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Christianity and Philosophical Culture in the Fi - The controversy about the Human Soul in the West (Hardcover)
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Christianity and Philosophical Culture in the Fi - The controversy about the Human Soul in the West (Hardcover)
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The spirituality and immortality of the soul might seem to be an
essential Christian doctrine, but in fact many early Christian
writers held that the soul is material and that immortality is a
gift. As Ernest Fortin's study of Claudianus Mamertus (d. 475), a
priest of Vienne in Gaul, and his De Statu Animae, On the State of
the Soul (ca. 470) shows, St. Augustine did not settle the
question. De Statu Animae is the only explicitly philosophical work
in the West that we possess between Augustine (354-430) and
Boethius. It responds to a defense of the corporeality of the soul
by Bishop Faustus of Reii, modern Riez. Like many early Christian
writers, Faustus held that God alone is spirit, so that the human
soul is material, immortality is a gift, and Platonic dialogues or
neo-Platonic textbooks of philosophy are the product of unhealthy
curiosity. By contrast, Claudianus is an exuberant Christian
neo-Platonist, guided by St. Augustine but also by Porphyry (235-ca
305). In this neo-Platonic tradition, Claudianus argues, for
instance, that the created universe would have been incomplete
without spiritual or both spiritual and corporeal creatures. But,
secondly, the book's title alludes to a more general theme:
Claudianus Mamertus is a creator of Christian philosophy. As Fortin
sees it, Claudianus does not just use philosophy to fight the
pagans with their own weapons. He also takes the riskier position
of using philosophy as both a stimulus but also a check against bad
uses we might make of revelation asking the Bible to answer
questions it never asks. Claudianus Mamertus and his circle, which
included the poet Apollinaris Sidonius, are tragic figures. The
Roman system of higher education had disappeared in the West. The
empire crumbled around them, as barbarian tribes took over Roman
Gaul piece by piece. Claudianus and Sidonius knew things would
never be the same. They knew they were the last of their kind.
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