Albinus and Plotinus on Divine Attributes
On two previous occasions I tried to show how neither Plato nor Aristotle held that God was unknowable, ineffable, and unnameable, how the tentative objections against the unknowability of the ideas raised in the Parmenides and Sophist are answered by Aristotle, how in the extant literature of Greek...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1952
|
| In: |
Harvard theological review
Year: 1952, Volume: 45, Issue: 2, Pages: 115-130 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | On two previous occasions I tried to show how neither Plato nor Aristotle held that God was unknowable, ineffable, and unnameable, how the tentative objections against the unknowability of the ideas raised in the Parmenides and Sophist are answered by Aristotle, how in the extant literature of Greek philosophy prior to Philo there is no conception of a God who is unknowable and unnameable and ineffable, how Philo arrived at the conception of an unknowable, ineffable, and unnameable God, how he may have meant it to be either an interpretation of Plato or something in opposition to him, and how the description of God as ineffable found in Albinus and Plotinus may have been due to the influence of Philo. We may add here that, though Plotinus attributes his conception of a hierarchy of three hypostases to Parmenides as reported by Plato and though it is also to that Parmenides that he may refer by the pronoun “he” in his statement, “he says that it (the One) cannot be spoken (ῥητòν) or described (γραπτóν),” neither the views which he attributes to Plato nor the language which he quotes from him are those of Plato. They are rather those of older interpreters of Plato, and among them Philo is to be included. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0017816000020769 |