Folia Theologica 19. (2008)
Perendy László: Judging Philosophers - Theophilus of Antioch on Hellenic inconsistency
196 PERENDY, László not simply common properties, or universals). Unique amongst them is the form of the Good, the quasi-divine goal of mystical apprehension that could be achieved, if at all, only at the end of the philosophical pilgrimage. Apprehension of the forms is knowledge (noësis) whereas belief about the changing everyday world is at best opinion (doxa). Knowledge is recollection of the acquaintance we had with the forms before our immortal souls became imprisoned in our bodies. (...) The Parmenides and Theaetetus are late middle or early late dialogues, and the former contains sufficiently devastating criticism of the doctrine of forms to throw Plato's later views into doubt. (...) In the late works, especially the last and longest dialogue, the Laws, Plato returns to the character of the ideal republic in a more sober manner, with civic piety and religion taking much of the burden of education away from philosophy. The Timaeus is especially interesting as a scientific treatise, whose cosmology echoed on in the Neoplatonism of the Christian era."13 He died in 348/47 BC. Theophilus observes the following contradictions in the teaching of Plato (and his followers): they acknowledge that God is uncreated, he is the Father and Maker of the universe, but they are also alleged to assume that uncreated matter is also God, and say that matter was coeval with God; Plato said so many things about the sole rule of God and about the human soul, saying that the soul is immortal, but later he contradicted himself and said that souls pass into other men and, in some cases, into irrational animals. Plato was obviously also ill-informed according to Theophilus, because he wanted the gods consist of matter. He was mistaken also about the deluge, because he said that it took place not over the entire earth but only over the plains. Theophilus criticizes him also because he obviously spoke by conjecture, which means that his statements are not necessarily true. Consequently, his form of education (f| Kax’amov TtoaSeia) did not avail him anything. One must, instead, become a student of the legislation of God, as Plato himself admitted when he said that accurate learning cannot be obtained unless God teaches it through the law. One can also ask: if Plato was the wisest of the Greeks, what about the abilities of the others? 13 Blackburn, 288-289.
