Origen and Hellenism: The Interplay Between Greek and Christian Ideas in Late Antiquity by Panayiotis Tzamalikos

Author:Panayiotis Tzamalikos [Tzamalikos, Panayiotis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781433189173
Google: ZvdtzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Peter Lang
Published: 2022-05-09T20:43:38+00:00

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4

Aetherial Bodies in Neoplatonism and Christianity

From Classical to Late Antiquity

In Late Antiquity, a perfervid discussion went on, especially among Neoplatonists, concerning an assumed astral or pneumatic or aetherial1 body, which the soul makes use of, assumed to serve either as a ‘vehicle’ of it or as a ‘vessel’ containing the soul itself. Michael Psellus and George Gemistus argued that the provenance of such ideas was Oriental, and originated from Zoroaster and the Persian Magi, as well as the Chaldean sages of Babylon.2

The Platonic tradition maintained that a ‘man’ is identified with his ‘soul’. The most explicit statement positing this appears in Alcibiades i,3 which is now regarded by some as spurious, but the Late Antiquity treated it as a genuine work ←311 | 312→of Plato, and both Proclus and Olympiodorus of Alexandria wrote commentaries on this. Otherwise, beyond the reference in the Alcibiades i (which was universally treated as Plato genuine work),4 Plato spoke ‘of the compound soul and body, which we call the living creature,’ although he was referring to animals in general, not specifically to human beings.5 Nevertheless, Plato (or whoever wrote this Platonic treatise) dismissed the idea that ‘man’ is a compound comprising body and soul; instead, he posited that ‘man’ is the soul alone.6 On that account, the body (σῶμα) is only something the soul makes use of as an ‘organ’; actually, this is a ‘tomb’ (σῆμα) of it.7

This thesis was naturally endorsed by some Neoplatonists, namely, Proclus and Simplicius.8 Olympiodorus of Alexandria recorded the allegedly Platonic proposition ‘the soul makes use of the body’9 (which Aristotle criticised10), and when he came upon Plato identifying ‘man’ with the soul, he showed no sign of dissent from this.11 Nevertheless, he took notice of Plotinus’ point,12 who allowed that ‘man’ considered ←312 | 313→as an ‘animal’ is a compound, and drew a distinction between ‘our higher soul’ and ‘our lower soul, which is a sort of emanation from the higher soul’.13 It should be recalled that Plotinus had added that, in a certain sense, we possess God and Intellect as being ‘ours’, yet in fact these are transcendent to us.14 However, this was but a disguised endorsement of Aristotle’s ‘nous that comes from without’ (ϑύραϑεν νοῦς), only to confirm Porphyry’s remark that the Enneads are stealthily full of Peripatetic and Stoic doctrines, and especially Aristotle’s Metaphysics is concentrated in them.’15 Thus, Plotinus argued that the soul is not in a body, no matter whether a ‘body’ is fancied as a receptacle (οὐ μὴν οὐδ’ ὡς ἐν ἀγγείῳ) or as a place (ὡς τόπος). For in either case the body per se is assumed to be lifeless.

Anyhow, Plotinus urged that a ‘noble man’ (σπουδαῖος) could not be considered as comprising body and soul16 (by which implicitly he endorsed the general view of Plato), but his ratiocination17 also made room for the idea that a ‘mean man’, who is overtaken by ‘the lower self’ and has relinquished ‘the higher self’, would be seen as a compound of body and soul.

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