The Everlasting Covenant

Neo-platonism

This mode of philosophising received some modification, when Ammonius Saccas, at the close of the century, opened a school at Alexandria, and laid the foundation of the sect called the New Platonic. EVCO 153.3

“This man was born and educated a Christian, and perhaps made pretensions to Christianity all his life. Being possessed of great fecundity of genius as well as eloquence, he undertook to bring all systems of philosophy and religion into harmony, or, in other words, to teach a philosophy by which all philosophers, and the men of all religions—the Christian not excepted—might unite together and have fellowship. And here, especially, lies the difference between this new sect and the eclectic philosophy, which had before flourished in Egypt. For the Eclectics held that there was a mixture of good and bad, true and false, in all the systems; and therefore they selected out of all, what appeared to them consonant with reason, and rejected the rest. But Ammonius held that all sects professed one and the same system of truth, with only some difference in the mode of stating it, and some minute difference in their conceptions; so that by means of suitable explanations they might with little difficulty be brought into one body. He, moreover, held this new and singular principle, that the popular religions, and likewise the Christian, must be understood and explained according to the common philosophy of all the sects.” ¹ EVCO 154.1