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ATHENS AND JERUSALEM:

THE CLASSICAL TRADITION AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH


by
KALLISTOS TIMOTHY WARE

A Tale of Two Dreams


St Jerome (c. 345 - 420) recounts how in a dream, or perhaps a waking vision, he once found
himself summoned before the divine judgement-seat, where he was accused of being a
Ciceronian rather than a Christian, and was condemned to be flogged with many lashes. 1 It is
a story that reflects the ambivalence felt by many early Christians towards the Classical
tradition. It was something that they found deeply attractive, and yet they feared this
attraction as a temptation and a threat. In the Questions of St Anastasius of Sinai (d. c.700),
however, there is another story about a dream, which ends on a happier note. There was once
a scholar whose practice it was daily to curse Plato. Eventually Plato himself appeared to him
in a dream and said: 'Man, stop cursing me; for you are merely harming yourself. I do not
deny that I was a sinner. But, when Christ descended into hell, no one believed in him sooner
than I did.'2
For my own part, as one who learnt from Theo Zinn to love and honour the Classics, I
greatly prefer the second dream to the first. Between Hellenism and Christianity there are
indeed crucial points of disagreement and possible conflict, but in the end there is
convergence rather than a contradiction. If Hellas has sometimes proved a dangerous
seduction for Christian thinkers, more often it has served as an enrichment. 3
1

Letter 22 : 30 (Patrologia Latina [PL] 22 : 416. Cf. J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome : His Life, Writings
and Controversies (London: Duckworth, 1975), pp.41-44.
2

Question 111 (Patrologia Graeca [PG] 89 : 764C). On problems concerning the authorship,

see M. Geerard, Clavis Patrum Graecorum, vol. 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1979), 7746.
3

The best general surveys of Hellenism and Christianity are still Henry Chadwick, Early

Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition : Studies in Justin, Clement, and Origen
Athens and Jerusalem

We shall do well to keep in mind these two dreams when reflecting on the well-known
question of Tertullian (c.160 - c.225), 'What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?' 4 For Tertullian
there was a great distance between the two cities. His standpoint can well be summed up in
the war-cry of the prophet Zechariah, 'Your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Greece' (Zech.
9 : 13). Reacting against Gnosticism which, in common with other early Christian writers,
he regarded as a distortion of the Christian message under the influence of Greek philosophy 5
- he saw in the Classical tradition not an ally but an enemy. Rather than rely upon the
received wisdom of pre-Christian Hellas, he preferred a theology of paradox: certum est,
quia impossibile, 'it is certain, because it is impossible.' 6 Tertullian's contemporary St
Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170 c. 236) displayed similar reservations about Greek thought,
arguing in his Refutation of all the heresies that each heretical sect had deviated from the
truth precisely through adopting the tenets of some pagan philosopher.
Fortunately, however, this is far from being the invariable opinion among early
Christian thinkers. Even Tertullian in his milder moments spoke of Seneca saepe noster,
'Seneca whom we may often claim as our own',7 and he was willing at times to appeal to the
testimonium animae naturaliter Christianae, the 'evidence of the natural Christianity of the
soul'.8 Repeatedly he displayed the influence, usually unacknowledged, of Stoicism. Others,
moreover, from the second and third centuries of the Christian era were openly affirmative in
their estimate of Hellenic culture. Justin Martyr (c.100 c.165), for example, thought in
terms of complementarity rather than confrontation. For him the Gospel and the best elements
in Plato and the Stoics were almost identical ways of apprehending the same truth. He
recognized that there were certain points of disagreement between Greek philosophy and the
Christian faith, but he was optimistic indeed, over-optimistic about the prospects of a
reconciliation between the two. His own spiritual pilgrimage from Stoicism, through the
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), and Werner Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia
(London/Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1969).
4

De praescriptionibus haereticorum 7.

Even though, as modern research has shown, the background to the Gnostic movement is far

more complex than this, yet from one point of view Gnosticism can indeed be regarded as, in
Henry Chadwick's phrase, 'a pessimistic interpretation of Plato' (Early Christian Thought and
the Classical Tradition, p.7).
6

De carne Christi 5.

