Church historians debate the extent to which Platonism has influenced Christian theology, and theologians debate the extent to which Platonism ought to influence Christian theology. Rather than settle either debate in this essay, I will merely argue that Christians may employ Platonic language without necessarily capitulating to pagan philosophy or making theology subservient to metaphysics.
The term ‘Platonism’ is used in various ways. For some, Platonism is strictly the teaching found in Plato’s dialogues. For others, it is a certain view in contemporary metaphysics and mathematics about abstract objects (e.g., numbers). For still others, it is the philosophical tradition of Plato and his followers, including the entire Aristotelian tradition. Lloyd P. Gerson characterizes this tradition with a list of negative philosophical positions: “antimaterialism, antimechanism, antinominalism, antirelativism, and antiskepticism.”[1] It is this last sense of Platonism that many contemporary Christian Platonists adopt as a metaphysical underpinning that supports their biblical hermeneutic and theology.[2] My aim is not to evaluate Platonism in any of these senses directly but to consider whether Platonic language is ever permissible in Christian theology.
1. Lloyd P. Gerson, From Plato to Platonism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), 10.
2. For more on Christian Platonism as a theological metaphysic, see Robert Lyon, “What is Christian Platonism?“
Let’s take Plato’s concept of participation with the Good as an example. According to Plato, there are two aspects to reality: the world of sensible things and the world of ideas (or forms). Ideas are abstract, universal, and eternal, but sensible things are concrete, particular, and contingent. Sensible things are less fundamental (or real) than ideas, but they relate to ideas through participation. For example, all beautiful things participate in the idea of beauty. And, ultimately, everything that exists participates in the highest, most abstract idea: the Good. Plato’s followers deified the Good, and early Christian Platonists identified the Good with the God of the Bible. But is that okay? May Christians use participatory language in theology?
In what follows, I will answer this question in four steps. First, I will discuss the Creator-creature distinction as a fundamental principle of theology. Second, I will show how the Creator-creature distinction, along with divine incomprehensibility and apprehensibility (knowability), lead to the conclusion that our predications about God (i.e., characteristics and activities we attribute to God) must be analogical. Third, I clarify the relationship between theology and metaphysics in light of the Creator-creature distinction and analogical predication. Finally, I argue that Christians may use Platonic language, such as participation, in our theology so long as we maintain the Creator-creature distinction and analogical predication.
The Creator-Creature Distinction
Perhaps the most fundamental principle of theology is the Creator-creature distinction. It maintains that God is essentially distinct from and independent of creation, and that creation is absolutely dependent upon God. God is not part of creation, and creation is not part of God. Moreover, God does not depend on creation for his existence, power, knowledge, goodness, happiness, or anything else. God’s existence is necessary, but creation’s existence is not. The world and everything in it are contingent, depending wholly on God’s free power and will.
The Creator-creature distinction is derived from explicit biblical teaching and reflection upon the whole counsel of Scripture. Genesis 1:1, for example, teaches that God actively created all things ex nihilo (from nothing), yet his own existence is transcendent and ontologically prior to creation. God did not create himself, so he is neither a creature nor part of creation. The revelation of the divine Name, Yahweh, in Exodus 3:14 is another support for the Creator-creature distinction. This Name, which may be translated as “I AM WHO I AM,” teaches us that there is nothing in creation by which God can adequately compare, describe, or define himself. God is God, and no lesser description will suffice.
Doctrinally, divine aseity and divine simplicity depend upon and reinforce the Creator-creature distinction. First, God is a se which means “from himself.” He is absolutely independent, self-existent, and self-sufficient. Second, God is simple, which is to say that he is not composed of a body, parts, or properties—whether physical or metaphysical. To say that God is composed of parts is to deny the Creator-creature distinction because it implies that God depends on something that is not identical with himself. For example, God cannot be composed of a bundle of distinct attributes like power, knowledge, and goodness because that would make God depend on each of those attributes for his existence. Rather, the Creator-creature distinction and divine aseity entail that God is simple; God’s power, knowledge, and goodness are not really distinct but are identical with each other and with God himself. God does not merely have power, knowledge, and goodness; God is his power, knowledge, and goodness.
Notice that the Creator-creature distinction immediately rules out atheism (which denies a Creator), pantheism (which identifies the Creator with creation), deism (which claims that creation has become independent of its Creator), and panentheism (which makes Creator and creation interdependent).
Analogical Predication
A second key principle in theology concerns how we think and speak about God, namely, the principle of analogical predication. This principle is grounded in the Creator-creature distinction and two further truths: (1) God is incomprehensible and (2) God is apprehensible.
