  Philoponus is often celebrated for having been one of the very first thinkers to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity. To some extent, this is true, but crucially, his contemporaries must have taken a different view. Pagan philosophers abhorred the way in which Philoponus used Christianity as a vantage point from which, in their opinion, he recklessly disturbed the harmony of the Greek philosophers, and Christian theologians could not but castigate his attempt to comprehend in Aristotelian terms what was for them, essentially, a profound spiritual mystery demanding belief just because it was philosophically unacceptable.