{"id":34847,"date":"2015-02-24T07:11:57","date_gmt":"2015-02-24T12:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=34847"},"modified":"2015-02-23T16:12:46","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T21:12:46","slug":"philip-jenkins-on-philos-theology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/philip-jenkins-on-philos-theology\/","title":{"rendered":"Philip Jenkins on Philo&#8217;s theology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-34848\" src=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/god-creating.jpg\" alt=\"god creating\" width=\"482\" height=\"376\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/god-creating.jpg 482w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/god-creating-300x234.jpg 300w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/god-creating-420x328.jpg 420w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/god-creating-460x359.jpg 460w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/god-creating-90x70.jpg 90w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" \/>At <strong><a title=\"The Anxious Bench blog\" href=\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Anxious Bench<\/a><\/strong>, eminent historian <strong>Dr. Philip Jenkins<\/strong> has<a title=\"Jenkins on Philo\" href=\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2015\/02\/philos-answer\/\" target=\"_blank\"> a nice basic summary of <strong>Philo&#8217;s merging of Platonic theology<\/strong> with that of the Hebrew Bible<\/a>. This summary fits nicely with the one I quoted towards the end of <a title=\"trinities podcast episode 76\" href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/podcast-76-justin-martyrs-dialogue-with-trypho-part-3\/\">episode 76<\/a> of the trinities podcast.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Jenkins says, in part:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Having excluded God from the world, though, Philo used a Stoic concept to bring him back (and he often ran into serious contradictions in the process). God was transcendent, but also thoroughly immanent, a constant creative force in all things. As a would-be Platonist, Philo explained creation as the work not of a God separated from the world, but of divine powers or attributes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;<strong>Powers<\/strong>&#8221; could mean the capabilities of a thing (the owner of the powers) but in these contexts it often means<strong> a being<\/strong>, a being with powers, i.e. thing of God&#8217;s Wisdom as a being who can do things, as a him or her.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The most important of these powers that lay between perfect Form and imperfect matter was the Logos, Reason, God\u2019s \u201cfirst-born,\u201d which is equivalent to Plato\u2019s creative Demiurge.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That is, the &#8220;Craftsman&#8221; who figures in the complicated creation-myth in Plato&#8217;s famous dialogue called the <em>Timaeus<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a title=\"Philip Jenkins on Philo of Alexandria\" href=\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2015\/02\/philos-answer\/\" target=\"_blank\">Click here<\/a> to read the whole thing.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At The Anxious Bench, eminent historian Dr. Philip Jenkins has a nice basic summary of Philo&#8217;s merging of Platonic theology with that of the Hebrew Bible. This summary fits nicely with the one I quoted towards the end of episode 76 of the trinities podcast. Dr. Jenkins says, in part: Having excluded God from the&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/philip-jenkins-on-philos-theology\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Philip Jenkins on Philo&#8217;s theology<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,15,14,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-christology","category-history","category-linkage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34851,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34847\/revisions\/34851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}