On Typology, Cyrus the Great, & President Donald Trump

Cyrus the Great Cylinder

A critic of President Donald J. Trump wrote on a Christian site, “It also seems that the original prophecies that claimed that Trump was the new ‘Cyrus’ to bring about a restored Christian America have proven false, and should be recognized as false prophecy.”

I replied,

Tell me how this has been “disproved.” I do not think you can make this claim with any viability; it is just one opinion, unless you are claiming your own gift of discernment.

Integral with prophecy is typology. Many OT figures can be safely regarded as prophetic types because their antitypes are laid out in the NT. The Cornerstone laid in Zion is Christ, who is also the Rock and the Cloud in the Wilderness. Moses is clearly a type of Christ as deliverer, and David a type of Christ as conquering king. Did Jesus identify Lucifer as the being He saw fall from heaven? Many commentators have thought so.

Many other types have been proposed, including some for which the antitype cannot be found within the canon. Still lack of antitype within the canon does not preclude the future discovery of an antitype. Is Nero, though not named in Revelation 13, a type of Antichrist yet to come? One may conclude so.

Nor does every type/antitype relationship have to be what we would deem officially “prophetic” in the charismatic sense. Abraham is a type of follower of God who receives a promise, believes it, and is credited with righteousness. Such application of Scripture by analogy goes back to OT times and remains a staple of common preaching. It is reliance on examples of “men of old” found especially in Hebrews 11. It is how “whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” (Romans 15:4). After Moses’ Law has been abolished, there is still analogy.

Hence it is no stretch to find in the person of Cyrus the Great, whom God called his Anointed, a type or analogy of an initially unbelieving king who deals amenably with God’s People and is the instrument God has chosen for his work. Cyrus was the Game-Changer, the Deal-Maker who served God’s purpose.

(Cyrus could not be God’s Anointed = a Type of Christ because he was a foreign king coming out of unrighteousness.) 

Similarly, Nebuchadnezzar was God’s instrument, whom God called “my servant,” but for the purpose of harsh judgment.

Therefore, the very least one must admit is that Donald Trump is a Cyrus figure by analogy — if not moreover an official, prophetic type — of ruler stemming from outside of God’s People who nevertheless regards their concerns and enacts help and deliverance in their behalf.

But unless one purports to speak prophetically for God against it, until the whole process at work in the world today comes to fruition, and unless the conclusion is self-evident, the question of President Trump as a “type” of Cyrus, prophetically, remains open.

[End of reply]

Note on the Cyrus Cylinder

On his cuneiform cylinder Cyrus declares an end to slavery.  In addition, he writes,

“Today I declare Freedom of Religion. All are free to choose any religion, live in all regions and take up any job provided that they never violate other’s rights.”

Copyright 2020 Paul A. Hughes

How Neoplatonism Got to Florence and England

John Colet, Dean of St. Paul’s School

How two churchmen in Florence opposed Aristotle by preaching Plato; and how John Colet took the message back to England

From J. H. Lupton, editor, Two Treatises on the Hierarchies of Dionysius by John Colet (London: Bell and Daldy, 1869).

(pp. xv-xvi)
A German essayist on [Psuedo-]Dionysius,* Augustus Meier, is probably right in saying, that mysticism chiefly springs up and flourishes, when the established forms of religion have begun to lose their hold on men; when the instinctive longing of the soul after the immortal and divine remains, but can find nothing to satisfy it in the external rites of a failing church. “From the hard and arid system of Peter the Lombard,” says Milman, “the profound devotion of the Middle Ages took refuge in mysticism.”

(p. xvi)
It was the sight of a letter of Erasmus’s to Robert Gaguin, the French historian, that first introduced Erasmus to the notice of [John] Colet. The practice of handing letters about, as evidences of scholarship, seems at that time to have been common; and Gaguin had in this manner shewn to Colet one received by him from Erasmus. The fact would seem to betoken a certain amount of intimacy between Gaguin and Colet. Now Gaguin, a man of letters, and the enviable possessor of a well-stocked library, was in correspondence with [Marsiglio] Ficino. In his collected Letters there is one addressed to the Florentine scholar, dated Sep. 1st, 1496 in which he compliments Ficino on the extent to which his writings were then read in Paris. His translation of Plotinus, he says, and other treatises of his, were so popular and so highly esteemed, that many a French scholar was eager “to know by sight and to gaze upon a man, from whom issued forth such noble memorials of learning.”

Marsiglio Ficino

(p. xix)
Supposing now Colet to have taken up this new work of the learned Abbot of Spanheim, with the curiosity of a young student, and the deference naturally paid to the latest authority, how would he have found [Psuedo-]Dionysius spoken of? As the convert of St. Paul; of surpassing holiness and incomparable learning; as probably the first Bishop of Athens, and certainly the apostle of France; as the author, lastly, of many illustrious works.

