John Philoponus

John Philoponus (flourished 6th century) was a Christian philosopher, theologian, and literary scholar whose writings expressed an independent Christian synthesis of classical Hellenistic thought, which in translation contributed to Syriac and Arabic cultures and to medieval Western thought. As a theologian, he proposed certain esoteric views on the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and the nature of Christ.

A native of Alexandria, Egypt, and a student there of the celebrated Aristotelian commentator Ammonius Hermiae, Philoponus interpreted Aristotle critically in the light of Neoplatonic idealism and Christian theology; thus, he identified Aristotle’s concept of the first cause with the Christian notion of a personal God. Arguing for the Christian doctrine of creation, he composed a treatise, now lost, “On the Eternity of the World,” contradicting the 5th-century Neoplatonist Proclus.

Possibly Philoponus’ Christianization of Aristotelian doctrine allowed the Alexandrian academy to continue despite criticism from the church. Among his notable commentaries are those on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, the logical treatises of the Organon, the Physics, the three books of De anima (“On the Soul”), and De generatione animalium (“On the Generation of Animals”). In philosophical theology Philoponus produced his major work, Diaitētēs ē peri henōseōs (“Mediator, or Concerning Union”), in which he discusses the Trinity and Christology. Because he held that every nature necessarily is individualized, he concluded that in Christ only one nature was possible, the divine. Although such a theological position appeared to be heretical monophysitism, Philoponus approximated the orthodox miaphysite teaching by explaining that though Christ’s humanity was devoid of personhood, it was not dissolved by its fundamental union with the divinity. An adherrent of the miaphysite tradition of St. Cyril of Alexandria (c. 375–444), who emphasized the unity of Christ’s humanity and divinity through the Incarnation, Philoponus criticized the doctrinal statements of Pope Leo I (440–461) and the Council of Chalcedon (451). In 681, approximately a century after his death, he was censured by the third Council of Constantinople for his alleged monophysitism.

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Philosophy 101

In order to defend the Christian dogma of personal immortality, Philoponus broke with the common Aristotelian and Stoic interpretation of a single universal mind operative in all people and taught that each person possesses an individual intellect. Among his other original contributions to Western thought was his development of Aristotle’s kinetic theory of motion (the principle that nothing moves unless it is moved by an external force), by affirming that velocity is directly proportional to the excess of force to resistance. Philoponus’ two treatises on grammar were later revised in lexicon form and received wide recognition during the Middle Ages.