To say that God is incomprehensible is to say that we cannot fully understand God in his infinite and inexhaustible nature. As the Psalmist says, his greatness is unsearchable (Ps. 145:3). Likewise, Paul esteems his ways as inscrutable (Rom. 11:33). We who are limited and finite cannot understand God who is infinite and transcendent. We cannot define God because definitions (from the Latin fin, meaning “end”) limit that which they define. But God has no limits, ends, or boundaries. In fact, definitions are compounds of genus and difference. For example, a horse is a mammal (genus) that people ride (difference from other mammals). But God does not belong to any genus, kind, or category. He is not one God among others. He cannot be defined, and we cannot grasp him.
But God’s incomprehensibility does not undermine his apprehensibility (his capacity to be known). God is indeed knowable because he has revealed himself. God has revealed himself generally to all mankind through nature and human conscience (Rom. 1:20; 2:15). We do not see God in creation (John 1:18); but we do see God’s work in creation (Ps. 19:1). God has also revealed himself specially in Scripture. Scripture not only discloses the divine mysteries of the Trinity and incarnation as well as the means of salvation, but it also corrects our fallen and limited understanding of nature and history.[3]
3. For more on the noetic effect of sin and our need for special revelation, see Pierce Taylor Hibbs, “Can You Understand a Kangaroo Without a Bible? Why I Hold a Revelational Epistemology” Christ Over All, August 19, 2024: Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts: Plundering Plato without Becoming a Platonist.
That God is incomprehensible and apprehensible demands the principle of analogical predication. Analogical predication avoids the pitfalls of univocal predication and equivocal predication. In order to see why this way of analogy is necessary, we need to define univocal and equivocal predications.
Univocal predication is the notion that our predications about God and our predications about creation are univocal; they are a one-to-one correspondence. For example, if I were to say, “God is wise” and “Solomon is wise,” the term ‘wise’ would be predicated to God and Solomon in the exact same way. Whatever it means for Solomon to be wise is exactly what it means for God to be wise.
The problem with univocal predication is that it puts God and Solomon on the same plane of existence. It removes God’s transcendence and undermines the Creator-creature distinction, for it assumes (or asserts) that God is merely a part of his creation. Yet, to say that God’s wisdom is the same as Solomon’s wisdom is to imply that we can fully grasp what it means for God to be wise. In reality, however, Solomon’s wisdom is created, finite, and mutable, but God’s wisdom remains uncreated, infinite, eternal, and identical with the incomprehensible God himself. Therefore, we cannot make univocal predications about God.
Equally, we cannot speak equivocally about God. Equivocal speech occurs anytime our predications about God and created realities take on completely different meanings. We know what it means for Solomon to be wise, but God’s wisdom is nothing like it. Equivocation implies that we have no idea what it means for God to be wise. Although we can predicate many things to God—wisdom, power, goodness, etc.—we have no idea what those words signify when they are predicated of God.
The problem with equivocal predication is that it denies the biblical witness to the knowability of God and results in agnosticism. We were made in his image (Gen. 1:26-27) with the ability to know him, and he has revealed himself to us in word and deed. Yet, equivocal predication denies such knowledge and makes any attempt at theology futile.
The only way to preserve God’s incomprehensibility, apprehensibility, and the Creator-creature distinction is to affirm analogical predication about God. In this way, our predications about God must be taken as an analogy—similar but dissimilar. We know what it means for Solomon to be wise: he has abundant knowledge and takes prudent courses of action. Similarly, God has complete knowledge and executes a perfect plan according to his perfect purpose. God’s wisdom, however, is not merely the creaturely wisdom of Solomon elevated to a higher degree. Rather, God’s wisdom is archetypal wisdom; it is uncreated, original, infinite, immutable, necessary, and eternal. Indeed, God’s wisdom is God himself.
With these three types of speech in view, we can take one more step, namely, to recognize an asymmetry between positive and negative predications. Analogical predication is concerned with positive predications (e.g., God is good), but when we predicate negatively (e.g., God is unchanging) we are indeed speaking univocally. Consider this clearer example: God is not a tree. We know exactly what ‘tree’ means, and we know that we cannot apply its meaning to God. So, we are saying that God is not like a tree; there is no relevant analogical relation between God and a tree. In fact, God’s incommunicable attributes (e.g., immutability, atemporality, infinity, etc.) are negative predications; God is not at all like created realities insofar as they are mutable, temporal, and finite. But God’s communicable attributes (e.g., wisdom, power, goodness, etc.) are positive predications, and thus, analogical predications; God is like these created realities (or, rather, these created realities are like God).
There is more we could say here, but we are now ready to turn to the main point of this essay and to consider the relationship between metaphysics (as a branch of philosophy) and theology.[4]
4. For more on the relationship between philosophy and theology more broadly, see Brad Green, “The Thorny Relationship of Theology and Philosophy: Or, Heidegger and a Christian Walk into a Coffee Shop,” Christ Over All, August 12, 2024: Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts: Plundering Plato without Becoming a Platonist.
