Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, April 8 2025
On 8 April 2025, Prof. Emanuele Vimercati (Pontifical Lateran University) held a seminar on the theme of assimilation to God, his economy and development, in Philo of Alexandria. The meeting is part of a cycle of seminars dedicated to the theme of “assimilation to God” (homoiosis theõ) and follows the one held by Professor Ferrari (University of Pavia) on the same theme in Plato’s Timaeus.
Philo’s particular contribution in his work De fuga et Inventione (later De Fuga), a commentary on the Pentateuch, was highlighted. Philo worked with the Bible on one side and Plato on the other: this is the context to consider. De Fuga is a commentary on the biblical text that narrates the flight and return of Hagar, a metaphor for detachment from the world and rediscovery (assimilation to God).
In De Fuga, Philo emphasises politics: practical activity as a means of assimilation. Philo deals with practical virtue to explain assimilation to God through the use of “political” vocabulary: the first political subject is God, and human beings, created in his image and likeness, act in the same way.
This approach has a preparatory function: those who want to assimilate to God must go through political action.
Vimercati emphasized the interest aroused by Philo’s reading of the creation of the world in “political” terms, precisely from which the discourse on assimilation to the divine is inserted.
Philo, Vimercati emphasized, offers an original reading of the theme of assimilation, even with respect to Plato (cited with his Theaetetus).
The noetic cosmos is in the Logos the intellectual activity of God: creation. The latter is in itself a political operation. It is understood as the introduction of a political order, starting from a precosmic chaos: this happens through a normative and regulatory intervention. The theme is not new: “ochlocracy” was a term dear to the Greeks, also present in Polybius to indicate the violent force of the masses followed by basileia (monarchy). Philo insists on the precosmic warlike condition on which God intervenes. In De Opificio – Professor Vimercati observed – Philo expresses himself differently and speaks, instead, of anarchy.
Also noteworthy is the analogy between creatures and Creator, between human beings and God. Man is created in the light of sociability: this element unites human action with that of God. Man is thus led to “socialization” precisely because primarily God’s creation is a political act.
Philo values political activity because it is “pertinent” to God. Dealing with money, fame and pleasure is admissible and contemplated but, for those who want to assimilate to God, it is necessary to do so in a temperate way. Those who want to assimilate to God, while rigidly wanting to disregard – and flee from – money, fame and pleasure, are to be blamed. An analogous reasoning emerges in relation to the relationship with the body and with the other: admitting it is a preliminary condition for those who want to contemplate God while disregarding the body. Finally, whoever wants to assimilate to God must prove to manage human goods through economy and politics, disciplines propaedeutic to a life of assimilation.
Philo also highlights the propaedeutic character of practical virtue with respect to theoretical virtue, understanding politics as a service activity. Politics in De Fuga is presented in its noblest sense. In this sense, the Alexandrian philosopher distances himself from those who see divinity as an entity devoid of operative capacity (Aristotelians, Epicureans): as God manifests his way of being by operating, so man must act to find himself in his following.
In The Statesman, Plato represents politics and economics, two theoretical virtues with an “architectonic” character: they have as their object a direction, a commanding activity. Plato distinguishes the two subjects: politics and economics have the same object, what varies is the extension (the city-polis or the house-oikos). Aristotle considers them two disciplines of practical order because they deal with detail and, unlike Plato, distinguishes them: the oikos is different from the polis.
Having said this, Vimercati conducted his reflection on Philo asking himself in what terms the positions of the Greeks were reflected in his thought. In Philo’s vision, politics is an “ambiguous” science (it has as its object good and bad legislation) but it is also “amphibious” because the politician deals with practice but also with contemplation.
Jacob, expression of the ascetic and the progressing one, must still come to terms with his corporeality. Nevertheless, the path cannot be exhausted as long as the soul has some relationship with the body. It seems in some cases, Vimercati noted, that the completion of assimilation is possible when the soul has left its own body as a dwelling.
For Philo, therefore, assimilation in this life is possible but partial, and becoming similar to God corresponds with becoming just.
God, for his part, grants knowledge of himself to his own Logos as a homeland, a homeland granted to a fellow citizen: God’s thought inhabits God as a fellow citizen. Whoever assimilates to God can count on a city-refuge, where to be hosted as a stranger. The analogy is here established between the homeland and the city of refuge, the ground of the right of asylum. Professor Vimercati emphasized the double political dimension that characterizes both the God-Logos relationship and the God-man relationship (stranger!).
In Philo, unlike Plato, God has “donated” knowledge of himself, which is why the ultimate stage in the path of assimilation is an intervention by God: not by chance in the progression one grasps elements of gratuitousness, beneficence and mercy.
Politics is amphibious, since it is practical and contemplative, the political man, therefore, not only deals with earthly goods but also with an investigation and a discovery.
What, then, is the object of political investigation? In this regard, that better generation of those who have inherited virtues is evoked – Vimercati notes. Politics, as such, deals with truth, virtue and good: the same objects of contemplative science. Given as presupposed an ascending dynamic between practical virtues and theoretical virtues, in Philo’s thought one clearly grasps the idea that a dose of contemplation is needed to exercise politics in practice at its best. Political action cannot, therefore, disregard the contemplation of good and virtue but clearly passes through the practice of administration and government of things in a contingent context.
What, finally, is the condition of man assimilated to God? The man assimilated to God tastes peace. This vision, Vimercati emphasized, starts from the way God creates: he, acting politically, produces peace by creating cosmic order. In the same way, God is a place of peace for those who strive to be assimilated to Him, thus overcoming earthly conflicts. God is therefore seen as a “political agent” and “place of refuge” for those who tend and want to resemble Him.
