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Key Players in Alexandrine Cosmology

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The Desert Fathers as the First Christian Mystics

Mysticism
There is little of Mysticism in the first schools of Greek philosophy, but it already takes a large place in the system of Plato, e.g., in his theory of the world of ideas, of the origin of the world soul and the human soul, in his doctrine of recollection and intuition. The Alexandrian Jew Philo (30 B.C-A.D. 50) combined these Platonic elements with the data of the Old Testament, and taught that every man, by freeing himself from matter and receiving illumination from God, may reach the mystical, ecstatic, or prophetical state, where he is absorbed into the Divinity. The most systematic attempt at a philosophical system of a mystical character was that of the Neoplatonic School of Alexandria, especially of Plotinus (A.D. 205-70) in his "Enneads". His system is a syncretism of the previous philosophies on the basis of Mysticism--an emanative and pantheistic Monism. Above all being, there is the One absolutely indetermined, the absolutely Good. From it come forth through successive emanations intelligence (nous) with its ideas, the world-soul with its plastic forces (logoi spermatikoi), matter inactive, and the principle of imperfection. The human soul had its existence in the world-soul until it was united with matter. The end of human life and of philosophy is to realize the mystical return of the soul to God. Freeing itself from the sensuous world by purification (katharsis), the human soul ascends by successive steps through the various degrees of the metaphysical order, until it unites itself in a confused and unconscious contemplation to the One, and sinks into it: it is the state of ecstasis.

With Christianity, the history of Mysticism enters into a new period. The Fathers recognized indeed the partial truth of the pagan system, but they pointed out also its fundamental errors. They made a distinction between reason and faith, philosophy and theology; they acknowledged the aspirations of the soul, but, at the same time, they emphasized its essential inability to penetrate the mysteries of Divine life. They taught that the vision of God is the work of grace and the reward of eternal life; in the present life only a few souls, by a special grace, can reach it. On these principles, the Christian school of Alexandria opposed the true gnosis based on grace and faith to the Gnostic heresies. St. Augustine teaches indeed that we know the essences of things in rationibus aeternis (in the eternal reasons), but this knowledge has its starting point in the data of sense (cf. Quæstiones, LXXXIII, c. xlvi). Pseudo-Dionysius, in his various works, gave a systematic treatment of Christian Mysticism, carefully distinguishing between rational and mystical knowledge. By the former, he says, we know God, not in His nature, but through the wonderful order of the universe, which is a participation of the Divine ideas ("De Divinis Nomin.", c, vii, §§ 2-3, in P.G., III, 867 sq.). There is, however, he adds, a more perfect knowledge of God possible in this life, beyond the attainments of reason even enlightened by faith, through which the soul contemplates directly the mysteries of Divine light. The contemplation in the present life is possible only to a few privileged souls, through a very special grace of God: it is the theosis, mystike enosis.
source: Mysticism
Christian mysticism advocates teaches that for Christians the major emphasis of mysticism concerns a spiritual transformation of the egoic self, the following of a path designed to produce more fully realized human persons, "created in the Image and Likeness of God" and as such, living in harmonious communion with God, the Church, the rest of humanity, and all creation, including oneself. For Christians, this human potential is realized most perfectly in Jesus, precisely because he is both God and human, and is manifested in others through their association with him, whether conscious, as in the case of Christian mystics, or unconscious, with regard to spiritual persons who follow other traditions, such as Gandhi. The Eastern Christian tradition speaks of this transformation in terms of theosis or divinization, perhaps best summed up by an ancient aphorism usually attributed to Athanasius of Alexandria: "God became human so that man might become god."[12]

Going back at least to Evagrius Ponticus and Pseudo-Dionysius, Christian mystics have pursued a threefold path in their pursuit of holiness. While the three aspects have different names in the different Christian traditions, they can be characterized as purgative, illuminative, and unitive, corresponding to body, soul (or mind), and spirit. The first, the way of purification, is where aspiring Christian mystics start. This aspect focuses on discipline, particularly in terms of the human body; thus, it emphasizes prayer at certain times, either alone or with others, and in certain postures, often standing or kneeling. It also emphasizes the other disciplines of fasting and alms-giving, the latter including those activities called "the works of mercy," both spiritual and corporal, such as feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless.

