effect
be, even if we welcome them passively or indistinctly, like
bad workmen? They will merge into the most intimate life
of our soul and either develop it or poison it. We only
have to look at ourselves for one moment to realise this,
and either feel delight or anxiety. If even the most hUlnble
and most material of our foods is capable of deeply influencing our most spiritual faculties, what can be said of the
infinitely more penetrating energies conveyed to us by the
n1usic of tones, of notes, of words, of ideas? We have not,
in us, a body which takes its nourishment independently
of our soul. Everything that the body has admitted and
has begun to transform must be transfigured by the soul in
its turn. The soul does this, no doubt, in its own way
and with its own dignity. But it cannot escape from this
universal contact nor from that unremitting labour. And
that is how the characteristic power of understanding and
loving, which will form its immaterial individuality, is
gradually perfected in it for its own good and at its own
risk. We hardly know in what proportions and under
what guise our natural faculties will pass over into the

55

final act of the yision of God. But it can hardly be doubted

that, with God's help, it is here below that we give ourselves the eyes and the heart which a final transfiguration
will make the organs of apower of adoration, and of a
capacity for beatification, particular to each individual
l11an and won1an an10ng uso
The masters of the spiritual life incessantly repeat that
God wants only souls. To give those words their true
value, we must not forget that the human soul, however
independently created our philosophy represents it as being,
is inseparable, in its birth and in its growth, from the
universe into which it is born. In each soul, God loves and
partly saves the whole world which that soul sums up in
an incommunicable and particular way. But this summingup, this welding, are not given to us ready-made and complete with the first awakening of consciousness. It is we,
who, through our own activity, n1ust industriously assemble the vvidely scattered elements. The labour of seaweed
as it concentrates in its tissues the substances scattered, in
infinitesimal quantities, throughout the vast layers of the
ocean; the industry of bees as they make honey from the
juices broadcast in so many flowers-these are but pale
images of the ceaseless working-over that all the forces of
the universe undergo in us in order to reach the level of
spirit.
Thus every n1an, in the course of his life, must not
only show himself obedient and docile. By his fidelity he
must build-starting with the most natural territory of
his own self-a work, an opus, into which something enters from all the elements of the earth. He makes his own
soul throughout all his earthly days; and at the same time
he collaborates in another work, in another opus, which
infinitely transcends, while at the same time it narrowly
determines, the perspectives of his individual achievement: the completing of the world. For in presenting the
Christian doctrine of salvation, it n1ust not be forgotten
that the world, taken as a whole, that is to say in so far as
it consists in a hierarchy of souls-~Thich appear only
successively, develop only collectively and will be completed
only in union-the world, too, undergoes a sort of vast
ontogenesis (a vast becoming what it lC) in which the

56

development of each soul, assisted by the perceptible realities on which it depends, is but a diminished harmonie.
Beneath our efforts to put spiritual form into our own
lives, the world slowly accumulates, starting with the
whole of matter, that which will make of it the Heavenly
Jerusalem or the New Earth. (Le ldilieu Divin I 3A,
pp. 30-33 of the English translation, London, 1960).
There are, of course, elements of at least equal importance in the
thought of Teilhard de Chardin which it is not easy to link with
the older Christian tradition. In particular, the central importance
of the idea of evolution is not son1ething \vhich one can expect to
find in the ancients, or the n1en oE the 17th century: though I. think
that the thought of St. Maximus and indeed of St. Augustine, leaves
room for the idea in principle, and that one can thoroughly accept
evolution \vhile retaining the fundan1ental Platonist awareness of
the transcendent and eternal behind and beyond the world of
change, in its Christian forn1 which has always allowed areal
value to time, movement and hUl11an history. One point oE particular importance, which appears in this passage, in which Teilhard
differs from the ancient Christian Platonist tradition is his acce.ptance of the deep and all-pervading influence oE the body, and
through it the \vhole material universe, on the soul. (I believe lUYself that the acceptance of this, which our modern scientific knowledge OE man makes necessary, is cOlupatible with the view of body
and soul or luind as distinct, though intimately interacting, entities whichhas been so vigorously attacked by many contemporary
philosophers and ably defended by others like H.D. Lewis, A.C.
E\ving and C.A. CanlpbelI). This separates Teilhard particularIy
sharply fronl St. Augustine, for whom (as for Plotinus) it \vas
axion1atic that body cannot act on spirit, since body is inferior in
the hierarchy of reality and soul is superior, and the inferior cannot act on or affect that \vhich is superior to it: cf. E. Gilson, T he
Christian PhiloJophy of St. Augustil1e (London, 1961), chapters BI
and IV: R.A. Markus in the Canlbridge History (see n.1.), Part V,
chapters 22 and 24.
23. The doctrine of the rnassa peccatrix or lnassa perditionis,
\vith its consequences, is expounded in nlany places in St. Augustine's anti-Pelagian works. Passages \vhich have struck me particularly are De Correptiolle et Gratia 16: Contra duas epistulas
Pelagial10runz II, vii, 13-16. The essentials of it are clearly stated

