In-Between
In-Between
John Philoponus (born around 490, dead sometime in the 570s) devoted his life to the Christianization of Hellenistic thought in general and to the mummification of Ptolemy's Almagest in particular. Already at a young age he had orchestrated a massive assault on Aristotle's physics and cosmology. The most remarkable aspect of this man and his revolutionary philosophy is that it grew out of the conviction that the universe is the single creation of a single God. Philoponus rejected the prevalent belief in the world's eternity and accepted instead the proposition that heaven and earth are constituted by the same physical properties and governed by the same physical laws. Closely connected with this belief in creatio ex nihilo was also Philoponus' revision of Aristotle's theory of dynamics. In line with his creationist critique of Aristotle, Philoponus got involved in debates about the definition of Jesus Christ. Throughout the debates frequent references were made to the discussion of identity and difference as it first appeared in Plato's Parmenides and then reappeared again in Plotinus' concept of hypostasis.
Keywords: John Philoponus, Aristotle, creation, Jesus Christ, universe, Plato, Plotinus, hypostasis, Parmenides, cosmology
Chicago Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
