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The Philosophy of Ammonius Saccas: And the Connection of Aristotelian and Christian Elements Therein*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

H. Langerbeck
H. Langerbeck
Affiliation:
Bad Homburg, v. d. Höhe
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Extract

The excellent report by H.-R. Schwyzer in his long article on Plotinus in R.-E. (Bd. XLI (1951), col. 477–81), presents the reader with a picture of the present state of research concerning Ammonius, while giving a critique of previous discussions. A significant feature of the situation is this: simultaneously with the endeavour to obtain a clear picture of Ammonius's doctrine from the reports in Nemesius of Emesa and Hierocles (Photius, Bibl. cod. 214 and 251)—reports whose upper and lower limits are controversial—a new and fruitful attempt has been made to work back to Ammonius as the common source behind numerous concordances between Plotinus and Origen. Following the lead of René Cadiou, who, in his epoch-making work La jeunesse d'Origène (Paris, 1935), demonstrated the importance of Ammonius for the development of the theology of Origen, de Jong has given a convenient conspectus of the parallels between Plotinus and Origen (Plotinus of Ammonius Saccas, Leiden, 1941). But this gives rise to some problems of general procedure. What justification is there for Schwyzer's assertion (op. cit. 480. 65) that ‘it is a priori improbable that Plotinus would have studied the writings of Origen’? This depends upon the presupposition that Christianity, and in particular its theology, during the years of Plotinus's studies at Alexandria, was of far too slight importance, intensive or extensive, to have had any influence upon a man of the spiritual calibre of Plotinus.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , November 1957 , pp. 67 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1957

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References

1 Bauer, W.: Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum, Tübingen, 1934, pp. 57 ff.Google Scholar

2 Compare e.g. Schmid-Stählin, Gesch. d. griech. Lit. II, p. 1341; Carl Schmidt, Plotins Stellung zum Gnostizismus … (T. U. Neue Folge V, 4) has proposed the name of a Bishop Ammonius of Thmuis.

3 As C. Schmidt, op. cit. 8, n. 1, agrees.

4 That is, ‘On the concord of Moses and Jesus’ a highly probable title for an early work by Ammonius about the chief theological problem of his day. It may be added here that we learn from Porphyry of the titles of two works by the neo-Platonist Origen, namely: These works must surely have dealt with the subjects of which Hierocles also treated in his περὶ προνοίαζ—the former would deal with the creation, the latter with destiny. An identification of Origen the neo-Platonist with the Christian Origen has been essayed by R. Cadiou (op. cit.), but is controverted by Schwyzer, op. cit. col. 480, 42 ff. From the way in which Hierocles brings to the front the name of this Origen, it can be deduced that he (and not, as might be supposed, Plotinus) was the main source of Hierocles's information about the teaching of Ammonius.

5 Translation taken from The Jung Codex, Three Studies by Puech, H. C., Quispel, G., Unnik, W. C. Van, tr. and ed. by Cross, F. L., London, 1955.Google Scholar The section quoted is from pp. 59 ff.

6 Cf. op. cit. p. 105.

7 Cf. van Unnik, op. cit. p. 103.

8 The state of λήθη is described with imagery taken from Iliad XXII, 199–201, as Quispel rightly emphasises.

9 Compare, Valentinus op. cit. 57 and 58. It should be observed that the concept of will is entirely missing from this theologia negativa. But the view of the activity of God—‘He who thinks himself’, etc.—coincides with Aristotle's.

10 Compare Van Unnik, op. cit. 98. Valentinus's principal work contains no allusion whatever to a demiurge.

11 Anticipating my conclusion, I refer to the striking formulation of Hierocles-Ammonius (Photius 462D32 sq.):

12 This distinction is, I think, not observed in H. A. Wolfson's great work on Philo. W. expounds Philo from the point of view of a Western ‘metaphysic of will’, considering him to have been its progenitor. But even a direct derivation of ‘the’ Christian (or, it may be, Jewish) concept of will from the Old Testament appears to me impossible. An assertion like the following, from Frank, E., Philosophical Understandingand Religious Truth, O.U.P. (1945), p. 174Google Scholar: ‘In the Old Testament, however, the idea of a free moral will isindicated for the first time: if God created the world with all its laws, not because this was the best possible world, but because out of His own unfathomable volition He wanted it thus’, surely goes back rather to Luther than to the text of Genesis. A date for the emergence of the whole problem seems to me to be given e silentio Philonis. Had the problem been current in Hellenistic Jewish thought, Philo's naïveté over against it would be quite incomprehensible.

13 But this does not mean that Origen abandons, as Jonas, thinks (Gnosis und Spätantiker Geist, Bd. II. i = Göttingen, 1954)Google Scholar, the distinction between the creator-spirit, identical with the Trinity, and created spirits. His speculations concerning the imperishability of ὕλη even in the eschatological condition of πάντα ὁμοῦ show this as plainly as possible (De princ. II, 2). That spirits have a personality which is never lost is as much an axiom for him as it is for Ammonius. Consequently, in complete contrast to Plotinus, he assigns no sort of ‘creative’ power to the soul. Thiscreative power is a typically Plotinian and a fundamentally anti-Christian conception.

14 An illustration of this is the way in which Nemesius III. 60, applies Ammonius's doctrine concerning the ἕνωσις of body and soul to the Christological problem of his own day.

15 For Ammonius's use of Alexander, a key passage is Nemesius III. 58 ∼ Alex, , de anima 14. 23Google Scholar; compare also Plotinus IV. 20, 15 sqq.

16 This article was already in the press when Dörrie, H.'s paper Ammonios der Lehrer Plotins (Hermes, 1955, pp. 439–77)Google Scholar was published, so that it has not been possible to take account of it. A discussion of its entirely different conclusions would have been a lengthy process.