ABSTRACT
Christians and Jews of imperial times held that the Greeks as a race were worshippers of the elements, while modern Europeans have seen the Platonists as pantheists who exaggerated the immanence of the Deity until he and the world became identical. Eusebius confirms that the Christian Origen had a tutor named Ammonius, and quotes a letter from Origen in which he pays tribute to an unnamed master who, for all we know, was his sole preceptor in Greek philosophy. For Origen as tor Philo, the incognoscibility of God implies the necessity of a positive revelation; conversely revelation makes a cul-de-sac of every other avenue to God. The Demiurge of the Platonist lacks the power, if not the goodness, of the Biblical Creator. The necessary adhesive is the 'soul of Christ', because the nature of soul, at once created and incorporeal, lends itself as no other nature will to simultaneous conjunction with the body and communion with the Logos.
