Plotinus offers a comprehensive description of his conception of a person who has achieved eudaimonia.

However, Christos Evangeliou has contended that Plotinus ’ opponents might be better described as simply “ Christian Gnostics ”, arguing that several of Plotinus ’ criticisms are as applicable to orthodox Christian doctrine as well.

The traditional view of Gregory is that he was an orthodox Trinitarian theologian, who was influenced by the neoplatonism of Plotinus and believed in universal salvation following Origen.

The difference between Thomism and Scotism could be expressed by saying that, while both derive from Arabic Neoplatonized Aristotelianism, Thomism is closer to the orthodox Aristotelianism of Maimonides, Averroes and Avicenna, while Scotism reflects the Platonizing tendency going back through Avicebron, the Brethren of Purity, the Liber de Causis and Proclus to Plotinus.

However we are told by Longinus that Ammonius wrote nothing, and if Ammonius was the principal influence on Plotinus, then it is unlikely that Ammonius would have been a Christian.

One way to explain much of the confusion concerning Ammonius is to assume that there were two people called Ammonius: Ammonius Saccas who taught Plotinus, and an Ammonius the Christian who wrote biblical texts.

The idea of Demiurge was, however, addressed before Plotinus in the works of Christian writer Justin Martyr who built his understanding of the Demiurge on the works of Numenius.

Of note here is that while Plotinus ' student Porphyry names Christianity specifically in Porphyry's own works, and Plotinus is to have been a known associate of the Christian Origen, none of Plotinus ' works mention Christ or Christianity.

He learned theurgy from Maximus of Ephesus, a student of Iamblichus ; his system bears some resemblance to the Neoplatonism of Plotinus ; Polymnia Athanassiadi has brought new attention to his relations with Mithraism, although whether he was initiated into it remains debatable ; and certain aspects of his thought ( such as his reorganization of paganism under High Priests, and his fundamental monotheism ) may show Christian influence.

Founded in the 3rd century CE by Plotinus, The Neoplatonist tradition has clear echoes in the Zohar, as indeed in many forms of mystical spirituality, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim.

Plotinus ' philosophy had a great influence on the development of Christian theology.

As a student of Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus was one of many Christian theologians who preserved and interpreted the earlier Neo-Platonic philosophy, including the thought of such figures as Plotinus and Proclus.

Varieties of the doctrine may be found in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophical theologians, especially during the heyday of scholasticism, though the doctrine's origins may be traced back to ancient Greek thought, finding apotheosis in Plotinus ' Enneads as the Simplex.

He drew particularly from Plato, the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, and Stoicism, which he altered and refined in light of divine revelation of Christian teaching and the Scriptures.

He also conducted dedicated studies of the fashionable philosophers of the time John Locke, Christian von Wolff, Leibniz, and Descartes, as well as returning to earlier thinkers Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, and others.

The comparison with the Christian Trinity is inescapable, but for Plotinus these were not equal and " The One " was at the highest level, with the " Soul " at the lowest.

Plotinus relied heavily on the concept of Logos, but no explicit references to Christian thought can be found in his works, although there are significant traces of them in his doctrine.

Plotinus ( c. 205 – 270 CE ) provided the non-Christian, neo-Platonic basis for much Christian, Jewish and Islamic mysticism.

Solovyov compiled a philosophy based on Hellenistic philosophy ( see Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus ) and early Christian tradition with Buddhism and Hebrew Kabbalistic elements ( Philo of Alexandria ).

The ante-Nicene Christian writer Lactantius routinely uses the Latin theonyms Caelus, Saturn, and Jupiter to refer to the three divine hypostases of the Neoplatonic school of Plotinus: the First God ( Caelus ), Intellect ( Saturn ), and Soul, son of the Intelligible ( Jupiter ).

Eckhart or Neoplatonists of the Christian and Pre-Christian tradition ( Plotinus, Augustinus, Dionysius Areopagita, Scotus Eriugena, Bonaventura etc.

Plotinus seems to be one of the first to argue against the still popular notion of causal astrology.

As a philosophical notion, it is most clearly found for the first time in the West in the second century C. E, in the Neoplatonism of Plotinus and his followers.

Despite this relatively pedestrian assessment of the material world, Plotinus asserted the ultimately divine nature of material creation since it ultimately derives from the One, through the mediums of nous and the world soul.

Plotinus, for example, attacked the Gnostics for vilifying Plato's ontology of the universe contained in Timaeus, and the universes ' creation by the demiurge.

Plotinus, a third-century Platonist, taught that the One transcendent absolute caused the universe to exist simply as a consequence of its existence-" creatio ex deo.

