Is Plato's God Yahweh?

[Dave G]

I'm going to start reading some Plato, starting with the Republic, and I'd like to know if his references to God can be generally assumed to be referring to the one true God, or does he intend Zeus, or does he have some other conception of God that is not Yahweh. Any help would be appreciated.

[bar Jonah]

How would Plato have been a follower of YHWH? :huh:

In that time, even most Israelites weren't in a right relationship with the one true God, much less some pagan Greek in another land.

[Dave G]

But he talks about "God," I believe, in his writings. I'm trying to determine if he was relating to God himself (imperfectly), or if he has some other concept of God that undergirds his philosophy.

Some Christians, maybe Augustine used Platonic thought to bolster Christian philosophy. I'm trying to find out if that was flawed from the get-go, and how so?

[bar Jonah]

How could he have possibly known the God if Israel?

And yes, if Augustine corrupted the church with pagan philosophy from pagans like Plato, then it was certainly flawed.

[nomad]

there were a lot of greeks who, while they didn't know His name, had at least a rudimentarily correct conception of God. that is a common misconception.

a good discussion, with quotes from some early greek philosophers and a summary overview of some early controversy is here:

http://www.ldolphin.org/cooper/ch1.html

the whole book is a good read (and online!) but this chapter is a must read, even if you avoid the rest (which is pretty heavy reading).

on the post's original point, i cannot answer that. plato is mentioned on the above page. but it appears to be in some dispute (i just read an old i.p. cory book, and he spends the last chapter attempting to refute some philosophers who felt that christianity was copycatting of platonic concepts. but i don't remember if he addressed plato directly. and i didn't agree with all of the republic, though i was pretty impressed with it (i got about halfway through it, i intend to finish it one of these days....))....

[Dave G]

I suppose in the same sense that other cultures will worship a god above all other gods. If natural man relates to God in the natural, isn't it still the same Creator and sustainer? Or not?

[bar Jonah]

A common misconception based on what, Nomad?

Same to you, Dmg... based on what? What evidence do you have that Plato worshipped God "in the natural?" :huh: In the absence of such evidence, we must assume the opposite.

[Dave G]

thanks for the link, nomad.
:thumb:

[Dave G]

Based on the use of the word "God" in his Republic. I didn't mean that he was worshipping God, or even relating to God in a correct fashion, or even had any means of salvation. But I was wondering based on the attention he seems to give to a supreme deity, whether it was a deity that is similar to Yahweh.

If he got things right, or not.

[bar Jonah]

The Bible is clear that worshipping gods that are "similar" to YHWH... always ends up with the same result. :eww:

[nomad]

my goodness, right idea, you are contentious lately.

did you read the link? or have you done _any_ reading on the ancient world? you don't have to go far to find someone who finds echoes of the One True God in the beliefs of various nations. they are sometimes buried under trash, sometime the accumulations of corruptions are thick, just as even in israel at certain times as you note.

it would be a bit foolish to assume that God was unknown outside israel. just off the top of my head i can think of at least three - naaman, nebuchadnezzar, and the queen of sheba - who came to know the truth about God from the jews themselves, and carried this knowledge elsewhere. and iirc in the story of solomon it is recorded that people from many nations came to offer sacrifices to Yahweh.

if you read just the first paragraph of the link i gave you, he explains the misconception. the rest of the link is his attempt to prove that there WAS a knowledge of God among some of the early pagans. for those who wish to find Him, it appears God was often available and delighted to be found...

[bar Jonah]

Barring evidence to the contrary, one must assume a citizen of a pagan culture is a sinner and not a saint.

[Dave G]

I'll just have to read it- I was hoping somebody could give me a quick rundown on what he meant when he said "God." And then try to figure out how Platonic thought made it into theology.

[nomad]

that's why they actually read what plato wrote :)

[bar Jonah]

Six years ago, I said I believed in the true God.

I was a witch, and I was bound for Hell.

[Dave G]

yer right

:doh:

[Dave G]

I don't think anyone would be able to make the case that Plato worshipped in spirit and in truth.

[Blake Reas]

Today @ 04:52 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=334453#post334453)
dmg_73072:

I'm going to start reading some Plato, starting with the Republic, and I'd like to know if his references to God can be generally assumed to be referring to the one true God, or does he intend Zeus, or does he have some other conception of God that is not Yahweh. Any help would be appreciated.

NO! YHWH is more dynamic in His relationship than the god of Plato.