(pp. xix-xx)
THE Council of Florence, held under the presidency of Eugenius IV., which had for its chief object the reconciliation of the Greek and Latin Churches, and which closed its deliberations in April 1442, has generally been considered to be the means through which the Platonic philosophy was introduced once more into Europe. But in reality Plato had been known to Italians a century before. Petrarch, who died in 1374, and to whose zeal in collecting manuscripts the cause of learning was in no small degree indebted, had procured several copies of Plato’s works, partly in Latin translations, and partly in the original Greek. His guide in this pursuit was Barlaam, a Calabrian monk, the fortunate possessor of still more treatises of Plato. Boccaccio succeeded to the study, and read Plato in the library of his friend Petrarch.

(p. xxii)
“From this period” says M. Delecluze, “freedom of thought in Europe took its rise; and from this crude medley of profound erudition and mystic philosophizing sprang the taste for the study of the moral sciences, and general literature, which opened the way to philosophy and the sciences.”

(pp. xxiii-xxiv)
The three great objects of [Giovanni Pico della] Mirandola’s literary labours were, as Ficino informs us, the reconciliation of the Platonic philosophy with the Aristotelian; the explanation of the Holy Scriptures; and the confutation of astrology. The first of these objects he often alludes to in his extant letters. Thus, in one dated 1484, he speaks of having lately passed from the camp of Aristotle to that of the Academy, not as a deserter, but as a spy. …. In one passage of his great work, for instance, after describing the increase of Aristotle’s influence, which he attributes in part to the influx of the works of Averroes and Avicenna, rendered easier by the conquests of Ferdinand and Isabella, he details the efforts made by Pletho and Bessarion to call attention to Plato; and then contrasts his relative’s endeavour to reconcile the two systems, with his own purpose of depreciating heathen philosophy altogether, when brought into rivalry with the doctrines of Christianity.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

…. It was through [Mirandola’s] entreaties that Ficino undertook the translation of Plotinus; an author whom Mirandola speaks of as worthy not only of constant perusal, but of being learnt by heart, and who appears to have led Ficino naturally on to Dionysius, as a translation of some of his works was the next task he took in hand.

(p. xxxi)
And so we are not surprised to learn that Ficino wrote a commentary on part of the Epistle to the Romans, nor that he publicly lectured on St. Paul, as Canon of the church of St. Lorenzo in Florence; nor finally that Colet, a student of Plato, Plotinus and Dionysius, lectured on St. Paul, on his return to Oxford.

*Pseudo-Dionysius, an anonymous monk steeped in the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, appeared  about A.D. 500 and wrote several mystical works under the pseudonymn Dionysius the Areopagite, mentioned in Acts 17:34 as a follower of Paul.  He has also been confused with the 3rd-century bishop and patron saint of Paris, Denis.  For both these associations, Pseudo-Dionysius has in past centuries been accorded a nearly apostolic level of credibility, quite undeserved. ~Paul Hughes

How Platonic Philosophy became Religion

Public Domain

How Platonism in its search for ultimate truth and beauty evolved into Mysticism and Contemplative Prayer (Neoplatonism)

Excerpt from R. G. Bury, editor, The Symposium of Plato (Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons, 1909), pp. xlviii-xlix, quoting Benjamin Jowett.

The philosopher is not only a student, he is also, by the necessity of his nature, a teacher. This is a point of much importance in the eyes of Plato, the Head of the Academy: philosophy must be cultivated in a school of philosophy.

The significance of Eros, as thus conceived, has been finely expressed by Jowett (Plato i. p. 532): “(Diotima) has taught him (Socr.) that love is another aspect of philosophy. The same want in the human soul which is satisfied in the vulgar by the procreation of children, may become the highest aspiration of intellectual desire. As the Christian might speak of hungering and thirsting after righteousness; or of divine loves under the figure of human (cp. Eph. v.32); as the mediaeval saint might speak of the ‘fruitio Dei’; as Dante saw all things contained in his love of Beatrice, so Plato would have us absorb all other loves and desires in the love of knowledge. Here is the beginning of Neoplatonism, or rather, perhaps, a proof (of which there are many) that the so-called mysticism of the East was not strange to the Greek of the fifth century before Christ. The first tumult of the affections was not wholly subdued; there were longings of a creature ‘moving about in worlds not realised,’ which no art could satisfy. To most men reason and passion appear to be antagonistic both in idea and fact. The union of the greatest comprehension of knowledge and the burning intensity of love is a contradiction in nature, which may have existed in a far-off primeval age in the mind of some Hebrew prophet or other Eastern sage, but has now become an imagination only. Yet this ‘passion of the reason’ is the theme of the Symposium of Plato.”