Purification, which grounds Christian spirituality in general, is primarily focused on efforts to, in the words of St. Paul, "put to death the deeds of the flesh by the Holy Spirit" (Romans 8:13). The "deeds of the flesh" here include not only external behavior, but also those habits, attitudes, compulsions, addictions, etc. (sometimes called egoic passions) which oppose themselves to true being and living as a Christian not only exteriorly, but interiorly as well. Evelyn Underhill describes purification as an awareness of one's own imperfections and finiteness, followed by self-discipline and mortification. Because of its physical, disciplinary aspect, this phase, as well as the entire Christian spiritual path, is often referred to as "ascetic," a term which is derived from a Greek word which connotes athletic training. Because of this, in ancient Christian literature, prominent mystics are often called "spiritual athletes," an image which is also used several times in the New Testament to describe the Christian life. What is sought here is salvation in the original sense of the word, referring not only to one's eternal fate, but also to healing in all areas of life, including the restoration of spiritual, psychological, and physical health.
It remains a paradox of the mystics that the passivity at which they appear to aim is really a state of the most intense activity: more, that where it is wholly absent no great creative action can take place. In it, the superficial self compels itself to be still, in order that it may liberate another more deep-seated power which is, in the ecstasy of the contemplative genius, raised to the highest pitch of efficiency. Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness... by Evelyn Underhill
The second phase, the path of illumination, has to do with the activity of the Holy Spirit enlightening the mind, giving insights into truths not only explicit in scripture and the rest of the Christian tradition, but also those implicit in nature, not in the scientific sense, but rather in terms of an illumination of the "depth" aspects of reality and natural happenings, such that the working of God is perceived in all that one experiences. Underhill describes it as marked by a consciousness of a transcendent order and a vision of a new heaven and a new earth.

The third phase, usually called contemplation in the Western tradition, refers to the experience of oneself as in some way united with God. The experience of union varies, but it is first and foremost always associated with a reuniting with Divine love, the underlying theme being that God, the perfect goodness,[13] is known or experienced at least as much by the heart as by the intellect since, in the words 1 John 4:16: "God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him." Some approaches to classical mysticism would consider the first two phases as preparatory to the third, explicitly mystical experience, but others state that these three phases overlap and intertwine.

Author and mystic Evelyn Underhill recognizes two additional phases to the mystical path. First comes the awakening, the stage in which one begins to have some consciousness of absolute or divine reality. Purgation and illumination are followed by a fourth stage which Underhill, borrowing the language of St. John of the Cross, calls the dark night of the soul. This stage, experienced by the few, is one of final and complete purification and is marked by confusion, helplessness, stagnation of the will, and a sense of the withdrawal of God's presence. This dark night of the soul is not, in Underhill's conception, the Divine Darkness of the pseudo-Dionysius and German Christian mysticism. It is the period of final "unselfing" and the surrender to the hidden purposes of the divine will. Her fifth and final stage is union with the object of love, the one Reality, God. Here the self has been permanently established on a transcendental level and liberated for a new purpose.[14]

Another aspect of traditional Christian spirituality, or mysticism, has to do with its communal basis. Even for hermits, the Christian life is always lived in communion with the Church, the community of believers. Thus, participation in corporate worship, especially the Eucharist, is an essential part of Christian mysticism. Connected with this is the practice of having a spiritual director, confessor, or "soul friend" with which to discuss one's spiritual progress. This person, who may be clerical or lay, acts as a spiritual mentor.

Influential Christian Mystics and Texts


Greek Influences

While not Christian, the influences of Greek thought are apparent in the earliest Christian Mystics and their writings. Plato (428–348 BCE) is considered the most important of ancient philosophers and his philosophical system provides the basis of most later mystical forms. Plotinus (c. 205 – 270 CE) provided the non-Christian, neo-Platonic basis for much Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mysticism.

Early Christianssource: Wikipedia

  • WHY RELIGION CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT MYSTICISM...Luke Timothy Johnson
  • Orthodox Mysticism: Teachings of the Desert Fathers
    • Background and Nature of the Hesychast Controversy
    • Importance of Mind-Body Views
    • The "Prayer of the Heart" or the "Jesus Prayer"
    • Source for Teachings of the Desert Fathers
    • True Meaning of Asceticism
    • Psychology of the Mystic
    • Further definitions are given, and particular emphasis of the renunciation of the products of one's own imagination
    • Signs of Religious Ecstasy
    • Cataphatic and Apophatic Theology
    • Mysticism in the Western Church
  • The Hesychast system
    • The Hesychast system
    • History of the controversy
  • Quietism
  • Excerpts from Encyclopedia of Monasticism Hesychasm...by John Chryssavgis

    The understanding is that the Hesychast confines within the body the power of the soul. The Hesychast is not dispersed but concentrated on a single point or person: God. Therefore, the true definition of silence is not outward but inward. Drawing on Basil's famous Second Letter on spirituality, we might say that the hesychast is the one who tries to move from multiplicity to simplicity, from diversity to unity. "The kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21): the Hesychast realizes this inwardly and intensely, and here silence connects with apophatic (i.e., negative) theology. The apophatic way applies both to theology and to prayer. God is a mystery above and beyond our understanding and even our experience. Silence is a way of addressing God in prayer, as it constitutes an imageless, wordless attitude whereby Hesychast no longer simply says the prayer but is prayer all the time.