In Christ,
Blake

[nomad]

according to sorokin, greek culture was making a shift from sensate to ideational around the same time. so he at least looks at it as a sort of 'cultural awakening'. we might not consider it very 'christian' nowadays, in the entire part of it, but the truth is society changed from a very naturalistic and humanistic bent to a more 'spiritual' orientation (i hate to use idealistic, because sorokin, whose terminology i am importing, uses that in a specific way i am not meaning here). i think plato etc. are given some credit for inspiring this, and some feel they may even have been influenced by jewish thought (unfortunately it went the other way too)... not all the diaspora was in 70AD, it started earlier (though i don't remember exactly when, it might not be early enough), and of course some jews wandered voluntarily for various reasons (including shipping and trade)...

that might be a good read too, at least the chapter on philosophy... it's more on western europe, but some on the greeks as well - the crisis of our age, pitirim sorokin. or the larger work, social dynamics (more of the same, but more detail... i haven't started that one yet). i don't know for sure if he is a christian, but i believe he is, just from his writings. and you can't fault a guy who, after 4 volumes (in the original social dynamics, of which crisis is a summary) of evidence over 26 centuries as his proof, ends by basically saying society will be saved by turning back to God :)

[Dave G]

good stuff, thanks

[nomad]

ok... note that i'm not necessarily widely read on this, just i have read a few things recently that just happened to touch on this.

separately... right idea, i applaud your jealousy for the name of yahweh. may god bless you for it. i do not always agree with what you have to say, but i do admire the depth of your conviction in it. that sort of faith is not always easy to come by these days.

[Dave G]

Yeah, RightIdea, I don't intend to diminish your zeal for Holy God.
I always know when I read your posts that you're going to be faithful to the cause.

[AcousticJS]

Today @ 06:00 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=334511#post334511)
Blake Reas:

NO! YHWH is more dynamic in His relationship than the god of Plato.

In Christ,
Blake

Yeh, spot on!

From what I can gather, Plato's 'God' was actually more of an abstraction consisting of a set of ideals. So Plato's God consists of a being that is defined purely in terms of omnipotence, omniscience, immutability. There's very little (if any) relationship or personality involved. YHWH is a highly relational and personal God.

As a tentative OVer, I also take exception to the platonic/hellenistic idea that to be 'perfect' somehow means that God can never change His mind or intention. The Hellenistic 'God' is the 'unmoved mover', which I disagree with.

To the Christian, God is ultimately Father. He is moved by the pleas of His children. He is interested in relationship, not just obedience.

I personally believe that Augustine syncretising his Christian faith with his Hellenistic/Platonic philosophy was one of the most damaging things to happen to the church. The other one was the institutionalisation of Christianity under Constantine.

God bless
Jon

[nomad]

ok now i'm going off on a limb here, but from an i.p. cory book i just read (mythological inquiry in the recondite theology of the heathen... whew! i am SO glad people have shorter titles now! :)... that book was really heavy and i don't think i got even half of it, too many details... he seemed to find a commonality in most ancient mythologies, and claims that most of it, underneath the centuries of accumulation, actually have a triad at the bottom of it, and underneath them a monad (or single God). and they were pretty consistent... the triads usually consisted of a creator, a preserver, and a destroyer (which could more correctly be called a regenerator; not ultimately destroying, but destroying to recreate). from reading it, it seemed like he was sort of 'finding what he was looking for', rather than extracting it wholesale, but it's interesting.

in other words, many of these could be wrong, because they are not looking at all of God. even in Christian thought, we see that there are three parts of God, and in john 1:18 he declares that 'no one has seen God at any time; only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.' what this is saying is that God the Father IS sort of distant, far off, ideal, and not interacting directly with man, but indirectly through His Son and Spirit and through nature. many people believe that even in the OT, when a person sees God, it is Jesus the begotten, not God the Father. and it does appear, from the sheer number of 'trinities' that exist in ancient mythology (which are otherwise somewhat bizarre, and again according to cory), that the ancients were aware of it and did try to understand and cope with it.

maybe we should open a new thread on this, because it is really interesting. my interest in this was started with the Bill Cooper book (which is really not interested in this topic; the main topic of the book is an attempt to prove that Noah was, historically, a real person, and his lineage is preserved in several places outside the bible), and triggered by a response from an OVer, claiming that everyone would have a chance to receive God, and decrying calvinism because some wouldn't have the chance. of course, then the discussion turns to 'but what about those who haven't, and couldn't have, heard the gospel'?

it seems consistent with God's good nature to grant knowledge of Himself to people in many places at many different times. even christians have different conceptions of God sometimes... the calvinist and arminian would probably accuse each other of different conceptions of God (in fact I have seen it many times). i cannot speak for plato, not remembering much and getting my info second and thirdhand, but i would not find it surprising to find knowledge of God scattered among the ancient pagans in unexpected places. i would not necessarily find the opposite surprising either - in the time of Noah, in a world full of people only Noah and his family was declared righteous and was saved - but i lean towards a possibility at least.

