Really excellent article. That the “orthodox” Christian perspective on the phenomenal cosmos constitutes something of a via media between the “Gnostics” and the Platonists (perhaps, excepting Plutarch) is a regular talking point of mine, and I’m happy to finally have an article to recommend!
I’m curious if you have encountered Jason BeDuhn’s argument (shared by Shelly Matthews) that Paul believes that the material cosmos was created by angelic mediators akin to the mediated law. The data to make any firm adjudication is probably lacking, but it’s an intriguing possibility.
I've enjoyed the Damick/De Young podcast The Lord of Spirits, but one point on which they haven't convinced me is that the spiritual world lacks all moral ambiguity; for them, it seems, the ever-present spiritual powers not properly and perfectly angelic are necessarily demonic and damned. Yet if we are to assert with Bulgakov and many before him that the appearances of the "natural" world are founded on a personal or angelic substructure, it seems to me we must allow that the moral ambiguity we see in the phenomenal world reflects deeper ambiguities in the realm of the spiritual. Your Substack, I think, has dredged up ample scriptural evidence for this.
Quick question David, what do you think of P. Tzamalikos' work on Origen? I was just reading his book *Guilty of Genius* and he mentioned Chadwick's translation of Contra Celsum as suboptimal, and I remembered that was the edition you had cited. I do generally like what I've read of Tzamalikos even if I think he is a little polemic when it comes to Plato himself
Really excellent article. That the “orthodox” Christian perspective on the phenomenal cosmos constitutes something of a via media between the “Gnostics” and the Platonists (perhaps, excepting Plutarch) is a regular talking point of mine, and I’m happy to finally have an article to recommend!
I’m curious if you have encountered Jason BeDuhn’s argument (shared by Shelly Matthews) that Paul believes that the material cosmos was created by angelic mediators akin to the mediated law. The data to make any firm adjudication is probably lacking, but it’s an intriguing possibility.
I've enjoyed the Damick/De Young podcast The Lord of Spirits, but one point on which they haven't convinced me is that the spiritual world lacks all moral ambiguity; for them, it seems, the ever-present spiritual powers not properly and perfectly angelic are necessarily demonic and damned. Yet if we are to assert with Bulgakov and many before him that the appearances of the "natural" world are founded on a personal or angelic substructure, it seems to me we must allow that the moral ambiguity we see in the phenomenal world reflects deeper ambiguities in the realm of the spiritual. Your Substack, I think, has dredged up ample scriptural evidence for this.
Quick question David, what do you think of P. Tzamalikos' work on Origen? I was just reading his book *Guilty of Genius* and he mentioned Chadwick's translation of Contra Celsum as suboptimal, and I remembered that was the edition you had cited. I do generally like what I've read of Tzamalikos even if I think he is a little polemic when it comes to Plato himself