| This thesis examines the concept of salvation in early Christian and early Neoplatonic thought. Salvation consists of the Return, which involves the three Principle Hypostases of the Plotinian Neoplatonic system: the One, Nous, and Soul. While the creation of the cosmos derives from the emanation of the lesser hypostasis from the greater, the Return consists of the contemplative ascension of a lower hypostasis to a higher one. While this process is natural, it is complicated at the level of Soul, primarily because souls fail to recognise that they originate in a principle consisting of a greater degree of unity than themselves. By returning to its noetic essence, the soul not only finds the immediate source of its own being, it is also healed of its passionate attachment to transitory corporeal objects and thereby prepared for the mystical union with the incorporeal and hyperontological One, also known as the First Principle. Although there is some variation between Plotinus and Origen and Gregory with respect to the status of Soul, Nous, and the One, these hypostases are still found in the Christian thinkers, both of whom envision the Apocatastasis, or the universal restitution of all creation within the First Principle from which it derives. Therefore, the landscape, the process, and the goal of the cosmic drama are common to both the Neoplatonic and the Christian philosophers. |
