The provocative label “Christian Platonism” certainly piques one’s interest. Any aphoristic philosopher can appreciate how tongue-in-cheek claims keep theology from going cold. So, we might suppose “No Plato, No Scripture”—the second chapter of Hans Boersma’s Five Things Theologians Wish Biblical Scholars Knew—is a clever title for continuing the Christian Platonist project. But how seriously should we take its underlying arguments? Boersma explains, “I, as a theologian, wish biblical scholars knew . . . that the Bible cannot be interpreted without prior metaphysical commitments and that we need Christian Platonism as an interpretive lens in order to uphold Scripture’s teaching.”[1] Boersma says two things here. First, prior metaphysical commitments—or assumptions about the true nature of reality—are needed for biblical interpretation. Second, he says that Christian Platonism just is that set of necessary commitments. In this brief essay I contend that both these claims are, strictly-speaking, false.
1. Hans Boersma, Five Things Theologians Wish Biblical Scholars Knew (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019), 40. Ellipses and emphases mine.
Metaphysical Priors
My thesis does not contradict the rightful observation that general revelation (nature around us) and special revelation (God’s word) play off one another in the art and science of biblical interpretation. Pitting them against one another is foolish. At some level, metaphysics is necessary to biblical interpretation. Whether or not metaphysics comes logically prior to biblical interpretation is a different issue. “Metaphysics” can take on various shades of meaning, but at minimum is inferential.[2] If right reasoning about reality can be grounded in creation apart from special revelation, then it can certainly be grounded in special revelation. It seems misguided to suggest we need prior metaphysical beliefs when we come to the Bible. Proper metaphysical commitments can be derived from the text of Scripture itself.
2. Michael J. Loux and Thomas M. Crisp, Metaphysics, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2017), 1–16. See also Boersma, Five Things, 40, where he writes, “Do we need Platonism as a metaphysic today? Doesn’t each historical era have its own metaphysical insights, and isn’t it one of Christianity’s distinct characteristics that it adapts to a variety of philosophical and metaphysical frameworks, so that our contemporary historical and cultural context demands a different, non-Platonic metaphysical lens for reading Scripture?” Christian Platonists tend to dismiss later developments in philosophy, but often apart from philosophical argument, at which point, one wonders why we cannot simply presuppose a Scriptural metaphysic and disregard the whole of secular or pagan musings on the topic.
To say that the truth or reality of the Christian narrative only makes sense within a Platonic framework is to invert one’s approach to understanding the word and the world. Why not say that a Platonic framework, insofar as it is true to reality, only makes sense within a Biblical framework?[3] But if this biblical framework is the assumed metaphysic, it renders the Platonic scheme superfluous at best, and pagan at worst. Consider the potential Christian Platonist push back that I write such things because I already look at Scripture through a Platonic lens. By way of reply, perhaps that person sees things through a “Platonic” lens, because he looks at Plato through a biblical lens. While all of this sifting seems overly or even merely semantic in nature, I am not sure that it is, given attempts to salvage the Christian Platonist label.
The Myth of Neutrality
3. I realize some theologians will bristle at the suggestion that a metaphysic, or anything else for that matter, is “biblical,” since this reductionist language can assume a biblicist fundamentalism that merely begs the question in favor of a particular metaphysic, which is the topic of discussion. But how is a “biblical metaphysic” any more problematic than the mixed metaphysical positions that find their way into the Procrustean bed of the Christian Platonists?
While Boersma self-consciously seeks to avoid importing a pagan Platonic metaphysic into the Christian account of reality, he also seems set on dodging an explicitly Christian metaphysic. He defines Christian Platonism in terms of five negative claims to be stated below, but it is important to understand the significance of their place in his thinking:
Each of these five metaphysical claims has historically been vital to the Christian tradition. They are not Christian doctrines in and of themselves. But they are theoretical building blocks without which Christian doctrines are difficult or impossible to uphold. To reduce the Christian faith to a strictly biblical Christianity (let’s call it pura scriptura) shorn of the metaphysical assumptions of Ur-Platonism is self-defeating. While biblical scholars often undertake such antimetaphysical approaches to the Christian faith out of a genuine concern to uphold biblical authority, the effect is, in reality, its opposite: scriptural truth cannot be maintained without the five elements of Ur-Platonism.[4]
4. Boersma, Five Things, 43–44.
This is a strong claim from Boersma. Why does he say these five claims (which we’ll look at below) are not Christian doctrines in and of themselves? If they are consistent with Christianity, and especially if they are entailed by it, then why hesitate to call them Christian? Perhaps he means these five claims are not unique to Christianity. In that case, they are still Christian and, insofar as Plato diverges into pagan principles, Plato’s system will not work. Inconsistencies beset the non-Christian who attempts to hold these principles, but not the Christian, from which it would follow that these metaphysical claims are, it seems, a uniquely Christian doctrine. Of course, more work needs to be done to establish this argument, but Boersma’s framing is off.
