Neoplatonic Interpretation of Paul’s Passage in Ioane Petritsi: Theory on Matter

Abstract

This article considers the interrelationship between Neoplatonic philosophy/metaphysics and Christian religion in the thought of the 13th‑century Georgian philosopher Ioane Petritsi, using his interpretation of one passage from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Rom. 4:17) as an example. This passage was only tangentially addressed in previous studies. The significance of this paper is to identify the nature of Petritsi’s attempt to harmonize the two traditions—Biblical and philosophical. In particular, how does Petritsi treat the Biblical text, whose origin is quite different from that of philosophical texts? Does he maintain two distinct discourses and seek meeting points between them, or does he employ a single metaphysical discourse and interpret the Biblical texts from that standpoint? This question is of interest because Petritsi’s philosophical or theological stance still represents a point of discord among scholars: for some, he is a patently Orthodox thinker who uses philosophy only to explicate Christian truth; for others, he appears to be a philosopher who cites Biblical texts merely as homage to official Church tradition, without sincerely believing in a direct relation between the ideas of the Bible and those of the Platonists. The article seeks to shed light on these questions.