    The Jesus Prayer--otherwise known as "pure prayer," "prayer of the intellect," or "prayer of the heart"--is the way with which such silence has been practiced for centuries in the Christian east. The essential words of this prayer are "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me." The origins of this prayer can be sought in Nitria and Scetis of fourth-century Egypt. The fundamental elements of the Jesus Prayer are precisely the discipline of repetition, the emphasis on penitence, the teaching of imageless prayer, the devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus, the use of a specific formula (probably dating from the sixth or seventh century), and the linking of this formula with the rhythm of breathing (a technique found as early as the 13th century).
  • The Desert, Sleep, and the Mystical Experience (Sleepless in America)...by John Cline, Ph.D.
    For millennia mystics have gone to the desert to become one with the absolute.
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The Alexandrian Schools...II...Philosophy

Although it is not possible to divide literatures with absolute rigidity by centuries, and although the intellectual life of Alexandria, particularly as applied to science, long survived the Roman conquest, yet at that period the school, which for some time had been gradually breaking up, seems finally to have succumbed. The later productions in the field of pure literature bear the stamp of Rome rather than of Alexandria. But in that city for some time past there had been various forces secretly working, and these, coming in contact with great spiritual changes in the world around, produced a second outburst of intellectual activity, which is generally known as the Alexandrian school of philosophy. The doctrines of this school were a fusion of Eastern and Western thought, and combined in varying proportions the elements of Hellenistic and Jewish philosophy. Traces of this eclectic tendency are discoverable as far back as 280 B.C., but for practical purposes the dates of the school may be given as from about 30 B.C. to A.D. 529. The city of Alexandria had gradually become the neutral ground of Europe, Asia and Africa. Its population, then as at the present day. was a heterogeneous collection of all races. Alexander had planted a colony of Jews who had increased in number until at the beginning of the Christian era they occupied two-fifths of the city and held some of the highest offices. The contact of Jewish theology with Greek speculation became the great problem of thought. The Jewish ideas of divine authority and their transcendental theories of conduct were peculiarly attractive to the Greek thinkers who found no inspiration in the dry intellectualism into which they had fallen (see NEO-PYTHAGOREANISM). At the same time the Jews of the Dispersion had to some extent shaken off the exclusiveness of,their old political relations and were prepared to compare and contrast their old territorial theology with cosmopolitan culture. Further, when the two sides came to consider the results of their intellectual inheritance they found that they had sufficient common ground for the initial compromise. Thus the Hellenistic doctrine of personal revelation could be combined with the Jewish tradition of a complete theology revealed to a special people. The result was the application of a purely philosophical system to the somewhat vague and unorganized corpus of Jewish theology. The matter was Jewish, the arrangement Greek. According to the relative predominance of these two elements arose Gnosticism, the Patristic theology, and the philosophical schools of Neo-Pythagoreanism, Neo-Platonism and eclectic Platonism.

The members of the school may be enumerated under three heads. (1) The beginnings of the eclectic spirit are, according to some authorities, discernible in the Septuagint (280 B.C.) (see Frankel, Historisch-kritische Studien zur Septuaginta, 1841), but the first concrete exemplification is found in Aristobulus (c. 160 B,C.). So far as the Jewish succession is concerned, the great name is that of Philo in the first century of our era. He took Greek metaphysical theories, and, by the allegorical method, interpreted them in accordance with the Jewish Revelation. He dealt with (a) human life as explained by the relative nature of Man and God, (b) the Divine nature and the existence of God, and, c) the great Logos doctrine as the explanation of the relation between God and the material universe. From these three arguments he developed an elaborate theosophy which was a syncretism of oriental mysticism and pure Greek metaphysic, and may be regarded as, representing the climax of Jewish philosophy, (2) The first purely philosophical phenomenon of the Alexandrian school was Neo-Pythagoreanism, the second and last Neo-Platonism, Leaving all detailed descriptions of these schools to special articles,devoted to them, it is sufficient here to say that their doctrines were a synthesis of Platonism, Stoicism and the later Aristotelianism with a leaven of oriental mysticism which gradually became more and more important. The world to which they spoke had begun to demand a doctrine of salvation to satisfy the human soul. They endeavoured to deal with the problem of good and evil. They therefore devoted themselves to examining the nature of the soul, and taught that its freedom consists in communion with God, to be achieved by absorption in a sort of ecstatic trance. This doctrine reaches its height in Plotinus, after whom it degenerated into magic and theurgy in its unsuccessful combat with the victorious Christianity. Finally this pagan theosophy was driven from Alexandria back to Athens under Plutarch and Produs, and occupied itself largely in purely historical work based mainly on the attempt to re-organize ancient philosophy in conformity with the system of Plotinus. This school ended under Damascius when Justinian closed the Athenian schools (A,D. 529). (3) The eddies of Neo-Platonism had a considerable effect on certain Christian thinkers about the beginning of the 3rd century, Among these the most important were Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Clement, as a scholar and a theologian, proposed to unite the mysticism of NeoPlatonism with the practical spirit of Christianity. He combined the principle of pure living with that of free thinking, and held that instruction must have regard to the mental capacity of the hearer. The compatibility of Christian and later Neo-Platonic ideas is evidenced by the writings of Synesius, bishop of Ptolemais, and though Neo-Platonism eventually succumbed to Christianity, it had the effect, through the writings of Clement and Origen, of modifying the tyrannical fanaticism and ultradogmatism of the early Christian writers.
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The Alexandrian Schools...I...Literature

