Philo, Selections (Cosmogony, Divine Mind, Transcendence, etc.)

The book that I am reading of Philo’s work—The Contemplative Life, the Giants, and Selections—is more “selections” than anything else. In other words, the first two texts are quite short (17 and 11 pages, respectively), leaving some 225 pages of excerpts drawn from throughout Philo’s work. These selections are arranged topically, providing a nice summary overview of the mystical thought of this first century Hellenized Jew.

Thirteen different topical categories are included in this anthology, from autobiographical material to scriptural exegesis to worship, mysticism, ethics, and theodicy. Today I’ll comment on categories such as Cosmogony, the Divine Mind, Knowledge and Prophecy, and the Divine Transcendence.

A general note to begin: I’m enjoying the selections far more than the two complete texts. I suppose those texts were necessary to provide an overview of Philo’s historical context as a dualistic philosopher-contemplative. But since I consider dualism to be problematic if not actually deleterious, it was a challenge for me to come face to face with that aspect of his thought. Sure, the dualism is still evident among the selections, but there is less of a sense of hostility between matter and spirit, more of a sense of partnership between the uncreated and created orders (as will be seen in some of the quotes found below).

Scriptural exegesis: Philo understands the scripture mythically. From miracles to talking serpents, Philo clearly understands that literary devices are at play in the composition of the sacred text. So much for Rudolf Bultmann being so innovative! But he insists that the reader gaze “through” the mythic symbolism to let the “truth” become “manifest.” By the same token, he insists that sacred texts should not be read only on the level of allegory. If a text says something that can be taken at face value… then do so!

When Philo takes aim at the mystery religions, I found myself cheering him on. A few choice quotes: “But we do not reveal the mysteries to those who, held fast by the incurable evil of vanity, measure what is pure and holy by no other standard than the ‘birdlime’ of verbiage and pretentious claptrap of ceremonial.” (take that, Uncle Aleister!)… “[Moses] does not deem it fitting that people bred in such a commonwealth as ours celebrate secret rites and, clinging to mystical fictions, make light of the truth and pursue what has been assigned to darkness and night, disregarding what is worthy of the light of day…For why, O initiates, if these things are good and profitable, do you shut yourselves up in deep darkness and render services to three or four individuals alone, when you can render it to all by presenting these advantages in the public market, and thus enable all confidently to share a better and happier life? For envy does not dwell with virtue…Note that nature, too, does not conceal any of her storied and admirable works, but displays the stars and the whole heaven to delight us by the sight and stir our longing for philosophy…Ought we not then follow her designs and display all that is necessary and useful for the benefit of those who are worthy of them?” (pp. 82-3). At the risk of alienating myself from the entire neopagan community, I have to say that I agree wholeheartedly with this perspective; I’ve always felt that no initiatory system could ever usher in a mystery greater than those found plainly in the natural world. And as for ritually-disclosed mysteries, they either make no real difference in peoples’ lives (thus making them essentially worthless except as a pastime) or they can demonstrably be shown to make a positive impact—and if such mysteries really are available, then there would be a moral obligation to disseminate them as widely as possible—and not keep them hidden under cloaks of oaths, secrecy and initiatory privilege. I for one cannot justify withholding information from someone that would make their life better just because a) I was required to take an oath before such information was given to me, or b) because I unilaterally decide “they aren’t ready for it” or “they need to discover it on their own” (how patronizing can you get?). How nice it is to find a non-Christian thinker whose perspective so thoroughly validates my own.

The Divine Mind: Unlike postmodernists who insist that there is no such thing as eternal truth but rather that the collective human mind “creates” the truth it discovers, Philo is a Platonists, and insists that truth, beauty, justice, and other forms have a universal existence independent of the human mind, meaning that such treasures of knowledge and wisdom must be discovered, not created. In a similar vein, the mind of God is ultimately beyond the capacity of the human brain to comprehend—just as the human organism can never be fully known by an amoeba.

“The voice told me that with the one God who truly Is are two all-high and primary powers, Goodness and Sovereignty. Through his Goodness he engendered all that is, through his Sovereignty he rules what he has engendered, but a third uniting both is intermediating Logos, for it is through Logos that God is both ruler and good.” (p. 89) If it sounds like trinitarian thought, remember that Philo was a contemporary of Christ and so would not have been exposed to early Christian ideas—if anything, the flow of ideas probably went in the opposite direction. What I like about this selection is that it deepens the standard Celtic notion of Sovereignty as the essential feature of the Goddess. Philo’s Existent is not merely Sovereign, but also Good and the Logos (the ordering principle).

