Folia Theologica 17. (2006)

László Perendy: A Christian Platonist

A CHRISTIAN PLATONIST

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the philosophical milieu the second century Greek apologists lived in.33

Xenocrates, who took over the headship of the Academy from Speusippus in 339 BC, designated Matter also by the term of 'the Everflowing'. His Dyad mostly seems to be an evil principle of disorder. Some of his doctrines influenced the Stoics34 and possibly the Gnostics as well. As we know about his ideas only from fragments and references, it is difficult to determine them exactly. But his triadic division of the universe possibly is the extension of what Speusippus had said about the various sorts or layers of Matter. Xenocrates maintained the theory of four elements, and thought that the so-called celestial element is fire, and not a fifth element.

J. BARNES and M. MIGNUCCI (eds.), Matter and Metaphysics. Fourth Symposium Hellenisticum, Napoli, 1988.

F. D. CAIZZI, La «materia scorrevole» suite tracce di un dibattito perduto, in J. BARNES and M. MIGNUCCI (eds.), Matter and Metaphysics. Fourth Symposium Hellenisticum, Napoli, 1988, 425-470.

E. MCMULLIN, The Concept of Matter in Gree/c and Medieval Philosophy, Notre Dame/Ind, 1965.

R. OMEZ, La notion platonicienne de “XQPA ", in Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 14 (1925) 433-452.

T. G. SINNIGE, Matter and Infinity in the Presocratic Schools and Plato, Assen, 1968.

33 In my summary of the history of Middle Platonism, I will mostly rely on the excellent work written by J. DILLON: The Middle Platonists. A Study of Platonism, 80 B. C. to A. D. 220, London, 1977. A previous and less voluminous work also gives a good summary of this less known and partially neglected period of Platonism: R. E. WITT, Albinus and the History of Middle Platonism, Cambridge, 1937. See also the Middle Platonism section of the bibliography.

34 On the Stoa e.g. the following works can be consulted:

P. BARTH and A. GOEDECKEMEYER, Die Stoa, Stuttgart, 19466.

E. BREHIER, La cosmologie stoïcienne à la fin du paganisme, in Revue de l’histoire des religions 64 (1911) 1-20.

M. L. COLISH, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, Leiden, 1985.

M. POHLENZ, Die Stoa. Geschichte einer geistigen Bewegung, Göttingen, 1978-80.

M. WOLFF, Hipparchus and the Stoic Theory of Motion, in J. BARNES and M. MIGNUCCI (eds.), Matter and Metaphysics. Fourth Symposium Hellenisticum, Napoli, 1988, 471-545.