The general character of the literature of the school appears as the necessary consequence of the state of affairs brought about by the fall of Greek nationality and independence. The great works of the Greek mind had formerly been the products of a fresh life of nature and perfect freedom of thought. All their hymns, epics and histories were bound up with their individuality as a free people. But the Macedonian conquest at Chaeroneia brought about a complete dissolution of this Greek life in all its relations, private and political. The full, genial spirit of Greek thought vanished when freedom, with which it was inseparably united, was lost. A substitute for this originality was found at Alexandria in learned research, extended and multifarious knowledge. Amply provided with means for acquiring information, and under the watchful care of a great monarch, the Alexandrians readily took this new direction in literature. With all the great objects removed which could excite a true spirit of poetry, they devoted themselves to minute researches in all sciences subordinate to literature proper. They studied criticism, grammar, prosody and metre, antiquities and mythology. The results of this study constantly appear in their productions. Their works are never national, never addressed to a people, but to a circle of learned men. Moreover, the very fact of being under the protection and, as it were, in the pay of an absolute monarch was damaging to the character of their literature. There was introduced into it a courtly element, clear traces of which, with all its accompaniments, are found in the extant works of the school. One other fact, not to be forgotten in forming a general estimate of the literary value of their productions, is, that the same writer was frequently or almost always distinguished in several special sciences. The most renowned poets were at the same time men of culture and science, critics, archaeologists, astronomers or physicians. To such writers the poetical form was merely a convenient vehicle for the exposition of science.

The forms of poetical composition chiefly cultivated by the Alexandrians were epic and lyric, or elegiac. Great epics are wanting; but in their place, as might almost have been expected, are found the historical and the didactic or expository epics. The subjects of the historical epics were generally some of the well-known myths, in the exposition of which the writer could exhibit the full extent of his learning and his perfect command of verse. These poems are in a sense valuable as repertoires of antiquities; but their style is on the whole bad, and infinite patience is required to clear up their numerous and obscure allusions. The best extant specimen is the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius; the most characteristic is the Alexandra or Cassandra of Lycophron, the obscurity of which is almost proverbial.

The subjects of didactic epics were very numerous; they seem to have depended on the special knowledge possessed by the writers, who used verse as a form for unfolding their information. Some, e.g. the lost poem of Callimachus, called Atna, were on the origin of myths and religious observances; others were on special sciences. Thus we have two poems of Aratus, who, though not resident at Alexandria, was so thoroughly imbued with the Alexandrian spirit as to be with reason included in the school; the one is an essay on astronomy, the other an account of the signs of the weather. Nicander of Colophon has also left us two epics, one on remedies for poisons, the other on the bites of venomous beasts. Euphorion and Rhianus wrote mythological epics. The spirit of all their productions is the same, that of learned research. They are distinguished by artistic form, purity of expression and strict attention to the laws of metre and prosody, qualities which, however good in
themselves, do not compensate for want of originality, freshness and power.

In their lyric and elegiac poetry there is much worthy of admiration. The specimens we possess are not devoid of talent or of a certain happy art of expression. Yet, for the most part, they either relate to objects thoroughly incapable of poetic treatment, where the writer's endeavour is rather to expound the matter fully than to render it poetically beautiful, or else expend themselves on short isolated subjects, generally myths, and are erotic in character. The earliest of the elegiac poets was Philetas, the sweet singer of Cos. But the most distinguished was Callimachus, undoubtedly the greatest of the Alexandrian poets. Of his numerous works there remain to us only a few hymns, epigrams and fragments of elegies. 1 Other lyric poets were Phanocles, Hermesianax, Alexander of Aetolia and Lycophron.

Some of the best productions of the school were their epigrams. Of these we have several specimens, and the art of composing them seems to have been assiduously cultivated, as might naturally be expected from the court life of the poets, and their constant endeavours after terseness and neatness of expression. Of kindred character were the parodies and satirical poems, of which the best examples were the Silli of Timon and the Cinaedi of Sotades.
1 A considerable fragment of his epic Hecate has been discovered in the Rainer papyrus.

Dramatic poetry appears to have flourished to some extent. There are still extant three or four varying lists of the seven great dramatists who composed the Pleiad of Alexandria. Their works, perhaps not unfortunately, have perished. A ruder kind of drama, the amoebaean verse, or bucolic mime, developed into the only pure stream of genial poetry found in the Alexandrian School, the Idylls of Theocritus. The name of these poems preserves their original idea; they were pictures of fresh country life.

The most interesting fact connected with this Alexandrian poetry is the powerful influence it exercised on Roman literature. That literature, especially in the Augustan age, is not to be thoroughly understood without due appreciation of the character of the Alexandrian school. The historians of this period were numerous and prolific. Many of them, e.g. Cleitarchus, devoted themselves to the life and achievements of Alexander the Great. The best-known names are those of Timaeus and Polybius.

