>Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants

>>8824225
It was written by ancient people. It means anything you want it to.
The "one true church" is only yours, in your head, (should you choose to found it) are you asking what other denominations think?

According to Philo of Alexandria, a Hellenized Jewish Platonist, the garden of Eden was something akin to Plato's intelligible world or world of ideas, and the various trees thereof and man himself were akin to ideas in the mind of God. Plato himself describes the intelligible world as a "meadow" in the Phaedrus, where the souls of gods and men were given nectar and ambrosia and live forever. Clement of Alexandria, in the Exhortation to the Heathens, uses similar language as Plato, but instead of nectar and ambrosia he says mana of heaven.

There is moreover in the Platonic Tradition the concept (taken from the Stoics) of logoi spermatikoi or seminal reason or "reason seeds" that are sowed as it were in the soil of the material world by nature in order to produce natural fruits. The material world doesn't directly interact with the ideas, but with the logoi that are images of the ideas. The Greek philosopher and theologian Maximus the Confessor develops this concept from a Christian perspective. Every natural phenomenon is due to the seminal logos inherent in it and the Divine Logos in Jesus Christ is the source of all these particular logoi.

>>8824245
I guess I sort of wanted to say
>what did they mean by this

>>8824251
But the garden doesn't exist yet at this point.

>>8824274
I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand.
>The material world doesn't directly interact with the ideas, but with the logoi that are images of the ideas.
But these ideas (or logoi spermatikoi, whichever the case), do they already exist at this point? What is their origin? Or is it like God?
>Maximus the Confessor develops this concept from a Christian perspective
Would you recommend that I first study the Bible before reading any Christian theologians (as I planned to do) or can (should?) I read certain things parallel to the Bible?

>>8824303
>But the garden doesn't exist yet at this point.
I assume you think this because you're taking the Genesis as a historical narrative taking place in time and space. Philo however read it as more of a parable. According to the Platonists there are vairous layers of meaning to every sacred text, historical, moral, and metaphysical. So in this sense according to Philo the Genesis narrative can be taken as metaphysical parable, describing events outside space and time, and hence the order of events is only due to our limited mode of undertanding, which is by means of discursive reasoning, not how the things are in themselves in the intelligible world. Therefore the images of trees, seeds, a garden, a meadow, etc. are to be understood as metaphors, sensible aids to undertand metaphysical realities which cannot be perceived with the senses.

>But these ideas (or logoi spermatikoi, whichever the case), do they already exist at this point? What is their origin? Or is it like God?
According to the Platonists, the intelligible world exists eternally outside space and time. The level of the world soul exists outside space, but not time. And the sensible world, in space and time. The ideas exist in their true form in the intelligible world. The logoi are "images" of the ideas in the level of soul, and natural phenoma are images of the logoi in the level of the sensible world.

This is not the case with Maximus though. With him the divine Logos is not distinguishable highest principle. To claim so would amount to heresy. So in Christian theology, the Logos, the intelligible world, and God are sort of convoluted into the same principle.

>Would you recommend that I first study the Bible
Yes, although I'm not a strict orthodox Nicean Christian.

>>8824435
Thanks a lot for the help, anon.

>>8824435
It's somewhat interesting how Platonic thought fits Christianity so seamlessly.

>>8824435
>is not distinguishable highest principle
is not distinguishable *from the* highest principle, that is, God. Interestingly enough, for Maximus the divine Logos is transcendent as well as immanent in the sensible world, pervading every little thing. In this sense he avoids Platonic dualism and redeems creation.

>>8824225
you know maybe there are gardens etc in heaven, just like there were angels before there were people lmfao