57

in the De Natura et Gratia written at an early stage in the Pelagian

controversy (c. A.D.413-15), e.g. the following:
Therefore this grace of Christ, without which neither infants nor grown-up people can be saved, is not given in
return for merits, but given freely, which is why it is
calied grace. 'Justified', the Apostle says, 'freely by his
blood'. Hence those who are not freed by it, whether because they were not yet able to hear or were unwilling to
obey, or even because, since by reason of their age they
were unable to hear, they did not receive the washing of
new birth, which they could have received and by which
they would have been saved, are altogether justly damned,
because they are not without sin, either because they drew
it from their origin or because they added to it by their
bad behaviour; for 'all have sinned'-whether in Adam or
themselves-'and need the glory of God.' The whole mass,
therefore, is liable to punishment, and if all were given the
tonnent of damnation which is owing to them, they
would, without doubt, not be given it unjustly. (De Natura
et Gratia IV4-V 5; my own translation).
This passage brings out clearly (and cp.Ym 9.-IX 10.) the important part which St. Augustine's conviction that no salvation is
possible without hearing the Gospel and sacramental baptism
played, at least at this early stage in the controversy, in forming
his doctrine of selective predestination.
To make clear my own position, and that of many for whom I
speak, and to show the relevance of the passages quoted in note 25
from Cudworth attacking the Calvinist conception of arbitrary
omnipotence (which I do not attribute to St. Augustine, but take
as drawing the logical conclusion from his doctrine of predestination), it is necessary to state plainly:

(I.) That the conception of 'justice' with which St. Augustine is

operating here seems to me an almost supernaturally evil one: his
'justice' is to me a fine name for an arbitrary and vindictive cruelty
which is the worst of vices, not a virtue, and which only a perverse theological logic could ever have attributed to the God who
is ultimate Good and Love.
(2.) That the mercy shown to some seems to me to make the
cruelty to the others worse by introducing an extreme arbitrari-

