Folia Theologica 17. (2006)

László Perendy: A Christian Platonist

192

L. PERENDY

Good. He rejects the Aristotelian fifth element and asserts the immortality of the rational soul, not only that of the intellect. There is harmony between the rational and irrational elements of the soul, although there is also a certain tension between them. The substrate of the soul is ungenerated, but its formal aspect is generated.54

Albinus, also known as Alcinous, was the disciple of a certain Gaius, a mysterious figure. We do not even know where Gaius taught. We do not know too much about Albinus' life, either. What seems to be certain is that Galen, the famous physician, took lectures from him about 150 AD. There are two extant works by him, both school handbooks. The more voluminous of them, Didaskalikos, is a scholastic survey of Plato's doctrine. In the chapter on the first principles he starts with Matter, giving only a summary of Timaeus 49Aff. As other Middle Platonists, he uses the word üXr| in the meaning of Prime Matter, which Plato himself never used in the dialogues in the meaning of Matter. Otherwise, what he says is completely Platonic, except that he regards Matter as potential body, perhaps under the influence of Aristotle. He describes the ideas as the thoughts of God. He gives a list of epithets applicable to the Supreme God (äppTyros, aÙTOTeXrjç, cteiTeXrjs, TravTeXíjs). Using them, of course, we cannot define him, we can only name him. He closely follows the description of the Timaeus about how the Demiurge fashioned the world out of chaos, but he quickly adds that there was no time when the world was not. In his mind Plato's intention was to remind us that the cosmos constantly is in a state of coming-to-be and that its cause is outside and above it. However, he thinks that the World Soul was never non-existent,

54 J. DILLON, o. c. 247-257. See also the following works:

M. BALTES, Die Weltentstehung des platonischen Timaios nach den antiken Interpreten, Leiden, 1978.

H. DIELS, Doxographi Graeci, Berlin, 1965.

E. DES PLACES, Atticus, Fragments, Paris, 1977.

C. RIEDWEG, A Christian Middle-Platonic Document - Ps. Justin ’s Ad Graecos de vera religione hitherto known as Cohortatio ad Graecos, in E. A. LIVINGSTONE (ed.), Studia Patristica 26, Leuven, 1993, 177-183.

M. O. YOUNG, Did Some Middle Platonists Deny the Immortality of the Soul?, in Harvard Theological Review 8 (1975) 58-60.