Plotinos's date being about A.D. 262, he stands midway between the
Christian writings of the New Testament, and the Council of Nicaea,
A.D. 325. As a philosopher dealing with the kindred topics--the soul
and its salvation,--and deriving terminology and inspiration from
the same sources, Platonism and Stoicism, we would expect extensive
parallelism and correspondence. Though Plotinos does not mention any
contemporaneous writings, we will surely be able to detect indirect
references to Old and New Testaments. But what will be of most
vital interest will be his anticipations of Nicene formulations, or
reflection of current expressions of Christian philosophic comment.
While we cannot positively assert this Christian development was
exclusively Plotinian, we are justified in saying that the development
of Christian philosophy was not due exclusively to the Alexandrian
catechetical school; that what later appears as Christian theology was
only earlier current Neoplatonic metaphysics, without any exclusive
dogmatic connection with the distinctively Christian biography. This
avoids the flat assertion of Drews that the Christian doctrine of
the Trinity was dependent on Plotinos, although it admits Bouillet's
more cautious statement that Plotinos was the rationalizer of the
doctrine of the Trinity.[509] This much is certain, that no other
contemporaneous discussion of the trinity has survived, if any ever
existed; and we must remember that it was not until the council of
Constantinople in A.D. 381, that the Nicene Creed, by the addition of
the Filioque clause, became trinitarian in a thoroughgoing way; and
not until fifty years later that Augustine, again in the West, fully
expressed a philosophy and psychology of the trinity.
To Plotinos therefore is due the historical position of protagonist of
trinitarian philosophy.