Before the Alexandrians had begun to produce original works, their researches were directed towards the masterpieces of ancient Greek literature. If that literature was to be a power in the world, it must be handed down to posterity in a form capable of being understood. This was the task begun and carried out by the Alexandrian critics. These men did not merely collect works, but sought to arrange them, to subject the texts to criticism, and to explain any allusion or reference in them which at a later date might become obscure. The complete philological examination of any work consisted, according to them, of the following processes: [GWEB01], arrangement of the text; [GWEB02], settlement of accents;[GWEB03], theory of forms, syntax; [GWEB04], explanation either of words or things; and finally, [GWEB05], judgment on the author and his work, including all questions as to authenticity and integrity. To perform their task adequately required from the critics a wide circle of knowledge; and from this requirement sprang the sciences of grammar, prosody, lexicography, mythology and archaeology. The service rendered by these critics is invaluable. To them we owe not merely the possession of the greatest works of Greek intellect, but the possession of them in a readable state. The most celebrated critics were Zenodotus; Aristophanes of Byzantium, to whom We owe the theory of Greek accents; Crates of Mallus; and Arislarchus of Samothrace, confessedly the coryphaeus of criticism. Others were Lycophron, Callima,chus, Eratosthenes and many of a later age, for the critical school long survived the literary. Dionysius Thrax, the author of the first scientific Greek grammar, may also be mentioned. These philological labours were of great indirect importance, for they led immediately to the study of the natural sciences, and in particular to a more accurate knowiedge of geography and history. Considerable attention began to be paid to the ancient history of Greece, and to all the myths relating to the foundation of states and cities. A large collection of such curious information is contained in the Bibliotheca of Apollodorus, a pupil of Aristarchus who flourished in: the 2nd century B.C. Eratosthenes was the first to write on mathematical and physical geography; he also first attempted to draw up a chronological table of the Egyptian kings and of the historical events of Greece. The sciences of mathematics, astronomy and medicine were also cultivated with assiduity and success at Alexandria, but they. can scarcely be said to have their origin there, or in any strict sense to form a part of the peculiarly Alexandrian literature. The founder of the mathematical school was the celebrated Euclid (Eucleides); among its scholars were Archimedes; Apollonius of Perga, author of a treatise on Conic Sections; Eratosthenes, to whom we owe the first measurement of the earth; and Hipparchus, the founder of the epicyclical theory of the heavens, afterwards called the Ptolemaic system, from its most famous expositor, Claudius Ptolemaeus. Alexandria continued to be celebrated as a school of mathematics and science long after the Christian era. The science of medicine had distinguished representatives in Herophilus and Erasistratus, the two first great anatomists.
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Alexandrian School
Alexandrian School...II...Philosophy
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The Alexandrian Schools...Preface

Under this title are generally included certain strongly marked tendencies in literature, science and art, which took their rise in the ancient Egyptian city of Alexandria. That city, founded by Alexander the Great about the time when Greece, in losing her national independence, lost also her intellectual supremacy, was in every way admirably adapted for becoming the new centre of the world's activity and thought. Its situation brought it into commercial relations with all the nations lying around the Mediterranean, and at the same time rendered it the one communicating link with the wealth and civilization of the East. The great natural advantages it thus enjoyed were artificially increased to an enormous extent by the care of the sovereigns of Egypt. Ptolemy Soter (reigned 323-285 B.C.), to whom, in the general distribution of Alexander's conquests, this kingdom had fallen, began to draw around him from various parts of Greece a circle of men eminent in literature and philosophy. To these he gave every facility for the prosecution of their learned researches. Under the inspiration of his friend Demetrius of Phalerum, the Athenian orator, statesman and philosopher, this Ptolemy laid the foundations of the great Alexandrian library and originated the keen search for all written works, which resulted in the formation of a collection such as the world has seldom seen. He also built, for the convenience of his men of letters, the Museum, in which, maintained by the royal bounty, they resided, studied and taught. This Museum, or academy of science, was in many respects not unlike a modern university. The work thus begun by Ptolemy Soter was carried on vigorously by his descendants, in particular by his two immediate successors, Ptolemy Philadelphus and Ptolemy Euergetes. Philadelphus (285-247), whose librarian was the celebrated Callimachus, bought up all Aristotle's collection of books, and also introduced a number of Jewish and Egyptian works. Among these appears to have been a portion of the Septuagint. Euergetes (247-222) largely increased the library by seizing on the original editions of the dramatists laid up in the Athenian archives, and by compelling all travellers who arrived in Alexandria to leave a copy of any work they possessed.