At one point Plotinus attempted to interest Gallienus in rebuilding an abandoned settlement in Campania, known as the ' City of Philosophers ', where the inhabitants would live under the constitution set out in Plato's Laws.

Plotinus also elucidates the equation of matter with nothing or non-being in his Enneads which more correctly is to express the concept of idealism or that there is not anything or anywhere outside of the " mind " or nous ( c. f.

Two of Ammonius's students-Origen the Pagan, and Longinus-seem to have held philosophical positions which were closer to Middle Platonism than Neoplatonism, which perhaps suggests that Ammonius's doctrines were also closer to those of Middle Platonism than the Neoplatonism developed by Plotinus ( see the Enneads ), but Plotinus does not seem to have thought that he was departing in any significant way from that of his master.

Plotinus sought to reconcile Aristotle's energeia with Plato's Demiurge, which, as Demiurge and mind ( nous ), is a critical component in the ontological construct of human consciousness used to explain and clarify substance theory within Platonic realism ( also called idealism ).

The majority of scholars tend to understand Plotinus ' opponents as being a Gnostic sect — certainly ( specifically Sethian ), several such groups were present in Alexandria and elsewhere about the Mediterranean during Plotinus ' lifetime.

The Neoplatonic philosophers, including Plotinus, rejected followers of gnosticism as being un-Hellenistic and anti-Plato due to their vilification of Plato's creator of the universe ( the demiurge ), arriving at dystheism as the solution to the problem of evil, taking all their truths over from Plato.

540 ), on the Dionysian Corpus constitutes the first defense of its apostolic dating, wherein he specifically argues that the work is neither Apollinarian nor a forgery, probably in response both to monophysites and Hypatius — although even he, given his unattributed citations of Plotinus in interpreting Dionysius, might have known better.

Plotinus had an inherent distrust of materiality ( an attitude common to Platonism ), holding to the view that phenomena were a poor image or mimicry ( mimesis ) of something " higher and intelligible " which was the " truer part of genuine Being ".

Even in daily, physical action, the flourishing human ’ s “… Act is determined by the higher phase of the Soul .” ( Enneads III. 4. 6 ) Even in the most dramatic arguments Plotinus considers ( if the Proficient is subject to extreme physical torture, for example ), he concludes this only strengthens his claim of true happiness being metaphysical, as the truly happy human being would understand that which is being tortured is merely a body, not the conscious self, and happiness could persist.

Iamblichus of Calcis ( Syria ), a student of Porphyry ( who was himself a student of Plotinus ) taught a more ritualized method of theurgy that involved invocation and religious, as well as magical, ritual.

David Lodge's novel Changing Places tells the story of exchange of professors between the universities of Rummidge and Euphoric State, Plotinus ( thinly disguised fictional versions of Birmingham and Berkeley ), which in the book both have replicas of the Leaning Tower of Pisa on campus.

* Neoplatonism: Plotinus ( Egyptian ), Ammonius Saccas, Porphyry ( Syrian ), Zethos ( Arab ), Iamblichus ( Syrian ), Proclus

In addition to all these he published Denkwürdigkeiten aus der Geschichte des Christentums ( 1823-1824, 2 vols., 1825, 3 vols., 1846 ); Das Eine und Mannichfaltige des christlichen Lebens ( 1840 ); papers on Plotinus, Thomas Aquinas, Theobald Thamer, Blaise Pascal, John Henry Newman, Blanco White and Thomas Arnold, and other occasional pieces ( Kleine Gelegenheitsschriften, 1829 ), mainly of a practical, exegetical and historical character.

* Plotinian Bibliography 2001-by Richard Dufour ( French and English versions ), continues his research presented in Plotinus: a Bibliography 1950-2000, referred above.

In this integral philosophy ( inspired in part by the works of Plotinus, Hegel, Sri Aurobindo, Eric Jantsch, and many others ) reality is said to consist of several realms or stages, including more than one of the following: the physical, the vital, the psychic, ( after the Greek psyche, " soul "), the causal ( referring to " that which causes, or gives rise to, the manifest world "), and the ultimate ( or non-dual ), through which the individual progressively evolves.

David Lodge's novel Changing Places tells the story of exchange of professors between the universities of Rummidge and Euphoric State, Plotinus ( thinly disguised fictional versions of Birmingham and Berkeley ), which in the book both have replicas of the Leaning Tower of Pisa on campus.

This ultimate reality can be called " Spirit " ( Sri Aurobindo ), " Brahman " ( Shankara ), " God ", " Shunyata " ( Emptiness ), " The One " ( Plotinus ), " The Self " ( Ramana Maharshi ), " The Dao " ( Lao Zi ), " The Absolute " ( Schelling ) or simply " The Nondual " ( F. H. Bradley ).