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Metamorfozy Platońskiej „metafory słońca” (Respublica 509b) w hetero- i ortodoksyjnej teologii (I-III w.): gnostycyzm, Klemens z Aleksandrii i Orygenes

100%

Mrugalski D.

Vox Patrum

2017

vol. 68

21-58

The metaphor of the sun, in which Plato (Republic 509b) compares the idea of the Good to the sun that dwells above the earth yet affects the phenomena occurring on it, was an inspiration for both heretical and orthodox theology in the first Christian centuries. The Gnostics, Clement of Alexandria and Origen all believed that God, like the Platonic idea of the Good, is radically transcendent in relation to the world, but at the same time is the cause of everything that exists in it. Unlike Plato, who believed that the idea of the Good is knowable and can be the subject of science, the Christian theologians of the first centuries believed that God was like a blinding light. This means that God, according to them, though intelligible, is unknowable in His essence. Therefore, God cannot be the subject of science. Another modification of the Platonic metaphor was the introduction of the element of sunlight, to which the philosopher from Athens did not refer. For the Gnostics, the rays of the sun were “eons” – spiritual beings that existed in the space between the first principle of all things and the material world. For Clement and Origen, the light that comes from the sun was the Son – the power and wisdom of God. In contrast to the Gnostics, who believed in the progressive degradation of the spiritual world through successive emanations, the Alexandrian Fathers believed that the Son possessed all the knowledge of God and therefore revealed to man the true God. Yet the revelation of God by the Son, and even the grace that assists human beings in the process of learning about God, do not give man complete knowledge of the essence of God. Thus the Gnostics, Clement and Origen, despite some doctrinal differences, all accepted the concept of the radical transcendence of God on the ontological and epistemological levels.

Nieskończoność Boga u Orygenesa: przyczyna wielkiego nieporozumienia

75%

Mrugalski D.

Vox Patrum

2017

vol. 67

437-475

Many historians of ideas – philosophers and theologians – believe that the first thinker to introduce the concept of a positive understanding of the infiniteness of God was Plotinus. In Greek philosophy, however, something infinite was understood as “unfinished” and therefore “imperfect”. All the same, according to many scholars, Christianity took the concept of the infiniteness of God precisely from the founder of neo-Platonism. One of the reasons for which researchers of the doctrines of the ancient world persist in this thesis even today is the fact that, in the writings of Origen – who lived at the time of Plotinus – we find the expressions which might give readers the impression that God’s power is finite, since God brought into existence a finite number of created beings. This article argues that this widely-held interpretation is wrong. Philo and Clement, a Jewish and a Christian thinker, both of Alexandria – from whose doctrines Origen borrowed abundantly – wrote of an infinite God before Origen did. In the surviving works of Origen, moreover, he nowhere states explicitly that God’s power is finite, although it is true that, according to him, God created a finite number of creatures. The controversial thesis of a finite God is found only in fragments written by ancient critics of Origen’s teaching. A detailed analysis of Origen’s own original pronouncements on the nature, power and knowledge of God leads one to the conclusion that the fragments that have led many historians of ideas into confusion, either do not represent the views of Origen himself or present Origen’s teachings inaccurately. Moreover, in Origen’s surviving Greek writings, we find the term ¥peiron used in reference to God. This is precisely the term used by Greek philosophers to designate infinity. We may posit, then, that the concept of the infiniteness of God, positively understood, was born of the encounter of Greek philosophy with the Bible – that is, with the Jewish and Christian doctrines of the first centuries of the common era. Origen, who came slightly later, continued the thought of his predecessors and does not contradict them anywhere in his surviving works. What remains to be examined is the question of whether Plotinus himself made use of the work of Jewish and Christian thinkers in forming his doctrine of an infinite God, rather than those thinkers leaning on Plotinus, as is usually assumed.

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Metamorfozy Platońskiej „metafory słońca” (Respublica 509b) w hetero- i ortodoksyjnej teologii (I-III w.): gnostycyzm, Klemens z Aleksandrii i Orygenes

Nieskończoność Boga u Orygenesa: przyczyna wielkiego nieporozumienia