By Andrew Louth
Students of the patristic period have paid extra consciousness to the dogmatic culture of their interval than to the improvement of Christian mystical theology. Andrew Louth goals to redress the stability. spotting that the highbrow kind of this practice was once decisively prompted by means of Platonic principles of the soul's courting to God, Louth starts off with an exam of Plato and Platonism. The dialogue of the Fathers which follows indicates how the paranormal culture is on the middle in their inspiration and the way the dogmatic culture either molds and is the mirrored image of mystical insights and matters. This re-creation of a vintage learn of the varied affects upon Christian spirituality features a new Epilogue which brings the textual content thoroughly brand new.
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Example text
Philo’s most frequent contention is that knowledge of God is beyond human capacity, because man’s creaturely state prevents such knowledge. It is not — and here we have a characteristically Platonist strain — because God out of envy denies man knowledge of Himself. So God addresses Moses thus: I freely bestow what is in accordance with the recipient; for not all that I can give with ease is within man’s power to take, and therefore to him that is worthy of my grace I extend all the boons which he is capable of receiving.
12 But does Philo go further? Does he speak of any kind of ecstatic union with God? We have seen that for Plato the Wnal vision of the Idea of the Beautiful is some sort of rapture and we shall Wnd again in Plotinus an understanding of ecstasy in which the soul is united with the One. What about Philo? Philo does discuss ecstasy. In one place (Quis Her. 249) he distinguishes four types of ecstasy: madness or melancholy, amazement, stillness of mind, and divine possession or frenzy. The fourth type is certainly literal ek-stasis: the mind is expelled and the divine spirit takes its place: When the light of God shines, the human light sets; when the divine light sets, the human dawns and rises.
There is also a long discussion in H. A. , 1947), I. 200–94, 325–59. 8 According to J. Dillon, The Middle Platonists 166. Philo 27 himself the Image of God, chiefest of all beings intellectually perceived, placed nearest, with no intervening distance to the Alone truly existent One. For we read, ‘I will talk with thee from above the Mercy-Seat, between the two Cherubim’ (Exod. 25:21): words which show that while the Word is the charioteer of the Powers, He who talks is seated in the chariot, giving direction to the charioteer for the right wielding of the reins of the Universe.