Cosmogony: “Some people, admiring the world rather than its Creator, proclaimed it uncreated and eternal, while impiously feigning a vast inaction in God, whereas we ought on the contrary to be astounded at his powers as Creator and Father, and not overglorify the world.” (p. 96) and later: “These men surmised that this visible universe was the only thing in existence, either being itself God or containing God in itself as the soul of the whole.” (pp. 113-4) Sound familiar? I guess the modern split between Christians and other monotheists (who regard the universe as a creation) and neopagans (who identify the universe with the Goddess herself) goes back a long way. It would be easy to dismiss this as more of Philo’s dualistic chest-thumping. Although here he does not indulge in a spirit-good/matter-bad way of seeing things: he only cautions against overglorifying the material world. So… what do I believe? I’m not sure. I think the argument can be made that worshipping the material universe with no sense of a Divine Other is ultimately spiritual narcissism; but then I think one could also argue that venerating the artwork is a way to venerate the artist.

Here’s an intense quote: “For creation is unable in its nature to receive the good in the same way that it is the nature of God to confer it, since his powers exceed all bounds…” (p. 97).

And another one: “the propounders of polytheism…do not blush to transpose mob rule, that worst of evil polities, from earth to heaven.” (p. 105). Whoa! I’ve always joked that polytheism asserts the universe is run by a committee, not by a dictator. Philo inverts that formula handily enough. Are we in a cosmos at the hands of a dictator, or mob rule? Put in a more positive way, is cosmic order the result of a sovereign democracy, or a benevolent monarch?

“For God willed that Nature should run a circular long-distance course…” (p. 109). This intrigued me, for it’s a truism among neopagans that monotheists adhere to a linear model of the cosmos, while pagans adhere to a cyclical model. Philo’s off-handed comment seems to blur that boundary somewhat.

The Divine Transcendence: “Do we see the sense-perceptible sun by anything other than the sun, or the stars by any other than the stars, and in general is not light seen by light? Similarly, God too is his own splendor and is discerned through himself alone, without anything else assisting or being capable of assisting with a view to the perfect apprehension of his existence… The pursuers of truth are they who form an image of God through God, light through light.” (p. 129) Ah, echoes of the Nicene Creed.

“For just as the eye sees everything else, but does not see itself, so the mind too perceives everything else but does not apprehend itself… For how should those who are ignorant of the substance of their own soul have a precise understanding of the soul of the universe?” (p. 130)

Here’s an early argument for sensory deprivation as a strategy for apophatic mysticism: “And if the senses thwart the contemplation of the intelligible, those fond of such contemplation are concerned to eliminate their onset. They shut their eyes, plug their ears, and restrain the impulses derived from the other senses, and deem it right to spend their time in solitude and darkness, so that the eye of the soul, to whom God has given the power to perceive things intelligible, may not be obscured by any object of sense.” (p. 134)

“Moreover, it is said that even the Father and Creator of all continually rejoices in his life and plays and is joyful, finding pleasure in accordance with the divine play and in joyfulness. And he has no need of anything, but with joy he delights in himself and in his powers and in the worlds made by him… Rightly, therefore, and properly does the wise man, believing his end (to consist in) likeness to God, strive so far as possible to unite the created with the uncreated and the mortal with the immortal, and not to be deficient or wanting in gladness and joyfulness in his likeness.” (p. 137) Wow. Why wasn’t I ever exposed to theology like this when I was a child? I always got the “God-is-a-wrathful-father” line. How would my experience of spirituality and faith have been different if I had first been taught that God is continually rejoicing in divine play and delight, and that it is the height of human wisdom to manifest such pleasure and joy in ourselves?

Philo does take on the question of divine wrath, and argues that God, being perfect, could never be troubled by such turbulent emotions. Rather, it is humans who project the concept of anger and wrath onto God, as a way of justifying our own need to believe that God is aggrieved when we fail to live up to our own ethical potential. He goes on to say that the true contemplative recognizes that God is pure love, but some people “need” the idea of an angry God as an incentive to live an ethical life.