58

ness which no allegation of the undoubted mystery of God's dealings with men can excuse.
(3.) That the great ll1ajority of 111ankind would have the best of
all possible reasons for wishing that the God of the anti-Pelagian
treatises did not exist and for doing everything possible to produce
a convincing demonstration of his non-existence.
24. The Platonic doctrine of divine goodness is sun1n1ed up in
the famous text of the Timaeus about the motive of the Demiurge
in making the world:
He was good, and one ~Jho is good is always absolutely
without any sort of selfish jealousy: so since he was quite
free froll1 this he wanted everything to be as nearly as
possible like himself.
The principle that god (6 8E6c;-a generalising, not a l11onotheistic singular-) is always the cause of good, never of evil is clearly
expounded, as the reason for rejecting poetic n1ythology, in Republic II 379. The \vay in \vhich the Christian doctrine that God is
Love should go on beyond, ~Jithout contradicting, the philosophical
conviction that God is the Good, is very weIl illustrated by the
following passage fron1 an impressive paper by Professor H.H.
Price (Professor Price is not, of course, a Platonist):
I an1 only concerned with the type of theisn1 whose celltral concept is the concept of love, the love of God for
finite persons and the love of finite persons for God, since
this is the only type of theistic religion with which I have
any personal acquaintance. The 1110re we cOllsider its ill1plications, the 1110re astonishing it appears. For theism of
this type is con1mitted to maintaining that God loves sinners as well as saints, fools as much as wise men. More
ill1portant still, we have to say that he loves those who do
not love him as n1uch as those w ho do. He loves atheists,
agnostics and materialists as much as he loves theists -as
much, in the sense that his love for each of us is wi thou t
limit. His love is not only universal, but also unconditional.
He loves all the persons he has created whatever they may
do, whatever emotional attitudes they may have, whatever
their beliefs n1ay be; or rather he loves each of them individually, each for his own sake, as an end in himself. He

59

is indeed Deus Optimus Maximus, best as weil as greatest.

For what could conceivably be better than universal and
unconditional love?
(H.H. Price, "Faith and Belief," in Faith and the Philosophers, ed. John Hick (London and New York, 1964), p. 5.)
25. The following are some characteristic passages from Cudworth, which I have taken from Platonism and Cartesianism in the
Phi/osophy 0/ Ralph Cudworth (Bem, 1962) by Lydia Gysi:
Another mistake, to our likeness is, ... when we make
hirn nothing but a blind, dark, impetuous self-will, running
through the world; such as we ourselves are furiously acted
with, that have not the ballast of absolute goodness to
poize and settle uso (Sermon be/ore the House 0/ Commons 27).
And indeed an omnipotent arbitrary Deity may seem to
be in some sense, a worse and more undesirable thing,
than the Manichaean evil God; for as much as the latter
could be but finitely evil, whereas the former might be so
infinitely. (T1"Ue lntellectual System 0/ the Universe 203).
For knowledge and power alone, will not make a God.
For God is generally conceived by all to be a most venerable and most desirable being. Whereas an omniscient and
omnipotent arbitrary Deity, that hath nothing either of
benignity or morality in its nature to measure and regulate
its will, as it could not be truly august and venerable according to that maxim 'Sine bonitate nulla majestas'; so
neither could it be desirable, it being that which could only
be feared and dreaded, but not have any firm faith or confidence placed in it. (Ibid. 202).
Faith, hope and love, do all suppose an essential goodness in the Deity. God is such a being, who if he were
not, were of all things whatsoever most to be wished for.
It being indeed no way desirable ... for a man to live in
a world, void of a God and Providence. He that believes a
Gocl, believes all that good and perfection in the universe,
which his heart can possibly wish or desire. It is the interest of none, that there should be no God. (Ibid. 661).
For Cudworth's passionate opposition to Calvinist predestination

cf. chapter V of the book from which these quotations are taken.

