Reading the early Christian theology of arithmetic: methods of research and the search for a method

Joel Kalvesmaki

Part of the Theology of Arithmetic website.

This lecture was presented 19 November 2002 at Catholic University of America. Works cited can be found under the last name of the author in my bibliography.

Just over two years ago, I first encountered the writings of Iamblichus, a fourth century philosopher who transformed the philosophical heritage of Plotinus, giving it a markedly theurgic character. My reading of his Pythagorean Way of Life challenged a notion I once held dearly. Until that point I had assumed that the philosophy of late antiquity was markedly Platonic, and that Plato was held by all neoplatonists to be the greatest of philosophers. Hence, I was shocked to find Iamblichus, one of these so-called neoplatonists, giving ultimate homage not to Plato, but to Pythagoras, whom I vaguely recognized at the time as one of the anonymous crowd of pre-Socratic philosophers. In his biography of Pythagoras, Iamblichus presented a view of philosophy that encompassed much more than the neoplatonism I knew. It included a reverence for the mathematical sciences, and saw within arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy disciplines that were capable of leading a person to the metaphysical heights, even union with the One.

Around the same time I was reading Iamblichus, I was cutting my teeth on the writings of the fourth century monastic theologian, Evagrius of Pontus, who spent the last two decades of his life in Palestine and Egypt. In his famous treatise On Prayer, Evagrius explains why he composed 153 sententiae on prayer. He cites John 21.11 and explains the significance of the number 153 as a composition of 100, 25, and 28, each of which had its own special meaning: 100 is a square number; 25, a circular; and 28, a triangular.

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