Knowledge and Prophecy: “Every man, in respect of his mind, is intimately related to the divine Logos, being an imprint or fragment of effulgence of that blessed nature, but in the constitution of his body he is related to the entire world, for he is a blend of the same things, earth, water, air, and fire, each of the elements having contributed the share that falls to it to complete an entirely sufficient material that the Creator had to take in order to fashion this visible image.” (p. 144) Once again, this could be read as a dualistic statement, but I see it as much more gracious and integral: spirit and matter are not hostile to one another, but come together lovingly to create humankind as a child of both heaven and earth.

“But since we bear the impression of the indelible imprints of injustice and folly and the other vices, we must be content if through reasonable conjectures through our own devices we may discover some semblance of the truth.” (p. 150) In other words, since we are imperfect beings, our knowledge of God and the cosmos must likewise also be imperfect (uh oh, has anyone told the Pope?). Of course, I know some neopagans who need this perspective as much as the pope does!

“For what reasoning is in us, the sun is in the world, for both are bearers of light, one sending forth to the whole world a sensible light, the other bestowing on ourselves the intelligible rays of apprehension.” (p. 154). Amen.

Philo’s mysticism dances with effulgent light, Divine joy and pleasure, the pursuit of wisdom, the celebration of the ineffable. I’m so glad I decided to read the mystics in chronological order. He reads like a symphonic overture to the grand opera that is to come.

Philo, “The Contemplative Life” and “The Giants”

The translation of the writings of Philo published as part of Paulist Press’ Classics of Western Spirituality contains two short texts, “The Contemplative Life” and “The Giants” followed by over two hundred pages of miscellanous excerpts from the rest of Philo’s work. The short works offer two different insights into the mind of this figure who stands at the headwaters of western mysticism. As a prominent Jewish exegete living in Alexandria, Philo’s contribution to the development of the great tradition consisted of his efforts to integrate Greek philosophy with the Jewish faith in the One God. If these two works are any indication, he did seem to pull off his goal, but in doing so brought the worst as well as the best parts of philosophy and spirituality together.

“The Contemplative Life” is not, as its title might appear, a manual on meditation or the interior life. Rather it is a brief discussion of a monastic order called the Therapeutae, a name meaning “healers” or “worshipers.” This community is considered by scholars to be similar to, although different from, the Essenes. Philo describes a community of people dedicated to solitude, sobriety, discipline, and the communal pursuit of wisdom. He attacks pagan and Roman lifestyles, taking particular aim at the prevalence in those cultures of prostitution and pederasty (and unfortunately coming across as homophobic in the process — but remember, he was a contemporary of St. Paul). The Therapeutae, by contrast, reject the hunger for sensual pleasures, choosing instead to discipline bodily appetites and dedicate themselves to the pursuit of wisdom and the quest for the contemplation of the Existent or the Divine Source “who is better than the Good, purer than the One, and more primal than the Monad.” Members of the community pray twice daily: “…at sunrise they pray for a joyful day, joyful in the true sense, that their minds may be filled with celestial light. At sunset, they pray that the soul may be fully relieved from the disturbance of the senses and the objects of sense, and that… it may search out the truth.”

Philo attacks those who revere the elements as personified by Hera, Hephaestus, Poseidon, and Demeter, as engaging in only so much sophistry. He sees paganism as, basically, a detour: worshiping the “untamed,” “wild,” and “irrational” energies. Clearly he wouldn’t have enjoyed a 21st century pagan gathering!

Still, there are aspects of the Therapeutae I find appealing. Philo describes them as dedicated gardeners and as unwilling to own slaves. Instead, they serve one another at their communal meals (he had plenty to say about how slaves often became the sexual playthings of their owners and their owners’ guests). As for where this “contemplative life” leads, Philo speaks of “the strong wine of God’s love” and concludes by saying the Therapeutae have “embraced the contemplation of nature and its constituent parts, and have lived in the soul alone, citizens of Heaven and the universe, truly commended to the Father and Creator of all by virtue, which has secured for them God’s friendship in addition to the most fitting prize of nobility, which excels all good fortune and attains to the very summit of joy.”

