Michael Champion: Becoming like God and Ordering Ascetic Knowledge in Gaza

Plato’s famous claim that the goal of philosophy is to become like God as far as that is possible (e.g. Theaet.176b) had a long and productive afterlife within Platonism, other schools of ancient philosophy, Hellenistic Judaism, Christianity, and beyond into Islam. It sustains the view that philosophy should be transformative rather than merely informative, and helps to structure philosophical knowledge and education, and ground spiritual practices. Changes in the notion of ‘God’ (including in Platonism itself) helped to change how the goal of philosophy was understood, pointing to the centrality of metaphysics for conceptualizing philosophy's transformative potential. The Platonic case provides a helpful comparandum for exploring how fifth- and sixth-century thinkers associated with Gaza applied the godlikeness goal to help structure ascetic knowledge and education. Focusing on the ascetic writings of Dorotheus of Gaza, this paper argues that Christian claims about the nature of God provide distinctive contours to Gazan accounts of the goal of the ascetic life. This in turn provides an account of truth, and ordered schemes of concepts, emotions, and virtues which constitute an educational programme designed to transform how monks understand the world. This cognitive ordering of concepts, emotions, and virtues dissolves dichotomies between intellectual commitments and spiritual practices, since the spiritual practices Dorotheus promotes are given meaning through knowledge ordered by the godlikeness principle. The parallels with Platonism are close, although different theological commitments mean that Dorotheus’ account of godlikeness results in distinctive claims about individual and communal perfection.