Christian Platonism
Boersma writes:
What exactly do I mean by “Christian Platonism”? Lloyd Gerson’s discussion of “Ur-Platonism” (literally, “proto-Platonism”) may be helpful here. Gerson uses the term to refer to an underlying shared set of five characteristics that all forms of Platonism have in common – indeed, the five characteristics were basic metaphysical building blocks for early Christian doctrine that have continued to serve as important ingredients in Christian Platonism ever since:
(1) antimaterialism claims that bodies and their properties are not the only things that exist;
(2) antimechanism maintains that the natural order (including, therefore, physical events) cannot be fully explained by physical or mechanical causes;
(3) antinominalism argues that reality is made up not just of individuals, each uniquely situated in time and space, but that two individual objects can be the same in essence (e.g., both being canine) while still being unique individuals (distinct dogs);
(4) antirelativism rejects the notion, both in terms of knowledge and morals, that human beings are the measure of all things, suggesting instead that goodness is a property of being; and
(5) antiskepticism maintains that the real can in some manner become present to us, so that knowledge is within reach.[5]
5. Boersma, Five Things, 43.
On the face of it, Christians should not have many, if any, difficulties accepting these very normal positions. Recall though Boersma’s claim, “To reduce the Christian faith to a strictly biblical Christianity (let’s call it pura scriptura) shorn of the metaphysical assumptions of Ur-Platonism is self-defeating.”[6] Is that true? No. All five of these tenets, what I will re-label the Biblical Metaphysic, are either explicit or implicit in Genesis 1.[7] To be fair, these five premises—antimaterialism, antimechanism, antinominalism, antirelativism, antiskepticism—appear throughout the remainder of Scripture as well, but my argument is intentionally modest.
6. Boersma, Five Things, 43-44.
7. Whether or not a biblical metaphysic can be known by “unaided” human reasoning, apart from Scripture, is irrelevant to the case I will make here.
Biblical Metaphysic
Genesis 1 teaches creation out of nothing (ex nihilo), from which the remainder of Scripture more clearly explicates the doctrine, implying the antimaterialist position that more than physical bodies and properties exist.[8] In order for the material universe to be created, an immaterial Creator must do the creating. Genesis 1 does not merely teach something like the formation and naming of pre-existent material reality, nor does Ancient Near Eastern literature support that thesis.[9] This concept is confirmed later on in the Bible too (e.g., Col. 1:15–16), which raises the question of where those biblical authors got the idea of creation out of nothing, if not from the Genesis account. When God speaks, and creation happens, and when the Spirit of God hovers over the waters, seemingly applying the creational plan of God, we see causes in the world that are not merely physical or mechanical, which supports the antimechanist view. The “kinds” of trees, plants, and animals explicit in Genesis 1 establish a form or essence for individuals that lends itself to anti-nominalism. Obviously, God is the measure of all things, not human beings. The anti-relativist claim that goodness is a property of being is at least implicit in God’s six-fold (or seven-fold!) declaration that creation is “good.”
8. See Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, Creation out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004).
9. See Noel Weeks, “The Bible and the ‘Universal’ Ancient World: A Critique of John Walton,” Westminster Theological Journal 78 (2016): 1–28.
Finally, anti-skepticism says the real is knowable and present to us. God speaks, creates a world external to man, and situates man to know. Might we bolster these claims by reading further along in the Genesis account, or the remainder of Scripture? Of course! We might also reason through corroborating metaphysical arguments. But this weak inductive argument based on an overly simplistic reading of such a small sample already precludes the necessity of Christian Platonism to correct any supposedly underdetermined metaphysic of Scripture. Assume the opposite. If we do not believe Scripture explicitly or implicitly affirms a biblical metaphysic, then we have a problem because we cannot know whether a biblical metaphysic is consistent with Scripture in the first place. If we are not comparing Plato’s metaphysic (or Aristotle’s, or Berkeley’s, and so on and so forth) with Scripture, how do we know which one to choose? We can eliminate inconsistent metaphysics, but how do we know which metaphysic is biblical? Ultimately, Scripture is our standard, but that means God is not silent about metaphysics.
Conclusion
The history of philosophy never does leave Plato entirely behind—the Christian Platonists are right about that—but we truncate our philosophical theology if we flatten the real disagreements between Plato and Aristotle, or focus solely on Greek thinkers to the exclusion of later ones who often highlighted their flaws. Plato was not the only person to do metaphysics. Boersma says, “We all do metaphysics—it’s just that some of us don’t recognize this, confusing a sola scriptura approach with a non-metaphysical hermeneutic.”[10] But why should Boersma assume a biblical hermeneutic, where Scripture interprets Scripture, is non-metaphysical? The five tenets of Christian Platonism appear implicitly or explicitly in Genesis 1, without even taking into account the remainder of Scripture. Of course, a biblical metaphysic need not entail “fundamentalism” or “biblicism” either. A theologian can draw on extrabiblical sources which corroborate the picture of Scripture. Still, the building blocks for Christian theology are in Scripture as a matter of necessity, priority, and content in a way that they do not appear in Plato. We have Plato, but even Plato had Moses, and Moses had God.[11] Christian Platonism is not necessary for understanding Scripture.