De anima 20: 1.

Apologeticus 17: 6.

Athens and Jerusalem

schools of Aristotle and Pythagoras, to Platonism and so finally to Christianity had involved
not a clean break with the past but a gradual transition. Even after accepting baptism, he did
not feel that he had to lay aside the mantle of the Hellenic philosopher.
Justin's approach is exactly summed up in the words of the prologue to the Fourth
Gospel, where it is said of the divine Logos: 'He was the true light that illumines everyone
who comes into the world' (John 1 : 9).9 Restating the Evangelist's message in Stoic terms,
Justin argued that Christ the Logos has sown seeds of the truth, logoi spermatikoi, in every
human heart; there is within all human beings a natural reason, emphytos logos, that provides
them with a partial yet true knowledge of God.10 The Church in its catholicity takes up all
these scattered seeds, nurturing them and bringing them to full maturity.
No less than Tertullian and Hippolytus, Justin was an opponent of Gnostic syncretism,
and he considered that the Church could make no compromise with pagan mythology and
ritual. But pagan philosophy, as he saw it, stood on an altogether different level, and could act
as a valuable handmaid to the Christian faith. The Hellenic thinkers had attained a genuine
measure of truth; Socrates as well as Abraham is to be seen as a 'Christian before Christ'.11
'Whatever, then, has been rightly expressed by anyone, belongs to us Christians', he
concluded.12 Christianity completes and perfects all the partial truths present in the nonChristian philosophers; it is in this way the absolute philosophy.
The same affirmative approach was adopted by Clement of Alexandria (c.150
c.215). 'The way of truth is one,' he observed, 'but into it, as into an ever-flowing river, run
various streams from different sides.'13 Not by one path alone, so he believed, do we humans
approach the inexhaustible plenitude of the truth. The Old Testament occupies, needless to
say, a privileged and unique position from the Christian point of view; the Jews are in a
distinctive sense the chosen people, since it was as a Jew that the Word became flesh. Yet, so
Clement insisted, if the Old Testament was a tutor to bring the Jews to the truth, then
philosophy was given to the Greeks for the same purpose. There is a double preparation for
the Incarnation of Christ, within Hellenism as well as Judaism; they are both tributaries of the
same great waterway. According to Clement, then, the Christian may discern in the
philosophical tradition of Athens a genuine propaideia, a real praeparatio evangelica.
9

It is uncertain how far Justin was in fact familiar with the Fourth Gospel.

10

See 2 Apology 8:1-3; 10: 8; 13: 2-5.

11

1 Apology 46: 3.

12

2 Apology 13: 4.

13

Stromata 1: 5 (29: 1).

Athens and Jerusalem

Christ's words, 'I am not come to abolish but to fulfil' (Matt. 5 : 17), apply not only to the
Law and the Prophets of Israel, but also to whatever is true in the wisdom of ancient Hellas.
Despite all this, however, there are problems. How far can this affirmative approach
be carried? The potential difficulties are evident in the case of Clement's successor at
Alexandria, Origen (c.185 c.254). For myself, I am more than willing to endorse Jerome's
estimate of Origen: 'the greatest teacher in the Church after the apostles'.14 (Alas! In later
years, during the unhappy controversy with Rufinus, Jerome changed his mind.) I am equally
willing to agree with St Vincent of Lrins (d. before 450): 'Who would not rather be wrong
with Origen than right with anyone else?'15 Unfortunately, in the eyes of his critics Origen had
indeed gone badly wrong; and, so they believed, this had happened precisely because he was
'blinded by Greek paideia', in the words of St Epiphanius of Salamis (c.315 - 403).16
The chief matters over which Origen was attacked were his teaching, as expounded in
his work On First Principles, concerning the pre-existence of souls and the pre-cosmic fall,
and his expectation of a final apocatastasis or 'restoration of all things', in which every
rational being, including even the devil, would eventually be reconciled to God.17 He was also
accused of accepting reincarnation, but this was probably not the case. 18 Now, on these and
other points where Origen, in the eyes of his detractors, had deviated from orthodoxy, it was
their conviction that he had been unduly influenced by Greek philosophy, and more
especially by Platonism. In reality, as Dr Edwards has recently argued, the relationship
between Origen and the Platonist tradition is complex. 19 To later Christian generations,
however, particularly after the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553), Origen served as a
melancholy example of the hazards of too great an openness towards Hellenic thought.