Alas, “The Giants” — a commentary on Genesis 6:1-4 — proves to be even less appealing to my post-modern sensibilities. Here Philo seems mired in the most awkward kind of body/soul dualism, with the masculine soul naturally more godlike and pure than the feminine body. Ick! He praises “the souls of the genuine philosophers, who… practice dying to the life in the body in order to obtain the portion of incorporeal and immortal life in the presence of the Uncreated and Immortal.” Basically, since God is utterly transcendent and unchanging, and the world of matter and flesh is messy, dirty and impermanent, Philo is firm in his rejection of physicality. “But those who bear the load of the flesh are unable, thus weighed down and oppressed, to gaze upward at the revolving heavens, but with necks wrenched downward are forcibly rooted to the ground like four-footed beasts.”

The distinction between Creator and creation is absolute: “…God has no likeness even to what is noblest of things born, since the latter has come into being and will suffer change in the future, but God is uncreated and ever active.” Philo even criticizes reason and “utterance” as uncertain, seeing only pure contemplation “of the Existent without speech within the soul alone” as worthy of our aspiration. This is interesting, since it anticipates the common assertion of the mystics that the vision of God is ultimately ineffable, that is to say, beyond the competency of human language to describe.

Philo goes on to suggest that humanity can be segregated into three categories: the “earth-born,” the “heaven-born” and the “God-born.” The earth-born are those who live according to the demands of their appetites, dedicated their lives to nothing more exalted than sensual pleasures, or to getting and spending. The heaven-born are the artists, intellectuals, and craftspeople, who pursue some measure of goodness and virtue but do not fully embody spiritual values. Only the God-born are the true priests and prophets dedicated to the contemplative life. We’ll see this kind of thinking again and again among the mystics, particularly those who argue that the contemplative life represents a higher calling than “the active life.”

While reading these two short works leaves me feeling that Philo does not have a lot to say to me personally as I try to chart my spirituality here in the 21st century, I can see how his ideas were destined to have a formative influence on the development of Christian mysticism. Modern people (particularly neopagans, who have a tendency to blame all of society’s problems on the biblical religions) need to remember that the strict dualism that has bedeviled our culture came not from the Jewish world, but from the philosophers of the pagan world. That Philo tried to synthesize the strict monotheism of Judaism with the world-denying ethos of paganism is, I fear, most unfortunate. What if he had moved in the other direction, and tried to integrate the worldly, sensual optimism of his Jewish tradition with the spirit of open inquiry and religious tolerance found in pagan antiquity?

One more thought. Monotheism was certainly a hallmark of Judaism, but it was not unique to the Jews. As a wonderful book called Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity makes clear, the idea of one supreme deity or source was on the march in the classical world — even before Christian evangelists began the aggressive spread of their faith. So while we may mourn Philo’s experiment of blending Greek dualism with Jewish monotheism, perhaps such a marriage was inevitable. It certainly did influence the course of western spirituality in ways that are still impacting us today.

Philo of Alexandria

To begin this journey through the great writings of the western mystics, we’re dipping a good two thousand years back in time… to the great city of Alexandria, where a Hellenized Jew named Philo‚ — arguably the father of western mysticism‚ — lived and wrote.

Philo lived from approximately 20 BCE to 50 CE. Scholars appear hesitant to call him a “philosopher,” seeing his work less in terms of original thought and more as a matter of exegesis (interpretation of other texts, particularly the Hebrew Scriptures) and eclectic sythesis (integrating Greek pagan philosophy with Jewish spirituality). He came from an affluent background and was influential enough to appear before the emperor Caligula to plead for the welfare of the Jewish community. A prolific author, his writings covered not only philosophy and exegesis, but also history, apologetics, and‚ — of signal interest to us‚ — mysticism. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church says, “As a spiritual leader, Philo stands in the tradition of the philosophical mystics. The highest grade of the inner life is ecstasy, which conveys the felt Presence of God to the soul.” Philo was one of the earliest exegetes to champion an allegorical approach to understanding the Hebrew scriptures, a strategy that allowed him to argue for the essential coherence between Greek and Hebrew thought.

Philo became quite influential, particularly in his hometown of Alexandria. Both Origen and Clement of Alexandria, as two of the earliest Christian mystics, drew heavily on Philo’s thought.

I will be reading Philo with two particular questions in mind: how can his efforts to integrate pagan and Abrahamic wisdom be useful to spiritual seekers today? and, in what ways is his thought important for understanding the grand tradition of mystics who followed him?

Click here to buy a copy of Philo’s The Contemplative Life, The Giants and Selections