Therefore, by the theorem, God exists. Problems. Anselm's "Ontological Argument" Abstract: Anselms's Ontological Argument is stated, and a few standard objections to his argument are listed. The final route to God is the route of being, in which Bonaventure brought Anselm’s argument together with Aristotelian and Neoplatonic metaphysics to view God as the absolutely perfect being whose essence entails its existence, an absolutely simple being that causes all other, composite beings to exist. Earlier, I was listening to a debate between Edward Feser and Graham Oppy on Capturing Christianity. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as it encapsulates a chain of thinkers which began with Ammonius Saccas and his student Plotinus (c. 204/5 – 271 AD) and which stretches to the 5th century AD. Moreover, conceivability does not entail possibility, and therefore God does not follow. Neoplatonism is a strand of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the second century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. Second in a series of essays on the existence/non-existence of God donated by Contributing Editor Susan Humphreys. Therefore, God exists. An alternative view of Edward Fester's Neo-Platonic Case for God in his book: "Five Proofs of the Existence of God." It is not clear I can conceive a necessary being of the sort intended. I can conceive of God as a necessary being. For Augustine, God is the source of the forms. In the Neoplatonic scheme of things, the top of the hierarchy of the universe was one god, called “the One,” and that all the lower levels were “emanations” from God. QED. As a Neoplatonist, and later a Christian, Augustine believed that evil is a privation of good and that God is not material. Five Proofs of the Existence of GodÊprovides a detailed, updated exposition and defense of five of the historically most important (but in recent years largely neglected) philosophical proofs of God's existence: the Aristotelian proof, the Neo-Platonic proof, the Augustinian proof, the Thomistic proof, and the Rationalist proof. Proof. St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) was a Neoplatonic Realist and was often called "the second Augustine." ÊThis book also offers a detailed treatment of each … The second argument in Feser’s book "Five Proofs of the Existence of God" 1 is the Neo-Platonic proof.It is also called the argument of the First … Such a God is more comprehensible; however, the trait of everlasting does tend to conflict with other Neoplatonic traits like perfection and immutable. neous appropriation of a systematic neoplatonic structure of argument and ... selfe, and not consisting (as all things do besides God) of many things. The integration of Neoplatonic arguments in the explanation of the Christian wisdom give rise to original speculations about creation, the world, the place of humankind, and the relation of soul-body. in the corollary’s proof. Some scholars may argue that this Christian appropriation of Neoplatonism is a betrayal of the original spirit of philosophy. These and other questions pose serious problems for the stability of the argument that God must be timeless. The idea of a transcendent God has roots both in Judaism and in Neoplatonic philosophy.The Old Testament, for example, records a prohibition against idols, and this can be interpreted as an attempt to emphasize the wholly “otherness” of God which cannot be represented physically. What he was saying was that these physical simples would have … Origins of Transcendence and Immanence . PDF | On Jan 1, 2004, Dermot Moran published Neoplatonic and Negative Theological Elements in Anselm’s Argument for the Existence of God in Proslogion | … The lowest level of the universe was this world; since it is the farthest from the One it is both less real than the rest of the universe and less like God. God exists. Just so, how did neoplatonism influence Christianity? In the debate, they were talking about Oppy’s counter-proposal to the conclusion of the Neoplatonic argument, which was that there could be “physical simples” instead of an absolutely simple God. An everlasting God, however, is a different story.