Metaphysics and Theology
These two principles—the Creator-creature distinction and analogical predication—refine the relationship between theology and metaphysics. Both theology and metaphysics concern reality and its most fundamental levels, but they have different proper subjects and scopes. Yet, theology may use metaphysical language analogically.
The proper subject of theology is God. Thus, theology is firstly concerned with God in himself—his essence and existence, his nature and attributes, his simplicity and triunity. But the scope of theology also includes God’s relation to all things: creation, providence, incarnation, redemption, and recreation. So, theology is the study of God and his relation to all things.
The proper subject of metaphysics is the nature of created reality. Metaphysics is interested in the fundamental nature of things like being, causation, material objects, abstract objects, time, space, possibility, and necessity. The scope and domain of metaphysics is creation, but it does not transcend creation. Metaphysics is not theology. Francis Turretin confirms, “Metaphysics is the highest of all sciences in the natural order, but acknowledges the superiority of theology in the supernatural order.”[5]
5. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison, trans. George Giger (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1997), 1:4.
Metaphysics cannot define God because God cannot be defined or univocally described by anything in creation. But, just as all positive predication about God must be analogical, metaphysical language may be applied to God analogically. Indeed, metaphysics is ideally suited to be a handmaiden of theology because it concerns creation at its most fundamental level. Its concepts and vocabulary (e.g., ‘nature,’ ‘being,’ ‘essence,’ ‘substance’) are the most basic and abstract of any science or field of inquiry. Therefore, metaphysical language is fitting for theology so long as we remember that all positive predicates about God are analogical.
Platonism and Christian Theology
Now we are able to answer the initial question: May Christians use Platonic language in Christian theology? Our specific example is Plato’s participatory language. I argue that we may use participatory language so long as we maintain the Creator-creature distinction and analogical predication. By maintaining these two principles, we keep the scope of metaphysics in its proper place.
Let’s consider how participatory language may be used in Christian theology. Certainly, there is biblical warrant for associating God with goodness itself. The Bible explicitly calls God ‘good’ (Mark 10:18) and teaches that all good comes from God (James 1:17). But we recognize that goodness is predicated to God analogically. God’s goodness is not identical with created goodness. We can agree with Platonists, that all things participate (“take part”) in the Good, but our sense of participation does not violate the Creator-creature distinction. God does not share his essential goodness with creatures because he is simple and has no parts. Rather, God is the cause of all good; and the effect resembles the cause. God created all things good (Gen. 1:31); all things resemble his goodness. Expositing Thomas Aquinas’s use of participatory language, Rudi A. te Velde explains,
Participation does not in any sense blur the fundamental distinction between what is God and what is not God (but dependent upon him), only one must keep in mind the distinction of the effect with respect to the cause goes together with a positive relationship, the likeness the effect has received from the cause. It is thus a distinction as implied in the relationship of the creature to its creator.”[6]
6. Rudi A. te Velde, “Participation: Aquinas and His Neoplatonic Sources,” in Christian Platonism: A History, ed. Alexander J. B. Hampton and John Peter Kenney (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 136.
A proper Christian use of participatory language recognizes the similarity between Creator and creature without confusing them.
Interestingly, this idea of participation is similar to our notion of communicable attributes (e.g., goodness). Communicable attributes are those perfections of God in which creatures participate. In his discussion of the communicable attributes, Turretin writes, “Believers are said to be partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4) not univocally (by a formal participation of the divine essence), but only analogically.”[7] In other words, our participation in the divine nature is an analogy. Our humanity does not fuse or mix with divinity. Rather, we participate by being made in God’s image (Gen. 1:26-27) and conforming to the image of his Son (Rom. 8:29). Thus, given the proper theological guardrails, participatory language is permissible in Christian theology.
7. Turretin, Institutes, 1:190.
In this essay, I have argued that we may use Platonic language in our theology without necessarily capitulating to pagan philosophy or making theology subservient to metaphysics. I used Plato’s concept of participation as an example. By maintaining the Creator-creature distinction and analogical predication, we are able to keep metaphysics in its proper place. Our participation in God is an analogy, not a univocal reality. To be clear, I have not argued that all Platonic language is permissible in Christian theology or that any Platonic language is necessary. Moreover, I have not argued whether a Platonic metaphysic should be privileged. Those are matters beyond the scope of this essay. Rather, I have merely presented the guardrails that help to protect against capitulation to pagan philosophy. Any use of Platonic language in Christian theology must be an analogy and must keep the Creator and creature distinct.