(d) Eros as Religion. We thus see how to “the prophetic temperament” passion becomes blended with reason, and cognition with emotion. We have seen also how this passion of the intellect is regarded as essentially expansive and propagative. We have next to notice more particularly the point already suggested in the words quoted from Jowett—how, namely, this blend of passion and reason is accompanied by the further quality of religious emotion and awe. We are already prepared for finding our theme pass definitely into the atmosphere of religion not only by the fact that the instructress is herself a religious person bearing a significant name, but also by the semi-divine origin and by the mediatorial role ascribed to Eros. When we come, then, to “the greater mysteries” we find the passion of the intellect passing into a still higher feeling of the kind described by the Psalmist as “thirst for God.” This change of atmosphere results from the new vision of the goal of Eros, no longer identified with any earthly object but with the celestial and divine Idea ([autokalon]). Thus the pursuit of beauty becomes in the truest sense a religious exercise, the efforts spent on beauty become genuine devotions, and the honours paid to beauty veritable oblations. By thus carrying up with her to the highest region of spiritual emotion both erotic passion and intellectual aspiration, Diotima justifies her character as a prophetess of the most high Zeus; while at the same time we find, in this theological passage of the Socratic [logoi], the doctrine necessary at once to balance and to correct the passages in the previous [logoi] which had magnified Eros as an object of religious worship, a great and beneficent deity.

This side of Diotima’s philosophising, which brings into full light what we may call as we please either the erotic aspect of religion or the religious aspect of Eros, might be illustrated abundantly both from the writers of romantic love-poetry and from the religious mystics.

(References follow to Edmund Spenser, Thomas Browne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Keats, among the romantic poets.)

How the Ancient and Medieval Church became Neoplatonist

The School of Athens, from Plato to Plotinus

Passages quoted from William Fairweather, Origen and Greek Patristic Theology (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901).

(pp. 6-8)
The situation of the Alexandrian Christians was thus in many respects unique. They witnessed the fragments of the old systems gathered together to produce, through the introduction of Platonic ideas, a revived and spiritualised paganism in opposition to Christianity, for the ushering in of Neoplatonism by Ammonius [Saccas] constituted the last prop of the old world. If, however, we think to find in the writings of the Alexandrian teachers a systematic refutation of Neoplatonism in its various principles, we shall be disappointed. So, too, if we look for a definite position against Christianity in the works of Platonists. Neither system was as yet sufficiently developed to admit of this. But there was between the two systems an essential difference at bottom, and the real conflict for the Church lay in its being forced very much to leave its own standpoint and adopt that of its opponents. To combat Platonism it must needs accommodate itself to philosophy, and in submitting to this it became fettered with philosophical adjuncts to a dangerously suicidal extent. . . . . That errors, mystical, speculative, allegorical, and pagan, began to choke it like so many weeds, is clear from the works of the men who, from their position as prefects of the Catechetical School, necessarily became apologists for Christianity. All of them were more or less tinctured with Platonic views. They were themselves philosophers, and so could sympathise with their opponents, whose error they were disposed to view rather as one of defect than as a total perversion of truth. In this way they were led to overestimate the similarity between pagan and Christian wisdom. Prior to the latter part of the second century Christian teaching, with very few exceptions, had been true to apostolic example; but after philosophers embraced Christianity, and the new Platonism, which allied itself to Orientalism, began to exert its influence, the case was altered. The intellectual was frequently represented as the chief or only side of Christianity to be attended to; it was regarded not so much as a rule of life as a speculative scheme of doctrine. From this the transition was easy to “mysteries” similar to those of heathenism. Certain views were kept secret as a higher species of doctrine suitable only for the cultivated few. An attempt was made, in short, to provide the gospel with a philosophy, and to resolve it into such a system as philosophers would embrace.

Nor is the explanation of all this far to seek. It may at first sight seem strange that Christian teachers could embrace doctrines known to be Platonic, but we must recollect that these same doctrines were supposed to have been borrowed from Holy Scripture, which they believed to be the revelation of God’s wisdom to men. Speculative theologians, moreover, have always been influenced by contemporary philosophy, and these Alexandrian Fathers only sought to express the doctrines of the faith in a form adapted to the spirit of the times. Men like Justin and Clement had themselves passed over from heathen philosophy, and naturally carried with them much of its influence; but they had nevertheless an ardent desire to see Christian truth in its right place. . . . . After all, the Alexandrian Fathers “did not exchange the gospel for Ncoplatonism.” They resolutely maintained the supreme authority of Holy Scripture; and with whatever distortions and incongruities it may have been associated, the assertion of this principle of an objective rule of faith was in itself of the utmost value in combating a philosophy of which the only standard lay in the subjective notions of its advocates.