60

An interesting testimony to the strength of this sort of theism in

the English-speaking \vorld of the 17th century is the way in which
some English and American theologians of the Calvinist tradition
toned down their Calvinism without formally abandoning it and
\vent as far as they could towards meeting the sort of objections
brought against Calvinism by Cudworth and other contemporary
opponents by developing the Scriptural idea oE God's covenant
\vith men. On this 'federal' or 'covenant' theology see Perry Miller,
T he Marrow 0/ Puritan Divinity {Publications 0/ the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, FebruarYI 1935; reprinted with an important
introduction in Errand into the W ilderness (Cambridge, Mass.,
1956: paperback edition New York, 1964) pp. 48-98.
26. On the thought of Pelagius see G. de Plinval, Pelage, ses
ecrits, sa vie et sa reforme (Lausanne, 1943) and the excellent short
account by lohn Ferguson, Pelagius, A Historical and Theological
Study (Cambridge, 1956).
The following passage from the Epistola ad Demetriadem is, in
the context of its period, a remarkably strong assertion of the
presence of real virtue among non-Christians. It is noteworthy that
Pelagius inc1udes contemporary pagan philosophers in his praise:
The good oE this nature is so generally established for all
that it also sometimes shows and dec1ares itself in heathen
men, who have no worship of God. For there are so many
philosophers whom \ve have heard and read, and seen
ourselves, to be pure, patient, modest, noble, abstemious,
kind; men who reject the honours and pleasures of the
world, and are lovers of righteousness as much as of
knowledge. (Migne, PL 30, 19B: for naturalis sanctitas
see 20B. The letter to Demetrias was preserved, and is
printed by Migne, among the letters oE St. Jerome!)
This passage should be compared with that from St. Maximus
Ad T halassium quoted in n.2l. It is perhaps significant that Pelagius attributes to 'nature' what St. Maximus attributes to the action
of the Holy Spirit.
27. The following passages from the first of the recently discovered baptismal instructions of St. lohn Chrysostom, which follow
each other fair ly c1osely, show the characteristic Eastern Christian
juxtaposition, without any sense of incongruity, of a fully Pauline
theology of grace and baptismal regeneration through the Passion of
Christ with a firm assertion of man's free will and responsibility for

61

his own destiny. It should be remembered that Eastern Christian

theology, except when under strong Western influence, has no room
for the idea of original guilt and generally takes a less pessimistic
view of the consequences of the Fall than St. Augustine. There is a
good and clear summary of Orthodox teaching on this point in The
Orthodox Church, by Timothy Ware (London 1963) pp.226-30.

(1.) You see, beloved, that my discourse concerns the

soul. For a physical ugliness of the bady could never
change into beauty; the Master has prescribed that nature
be subject neither to motion nor change. But in the case of
the soul, such change is easy and very simple. Why is this
and how is it possible? With the soul, it is entirely a
matter of free choice rather than of a nature subject to
necessity. Therefore if a deformed and extremely ugly
soul has suddenly willed to do so, it can change itself, it
can ascend to the summit of beauty and again become
comely and graceful; if it again grows careless, it can
again be swept down into the utmost ugliness. (First
BaptismalInstruction 10).
(2.) Moved by His kindness, our Bridegroom hurries to save our souls. Even if someone is ugly, or illfavored to the eye, or poor as can be, or lowborn, or
a slave, or an outcast, or maimed or burdened with the
weight of his sins, the Bridegroom does not split hairs,
nor is He inquisitive, nor does He demand an accounting. The gifts He gives are a master's munificence
and grace (cupEa yap eon Kai qHAonflla Kai X6:Pl<;
EO'TtonK~). He asks one thing only from us; to forget
the past and to show good will for the future. (Ibid. 15).
(3.) But the kindly Master, imitating his own goodness ('T]V oi KElav fllfloUflEVO<; o:ya86,y),a), has accepted
this great and marvelous sacrifice because of His solicitude
for her, that by His own blood He might sanctify her;
that having cleansed her by the bath of baptism, He might
present her to Hirnself a Church in all her glory. To this
end He poured forth His blood and endured the cross, that
through this He might freely give sanctification to us too,
and might cleanse us through the bath of regeneration, and
might present to Hirnself those who before were in dishonor and unable to speak with confidence, but now are

62

glorious, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.