14

See Jerome, Preface to the Homilies of Origen on Ezekiel, ed. W. A. Baehrens, p.318

(quoting Didymus the Blind); cf. Rufinus, Apology 2: 13 (PL 21 : 596B).


15

Commonitorium 17:12[44]. Cf. Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes 1 : 'Errare malo cum

Platone, quam cum istis vera sentire.


16

Panarion 64: 72: 9.

17

See Elizabeth A. Clark, The Origenist Controversy : The Cultural Construction of an Early

Christian Debate (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1992). Cf. Kallistos Ware, The
Inner Kingdom (Crestwood, NY : St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2000), pp.193-215.
18

By the end of his life, at any rate, he seems to have rejected the transmigration of souls: see

Origen, Against Celsus 3: 75; 5: 29; 5:49.


19

See Mark Julian Edwards, Origen against Plato (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002).

Athens and Jerusalem

How far, then, can a Christian thinker go in building bridges with the Classical
tradition? What are the opportunities that should not be missed, and the safeguards and the
restraints that need to be imposed? Let us begin by taking, as a guide-line and point of
reference, the chief occasion in the New Testament on which the relationship between Athens
and Jerusalem is explicitly discussed; and that is the speech of St Paul on Areopagus (Acts
17:22-31). In the light of this, let us go on to examine more particularly the Christian attitude
to Plato, under two aspects: Plato as a threat, and Plato as a Christian before Christ.

Paul on Areopagus
It is outside our present purpose to assess the historicity (or otherwise) of Luke's account of
the visit of Paul to Athens. Our concern is rather with the symbolical significance of the
event, as Acts 17 presents it. Paul's advent in Athens, so Luke clearly wishes his readers to
appreciate, is a moment of critical importance. The apostle of the Gentiles has come to preach
the Christian faith in a city which had long since ceased to be politically influential, but
which was still seen as the centre of Greek civilization, and above all as the heartland of
Greek philosophy. It was the first decisive encounter between the Gospel and Hellenism; and
on this encounter, as Werner Jaeger observes, 'the future of Christianity as a world religion
depended'.20
And how does Paul begin? Not by asserting a sharp discontinuity, a radical
antagonism, between Hellenism and the message of the Gospel, but by indicating their
possible convergence. His stance is positive, although it has also negative undertones. While
clearly repudiating all idolatry, Paul does not commence by telling the Athenians that they are
deluded by falsehood, but he seeks rather to assure them that they are already in some
measure on the path of truth. This is surely a sound diplomatic ploy; if we wish to gain a
sympathetic hearing from our audience, is it not prudent to begin by suggesting where they
might be right, before pointing out their errors? Yet far more is at stake here than apologetic
strategy. Paul is making a spiritual and theological point of primary significance.
The apostle starts, then, with a reference to the altar of the 'unknown God: 'What you
worship but do not know this is what I proclaim to you' (Acts 17:23). The Athenians
already have a subconscious awareness of the one true God, and this the apostle seeks not to
belittle but to reinforce. The Saviour whom he preaches responds to the deepest yearnings
already present in the hearts of his pagan auditors. Paul appeals next to the fundamental unity
20

Early Christianity and Greek Paideia, p.11.

