The mystical quest for the soul in the knowledge of an unknowable God: … is the result of its longing for God Himself alone, and apart from the benefits of His relationship to us – it is a quest of pure love (Louth, p. 24). This is pursued in three stages: 1. Conversion to pure religion; 2. Self-knowledge; and 3. Knowledge of God. The conversion to pure religion is seen by Philo’s description as the cessation from the worship of the creation, which the Magian traditions have established through astrology. The relinquishing of astrology and the belief in the effects of the stars on human behaviour is the first step to a pure religion. Next, by consideration of self and by self-realisation the way is opened up to a third stage from accurate self-knowledge to knowledge of God Himself. The mind will no longer stay “in heaven”, which is the organ of sense, but withdraws into itself. For it is impossible that the mind whose course still lies in the sensible rather than the mental should arrive at the contemplation of Him that is (De Migratione Abrahami, pp. 195 ff – from Louth’s quotation on p. 24). This rejection of the dominant form of the cosmic influence was to be the adaptation which was necessary to allow Christianity to adopt the Mysteries in a more subtle form – the Creator beyond the creation. Through moral purity the soul was to assert its ascending over the body but, although Philo uses Platonic terms, he reduces the soul to a creature created by God, and nothing in itself. For Philo: … self knowledge is not identified with knowledge of God; in self knowledge the soul does not realise the world of the Ideas within itself (as in Plotinus, and perhaps Plato), rather, in self knowledge the soul comes to realize its own nothingness and is thrown back on God, Him who is (Louth, p. 25). The creature therefore has no ... capacity to know God but is given this knowledge by Grace. The adoptions were necessary to enable a Judeo-Christian reduction of the mystical propositions to be syncretically adopted. It was, however, readapted by Plotinus as noted by Louth and quoted above, and from him it was taken up by the Patristic writings. Despite their differences, Philo draws on Plato’s ideas in the Timaeus (41C: cf. 90Aff.) that immortal souls are the direct creation of the demiurge, while what is mortal is made by lesser gods. This concept is a development of Chaldean theology. This plurality of powers mentioned previously is found in Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides (Morrow & Dillon, Princeton, 1987, pp. 233-234). The power of greatness is immaterial and material realities confer superiority and transcendent perfection, whilst equality is the cause of harmony and proportion in all things, revealing the mean term of proportion either in souls or in nature and its end is friendship and unity. Then since the Demiurge, in constructing the universe, used all the means – arithmetical, geometrical and harmonic – and the uniting bonds based upon them, you would hit the truth about it. I think if you say that this Equality used by the Demiurge is the one intellectual cause that generates the cosmos (ibid.). This inward search is for what is termed the One in Us, which Socrates called the illumination of the soul (Proclus, ibid., p. 588). So by the One in Ourselves do we approach the One (ibid.). Now it is in this element alone that Philo differs in that it occurs not naturally but by grace; but the sequential development of this entire search is outlined by the Commentary as follows: And Plato says that the One is known by no sensation, for he says no being senses it – evidently not even the divine sensation, nor the primary cause of sensation, nor, in general, is there any mode of cognition in the divine Intellect that is co-ordinated with the One. Neither, therefore, does the Demiurge sense-perception perceive the One, for even that is a perception of things existent. Secondly consider opinion; first, ours, then that of the demons, then that of the angels, then that of the cosmic gods, then that of the absolute gods (for these, inasmuch as even they have something to do with the world, contain the rational principles of sensible objects), then that of the assimilative gods (for in these are the causes of the cosmic gods); and, finally, the demiurge opinion, opinion itself, for this is the fount of all opinion and is the primary cause of the things that exist in the world, and from it the circle of difference has it origin. Consider this whole series and say: the One is unknowable to all forms of opinion. There remains knowledge. Do not regard only what we have; for it is particular and there is nothing venerable about it – it does not know the One – but regard also the knowledge of demons, which sees the kinds of existence; and the angelic knowledge, which sees what is prior to these; and that of the cosmic gods (by which they follow their ‘absolute’ leaders); and that of the absolute gods themselves, which operates transcendently in the sphere of the intelligible; and, higher still, that of the assimilative gods, through which they are the first to assimilate themselves to the intellectual gods; and in addition to these, consider the original knowledge which is united to the intelligible themselves, which in the Phaedrus (247d) is also called ‘knowledge itself’; and, above all these, consider the intelligible union which lies hidden and unutterable in the interior recess of Being itself. Consider all these kinds of knowledge and understanding of existence, and you will see that they all fall short of the One. For they are all knowledge of Being and not of the One. But the argument has shown that the One is above Being. Therefore, all cognition, whether it is knowledge, or opinion, or sense-perception, is of something secondary and not of the One (Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides (Bk. VII), Morrow & Dillon, Princeton, 1987, p. 589). From the above, the entire argument is developed from Chaldean theology as found also extending into India and is the basic reasoning which resulted in Indian Monism, with a pantheon of illusiory gods and has the same cosmological structure within the ‘Mysteries’. Philo’s adoptions of these were to accommodate some biblical notions to this mystical structure.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 11:40:00 +0000
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