[Ibid. 17; all translations by Paul W. Harkins, from St.
John Chrysostom: Baptismal Instructions (Ancient Christian Writers 31: London and Westminster, Maryland,
1963) pp. 26-30].
For the theology of the 'semi-Pelagians', i.e. the monks of the
Marseilles region, belonging very much to the Eastern monastic
tradition, who opposed the teaching of St. Augustine on grace and
predestination and tried, not very successfully, to work out a
theologically satisfactory counter-position, see John Cassian, Collationes III and (especially) XIII. Very good short accounts of the
theological issues involved, especially the question of God's will to
save all men, which was a central point in this controversy, \vill be
found in the introductions and notes by P. de Letter, S.J. to his
translations of Prosper of Aquitaine, T he CaU of All Nations and
Defense of St. Augustine (Ancient Christian Writers 14 and 32,
London and Westminster, Maryland, 1952 and 1963). I have not
discussed or illustrated the positions of Cassian and his opponent
Prosper here, as I think that their attempted solutions are not very
helpful, and confuse rather than clarify the main issues.
28. The articles on which the view of Pelagianisn1 adopted here
is based are: J.N.L. Myres, 'Pelagius and the End of Ron1an Rule
in Britain'. Journal of Roman Studies L, 1-2 (1960) pp. 21-36; and
J. Morris, 'Pelagian Literature'. Journal of Theological Studies N.S.
XVI, 1 (April, 1965) pp. 26-60.
Myres's summing up of his very thorough investigation of the
use of gratia in the Theodosian Code (compiled in 438 from imperial rescripts issued from the tin1e of Constantine I to the date of
compila tion) is as follows:
There is only one possible conclusion to be drawn from all this.
Gratia in common parlance stood for judicial corruption in the
courts, for oflicial hanky-panky of all kinds in public life; for the
irrational, unpredictable, or capricious as contrasted with the rational, the dependable and the intelligible in all human relationships. The inimici gratiae) whatever might be the theological implications of the phrase, were, from the point of view of human
conduct, the enemies of corruption and so, by implication, the
champions of justice and a fair deal for all men equally. (Art. cit.,
p.26).

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Real concern with the plight of the poor and extensive attempts
to alleviate it by private and Church charity are of course to be
found in the Christian Roman Empire: the sermons of St. John
Chrysostom provide notable examples. And there is a certain
amount of denunciation of the injustices and cruelties of the rich
and powerful, especially in Books IV and V of the De GuberlIatione Dei, Salvian's tirade against the wickedness of his age wh ich,
like so many Christian (and earlier pagan) pronouncements on
this sort of subject, is too violent, undiscriminating, and rhetorically exaggerated to be really impressive and convincing. But
only in the Pelagian Treatise De Divitiis (C.P. Caspari Briefe,
Abhandlungen und Predigten (Christiana, 1890) pp. 14 ff; PL,
Supplement T, 1380 ff.) is there any suggestion that Christians
should set about reforming the unjust and cruel society which they
now controlled. The Church did not think that it was any part of
its business to question, still less to change, the social and political
order. But the unknown Briton who wrote the De Divitiis offers
at least a rudimentary programme for a Christian revolution:
Abolish the rich and you will have no more poor. If no
one has more than he needs, then everyone will have as
much as he needs. For it is the few rich who are the cause
of the many poor. (12.2; tr. 1. Morris).
(On the probable authorship and degree of influence of this
treatise see the very full discussion by Dr. Tohn Morris in the
article cited above. He shows that it is probably not (as de Plinval
thought) by Pelagius, and is not representative of the main stream
of Pelagianism, though its ideas are derived from Pelagian premises
and fit admirably into the general pattern of Pelagian thought).
On the social record of the Church in the Christian Empire see
the authoritative, massively documented, and to a Christian reader
extremely depressing account by Professor A.H.M. Tones in chapter
XXIII of his Later Roman Empire (Oxford, 1964) and chapter
XXIV of his shortened and simplified version of his great work,
The Decline of the Ancient World (London, 1%6).
29. The following passages weil illustrate the breadth of Christian vision and concern characteristic of the Council:
Finally, those who have not yet received the Gospel are
related in various ways to the People of God. . . . [The
Constitution goes on to speak with respect and affection of