thought before i'm declared a heretic i should explain myself a bit :) (and i may be totally off, which is why i wanted to explain further. perhaps someone can set me straight :)

now, currently it's just a possibility, albeit one that is not newly considered, but has been several times in the past (at least). it is not without its perils - in a curious irony, cory notes that some early christians (i think it was early... maybe not so early, can't remember) wanted to show that plato was really seeing a shadow of the real God (in the same way that Paul uses the statue of the 'unknown God' in athens to declare to them who He is); however, once this was done, it was turned on them, when platonists then claimed that the christian similarities were 'stolen' from plato (and not the other way around; the christian or jew would believe that either plato received it from a much older tradition, or that the same God granted both jew and plato knowledge in parts of Himself). this is seen even up to the present day.

of course, the very things HE wrote about have fallen into this very trap as well :) in a side note he mentions Mithras, and in this writeup similarities are evident (he does not talk much about Mithras, but even not knowing much about mithraism it struck me). the christian or jew will believe this is at best a corruption of a much older tradition passed down from adam or noah. however, in the present day it is argued, as with plato, that christianity 'stole' its ideas from mithras. and i don't think that's true either, similarities or no similarities.

[bar Jonah]

Just because many pagan cultures have created perversions of the one, true religion doesn't mean that all those pagans were actually inadvertently worshipping the one, true God.

[nomad]

no, of course not. what it DOES mean is that there is a potential that at times, some people 'saw through' the religion to the truth behind it.

in other words, i would agree with your basic assumption that a person in a pagan society could be expected to be pagan. however, i believe that there IS a chance that at times, some in pagan societies could have had a purer view of the truth than what we would expect from the prevailing religions. even in america, you occasionally hear the view that christianity in america is no longer 'pure' and infiltrated by idols, usually either tradition, intellectualism, or greed, and a survey of the culture via TV and other media might lead to a skewed view of american society as well.

note i only said a chance :)

[bar Jonah]

On the contrary, the Bible makes it clear that men are not good enough or wise enough to reach God of their own accord, of their own wisdom ... "seeing through their religion to the Truth behind it," so to speak.

Or do you think we are able to reach up to God, as opposed to Him reaching down to us?

[nomad]

you are OV, are you not? and not a calvinist?
do you believe in prevenient grace, or not?

basically, what DO you think God does, and what do you think a person does? and, given that, why do you think this case is so different? can God not draw people to Himself, even when He is hidden? paul says, after all, that no person is without excuse, because the very universe declares Him: Rom 1:20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. if this is true, then perhaps the men are NOT doing it 'by themselves', as you assert.

an example might be abram: in genesis 11, we see that abram lives in ur, among the chaldeans. this is not necessarily known as a Godly country, afaik (the chaldeans are often associated with the babylonians, earlier in history, iirc). however, in chapter 12, the Lord tells abram to do something, and he does it. the story is not given, but there's no indication this is something out of the ordinary.

in other words, why do you think this is so different than someone in america, for instance, or even right here on this board, who does not believe in Christ, becoming convinced? as far as we can tell, there were people around in many places who knew the truth about God (the Jews, and before the Jews apparently as well).

this whole thing probably deserves a new thread. but, in short:

- if you are a calvinist (God does everything), then there is no problem - God can save who He wishes, and reveal Himself to who He wishes.

- if you are of an arminian bent (even if not on the entire theology, just on this aspect of soteriology, where God does something and man does something in cooperation) - most people come to this out of outrage that God might only choose to save some; many of these also claim that everyone has a decent chance to serve God. if that is true, and it has been true for all of history since Adam (as is usually also part of the argument), then we should expect some of them, even in predominantly pagan societies, could choose God.

we might look to solzheytsin (sp) as a modern-day example, of someone who knew God, but inside a primarily atheist culture and society, or similar (but less well known, so maybe not directly applicable to plato's situation) in the churches in various persecuted places on the earth today.

so what other view am i missing, that is incredulous that there might be people serving the true God outside of ancient Israel?

[Pereynol of Sheer Dread]

Some of the early Christians had some interesting thoughts bearing on the question you raise. Justin Martyr, in his Apologia, writes:

We have been taught that in Christ is the firstborn of God, and we have proclaimed that he is the Logos, in whom every race of people have shared. And those who live according to the Logos are Christians, even though they may have been counted as atheists---such as Socrates and Heracleitus, and others like them among the Greeks...Whatever either lawyers or philosophers have said well, was articulated by finding and reflecting upon some aspect of the Logos. However, since they did not know the Logos---which is Christ---in its entirety, they often contradicted themselves...Whatever all people have said well belongs to us CHristians. For we worship and love, next to God, the Logos, who comes from the unbegotten and ineffable God, since it was for our sake that he became a human being, in order that he might share in our sufferings and bring us healing. For all writers were able to see the truth darkly, on account of the implanted seed of the Logos which was grafted into them. Now the seed and imitation of something which is given on the basis of a person's capacity to receive it is quite different from that thing itself, of which the communication and imitation are received according to the grace of God.

