Folia Theologica 17. (2006)
László Perendy: A Christian Platonist
A CHRISTIAN PLATONIST 179 name in the strict sense of the word, as no one is before him or above him. ("But these words Father, and God, and Creator, and Lord and Master, are not names, but appellations derived from His good deeds and works.'') He is an ineffable Father, who knows everything, who does not move anything, who is not moved by anybody, either. He cannot be contained even by the whole universe, who existed before the world came into beings. These ideas about God are contrary to what the Stoics taught about him. They taught that God himself perishes in fire at the end of the world. In opposition to them, Christians think that he is more than that: he is above any kind of change, he is not identical with the world, and he is not a part of it. He is its creator. The Stoics may have very precious ideas in ethics, but their doctrine of God and their cosmology are inadequate. We can find the other sentence of key importance in the Dialogue (already quoted above: Oűtc ëoTai ttotè àXXoç 0eôç, <3 Tpúcfxüv, oÜT6 T\v dir’ aiûvos, éycii oüraç upos aÙTÔv, nXf)v toû TroLfjaavTo? Kai SiaTâ^avToç TÓ8e tô ttûv. The next sentence is also important: "Nor do we think that there is on God for us, another for you, but that He alone is God who led your fathers out from Egypt with a strong hand and a high arm..."12 So the God of Christians is identical with the creating and liberating God of the prophets. Actually, what Plato was able to communicate about God, that information in fact came from Moses, or better to say from the Spirit who inspired him and who was present at the creation of the world. It is less apparent, but from a Christological point of view the following sentence is very important: "this name (i.e. the name of Christ) itself also containing an unknown significance, just as the title "God" is not a name, but the intuition implanted in human nature of an inexpressible reality."13 I think this sentence can be understood as the affirmation of the divinity of Christ. Given these unambiguous statements, it seems rather strange how diversely the life-work of Justin was evaluated in the 19th cen12 Dialogue with Trypho, Ch. 11. 13 Apologia Minor, Ch. 6; L. W. BARNARD, St. Justin Martyr, The First and Second Apologies (Ancient Christian Writers, 56), New York-Mahwah/N.J., 1997, 77.
