Folia Theologica 17. (2006)
László Perendy: A Christian Platonist
182 L. PERENDY a single event in the chain of events in history, but it is a long process, during which the will of the Father has been gradually revealed for human beings through the Son.23 It is J. Daniélou's observation that in Justin's system the attribute dyevvr|To? can be applied to the Father, in particular to his relation to the Son. Fie makes the significant observation that the attribute appr|Tos is always tightly connected to dyevur|T05. It is undeniable that both expressions show Justin's connection with contemporary Platonists, but we cannot speak about dependence, as some scholars have thought.24 Without any doubt he needed the ideas of contemporary Platonism to accentuate God's absolute transcendence vis-à-vis the Stoics. In his teaching the cosmos is not a divine substance. Nevertheless it is attached to God as a result of redemption. The cosmos, being a created order, has not existed from all eternity, but in fact is the consequence of God's power above chaos. We have been informed by Moses about how it came to be. He relates the events connected with the coming into existence of the cosmos in a more detailed way than Plato, and a long time before him. In his view Moses was in the possession of the entirety of knowledge, whole Plato and his followers can be said to have partial knowledge. Justin can agree with them in these questions in opposition to the Stoics, because God cannot be subject to the categories of the created world. But he emphasizes again and again that Plato's followers are not in the possession of the whole truth. In his opinion this is obvious from the fact that even inside Platonism there is no agreement in some basic question, e.g. in the interpretation of the Timaeus. He shares the view of the so-termed orthodox group, whose members regard the description of the activities of the Demiurge a real creation story, and not just a story serving didactic purposes. In the 20th century Justin was often accused of having dualistic tendencies, because he does not speak about creatio ex nihilo. Some scholars even said that accepting and using the ex23 H. CHADWICK, Justin Martyr’s Defence of Christianity, in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 47/2 (1965) 275-297. 24 J. DANIELOU, Message évangélique et culture hellénistique aux Ile et Ille siècles, Tournai, 1961, 305.
