Delphi. The Gnostics, although nontraditional in doctrine and elitist in member-
ship, shared this traditional organization style of part-time leaders with merely
local roots. The traditional Egyptian temples with their extensive property were
an exception to this amateur pattern, but their circles were very parochial.- Another pro-Christian emperor, Gallienus, who called off the Decian persecutions,
vetoed Plotinus’ project for the religious community “Platonopolis” (CHLG, 1967:
202). - This is not to deny that there were external organizational and political factors
involved in the heresy disputes, but rather to stress that there were internal
intellectual issues involved as well, which had their own sociological impetus inside
the intellectual community. The heresies emerged when there was a coordination
of the two levels of struggle. - The tendency of Middle Platonism to become relatively more associated with
Christianity may well be another reason why Plotinus formulated a rival Neopla-
tonist doctrine for the anti-Christian coalition. - Of the eight great Latin and Greek doctors recognized by the church, seven worked
in the generation of the 360s to the 390s: Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Basil of
Cappadocia, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and John Chrysostom
(Attwater and John, 1983: 41, 107, 194). This is the period immediately after the
failure of Julian’s restoration of the pagan cults in 362–363. The only major church
father not in this generation is Pope Gregory the Great, active 575–604. - Once inside the church, it was not difficult to choose a winning faction. In 386
the Manichees were purged at Carthage; in 388 a Donatist bishop was executed;
in 391 the emperor issued a general edict against paganism; in 399 imperial agents
closed pagan shrines in Africa (Brown, 1967: 74, 184, 187). Carthage, a land of
organizational struggle among Catholics, Donatists, and Manichees, was just the
place to produce a thinker like Augustine. An ingredient of his greatness was the
opportunity to define the doctrinal content of orthodoxy for the victorious organ-
izational faction. - It was about this time that Neoplatonism had its last upsurge, with the formal
reestablishment of the Academy at Athens and Alexandria. Neoplatonism made a
useful religion for educated pagans under Christian power, since it favored inner
worship approached via philosophy rather than exterior cult practices at just the
time when the latter were being abolished.
4. Ancient China
- Historical sources are often vague regarding the lives of intellectuals of early China,
as they are for Greece and India. What follows here is an attempt at coherent
reconstruction of how the oppositions of the intellectual community unfolded. It
should be understood throughout, without repeated caveats in the text, that an
interpretation is being offered. Occasional footnotes cite evidence in regard to
controversial points about the dating. Network sources for Chapters 4 and 6 are
those given in Chapter 2. On Chinese social history, see Eberhard (1977); Gernet
(1982); CHC (1986).
958 •^ Notes to Pages 125–138