Athens and Jerusalem

of the human race: 'He has made of one blood every nation of humankind to dwell upon the
whole face of the earth' (Acts 17:26). The apostle goes on to speak of God's immanence and
omnipresence, insisting in terms parallel to Romans 1:19-20 upon the natural knowledge
of God accessible to all human beings by virtue of their inherent affinity with the Creator: 'In
him we live and move and have our being; as even some of your poets have said, "For we too
are his offspring"' (Acts 17:28).21
Thus far, employing ideas that the Stoics present among his listeners would have
found thoroughly familiar, Paul has concentrated upon what Hellenism and Christianity share
together. After emphasizing these points of concurrence, however, he then turns to a crucial
difference between the two. His speech ends with something that could never have been
deduced by natural human reason from philosophical premises, with something to be known
solely through God's self-revelation: the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead (Acts 17:31).
What began as (to all appearances) a typically Hellenistic oration terminates with a
distinctively Christian conclusion. Paul was fully conscious that his concluding reference to
the Resurrection would prove perplexing and even scandalous to his cultured audience, but
this scandal he has made no attempt to mitigate.
Paul's intention, then, in the Areopagus speech as presented by Luke, is to achieve a
suitable balance between continuity and discontinuity. While acknowledging the common
ground between Hellenic thought and Christianity, he seeks also to do justice to the radical
newness of the Christian kerygma. He does not forget that the one who said that he came not
to abolish but to fulfil also spoke of his Gospel as 'new wine' that bursts asunder the old
wineskins (Matt. 9:17). The speech on Areopagus makes plain the manner in which
Christianity can utilize Greek ideas and yet at the same time transform and pass beyond them.
But this task of transformation is far from straightforward and, as Paul himself discovered,
can easily meet with incomprehension and mockery.
Continuity and newness: how are the two to be held in equilibrium? Where is the line
to be drawn? Which are the aspects of the Classical tradition that constitute a danger to the
Christian message, and which are things that can serve to elucidate and enhance it? In this
context it may be helpful to distinguish three levels, connected but distinct.
(1) There is first the level of paideia, of life-style, culture and education. Here most
Christians in the ancient world found little difficulty in drawing confidently upon the
Hellenic heritage. A notable example of a constructive attitude towards Greek literature is
21

The first part of this sentence is possibly a quotation from Epimenides of Crete; the second

half is a quotation from Aratus, Phaenomena, line 5.


Athens and Jerusalem

provided by the treatise entitled To the Young, written by St Basil of Caesarea (c.330-c.379)
for his nephews (and perhaps also his nieces). 22 True and sure wisdom, he says, is to be found
only in Holy Scripture. But, to prepare our minds for Biblical study, Greek literature serves as
an excellent progymnasia or preliminary training.23 Discernment is of course needed: 'Accept
only what is useful, and recognize what should be ignored.'24 Basil makes it clear, however,
that for the most part the examples set before us in the Greek Classics are definitely
beneficial. After describing, for instance, the patience of Socrates in the face of ill-treatment,
he concludes: 'Since these actions correspond almost exactly to our own ideals, it is of great
value to imitate them.'25 Admittedly, the Greek and Latin Fathers firmly rejected certain
elements in the pagan way of life, such as homosexuality. But on the whole, as regards this
first level, that of paideia, they perceived what Basil calls 'affinity' (oikeiotes)26 rather than
opposition.
(2) Turning more specifically to the realm of philosophy, we need to distinguish form
from content (although, needless to say, the two cannot be altogether separated). On the level
of terminology and argumentation in its employment of technical terms, definitions, and
methods of reasoning Christian theology owes a manifest debt to the Greek philosophical
tradition. We have only to recall, for example, the use made by the Fathers of such words as
ousia, physis and hypostasis when developing the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation.
In their reliance on these terms, however, Patristic writers at the same time adapted and
deepened their meaning. When, for example, the fourth-century Cappadocians or St Maximus
the Confessor (c. 580-662) discussed the concepts of hypostasis and prosopon, they
formulated what may be seen as a subtler and far more dynamic ontology of personhood than
is to be found in Hellenic philosophy.27
(3) How far, in the third place, has Christian theology been influenced by the Greek
philosophers, not only as regards its terminology and outward form, but also as regards its
inner content? It is here, on this third level, that the problematic of Athens and Jerusalem
22

See N.G. Wilson, Saint Basil on the Value of Greek Literature (London : Duckworth, 1975),

p.7.
23

To the Young, On the Value of Greek Literature 2:6.