64

Jews and Moslems, as it has already spoken, immediately

before the beginning of this quotation, of non-Catholic
Christians. Then it continues] Nor is God far distant from
those w ho in shadows and images seek the unknown God,
for it is he who gives to all men life and breath and all
things (cf. Acts 17, 25-8), and as Saviour wills that all men
be saved (cf. I Timothy 2, 4). Those also can attain to
salvation who through no fault of their own do not kno\\the Gospel of Christ or his Church, yet sincerely seek God
and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do his will as
it is kno\vn to them through the dictates of conscience.
Nor does divine providence deny the helps necessary for
salvation to those who, \vithout blame on their part, have
not yet arrived at an explieit knowledge of God and with
his grace strive to live a good life. Whatever good or truth
is found among them is looked upon by the Church as a
preparation for the Gospel. She knows that it is given by
hirn who enlightens all men so that they may finally have
life. (The Constitution on the Church 0/ Vatican 11, 11.16,
authorized English translation, ed. Edward H. Peters,
C.S.P. GIen Rock, N.T.: Paulist Press, 1965, p. 91).
Christ's redemptive \vork, while essentially concerned
with the salvation of men, includes also the renewal oE
the w hole temporal order. Hence the mission of the
Church is not only to bring the message and grace oE
Christ to men but also to penetrate and perfect the temporal order with the spirit oE the Gospel. In fulfilling this
mission of the Church, the Christian laity exereise their
apostolate both in the Church and the world, in both the
spiritual and the temporal orders. These orders, though
distinct, are so connected in the singular plan of God that
He Hirnself intends to raise up the \"hole world again in
Christ and to make it a new creation, initially on earth and
completely on the last day. In both orders the layman, being simultaneously a believer and a citizen, should be continuously led by the same Christian conscience.
God's plan for the world is that men should work together to renewand constantly perfect the temporal order.
All those things which make up the temporal order,

65

nalnely, the good things of life and the prosperity oE the

family, culture, economic ill.atters, the arts and professions,
the laws of the political comrnunity, international relations,
and other matters of this kind, as weIl as their development and progress, not only aid in the attainment of man's
ultimate goal but also possess their own intrinsic value.
This value has been established in them by God, whether
they are considered in themselves or as part of the whole
temporal order. 'God saw that all that He had made \vas
very good.' (Genesis 1, 31). This natural goodness of
theirs takes on a special dignity as a result of their relation
to the human person, for whose service they were created.
It has pleased God to unite all things~ both natural and
supernatural, in Christ Jesus 'so that in all things he may
have the first place' (Colossians 1, 18). This destination,
however, not only does not deprive the temporal order of
its independence, its proper goals, laws, supports and significance for human welfare but rather perfects the temporal order in its own intrinsic strength and worth
and puts it on a level with man's whole vocation upon
earth. (Decree on the Apostolate 0/ the Laity 11 5 and 7authorised English translation issued by N.C.W.C. News
Service).

66

THE SAINT AUGUSTINE LECTURES

VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY
VILLANOVA, PA.
1959

Saint Augustine on Personality, by Paul Henry,

S.J. Institut Catholique, Paris; New York, The
Macmillan Company, 1960.

1960

Platonism and Augustinianism, by Raymond Klibansky; McGill University, unpublished.

1961

Charter oi Christendom; the Significance oi The

City of God, by John O'Meara, University College, Dublin; New York, The Macmillan Company, 1961.

1962

At the Origins oi the Thomistic Notion oi Man,

by Anton Pegis, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, Toronto; New York, The Macmillian
Company, 1963.

1963

Augustine's View oi Reality, by Vernon J. Bourke,

St. Louis University; Villanova, Villanova Press,
1964.

1964

Augustine and the Creek Philosophers, by lohn F.

Callahan, Georgetown University; Villanova,
Villanova University Press, 1967.

1965

J'he Resurrection and Saint Augustine's Theology

oi Human Values, by Henri Irenee Marrou,
University of Paris; Villanova, Villanova University Press, 1967.

1967

Saint Augustine on Creation, by Paul Henry, S.J.,

Institut Catholique, Paris, University of California, San Diego; Villanova, Villanova University Press, in preparation.

67