Importantly, the new direction Plotinus, and presumably Ammonius Saccas before him, had given to Greek philosophy gradually acquired traction among the Greco-Roman elites. Ironically, it may have contributed to the acceptance of Christianity among the educated, thereby elevating the religious sentiments of the empire’s misfits and downtrodden to the ideology of a political system sanctified by the will of god. Evidence for the increasing Neoplatonization of Christianity is abundant: The brilliant Christian theologian Origen, some twenty years older than Plotinus, may also have been a pupil of Ammonius Saccas; the Cappadocian Fathers Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus spent their youth in philosophical study in Athens in the 4th century, where they most certainly were exposed to Neoplatonism, while Augustine of Hippo (354–430) was intimately familiar with the writings of Plotinus and Porphyry. The cut-throat debates about transubstantiation (in the Eucharist), the hypostases of the Trinity, or the divine/human nature of Christ, could not even be followed without a thorough training in current Greek philosophical discourse. By the end of the 5th century, the audience in the philosophical classrooms in Alexandria was predominantly Christian, and Neoplatonism continued to be taught in some form or other in Athens, Alexandria, Constantinople, Baghdad, Mistra, and other pockets of learning until its triumphant revival in Renaissance Italy.