24

Op. cit., 1: 5; cf. 4: 1.

25

Op. cit., 7: 7.

26

Op. cit., 3: 1.

27

See John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church

(Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985), pp.27-65.


Athens and Jerusalem

becomes more acute. And the Greek philosopher who, above all others, has acted as a
challenge and a stimulus on this level who has been experienced by Christian thinkers both
as an attraction and a snare is none other than Plato. Luke tells us that Paul's audience on
Areopagus consisted of Stoics and Epicureans (Acts 17:18); but for Christian theology the
crucial encounter has been the interface not with Stoicism or Epicureanism, nor yet with
Aristotelianism, but with Platonism. Let us, then, look selectively at the main elements in
Platonism that have posed a potential threat to Christianity, and at those that have inspired
and enriched it.28

Plato as a Threat
'What else is Plato', asks the Pythagorian Numenius (second century A.D.), 'but Moses in
Attic Greek?'29 If not a few of the Fathers have been inclined to agree with this estimate,
others have had their doubts. St Gregory Palamas (c.1296-1359), in the course of his debate
with Barlaam the Calabrian, provides a typical list of the main points in pagan philosophy
that Christian theology has found unacceptable, and it is significant that the doctrines to
which he refers are almost all of them basically Platonic. 30 He mentions five things in
particular:
the theory of the Ideas or Forms, conceived as timeless, self-subsistent realities,
existing in their own right;
the notion of the world soul;
the eternity of matter;
the eternity of the human soul;
the transmigration of souls.31

28

On the critical reception of Plato by the Church Fathers, see in particular James K.

Feibleman, Religious Platonism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1959); Endre von Ivnka, Plato
Christianus (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1964); Frantiek Novotn, The Posthumous Life of
Plato (Prague: Academia, 1977).
29

Quoted in Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 1: 22 (150: 4).

30

It has of course to be remembered that, in the eight centuries between Plato and Proclus,

there were many different varieties of Platonism.


Athens and Jerusalem

He refers in addition to the belief that the world was created by demons, and also to the
worship of the heavenly bodies together with the resulting practices of astrology; but here
evidently he has in view, not the mainstream Platonic tradition, but a debased version of
Platonism verging on Gnosticism.
Underlying Palamas's enumeration of errors, two primary issues stand out. First,
viewed from a Christian standpoint, Platonism fails to distinguish adequately between the
uncreated and the created. Divine transcendence is indeed affirmed, yet it is not a radical
transcendence. Plotinus (205-269/70), for example, posits a series of emanations from the
divine, a gradually descending hierarchy of being, but no doctrine of creation ex nihilo. The
highest element in the human soul is understood to be, not merely formed in the image and
likeness of the Godhead, but itself by nature divine, as is evident from the last words of the
dying Plotinus: 'Strive to bring back the god within yourselves to the divine in the All.'32
In contrast to this, Palamas, taking up from earlier Patristic authors the distinction
between the divine essence and the divine energies, insists upon the total otherness of God,
while at the same time safeguarding his total immanence: in 'deification' (theosis) human
beings participate directly in the uncreated energies of God, but his essence remains always
beyond all participation, both in this present life and in the age to come. In this way Palamas
is enabled to assert the possibility of a transfiguring union between the human person and
God, even in this present life, while yet preserving the line of demarcation between Creator
and creature; the mystical experience involves veritable and unmediated oneness, but it is
oneness without absorption or confusion. The God of Palamas and of the Greek Patristic
tradition is both nearer to us, through his divine energies, than the God of the Hellenic
philosophers, and yet more authentically transcendent, by virtue of his imparticipable
essence.
Secondly, seen in a Biblical perspective, Platonism fails to allow sufficiently for the
Spirit-bearing potentialities of material things, and more especially for the spiritual value of
the human body. It is true that Platonism is not dualist in any crude and unqualified sense;
indeed, Plotinus attacks the Gnostics precisely on the ground that they regard the material
universe as the handiwork of evil powers. 33 But Platonism, even if it is does not consider
matter to be intrinsically evil, yet holds that it lacks genuine reality a more subtle form of
31

Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts 1:1 and 2:1. In Plato's Timaeus it is in fact unclear

how far matter is regarded as eternal; certainly the soul seems to have a beginning.
32

Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 2

33

See in particular Enneads 2: 9.

