History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity. A. D. 100-325

monotheism, superstition with culture, and to hold, as with convulsive grasp, the old popular religion

in a refined and idealized form. Some scattered Christian ideas also were unconsciously let in;

Christianity already filled the atmosphere of the age too much, to be wholly shut out. As might be

expected, this compound of philosophy and religion was an extravagant, fantastic, heterogeneous

affair, like its contemporary, Gnosticism, which differed from it by formally recognising Christianity

in its syncretism. Most of the NeoPlatonists, Jamblichus in particular, were as much hierophants

and theurgists as philosophers, devoted themselves to divination and magic, and boasted of divine

inspirations and visions. Their literature is not an original, healthy natural product, but an abnormal

after-growth.

In a time of inward distraction and dissolution the human mind hunts up old and obsolete

systems and notions, or resorts to magical and theurgic arts. Superstition follows on the heels of

unbelief, and atheism often stands closely connected with the fear of ghosts and the worship of

demons. The enlightened emperor Augustus was troubled, if he put on his left shoe first in the

morning, instead of the right; and the accomplished elder Pliny wore amulets as protection from

thunder and lightning. In their day the long-forgotten Pythagoreanism was conjured from the grave

and idealized. Sorcerers like Simon Magus, Elymas, Alexander of Abonoteichos, and Apollonius

of Tyana (d. a.d. 96), found great favor even with the higher classes, who laughed at the fables of

the gods. Men turned wishfully to the past, especially to the mysterious East, the land of primitive

wisdom and religion. The Syrian cultus was sought out; and all sorts of religions, all the sense and

all the nonsense of antiquity found a rendezvous in Rome. Even a succession of Roman emperors,

from Septimius Severus, at the close of the second century, to Alexander Severus, embraced this

religious syncretism, which, instead of supporting the old Roman state religion, helped to undermine

it.

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After the beginning of the third century this tendency found philosophical expression and

took a reformatory turn in Neo-Platonism. The magic power, which was thought able to reanimate

all these various elements and reduce them to harmony, and to put deep meaning into the old

mythology, was the philosophy of the divine Plato; which in truth possessed essentially a mystical

character, and was used also by learned Jews, like Philo, and by Christians, like Origen, in their

idealizing efforts and their arbitrary allegorical expositions of offensive passages of the Bible. In

this view we may find among heathen writers a sort of forerunner of the NeoPlatonists in the pious

and noble-minded Platonist, Plutarch, of Boeotia (d. 120), who likewise saw a deeper sense in the

myths of the popular polytheistic faith, and in general, in his comparative biographies and his

admirable moral treatises, looks at the fairest and noblest side of the Graeco-Roman antiquity, but

often wanders off into the trackless regions of fancy.

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The oldest apostle of this strange medley of Hellenic, Persian, Chaldean and Egyptian mysteries in Rome was Nigidius

Figulus, who belonged to the strictest section of the aristocracy, and filled the praetorship in 696 a.u.c. (58 b.c.) He foretold the

father of the subsequent emperor Augustus on the very day of his birth his future greatness. The system was consecrated by the

name of Pythagoras, the primeval sage of Italian birth, the miracleworker and necromancer. The new and old wisdom made a

profound impression on men of the highest rank and greatest learning, who took part in the citation of spirits, as in the nineteenth

century, spirit-rapping and tablemoving exercised for a while a similar charm. "These last attempts to save the Roman theology,

like the similar efforts of Cato in the field of politics, produce at once a comical and a melancholy impression. We may smile

at the creed and its propagators, but still it is a grave matter when all men begin to addict themselves to absurdity." Th. Mommsen,

History of Rome, vol. IV. p. 563 (Dickson’s translation. Lond. 1867.)

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History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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The proper founder of Neo-Platonism was Ammonius Saccas, of Alexandria, who was born

of Christian parents, but apostatized, and died in the year 243. His more distinguished pupil, Plotinus,

also an Egyptian (204–269), developed the NeoPlatonic ideas in systematic form, and gave them

firm foothold and wide currency, particularly in Rome, where he taught philosophy. The system

was propagated by his pupil Porphyry of Tyre (d. 304), who likewise taught in Rome, by Jamblichus

of Chalcis in Coelo-Syria (d. 333), and by Proclus of Constantinople (d. 485). It supplanted the

popular religion among in the educated classes of later heathendom, and held its ground until the

end of the fifth century, when it perished of its own internal falsehood and contradictions.

From its love for the ideal, the supernatural, and the mystical, this system, like the original

Platonism, might become for many philosophical minds a bridge to faith; and so it was even to St.

Augustin, whom it delivered from the bondage of scepticism, and filled with a burning thirst for

truth and wisdom. But it could also work against Christianity. Neo-Platonism was, in fact, a direct

attempt of the more intelligent and earnest heathenism to rally all its nobler energies, especially

the forces of Hellenic philosophy and Oriental mysticism, and to found a universal religion, a pagan

counterpart to the Christian. Plotinus, in his opposition to Gnosticism, assailed also, though not

expressly, the Christian element it contained. On their syncretistic principles the Neo-Platonists

could indeed reverence Christ as a great sage and a hero of virtue, but not as the Son of God. They

ranked the wise men of heathendom with him. The emperor Alexander Severus (d. 235) gave

Orpheus and Apollonius of Tyana a place in his lararium by the side of the bust of Jesus.

The rhetorician Philostratus, the elder, about the year 220, at the request of Julia Domna,

the wife of Septimius Severus, and a zealous patron of the reform of paganism, idealized the life

of the pagan magician and soothsayer Apollonius, of the Pythagorean school, and made him out

an ascetic saint, a divinely inspired philosopher, a religious reformer and worker of miracles, with

the purpose, as is generally assumed, though without direct evidence, of holding him up as a rival

of Christ with equal claims to the worship of men.

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The points of resemblance are chiefly these: Jesus was the Son of God, Apollonius the son

of Jupiter; the birth of Christ was celebrated by the appearance of angels, that of Apollonius by a

flash of lightning; Christ raised the daughter of Jairus, Apollonius a young Roman maiden, from

the dead; Christ cast out demons, Apollonius did the same; Christ rose from the dead, Apollonius

appeared after his death. Apollonius is made to combine also several characteristics of the apostles,

as the miraculous gift of tongues, for he understood all the languages of the world. Like St. Paul,

he received his earlier education at Tarsus, labored at Antioch, Ephesus, and other cities, and was

persecuted by Nero. Like the early Christians, he was falsely accused of sacrificing children with

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Philostratus himself gives no intimation of such design on his part, and simply states that he was requested by the empress

Julia Domna (a.d. 217), to draw up a biography of Apollonius from certain memoranda of Damis, one of his friends and followers.

The name of Christ is never mentioned by him; nor does he allude to the Gospels, except in one instance, where he uses the

same phrase as the daemon in St. Luke (viii. 28): "I beseech thee, torment me not (

μή με βασανίσῃς .). Vita Apoll. IV. 25. Bishop

Samuel Parker, in a work on the Divine Authority of the Christian Religion (1681), Lardner, Neander (K G. I. 298), and J. S.

Watson (in a review of Re’ville’s Apoll. of T., in the "Contemporary Review" for 1867, p. 199 ff.), deny the commonly received

opinion, first maintained by Bishop Daniel Hust, and defended by Baur, Newman, and Re’ville, that Philostratus intended to

draw a parallel between his hero and Christ. The resemblance is studied and fictitious, and it is certain that at a later date Hierocles

vainly endeavored to lower the dignity of Christ by raising this Pythagorean adventurer as portrayed by Philostratus, to a level

with the eternal Son of God.

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Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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