As you may have noticed, this "ethical" response to Plato and Aristotle left some ethics to be desired. Specifically, any reference to a personal God. And so religious mystics attempted to build a bridge between the mind and the soul. The result--no surprise here--was a philosopher God. These thinkers wanted a theosophy--a religious world view. Let's see what that view looked like.

In the last two centuries before Christ, Stoicism underwent a significant process of modification. They dropped their doctrine of "conflagration" (the end of the world by fire), and accepted the eternity of the cosmos (I'm sure the cosmos was grateful). And they began using their Divine Providence doctrine to supply order in that eternal cosmos, making Stoicism more suitable for the Romans who adopted their philosophy.

Three men would be upset if we didn't mention them here. Posidorus of Apamea (130-46 B.C.) developed important doctrines about God and mankind. He saw man as the "bridge-being" or intermediate between higher and lower life, and viewed the cosmos as a single organism ruled by a divine or "higher" power. Sounds a bit like Shirley MacLaine.

Epictetus was one of the greatest later Stoics. The son of a woman slave, he was born between 50 and 60 A.D. at Hieropolis in Phrygia. He came to Rome as a slave of one of Nero's men, became a secretary, and took courses with Musonius Rufus, the fashionable Stoic philosopher. After obtaining his freedom, he taught philosophy on street corners, and later established a school in Nicopolis. He was mainly a moral and religious teacher, and his philosophy can be summed up in two words: "bear" and "forebear." Joyful resignation to the Divine Will is the highest good for Epictetus.

The greatest of the later Stoics was Marcus Aurelius (121-180 A.D.). He succeeded Antonius Pius to the Roman throne in 161 A.D., and was a brilliant ruler and even more brilliant philosopher. He based much of his teachings on Epicurus, but also derived much from Plato. Marcus' Meditations is a masterpiece of Stoic thought.

Marcus' son Commodus began the decline of the Empire. With Aurelius the end of an epoch was reached--he was the last great Stoic, and the last great product of classical culture as well.

The next movement of significance before Christian philosophy is known as Neo-Platonism. Philo of Parissa returned Plato's Academy to positive, dogmatic teaching, and away from the skepticism of the day. Most of all, his school taught a theological and religious way of life.

The primary object of the Neo-Platonics was knowledge of truth about the divine world, leading to the "greatest possible likeness to God." They placed a supreme Mind or God at the head of a hierarchy of being, as the first principle of reality. This Supreme Mind is too far above the material world to be accessible to us except through occasional flashes of illumination. Intermediary beings such as lesser gods, stars, and demons rule and order the visible universe. Evil comes from matter itself, which is opposed to the intentions of the Good.

In this system, God is known primarily through the "via negative" (the "way of negation"). By stating what God is not, we get a better understanding of what he is. Religion is remote intellectual devotion to the remote Supreme Mind, whose vision we can only hope to attain fully in the next life. Pagan piety towards the inferior gods, the star-gods and other deities of mythology or popular religion is combined with ascetic philosophical reflection. By harmonizing Plato's Good and Aristotle's Mind, this school created a view of God which was followed by many for hundreds of years.

One last philosopher before Christianity must be mentioned: Philo Judaeus of Alexandrinus (30 B.C. to A.D. 50). This Alexandrian Jew of a priestly family wrote historical, philosophical, political, and ethical works. He was the leading figure of his intellectual community. And his efforts to combine Neo-Platonism and the Old Testament would influence theologians for centuries to come.

Philo's great ambition is to bring Plato and the Hebrew Bible together, as a means of encouraging philosophers to worship the Jewish God. His method is known as "allegory," a hermeneutical approach whereby the literal or intended meaning of the text is obliterated in favor of a more "spiritual" reading.

By this approach, Genesis is not a record of historical fact but a kind of Platonic myth. Adam symbolizes "spirit" or "mind," Eve sensuality, and Jacob asceticism. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob stand for the learned, natural, and exercised virtues. When the three wanderers ask about Sarah's whereabouts and Abraham answers, "She is in the hut" (Genesis 18.9), he is really saying that virtue is in the soul. Who needs seminary when you can interpret the Bible like this!

Philo's theology was quite interesting and influential. He saw God as the absolute, transcendent Being who is the ground of all existence. The "logos" is the instrument by which God works to make the world of visible things. The "pneuma" is the Divine Substance which God breathes into humans, and becomes our intelligence and the "image of God" in us. Salvation comes as we deliver ourselves from our bodies (our evil principle), eradicate our passions by asceticism, and seek God through mysticism.

Philo matters to us not because of his theological results, but because of his method. He was among the first to attempt to bring Platonic thought and biblical revelation together. And his allegorical method is still (unfortunately) in common use today.