The most distinguished teachers at Athens were Plutarch (q.v.), his disciple Syrianus (who did important work as a commentator on Plato and Aristotle, and further deserves mention for his vigorous defence of the freedom of the will), but above all Proclus (411-485). Proclus is the great schoolman of Neoplato nism. Forty-four years after the death of Proclus the school of Athens was closed by Justinian (A.D. 529) ; but it had already fulfilled its mission in the work of Proclus. The works of Proclus, as the last testament of Hellenism to the church and the middle ages, exerted an incalculable influence on the next thousand years. They not only formed one of the bridges by which the mediaeval thinkers got back to Plato and Aristotle ; they determined the scientific method of thirty generations, and they partly created and partly nourished the Christian mysticism of the middle ages.
The disciples of Proclus are not eminent (Marinus, Asclepiod otus, Ammonius, Zenodotus, Isidorus, Hegias, Damascius). The last president of the Athenian school was Damascius (q.v.). When Justinian issued the edict for the suppression of the school, Da mascius along with Simplicius (the painstaking commentator on Aristotle) and five other Neoplatonists set out to make a home in Persia. They found the conditions were unfavourable and were allowed to return (see CHOSROES I.).
At the beginning of the 6th century Neoplatonism had ceased to exist in the East as an independent philosophy. Almost at the same time, however—and the coincidence is not accidental— it made new conquests in the church theology through the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius. It began to bear fruit in Christian mysticism, and to diffuse a new magical leaven through the wor ship of the church.
In the West, where philosophical efforts of any kind had been very rare since the and century, and where mystical contempla tion did not meet with the necessary conditions, Neoplatonism found a congenial soil only in isolated individuals. C. Marius Victorinus (q.v.) translated certain works of Plotinus, and thus had a decisive influence on the spiritual history of Augustine (Confess. vii. 9, viii. 2). It may be said that Neoplatonism influ enced the West only through the medium of the church theology, or, in some instances, under that disguise. Even Boetius (it may now be considered certain) was a catholic Christian, although his whole mode of thought was certainly Neoplatonic (see BoEnus).
Neoplatonism and the Theology of the Church.—The question as to the influence of Neoplatonism on the development of Christianity is not easily answered, because it is scarcely pos sible to get a complete view of their mutual relations. The answer will depend, in the first instance, upon how much is included under the term "Neoplatonism." If Neoplatonism is understood in the widest sense, as the highest and fittest expression of the religious movements at work in the Graeco-Roman empire from the and to the 5th century, then it may be regarded as the twin sister of the church dogmatic which grew up during the same period; the younger sister was brought up by the elder, then re belled against her and at last tyrannized over her. In so far as Neoplatonism and the church dogmatic set out from the felt need of redemption, in so far as both sought to deliver the soul from sensuality and recognized man's inability without divine aid—without a revelation—to attain salvation and a sure knowl edge of the truth, they are at once most intimately related and at the same time mutually independent. It must be confessed that when Christianity began to project a theology it was already deeply impregnated by Hellenic influences. But the influence is
to be traced not so much to philosophy as to the general culture of the time, and the whole set of conditions under which spiritual life was manifested. When Neoplatonism appeared, the Christian church had already laid down the main positions of her theology ; or if not, she worked them out alongside of Neoplatonism—that is not a mere accident—but still independently. It was only by identifying itself with the whole history of Greek philosophy, or by figuring as pure Platonism restored, that Neoplatonism could stigmatize the church theology of Alexandria as a plagiarism from itself. These assumptions, however, were fanciful. Although our sources are unfortunately very imperfect, the theology of the church does not appear to have learned much from Neoplatonism in the 3rd century—partly because the latter had not yet reached the form in which its doctrines could be accepted by the church dogmatic, and partly because theology was otherwise occupied. Her first business was to plant herself firmly on her own territory, to make good her position and clear away old and objectionable opinions. Origen was quite as independent a thinker as Plotinus; only, they both drew on the same tradition. From the 4th century downwards, however, the influence of Neoplatonism on the Orien tal theologians was of the utmost importance. The church gradu ally expressed her most peculiar convictions in dogmas, which were formulated by philosophical methods, but were irreconcilable with Neoplatonism (the Christological dogmas) ; and the further this process went the more unrestrainedly did theologians resign themselves to the influence of Neoplatonism on all other ques tions. The doctrines of the incarnation, the resurrection of the flesh and the creation of the world in time marked the boundary line between the church's dogmatic and Neoplatonism ; in every other respect, theologians and Neoplatonists drew so closely to gether that many of them are completely at one. In fact, there were special cases, like that of Synesius, in which a speculative reconstruction of distinctively Christian doctrines by Christian men was winked at. If a book does not happen to touch on any of the above-mentioned doctrines, it may often be doubtful whether the writer is a Christian or a Neoplatonist. In ethical precepts, in directions for right living (that is, asceticism), the two systems approximate more and more closely. But it was here that Neoplatonism finally celebrated its greatest triumph. It in doctrinated the church with all its mysticism, its mystic exercises and even its magical cultus as taught by Iamblichus. The works of the pseudo-Dionysius contain a gnosis in which, by means of the teaching of Iamblichus and Proclus, the church's theology is turned into a scholastic mysticism with directions on matters of practice and ritual. And as these writings were attributed to Dionysius, the disciple of the apostles, the scholastic mysticism which they unfold was regarded as an apostolic, not to say a divine, science. The influence exercised by these writings, first on the East, and then—after the 9th (or i 2th) century—on the West, cannot be overestimated. It is impossible to enlarge upon it here ; suffice it to say that the mystical and pietistic devotion of our own day, even in the Protestant churches, is nourished on works whose ancestry can be traced, through a series of inter mediate links, to the writings of the pseudo-Areopagite.