The intellectual movement so originated extended over a long period of years. If we date its rise from the 4th century B.C., at the time of the fall of Greece and the foundation of the GraecoMacedonian empire, we must look for its final dissolution in the 7th century of the Christian era, at the time of the fall of Alexandria and the rise of the Mahommedan power. But this very long period falls into two divisions. The first, extending from about 306 to 30, includes the time from the foundation of the Ptolemaic dynasty to its final subjugation by the Romans; the second extends from 30 to A.D. 642, when Alexandria was destroyed by the Arabs. The characteristic features of these divisions are very clearly marked, and their difference affords an explanation of the variety and vagueness of meaning attaching to the term" Alexandrian School." In the first of the two periods the intellectual activity was of a purely literary and scientific nature. It was an attempt to continue and develop, under new conditions, the old Hellenic culture. This direction of effort was particularly noticeable under the early Ptolemies, Alexandria being then almost the only home in the world for pure literature. During the last century and a half before the Christian era, the school, as it might be called, began to break up and to lose its individuality. This was due partly to the state of government under some of the later Ptolemies, partly to the formation of new literary circles in Rhodes, Syria and elsewhere, whose supporters, though retaining the Alexandrian peculiarities, could scarcely be included in the Alexandrian school. The loss of active life, consequent on this gradual dissolution, was much increased when Alexandria fell under Roman sway. Then the influence of the school was extended over the whole known world, but men of letters began to concentrate at Rome rather than at Alexandria. In that city, however, there were new forces in operation which produced a second grand outburst of intellectual life. The new movement was not in the old direction-had, indeed, nothing in common with it. With its character largely determined by Jewish elements, and even more by contact with the dogmas of Christianity, this second Alexandrian school resulted in the speculative philosophy of the Neo-Platonists and the religious philosophy of the Gnostics and early church fathers.

There appear, therefore, to be at least two definite signification of the title Alexandrian School; or rather, there are two Alexandrian schools, distinct both chronologically and in substance. The one is the Alexandrian school of poetry and science, the other the Alexandrian school of philosophy. The term "school," however, has not the same meaning as when applied to the Academics or Peripatetics, the Stoics or Epicureans. These consisted of a company united by holding in common certain speculative principles, by having the same theory of things. There was nothing at all corresponding to this among the Alexandrians. In literature their activities were directed to the most diverse objects; they have only in common a certain spirit or form. There was among them no definite system of philosophy. Even in the later schools of philosophy proper there is found a community rather of tendency than of definite result or of fixed principles.
Alexandrian School
Alexandrian School...I...Literature
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The Alexandrian Schools

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Educating Early Monks...The Alexandrine Schools and the Beginnings of Christian Philosophy

Many of the early desert fathers were monks educated at the Alexandrine University and the related Catechetical School, both located in Alexandria, Egypt. Many of these monks were exposed to the teachings of Plato that tended to fuse the writings of Plato and Christianity into Neoplatonism. Two of the early Church Fathers Clement (150 - 215) and Origen (185 – 254), as heads of the Cathechetical School in Alexandria, were instrumental in the education of these monks. The teachings and writings from both these early Church fathers were influenced by Neoplatonism. Origen's writing were declared heretical by the Church in the 6th century.
"There were two kinds of monks in Egypt - the simple and uneducated, who composed the majority, and the Origenists, an educated minority."...Christian Reincarnation
"Scholars have seen two monastic camps: “Hellenic or Hellenized monks whose theology was more intellectual and more speculative than the naïve and literal beliefs of their Egyptian brethren."...source: COPTIC PALLADIANA I: THE LIFE OF PAMBO (LAUSIAC HISTORY 9-10)
The Alexandrian school is a collective designation for certain tendencies in literature, philosophy, medicine, and the sciences that developed in the Hellenistic cultural center of Alexandria, Egypt during the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

Alexandria was a remarkable center of learning due to the blending of Greek and Oriental influences, its favorable situation and commercial resources, and the enlightened energy of some of the Macedonian Dynasty of the Ptolemies ruling over Egypt, in the final centuries BC. Much scholarly work was collected in the great Library of Alexandria during this time. A lot of epic poetry, as well as works on geography, history, mathematics, astronomy and medicine were composed during this period.

The name of Alexandrian school is also used to describe the religious and philosophical developments in Alexandria after the 1st century. The mix of Jewish theology and Greek philosophy led to a syncretic mix and much mystical speculation. The Neoplatonists devoted themselves to examining the nature of the soul, and sought communion with God. The two great schools of biblical interpretation in the early Christian church incorporated Neoplatonism and philosophical beliefs from Plato's teachings into Christianity, and interpreted much of the Bible allegorically. The founders of the Alexandrian school of Christian theology were Clement of Alexandria and Origen...source: Wikipedia
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Nature of the Human Soul...Excerpts from Alexandrine Teaching

Excerpts from: Alexandrine Teaching...by R. B. Tollinton

p. 65

[Clement] sees life as a divinely ordered system of training for the human soul. There are stages, there are the several subjects in their order, there are the various lines of approach, but in all the Word is operative, leading men

p. 66

upwards, pointing the road towards final vision, deeming nothing unimportant and no man wholly incapable of higher things. Greek philosophy and the Old Testament were converging roads of progress which met in the highway of Christianity. Each had its place in the scheme of the divine Educator, so that Plato as well as Moses led their followers towards the Kingdom of God. Such teaching was indeed catholic in the highest sense, and was in that age probably only possible in Alexandria.
p. 78

Association with matter may corrupt the soul, so that it becomes unclean and ugly and acquires passions by too intimate converse with the body, but in its proper function soul redeems matter from its evil and imparts to it whatever is possible of the good. Thus soul is the active power in the creation of the universe and in its maintenance. It is with the universe that Time comes into being, so that time is only possible through the soul. In itself the soul is immortal, both the world soul and the soul of the individual, which is capable of existing apart from the body and may be reincarnate in another existence.
p. 100

