Abstract

The following announcement looks at Michael Psellos and Philo of Alexandria, two authors from different contexts and periods. It attempts to show how both authors, working within a given dogmatic tradition, sought to support and verify this tradition by producing an eclectic philosophical synthesis, drawing on and reconciling various philosophical currents. It shows how the Aristotelian categories were used as well as other philosophical techniques in both authors to address God’s immanence, transcendence and divine personalism. In the context of Philo of Alexandria the use of Greek philosophy, coupled with Judaism in the context of exegetical imagination, leads him to the discovery of God’s energies or powers, and their mediating role between God and the human being. Psellos comments on Gregory of Nazianzus’ theology, and the heresy of Eunomios within the Aristotelian categories of relation coupled with diversions into ideas, such as the superiority of oracles’ revelation in the thought of Aristides. This paper does not seek to compare shared concepts between these two authors as much as to show the method, which seeks out to produce an original thought by commenting on the existing and accepted dogma.