Christian Neoplatonist philosophy.

The Platonic view of man as a soul imprisoned within a body was for a time incorporated into Christian speculative thought through the writing of Evagrius of Pontus (d. 399) and Origen of Alexandria (d. 253 or 254), but it was later ignored in favor of a more Hebrew view of man as an animated body. The difference between considering man as an animated body (like Adam, for whom God first created a body out of the dust and then breathed life into him) or an imprisoned soul (as taught by the Greek philosophers who followed Plato) has a subtle influence on one's understanding of redemption and even of prayer. Origen had given the outline for mystical theology with some Platonic influence, but this was balanced by the teachings of the Macarian Homilies (usually attributed to St. Macarius of Egypt, 300-390 A.D., but perhaps the work of an unknown writer of the fifth century). In the Macarian writings, the more Biblical emphasis on the whole man was re-established. The pagan Greek emphasis made prayer an activity of the mind and intellect, whereas the Hebrew tradition followed by the hesychasts made prayer a function of the whole man: mind, emotions, will, and even body!...ORTHODOX MYSTICISM: TEACHINGS OF THE DESERT FATHERS

Their fundamental conception (the Alexandrine Schools), largely qualified, by no means consistently maintained, as we shall have frequent occasion to notice in these lectures, was that of the Divine Transcendence. God is above, beyond, away, ontologically remote. They are led more and more to separate God from the world, to form a chasm between the uncreated and creation, over which they then proceed to construct a connecting bridge. This impulse, indeed we might say this obligation, to relegate the Deity to an uncontaminated isolation, is seen in all the teachers of this way; it is perhaps least prominent in Origen; it is certainly most definitely asserted in Plotinus. We shall note its phases in Philo and those who followed him one by one....Alexandrine Teaching...Lecture I...Transcendence...by R. B. Tollinton

• Neoplatonism and Christianity (Wikipedia)
• Neoplatonism (Wikipedia)
• Christian Platonism and Christian Neoplatonism: Christian Platonists and Platonizing Christians in History
• Neo-Platonism (IEP)
• Neoplatonism in relation to Christianity: an essay (1908)
• Augustine’s Philosophical Theology & Neoplatonism
• Alexandrine Teaching

On the other hand, the ancient Christian tradition of bashing Platonism continues to the present day. Platonism or Neoplatonism, was given a new label, "Christoplatonism", recently coined by Randy Alcorn in his book Heaven.

• Google "Christoplatonism."
• For a brief overview of the Randy Alcorn's book checkout: Models of Eschatology Part 3: The Dangers of Christoplatonism
• The book has people asking questions like: "Will you be able to drink coffee in heaven?" Heaven What will it be like.? What can we know?

I can not imagine this superficial sort of speculation about the Divine realm would have been of concern to the desert fathers, Plato, or any of the Christian mystics throughout history! For a serious inquiring mind, maybe a more real perspective on the Divine realm could be drawn from written accounts of near-death experiences (NDE).

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