If we ask what is the exact operation of the soul, the answer is that it gives form to matter.
p. 101

Soul gives form to matter. Matter is receptive. It must be there, in existence, if it is to receive. So, co-existent with spirit, matter would be eternal.
p. 117

Matter is contrasted more often than associated with form. It is the lowest constituent. It limits the spirit. It beguiles the soul that enters into it. It drags its spiritual visitor down to lower levels and even sinks it in the mud. Constantly the epithets applied to it are such terms as lifeless, shapeless, corruptible, base, despicable, shifting, defective. It is classed with vice and corruption. At best it is devoid in its own nature of all good. More often it is the positive cause of evil, restricting ideals, thwarting the purpose of the artificer, occasioning sin.
p. 124

Sensuous beauty was associated with the

p. 125

body and the body was the prison and impediment of the soul.
p. 134

What is man's origin? How does he come here? Plainly man is a composite creature, body and soul, or perhaps a trinity, as St. Paul spoke of his body, soul and spirit.
p. 135

But in the origin of the other element, the soul, the Alexandrines were more interested. Origen says that there were three possible theories on the subject. Either the soul came by creation, so that a new soul came into being for every body, or the soul came by what we should term heredity, which is the traducianist explanation and implies that along with the physical element spiritual qualities also came from parent to child, on which modern Eugenists have so much to say. Thirdly was the account that rested upon the supposition of preexistence; the soul came into the body ab extra, having lived earlier lives and bringing with it the qualities and a nature which it had acquired by its own conduct. There is an obvious similarity

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between this theory and the Buddhist doctrine of "Karma". It is an unsettled question whether on this point eastern and western doctrine arose independently, by a parallel growth, or whether they had a common source.

Between these different explanations opinions varied. Clement alone leaves us in no doubt that he believed each soul existed by separate creation; "God made us; we did not pre-exist. Had we preexisted we should have known where we had been and how and why we came here. If we did not pre-exist, God alone is responsible for our birth. "And all his references to Gnostic reincarnation are adverse. Nor has he anything to say for Platonic recollection.... On this point Clement's position is clear and defined.

Philo before him had been less sure. As so often Philo had learned something from Plato and something from the Scriptures, and the two elements remain in his teaching unreconciled. There are passages in which he fully accepts in Plato's way the independent existence of the soul. The soul was either etherial or wholly uncorporeal in nature; in either case it descended into the body from its own place and sphere.
p. 137

We have a more detailed account of the soul's descent to bodily conditions in the notices given us of the system of Basilides. The soul in this Gnostic theory dwells in the upper heaven which is fixed and immobile. Prompted by desire the soul seeks a less immaterial existence, first clothing itself with an etherial envelope of rarefied tenuity, then little by little acquiring more weight and solidity till it comes down to the planetary spheres in each of which it loses something of its pure spirituality.
p. 138

The soul with Origen also pre-exists. Originally God created a number, large but definite, of rational natures, all free, all equal. By their acts of choice they rose or fell in the spiritual scale and in the whole long process of many ages, many worlds, each soul is born into just that body which it has deserved and which will afford it the best opportunities of discipline and development. "I loved Jacob and I hated Esau," is a hard saying, but the difficulty vanishes if their different fortunes are due to their lives in an earlier world. The soul that is united to a human body has really made itself, and there is no great teacher who has laid so terrible a weight of responsibility upon man's free will as Origen.

In this point he is more definite than Plotinus, who recognizes more than one explanation of the soul's incarnation. Once, he tells us in an interesting reminiscence, that he had come down from a mood of contemplation to a more discursive

p. 139

phase of thought, and the change had forced upon him the question: How did any soul enter any body? He devotes a whole tractate to the answer, which is not so much final as suggestive. The soul descends into the body because of the necessity that lower forms of existence should come into being, or because itself it desired to have this experience, even at times deserting its higher loyalty. Or again the soul may have been sent; it comes on a mission, by a divine sowing. Or it comes to care for lower things, to order, to administer and rule. Perhaps its own audacity has caused its fall into material conditions. Perhaps it comes because the experience of this lower life will result in later advantage; pain is gain.... Thus a variety of causes may have brought us here.
p. 140

So, body and soul, man comes into being, a

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composite creature, a wanderer between two worlds, God's image stamped on clay. And yet our arrival here is no matter for unqualified gratitude. "Trailing clouds of glory do we come." Plotinus at any rate would have admitted Wordsworth's belief. But it is a descent. The soul comes down. Birth is a fall. We are prisoners and captives. Life is a dungeon, at best a school away from home. It is not "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given." There is no "joy that a man is born into the world". We do not "bless thee for our creation".

Individual souls, living in the spiritual world, make 'the downward journey and this is how Plotinus describes it: "There comes a stage at which they descend from the universal to become partial and self-centred; in a weary desire of standing apart they find their way, each to a place of its very own. This state long maintained, the soul is a deserter from the All; its differentiation has severed it; its vision is no longer set in the intellectual or spiritual; it is a partial thing, isolated, weakened, full of care, intent upon the fragment; severed from the whole....
p. 142

A like sentiment underlies a passage in Origen, where he quaintly remarks that only bad men celebrate their birthdays.

