Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| That Even the Platonists, Though They Say These Things Concerning the One True God, Nevertheless Thought that Sacred Rites Were to Be Performed in Honor of Many Gods.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter 12.—That Even the
Platonists, Though They Say These Things Concerning the One True
God, Nevertheless Thought that Sacred Rites Were to Be Performed in
Honor of Many Gods.
But we need not determine from what
source he learned these things,—whether it was from the books of
the ancients who preceded him, or, as is more likely, from the
words of the apostle: “Because that which is known of God, has
been manifested among them, for God hath manifested it to them.
For His invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly
seen, being understood by those things which have been made, also
His eternal power and Godhead.”311
From whatever source he may have
derived this knowledge, then, I think I have made it sufficiently
plain that I have not chosen the Platonic philosophers undeservedly
as the parties with whom to discuss; because the question we have
just taken up concerns the natural theology,—the question,
namely, whether sacred rites are to be performed to one God, or to
many, for the sake of the happiness which is to be after death. I
have specially chosen them because their juster thoughts concerning
the one God who made heaven and earth, have made them illustrious
among philosophers. This has given them such superiority to all
others in the judgment of posterity, that, though Aristotle, the
disciple of Plato, a man of eminent abilities, inferior in
eloquence to Plato, yet far superior to many in that respect, had
founded the Peripatetic sect,—so called because they were in the
habit of walking about during their disputations,—and though he
had, through the greatness of his fame, gathered very many
disciples into his school, even during the life of his master; and
though Plato at his death was succeeded in his school, which was
called the Academy, by Speusippus, his sister’s son, and
Xenocrates, his beloved disciple, who, together with their
successors, were called from this name of the school, Academics;
nevertheless the most illustrious recent philosophers, who have
chosen to follow Plato, have been unwilling to be called
Peripatetics, or Academics, but have preferred the name of
Platonists. Among these were the renowned Plotinus, Iamblichus,
and Porphyry, who were Greeks, and the African Apuleius, who was
learned both in the Greek and Latin tongues. All these, however,
and the rest who were of the same school, and also Plato himself,
thought that sacred rites ought to be performed in honor of many
gods.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
