text: Yes, in some ways Augustine always displays his Neoplatonic intellectual roots. But Greek philosophical thought -- which by the fourth century meant one or another form of Neoplatonism -- was in the air in any case, and part of the common background of the Church Fathers of the period, East and West. The Nicene Creed is unimaginable without it.
  
  As for Revelation, I like the new reading of it that Elaine Pagels presents (though it's not original with her) in her recent "Revelations," that yes, John of Patmos is indeed a Judaizer, but his religious foes amongst those calling themselves Christian were members of the Pauline communities in western Asia Minor and the Aegean basin, and fellow-travelers who admired Paul thereabouts. And though Pagels is misleading on the subject of Roman imperial religion, given a date circa 95 CE, toward the end of the reign of Domitian, it seems clear enough what John thought of Rome, aka Babylon, without bringing in the Roman Christians.