Universal Salvation in Late Antiquity: Porphyry of Tyre and the Pagan-Christian Debate by Michael Bland Simmons (review)

Taking a traditional view of paganism as dying in the midst of third century crises and doomed to failure by its production of only weak modes of salvation, Simmons's book makes the radical claim that the Platonist philosopher Porphyry of Tyre attempted to develop a universal soteriology that could counter Christian models, which were otherwise clearly superior. Simmons argues that Porphyry responded to the universal soteriology of Origen and then that of Eusebius's Chronicle (the first edition of which Simmons dates to the 280s c.e., in spite of Burgess's now ubiquitously-accepted dating of 306) with his own pagan form of universal salvation for all classes of people. In turn, Porphyry's universal soteriology received Christian universalist responses, especially in Eusebius's Theophany (dated to the last years of Eusebius' life, ca. 339, in spite of clear evidence that 335 must be a terminus ante quem; see my Eusebius [London: I. B. Tauris, 2014], 19–20). Porphyry's soteriological thought reached its fruition, according to Simmons, in the Philosophy from Oracles (dated debatably to 302/3), in which a tripartite schema provided a first path of salvation for the uneducated masses through traditional cults, a second path for the novice philosopher through the virtue of continence, and a third path for the elite philosopher. Iamblichus, too, developed a notion of universal salvation, though he disagreed with his predecessor in seeing theurgy as necessary for the salvation of each of the three classes of persons.

The convoluted structure and repetition (sometimes with contradictions, e.g., the second path of salvation is abruptly named the third path at 114–20) can be off-putting. Less felicitous is the lack of conceptual clarity exhibited in Simmons's identification of the second path (for the novice philosopher) as sometimes a "stage" on the path of the true philosopher or at other times a "way" which was "exclusive" from that of the elite philosopher (121); all three ways "were mutually exclusive, but also . . . inclusive" (125). The ambiguity is perhaps a result of the fact that Porphyry nowhere explicitly mentions three paths or stages.

The specialist on Porphyry may find more troublesome Simmons's assertion that his chronological reconstruction of the philosopher's writings is based on the premise that universalism was the primary objective of Porphyry's literary career (20). Thus, a work that denies finding universalism (the Regr. anim.) is placed early, while the allegedly universalistic Phil. Orac. is assigned a late date. Yet, in spite of Simmons's repeated declarations, this reviewer has yet to find promotion of universal salvation in any of Porphyry's works. Scholars have been growing increasingly uneasy of hypothetical chronologies of Porphyry's writings, but replacing these with an equally tendentious chronology is not entirely helpful. Simmons argues that the prologue of the Phil. Orac., in which the work is explicitly limited to the few and the addressee is warned not to divulge its contents, merely expresses a rhetorical trope. This argument poses significant problems. Aside from the prologue's explicit declarations that the work is intended for an elite few, the claim that salvation is offered to all is not found in these fragments, which are addressed to the person who is "giving birth to truth" (a Platonic allusion indicating a philosophical not an uneducated recipient of salvation); Simmons's reading of fr. 303.29–30 as ten holen katharsin diverges from the critical editions of Mras and Smith without indication that he is doing so; and finally, Simmons's assertion that the Phil. Orac. was delivered at Nicomedia at Diocletian's court relies only on a passage of Lactantius that nowhere names Porphyry and a passage of Porphyry that nowhere names Diocletian or Nicomedia. Simmons's only refutation of the sound arguments by Goulet and Riedweg against associating Porphyry with Diocletian's court, which he sharply rejects as "totally unconvincing," is...