A copy and shadow of heavenly things...

Neoplatonism and Christianity; and a Scriptural Approach to Personal Finances

Copies of Heavenly Things

I’d like to take a bit of time this week to articulate an idea that has fascinated me for many years and which I’ve found again described in Bijan Omrani’s God is an Englishman. It is the idea that the world that we live in is a kind of image or copy of the heavenly realm and that we can both recognise and access the presence of the divine inherent in all things by virtue of their God-createdness.

It begins with the rediscovery of Plato in the mid-fifteenth century AD in Western Europe. With this rediscovery came various interpretations of Plato by commentaries, often described as “Neoplatonic”, from Late Antiquity (roughly 3rd to 6th centuries AD) by people like Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblicus. These latter works had a profound effect on the fifteenth and sixteenth century Christian concepts of God and interpretations of the relationship between God and creation. This was not entirely novel in Christianity as other thinkers from centuries before, most notably St Augustine, had too been thoroughly influenced by these ideas and had woven them into their theology.