In 384 AD in the Roman city of Milan, a young rhetoric professor struggled with his own sin, pagan philosophy, and the influence of his faithful Christian mother, Monica. Though outwardly a successful academic with an enviable job, inwardly he was wasting away. In God’s providence, he began attending sermons delivered by the rhetorically gifted bishop Ambrose and became awakened to the intellectual possibilities of Christianity and the vastness of God Himself. In his Confessions, chronicling the saving work of God in his life, he wrote that “By inward goads you stirred me to make me find it unendurable until, through my inward perception, you were a certainty to me.”[1] Young Augustine had been transformed by God’s love, and soon afterward would convert, abandon the sins of his youth, and go on to write tremendous works of theology in praise to God.
1. Confessions, VII.12
In Book VII of his work Confessions, he recounts at length how the “Platonic books” helped him see the intellectual vacuousness of Roman paganism. These books were written by philosophers from a Roman school of thought which today we call Neoplatonism. This group of thinkers self-consciously took their inspiration from the older Greek philosopher Plato, who lived around 425–349 BC in Athens, Greece. Who was Plato? Why were there “Platonic Books” 500 years after he died, let alone today? And is Plato a friend or enemy of Christianity? In this article, I’ll first explain several reasons why Plato continues to be influential and valuable, and then I’ll consider some ways in which Christianity turns out to be incompatible with a fully-expressed Platonism.
A Brief Sketch of His Life and Influence
Plato was an Athenian Aristocrat, born into a prominent family and educated in all of the latest fifth century fashions. As a young man, he observed firsthand the revolutionary dysfunction of Athenian politics. In 399 BC the revolutionaries executed Socrates, an elderly Athenian famous for discussing wisdom in the public market. Plato was appalled at this injustice and realized his city and her leadership were viciously corrupt. In a surviving letter, Plato tells us how he turned away from a political life (the typical life of an aristocrat) and toward philosophy, being convinced that political systems could never be fixed unless the character of the people was first transformed and the leaders came to love wisdom.
His story may be interesting, by why do we care about Plato today? Quite simply, his ideas did not merely stay with him in the Athens of the fourth century BC, but instead proved to be the most fertile intellectual truths in the entire history of mankind’s reflection on nature. That may sound like an exaggeration, but it is not: apart from the Bible, no work of the West has exerted the degree of influence of Plato’s dialogues—the collection of several dozen works written by Plato which survive to the present. Nearly 100 years ago the British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead rightly wrote these well-known words about Plato’s influence: “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”[2] Why was Plato so influential? First, at a practical level, his ideas filtered into nearly every ancient school of thought through his disciples and students. Second, at an intellectual level, his ideas were found to be true.
2. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, (New York: Free Press, 1979), 39.
An Enduring Influence
Plato’s most famous student is Aristotle (384–322 BC), who in the generation after Plato’s death wrote dozens of systematic works of philosophy, spanning topics that cover not only what we now think of as philosophy, such as ethics, metaphysics, and logic, but also what used to be called natural philosophy, such as physics, biology, and zoology. He also wrote works on rhetoric, politics, and many other topics. Aristotle was a close student of Plato’s, nearly becoming head of his academy upon his death in 349. Many of his core philosophical commitments come out of Platonism. The later schools of ancient philosophy, including Stoicism and Skepticism, take inspiration from Plato’s presentation of his own teacher, Socrates. In the Roman period hundreds of years later, Cicero (106–43 BC) read Plato carefully, even writing his own work The Republic, borrowing from Plato’s work of the same name. Plutarch (46–after 119 AD), the author of the famous Parallel Lives that formed the moral education of generations of Western elites, was a self-conscious Platonist. His Lives are in a way Platonism manifested in historical stories. Prior to the coming of Christ, intellectual Jews were already reading Plato and grappling sympathetically with his ideas. Philo of Alexandria (around 20 BC–50 AD) shows deep familiarity with both the Hebrew scriptures and the arguments of the Platonic philosophers.
Augustine (354–430 AD) was familiar with Cicero, with the ancient Stoics and Skeptics who praised Socrates, and ultimately with the book of Neoplatonism, chief among which is the Anneads by Plotinus. Through Augustine’s creative, Christian appropriation of valuable Platonic ideas, Platonism is fulfilled by and absorbed into orthodox Christianity. Later Western theologians like Bonaventure, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas will embrace these Platonic elements as generally faithful testimonies of reason about God’s existence and attributes.
Truth in Accord with Reality
This brings us to the second, and more primary reason for Plato’s influence: the truth and power of his ideas. What did Plato believe and teach? Using Augustine as our entrée, and bracketing for the moment the way that later Platonists reconstructed aspects of Platonism, there are a number of core Platonic ideas that account for the power of his thought.
What did Augustine learn from the Platonists? In Book VII of Confessions he recounts how they taught him “to seek for immaterial truth.” Until that time, Augustine had been in the grip of materialism, the thought that everything which exists is physical, composed of material elements like earth, air, fire, and water, possible composed of even smaller atomic particles. The mistaken view the “all that exists is the material world” is actually an old mistake—from 300 BC forward you can find philosophers defending this idea.[3] Before encountering Neoplatonism, Augustine himself used to think that God was made of some kind of rarified matter—that God was physical—though he couldn’t understand how that would really work. Platonism is the oldest and most substantial philosophy that sets itself against this type of materialism, arguing instead that the non-physical world that transcends the body and the senses is the most real and fundamental kind of existence that there is. This immaterial reality is the source and explanation of the physical world, which exists in a less full and complete way. This made him an ally to much of early Christian thought.