And Clement of Alexandria says, in his Miscellanies, that:

Until the coming of the Lord, philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness. And now it assists those who come to faith by way of demonstration, as a kind of preparatory training for true religion. For you will not stumble if you attribute all good things to providence, whether it belongs to the Greeks or to us. For God is the source of all good things, some directly (as with the Old and New Testaments), and some indirectly (as with philosophy). But it might be that philosophy was given to the Greeks immediately and directly, until such time as the Lord should also call the Greeks. For philosophy acted as a "schoolmaster" to bring the Greeks to Christ just as the law brought the Hebrews. Thus philosophy was by way of a preparation, which prepared the way for its perfection in Christ.

Interestingly, one sees a variant of these ancient ideas at work in the thought of C.S. Lewis, who believed that the resurrection of the Lord Jesus was a "true myth"---that all the pagan stories of the dying and rising hero were also scattered among the pagans in a kind of prophetic sense, to ready them for the gospel, as it were. All the pagan stories prefigured the reality of the actual resurrection. Indeed, this idea played a very large part in Lewis' conversion.

In any event, there's a lot of speculation involved---whatever one concludes about these matters. And, while we may want to wrap everything up without ambiguities, it may well be that we'll have to wait upon that till the next world....

[bar Jonah]

And Jim of Denver says, "Hogwash. Big deal."

In discerning absolute truth, I'm not interested in the wisdom of men. Unlike God's word, their words are fallible. And I say that, even if I agree with the author close to 100%.

[Pereynol of Sheer Dread]

Today @ 02:26 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=335925#post335925)
RightIdea:

And Jim of Denver says, "Hogwash. Big deal."

In discerning absolute truth, I'm not interested in the wisdom of men. Unlike God's word, their words are fallible. And I say that, even if I agree with the author close to 100%.

Isn't "Jim of Denver" also fallible? Even if I nearly always agree with him, should I always endorse Jim's wisdom? There are at least two sides to any speculative conflict, even if that conflict cannot be resolved in everyone's mind. And, whichever side you take, mere speculation probably ought not presume to be dogma....

[bar Jonah]

Yes, Jim of Denver is also fallible! That's the point, Pereynol! :doh:

We should be looking at scripture rather than presenting non-scripture as authoritative evidence of doctrinal truth. I don't give a flying fig what someone's opinion is.

Detractors of Christianity regularly point to the many many evils done in the name of "the church." What do we tell them? Stop judging Christianity by a bunch of fallible people who don't even follow the actual teachings of Christianity. Judge the belief system by its source -- Jesus Christ, and the Bible.

[Pereynol of Sheer Dread]

RI,
Of course I agree with looking at scripture; it's just that the scriptures do not always address a specific question in a definitive way. That's one reason why contemporary conservative theologians who trust the scriptures have continuing disagreements. Since there isn't any direct scriptural reference to Plato in the Bible, and only minimal reference to Greek philosophy in general, we tend to get a variety of speculative replies from those who trust and interpret the scriptures. I've heard good arguments on both sides, but a conclusive answer has not been forthcoming, IMHO. There are some who would argue till they drop about this topic, but I'm not one of them....

[nomad]

there's the problem, i'm not trying to say this is absolute doctrinal truth :) it is speculation. and any assumption otherwise is also speculation. i'm just pointing out, it is a natural extension of most arminian beliefs. and, i believe, supported (or at least not opposed) to the bible as well (which doesn't say specifically either way, afaik)...

[bar Jonah]

Pereynol, are you inferring that the Bible doesn't have all the truth we need to live a Christian life? :hrm:

[Pereynol of Sheer Dread]

Today @ 11:56 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=336189#post336189)
nomad:

there's the problem, i'm not trying to say this is absolute doctrinal truth :) it is speculation. and any assumption otherwise is also speculation. i'm just pointing out, it is a natural extension of most arminian beliefs. and, i believe, supported (or at least not opposed) to the bible as well (which doesn't say specifically either way, afaik)...

Exactly so, and one can also find incipient soteriological inclusivism within the thought of the Alexandrians. Again, we've got speculation supported by inferences from scripture, but not explicit or conclusive answers....

[Pereynol of Sheer Dread]

Today @ 11:58 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=336191#post336191)
RightIdea:

Pereynol, are you inferring that the Bible doesn't have all the truth we need to live a Christian life? :hrm:

Not at all; I'm just saying that scripture doesn't explicitly address every question our minds might ask.