egion,
to fight for its own position and to conquer older notions intolerable
to it. Origen was quite as independent a thinker as Plotinus; but both
drew from the same tradition. On the other hand, the influence of
Neoplatonism on the Oriental theologians was very great from the fourth
century. The more the Church expressed its peculiar ideas in doctrines
which, though worked out by means of philosophy, were yet unacceptable
to Neoplatonism (the christological doctrines), the more readily did
theologians in all other questions resign themselves to the influence of
the latter system. The doctrines of the incarnation, of the resurrection
of the body, and of the creation of the word, in time formed the
boundary lines between the dogmatic of the Church and Neoplatonism; in
all else ecclesiastical theologians and Neoplatonists approximated so
closely that many among them were completely at one. Nay, there were
Christian men, such as Synesius, for example, who in certain
circumstances were not found fault with for giving a speculative
interpretation of the specifically Christian doctrines. If in any
writing the doctrines just named are not referred to, it is often
doubtful whether it was composed by a Christian or a Neoplatonist. Above
all, the ethical rules, the precepts of the right life, that is,
asceticism, were always similar. Here Neoplatonism in the end celebrated
its greatest triumph. It introduced into the church its entire
mysticism, its mystic exercises, and even the magical ceremonies, as
expounded by Iamblichus. The writings of the pseudo-Dionysius contain a
Gnosis in which, by means of the doctrines of Iamblichus and doctrines
like those of Proclus, the dogmatic of the church is changed into a
scholastic mysticism with directions for practical life and worship. As
the writings of this pseudo-Dionysius were regarded as those of
Dionysius the disciple of the Apostle, the scholastic mysticism which
they taught was regarded as apostolic, almost as a divine science. The
importance which these writings obtained first in the East, then from
the ninth or the twelfth century also in the West, cannot be too highly
estimated. It is impossible to explain them here. This much only may be
said, that the mystical and pietistic devotion of to-day, even in the
Protestant Church, draws its nourishment from writings whose connection
with those of the pseudo-Areopagitic can still be traced through its
various intermediate stages.