Certainly, by the time he wrote the <span>Confessions,</span><span> Augustine had read some Plotinus and become much influenced by his style and arguments.</span> This is evident in the Confessions, both in the persistent series of questions with which Augustine pursues a difficult problem (as in Confessions 1.3.3-4.4), and in occasional flashes of exhortation (as at <span>Confessions </span>1.18.28). Neo-Platonism influenced in Augustine his entire concept of God and of Creation. In the Neo-Platonist view, all things (including souls) had an infinite, timeless, and unchangeable God as the cause of their existence. Neo-Platonists held that everything existed only to the extent to which it participated in God. Plotinus taught that a person must turn inward to find God, who is identical with the inner reality of the soul.
Neoplatonism<span> was a major influence on </span>Christian theology<span> throughout </span>Late Antiquity<span> and the </span>Middle Ages<span> in the West. This was due to </span>St. Augustine of Hippo<span>, who was influenced by the early Neoplatonists </span>Plotinus<span> and </span>Porphyry<span>, as well as the works of the Christian writer </span>Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite<span>, who was influenced by later Neoplatonists, such as </span>Proclus<span> and </span>Damascius<span>.</span>