(p. 23)
By the light which it threw upon the great problems raised by philosophy regarding God, the world, and the human soul, Christianity had awakened the dormant spiritual sense in vast multitudes of men. But in the matter of satisfying the spiritual needs of humanity it found a rival claimant in Neoplatonism, which took for its religious ideal the direct apprehension of the divine essence. Thus, it was believed, would the traditional worship receive a new impetus, and the desideratum, for want of which men were seceding to Christianity, be supplied. The promoters of Neoplatonism saw that if heathenism was to prevail, it must both get rid of its more glaring absurdities, and also strengthen itself by a large accession of ideas, principles, and rites. Thus they borrowed whatever appeared to them good from every available source. They contemplated nothing less than the introduction of a universal religion, constructed on principles so broad that the wise of all the earth could adhere to it. It was their aim to set matters right between philosophy and theology, between doctrine and life, and to satisfy the needs of the soul on a scale to which Christianity could make no pretension.

(p. 74)
Origen finds his ruling principle of interpretation in Prov. xxii. 20 (LXX), and in an analogy between the Platonic doctrine of the constitution of man and Scripture, which has been given for man’s salvation. As man is of a tripartite nature, consisting of body, soul, and spirit, so also does Scripture possess a threefold sense—the literal, the moral, and the spiritual.

(p. 77)
What led Origen thus to repudiate tlie literal sense of so many passages of Scripture? In general, it may be said that his Platonic spiritualism, his attachment to the Alexandrian idea of gnosis, and his extravagant conception of inspiration already predisposed him in favour of a mystical exegesis.

(p. 87)
The character of Origen’s theological system as a philosophy of revelation accounts for the Gnostic and Neoplatonic features mixed up with it. His speculations often recall the theosophic dreams and fantastic cosmology of Valentinus, and his methods are those of that prominent heresiarch, and of the Neoplatonic schools. In his doctrine of the pre-existence of souls, in his theory of a threefold division of human nature, and in his highly symbolic interpretation of the story of Paradise, his Christian theology clearly shows affinity with those systems. The agreement, however, is not in principle, but is due to the adoption in common of particular Platonic tenets. He is even more of an idealistic philosopher than Plato himself.

(pp. 92 f.)
The moral and religious ideal set forth in the system of Origen is one which has its roots partly in Neoplatonic mysticism and partly in Holy Scripture. It had long been a favourite theory with idealistic philosophers that the most perfect life open to man is that which consists solely in meditative introspection and contemplation of the eternal. According to this view actions have the effect of entangling us in all manner of worldly concerns, and therefore it is better for us not to act, but just to remain absorbed in the absolute and the unseen, and in the possession of a calm tranquility which more than anything else tends to make us godlike. To have need of nothing is to be in closest contact with the Deity; to overcome the sensuous, and to live in the habitual contemplation of the invisible, is to attain at length the final aim of existence in ecstatic union with God. This is the view of life that prompted the ancient hermits to withdraw from the world and take to their cells, and it is this that has laid the foundation of the monastic system wherever it has been practised. Whether, however, this abandonment of the active for the contemplative life is in harmony with the truo genius of Christianity may well be doubted; its note is not that of an isolated self-sufficiency, but that of a yearning aspiration after righteousness. In the Alexandrian Fathers we see the union of both tendencies.

(p. 107)
Both [Origen and Celsus] were Platonists, but with a difference.

(p. 215)
Indeed the tide [of Origenism], instead of flowing, began to ebb, and after the time of Theognostus its adherents were obliged to assume the defensive. Partly this was due to the rival attractions of Neoplatonism, which at the commencement of the fourth century became the prevailing philosophy in Christian as well as in pagan circles, and partly to the circumstance that the Church was wholly engrossed with debates upon one particular subject—that of the Trinity, and could not give a thought to the elaborate philosophy of Origenism.

(p. 257)
Enough has been said to show that Origen’s influence upon succeeding ages was by no means commensurate with the boldness and grandeur of his system. This may be accounted for in several ways. For one thing it was not “compactly built together”; through its looseness and discursiveness it was at a disadvantage as compared with the more firmly welded Neoplatonism of Plotinus.

(p. 258)
Not until the ninth century did any gleam of his influence appear; and if three centuries later it manifested itself with greater strength in the pages of Duns Scotus, it was overlaid and virtually stifled with Neoplatonic mysticism drawn from the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.