Athens and Jerusalem

dualism, but none the less unacceptable for the Christian theologian. To the Platonist the real
person is the soul, while the body is discounted as extrinsic to authentic personhood. It is a
prison, a tomb, a piece of temporary clothing: 'the body is the soul's tunic', states a
Pythagorean epitaph with which Platonists would not disagree.34 It was even said of Plotinus
that 'he seemed to be ashamed of being in a body'.35
Here there is a sharp discrepancy between Hellenism or, more exactly, Platonism
and the Hebraic standpoint of the Bible. Scriptural anthropology, save on rare occasions, is
unitary and holistic. There is no separation between body and soul in the Old Testament: in
the words of Johannes Pedersen, 'The body is the soul in its outward form.' 36 St Paul is, in this
as in other respects, exactly what he himself claimed to be, a 'Hebrew of the Hebrews' (Phil.
3:5). As J.A.T. Robinson puts it, summarizing the Pauline view: 'Man does not have a body,
he is a body. He is flesh animated-by-soul, the whole conceived as a psycho-physical
unity.'37 Where Platonism affirms the immortality of the soul, the Bible affirms the
resurrection of the body.
The Greek Christian tradition, albeit at times with hesitancy and ambivalence we
think at once of Origen and Evagrius of Pontus (346-99) has on the whole remained faithful
to this Biblical understanding of personhood.38 Even if Platonic language frequently occurs in
Patristic texts, their authors were for the most part in no doubt whatever that the human
person is an integral unity of body and soul: not a soul temporarily imprisoned in a body and
endeavouring to escape, but a psycho-somatic whole. In words that recall the teaching of St
Irenaeus of Lyons (d. c.200) a thousand years before, Michael Choniates (d. 1222) writes:
'The term "man" is applied, neither to the soul alone nor to the body alone, but to both of
them together; and so it is with reference to them both that God is said to have created man in
his image.'39 As St Maximus the Confessor maintains, our body is to be sanctified along with
our soul: 'By nature we remain entirely human in our soul and in our body, but by grace we
34

Inscriptions Graecae 14: 2241, cited in Liddell and Scott, revised edn, A Greek-English

Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), p.1993, col.1.


35

Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 1.

36

J. Pedersen, Israel, vol. 1 (London/Copenhagen: Oxford University Press/Poul Branner,

1926), p.171.
37

John A.T. Robinson, The Body: A Study in Pauline Theology (London: SCM, 1952), p.14.

38

See Kallistos Ware, '"My helper and my enemy": the body in Greek Christianity', in Sarah

Coakley (ed.), Religion and the Body (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp.90110.
Athens and Jerusalem

10

become entirely god in our soul and in our body.40 St Gregory Palamas upholds the same
doctrine of total sanctification:
The spiritual joy that passes from the soul into the body remains a spiritual
reality even though it is active in the body . It is not at all corrupted by its
communion with the body, but transforms the body and makes it spiritual. The
body, once it has rejected the evil appetites of the flesh, no longer drags the
soul downwards but is raised up together with it, so that the whole human
person becomes spirit.41
In thus becoming 'spiritual', it is important to add, the body in no way ceases to be material.
In Platonism the material and the spiritual are mutually exclusive, but not in Christianity.
Faithful to this holistic perspective, Palamas maintains that the vision of divine and
uncreated Light, experienced by the saints in prayer, involves the body as well as the soul: the
saints see the Light, not perhaps 'with', but certainly 'through the eye', to use William Blake's
distinction.42 Nor is this all. It is not the human body alone that is called to sanctification and
theosis, but the entire material creation (see Rom. 8:19-22; Rev. 21:1). We are to be saved not
from the world but with the world. Manifestly the Greek Fathers did not learn this doctrine of
bodily and cosmic transformation from Plato: its source and foundations are to be found, first
of all, in the Old Testament (see Isa. 11:6-9; 26:19; 35:1-10; 41:18-20), and then in the
Incarnation, Transfiguration and Resurrection of Christ.