3. Leucippus and Democritus are usually credited as the first Atomists in the West. For an influential and prominent Roman example see the work of the Epicurean philosopher Lucretius.
Plato argued there was a whole world of immaterial Forms that constitute the essences of things that are present in the physical. So, for example, every individual human being is not merely the material atoms out of which he is composed, he also possesses an immaterial human nature as the form in which those atoms come together. That common nature is shared by every human being, and human nature would continue to be real even if every actual human being ceased to exist. It is by partaking in the eternal essence of humanity that we exist as human beings.
Platonic Ethics
This orientation toward what is non-physical was not merely a physical or metaphysical commitment, it was ethical and spiritual. Plato stood against not only an emerging materialism, but also ethically destructive ways of life that were egoistic, hedonistic, and consumed with ambition for power. What most people were living for then is what most people live for today: pleasure, power, and the money necessary to get them. But for Plato, what counts in living as a human being is whether you lived as a person of character. This character is manifest in personal virtues, the chief of which are courage, wisdom, self-control, and justice, which enable you to act in the way that is ethically required by the situation.
In Book V of his work The Republic, Plato argues that these virtues correspond to the chief parts of the soul, parts which represent the human desire for different objects. The lower parts of the soul are mere appetite, desiring food, sex, and the like. The virtue distinctive of this part is self-control, which brings about a moderation of these appetites so that we only desire them to the degree they are appropriate and contribute to the overall wellbeing of the person. Plato rightly saw that hunger is good insofar as it tells you to eat, but it’s bad when it leads you to overeat. A moderate appetite which primarily likes healthy foods is the ideal condition. Another part of the soul is concerned with knowledge and truth, and the perfection of this part is wisdom. A final part of the soul is concerned with anger, indignation, pride, fear, and confidence, and the perfection of this part is courage. Plato noted that some things are worth getting angry over, and require vigorous action in order to bring about justice. In many situations, though, we are petty, getting angry without just cause or inflating our own status as if we were the most important thing in the world. Courage asserts ourself in a proper way for the sake of what is noble. Justice, or righteousness, is a crowning virtue present when each part of us does its proper work.
Plato = Christianity?
These “Cardinal Virtues,” as they come to be called, lived on in Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, and the whole later Christian tradition. At the level of nature and human society they are the hinges of a well-lived life. You can live a good life even if you are poor, never elected mayor, and never win a football game. In human life, it is character that counts. However, if you possess these qualities of character, you are in fact less likely to be poor (and you’ll use your money well, regardless of how much you have), more likely to be elected mayor (since we all want wise mayors), and more likely to win football games and battles against enemies (the courageous generally defeat the cowardly). Outward success comes from inner success. If something is wrong in your outer world, fixing it requires you to change your inner self. You are not oppressed by systems and cultures—your fault lies within your own soul. In these sentiments, Plato has general agreement with Christianity.
Moral renewal is not the only goal of Platonism. Our ultimate end lies in conforming ourselves to the divine nature and becoming united to God. Forming our character is not merely becoming “good,” it is also becoming “holy” as we increasingly model ourselves on the divine source of our orderly universe. Plato’s conception of heaven is one where we escape from the troubles of the body and live in a perfect intellectual communion with God and all the eternal truths of the world. God is an impartial judge, Plato argued, and after we die He will examine our soul and judge whether we are holy or unholy. The Neoplatonists eloquently argued that we all came from the Father and are destined to return to Him.
Plato ≠ Christianity
As Christian theology matured it became clear how Platonism falls short of the truth in several important ways. The Platonic emphasis on the value of the spiritual is good, but tends to be carried further and bring with it the correlative notion that the body is evil. Yet this addition cannot be reconciled with scripture. In Genesis, God creates the world and sees that it is good. Being in the body is a good gift. Physicality is good. And, heaven is a physical place with resurrected bodies. The Platonist emphasis on the non-physical is taken too far when it devalues the created body. Christians are more earthy than Platonists are willing to be (though some Christians of every era have unfortunately slid into this Platonist error).
Second, in the Platonist picture there is no place for Divine grace in the restoration of the sinner. Though Plato did think that the gods were involved with men in various ways, according to him our own moral improvement is ultimately up to us and depends on how we use our minds. For the Platonist we have to make ourselves holy through our own efforts—a task we know is impossible for fallen creatures. Instead of God’s grace, given to us through His Son Jesus Christ, who died in our place to give us His holiness, Plato tells us to save ourselves and make ourselves holy. It’s an impossible gospel. In the end, Plato has too high a view of what human nature can accomplish on its own. Despite his pious disposition, he cannot show us the true gospel.
Conclusion
Many throughout church history have rightly viewed Platonism as the friendliest of the various philosophies, an ally in various intellectual wars, a useful tool in the dispelling of falsehoods, and an impressive example of what God’s common grace can accomplish even among the pagans. But even so, Plato was never the final solution or answer for Christians. As he was for Augustine, Plato can be an enriching friend and aid against certain errors. He can teach us valuable truths. But we need a wiser man with a better gospel—and a physical, resurrected body—to bring us to the one true God.