The estimate of life implied is surely very different from the teaching of Jesus on service and stewardship and the right

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use of this world's goods. Such other-worldliness is not unqualified. The Alexandrines have something to say on the other side. But on the whole the soul of man has come down. The body is limitation rather than medium and opportunity.
p. 145

All souls, with Origen, started in equality but differentiation came through freedom, the responsibility being entirely their own. For here there was a marked difference between the teaching of the Church and that of the Gnostics. The latter held that souls were born with different natures; some were spiritual, some hylic or material; between were the psychic or natural group, who could rise and fall, whereas a spiritual soul was spiritual

p. 146

always, and a material soul could never be anything else.

Moreover, Origen continued, it was plain matter of fact that character did change, the bad man became good, the good man bad. Thus when the soul enters into human conditions, its character is in no case so definitely determined as to leave it without moral freedom. Our salvation or election was not predetermined before our arrival here; it is of ourselves that we are thus or thus.
p. 155

Only the soul of man, said Philo, had received from God the power of voluntary movement, being in this regard made like unto God and liberated as far as possible-we note the limitation-from that stern mistress, necessity.
p. 168

Philo treats the soul as in its very nature immortal. It is of divine origin, existing before the body and outlasting it. Clement and Origen are of the same mind. For the Gnostics too the soul descends and the soul returns.

Thus their theory of immortality is not conditional. Annihilation, which some of us are now inclined to welcome as an alternative to Eternal Punishment, has no place in any of the Alexandrine schemes. It is quite true that Philo speaks of eternal death awaiting the impious. But this death is not extinction. It is the unending endurance of suffering, the permanent loss of pleasure, desire and hope. The soul is so its own hell. The mark God set upon Cain was indelible. Here, as in the Gospels, we have the unforgivable sin. Something like this condition is supposed in Neoplatonism,

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when the soul descends from body to body, ever more and more involved in matter till at last it loses all strength to lift itself aloft again. It is heavily burdened, numbed into forgetfulness; it carries a great weight that bears it down. But it does not die. There is no extinction.

So there is no Nirvana; the spirit of Origen was too intimately Greek for such a final stage. Perhaps in the case of Plotinus the point is less clear. The individual soul in this life, though it does not lose its relation to the world-soul, is still a distinct and separate self, but the conditions of this life are not those of another.

For Plotinus unity is the source and highest character of true existence, separation, the very sign of imperfection and defect of reality." "Soul Yonder," Plotinus says, "is undifferentiated and undivided." The conclusion may be that in another world the distinctions which separate one

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soul from another are not lost but latent, so that persons are persons still but liberated from much which here is isolating and restrictive in personality. With this possible exception it may be said that the Alexandrines in their teaching on the life of the world to come retain a place for human individuality:

"Eternal form shall still divide
And I shall know him when we meet."

In Christian writers this belief is strengthened by the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. Philo knows nothing of any resurrection, and it has no place in the book of Wisdom. The Gnostics spiritualized the doctrine completely. Their resurrection did not involve the body. Plotinus was quite ready to allow many reincarnations, one life in the body after another. Death indeed is only a change of body. We go away earlier to come back sooner. We carry on into the next life the results of our actions in the life before. But it is always a fresh body, never a resuscitation of the old. The true resurrection is not that of the body but the soul's rising from the body altogether, when it passes, after many lives in many bodies, from the corporeal sphere and enters into the spiritual world. But of course for the Christian Platonists this purely philosophic position was not possible.
p. 171

The belief in the Lord's resurrection had been too long an established article in the Church's creed for it to be abandoned. That the Lord did truly rise from the dead was final truth, like other items in the Apostolic teaching. Clement proposed to write a treatise on the Resurrection, but if he wrote one nothing of it has survived. The task was taken over by Origen; he wrote two books on the subject, and has in several other passages made his views clear. He was in a difficult position, liable to offend the orthodox, if he questioned the church's doctrine liable to offend the educated if he defended the crude literalism of the simple believers.

He lays it down as a principle that, with. the single exception of the Trinity, all rational beings need a body. They cannot live without one. This rules out the purely Platonic immortality. Origen is prepared to assert that such an immortality, suppose it were possible, has value, and that St. Paul's doctrine does not compel us to believe that a disembodied life must be necessarily worthless. But that is as far as Origen ventures to go. He retains the resurrection, but he boldly abandons the literal interpretation of it. He dwells on the nature of the body: it is in a condition of constant flux and change. The same material atoms may conceivably have belonged to more than one

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human body, and if there is to be a reassembling of such material at the resurrection, the difficulty is obvious.
p. 177

The Alexandrine outlook was definitely individualistic and other-worldly. The real good for man was to "fly hence", and attain to spiritual communion in another world. Just as Plato cared only to be a citizen in the heavenly city, so the eyes of his followers were set upon a higher state of being, where stage after stage the soul might pass into indefectible blessedness. It was an individualistic ideal, the solitary flight of "the alone to the alone", the mystic union of the soul with God.
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