Plato as a Christian before Christ


Such, for the Christian tradition, are the two gravest shortcomings in Plato's vision of reality:
his failure to distinguish firmly between the uncreated and the created, and his failure to
acknowledge the spiritual value of matter and the essential unity of the human person, body
and soul together. In these two respects Plato has formed for Christianity a continuing
39

Prosopopoiai (PG 150:976A). This text was formerly attributed to Gregory Palamas. Cf.

Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 5: 6: 1.


40

Ambigua 7 (PG 91:1088C).

41

Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts 2: 2: 9. Note that Palamas, following Paul, makes

a clear distinction between 'body' and 'flesh'. For the concept of a spiritual body, cf. I Cor. 15:
44.
42

See Blake, The Everlasting Gospel (d): ' And leads you to Believe a Lie/When you see

with, not thro', the Eye'.


Athens and Jerusalem

11

temptation. But he has served also, in a far more significant way, as a constant fount of
inspiration. What the Church has found congenial in Platonism is above all its insistence
upon the pre-eminence of the invisible realm of unchanging eternity. If this is deepened by a
doctrine of creation ex nihilo, and if it is combined with a holistic view of human nature
and if, following Albinus (second century A.D.), the Forms or Ideas are reinterpreted as
thoughts in the mind of God rather than independently subsisting entities then it is not
difficult to see Plato as a forerunner and friend of Christ.
Without derogating from the intrinsic density of material objects from what Western
Scholastic philosophy terms their haecceitas or 'thisness', and what Zen Buddhism describes
as the distinctive 'Ah!' of each thing we can at the same time agree with the Platonists that
all visible realities point beyond themselves to their transcendent and eternal archetypes in
God. The entire world is a sacrament; all creation is a Burning Bush, a theophany. Such is the
creative message of a truly Christian Platonism.
In addition to this, there is one particular aspect of Plato's philosophy that has had a
life-creating influence upon Patristic thought, and that is his teaching about the intellect
(nous) and the act of intellection (noesis).43 The modern reader is in danger of identifying the
nous with the reasoning brain, but this is not at all what Plato meant. In the Republic he is
careful to make a fourfold distinction between conjecture (eikasia), belief (pistis), thinking
(dianoia), and intellection (noesis).44 The first two are concerned with the world of
appearances or of the senses, with the realm of aistheta. The second two are concerned with
the realm of the intelligible Forms, but in differing ways. Dianoia signifies discursive
thinking on the basis of abstraction, that is to say, reasoned argumentation from premises to a
conclusion, as in mathematics. Noesis, however, indicates a higher form of apprehension; it is
not abstract but specific, and denotes the direct act of intellectual vision whereby not
through a chain of reasoning but by immediate awareness the truth is simply 'seen' to be
true.
So the future philosopher-king, after undergoing an elaborate training in mathematics
on the level of the dianoia, makes all at once a leap beyond the reasoning brain, grasping the
world of eternal reality with the nous. When by means of noesis he suddenly apprehends the
realm of the Forms or Ideas, he does this, not as the conclusion of a series of logical
43

Cf. Kallistos Ware, 'Nous and Noesis in Plato, Aristotle and Evagrius of Pontus', Diotima 13

(1985) (Proceedings of the Second International Week on the Philosophy of Greek Culture,
Kalamata, 1982, Part II), pp.158-63.
44

Republic VI, 509d 511e.

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arguments, but through an instantaneous flash of insight. In Letter VII Plato likens this
experience to the sudden kindling of a flame.45
This Platonic understanding of the nous, widely adopted by the Greek and Latin
Fathers, is a master-key that opens many doors in Patristic anthropology and spirituality.
When, for instance, Evagrius of Pontus describes prayer as 'the communion of the nous with
God',46 or as 'the highest noesis of the nous',47 he does not mean by this any more than did
Plato when speaking of noesis exclusively or even primarily an activity of the discursive,
reasoning brain. He means on the contrary a form of mystical awareness freed from
conceptual thinking and discursive argumentation, freed even from consciousness of the self,
in which the subject-object distinction has all but disappeared.48
By the same token, when fourteenth-century Hesychast texts in The Philokalia
describe the Jesus Prayer as noera proseuche, 'prayer of the intellect', this does not signify
that it is a form of systematic, conceptual prayer similar to the 'discursive meditation'
commended in the Counter-Reformation West.49 For the fourteenth-century Hesychasts as for
Evagrius, nous indicates in this context a level of spiritual apprehension superior to the type
of discursive thinking that employs images and abstract concepts. Although the Jesus Prayer
is a prayer in words and these words are used coherently and with a definite meaning yet
its aim is to raise our mind from the level of the dianoia to that of the nous, from discursive
thinking to inner stillness or hesychia, so that we no longer formulate propositions about God
but simply dwell in God through a union of love. Through the dianoia we know about God;
through the nous we know God. St Maximus the Confessor surely has this dianoia-nous
distinction in view when he makes a contrast between, on the one hand, the discursive
thinking that works through abstract concepts and, on the other, the immediate 'perception'
(aesthesis) that knows a thing not at second hand, through forming a concept of it, but
directly, through participating in it. He describes the latter form of cognizance as 'simple and
unified knowledge'.50

45

Plato (?), Letter VII, 341c.

46

On Prayer 3 (PG 79: 1168C).

47

On Prayer 34a (missing from PG, but included in The Philokalia).

48

On Prayer 66-67, 70, 114-15, 117, 120 (PG 79: 1181AB, 1181C, 1192D - 1193B).

49

On the Jesus Prayer (the short invocation 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on

me', frequently repeated), see 'A Monk of the Eastern Church' (Lev Gillet), The Jesus Prayer,
revised edn (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1987).
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13

This Platonist teaching about nous and noesis, appropriated by the Fathers, is of vital
import in the modern world. Most people today have lost the sense of what the nous signifies,
and so they have become alienated from the deepest and most creative aspect of themselves.
They imagine that they are no more than a reasoning brain, with emotions and will-power.
They have quenched their capacity for spiritual insight and intuitive vision. Because almost
the whole of our educational programme in the West is centred upon the training of the
dianoia, all too many of our contemporaries lack any awareness of being also, on a far
profounder level, a nous or supra-rational intellect. Forgetting Plato, we have lost the door of
entry into our own inner sanctuary. As we embark upon the new millennium let us strive to be
more truly ourselves by becoming more truly noetic.

Genuine Catholicity
St Cyril of Jerusalem (c.315-87), in his definition of the term 'catholic', distinguishes two
dimensions of meaning in the word. There is first the exterior and quantitative sense: the
Church is catholic because it extends 'throughout all the world from one end of the earth to
the other', embracing 'the whole human race'. But alongside this 'extensive' meaning there is
also an 'intensive', qualitative sense: the Church is catholic because it contains and teaches all
the healing fullness of salvation.51 Faithful to the second, richer meaning of the word
'catholic', the Church welcomes and makes its own all truth, wherever it is to be found. That
is what St Paul did in his speech to the Athenians on Areopagus, and that is what Christians
today are also called to do, if they seek to be 'humanists' in the correct sense of the word.
Without compromising the utter newness of the revelation brought by Christ, we need to
acknowledge also the continuity between Classical Hellas and the Gospel. With good reason,
in the wall-paintings of Byzantine churches Plato and Aristotle are included among the
prophets. Athens and Jerusalem are not implacable foes; they can and should be fellowworkers, partners and friends.

50

To Thalassios 60, ed. C. Laga and C. Steel, Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca 22

(Turnhout : Brepols, 1990), especially lines 77 90.


51

Catecheses 18: 23.

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Athens and Jerusalem

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