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I Don’t Believe in Being Platonic

I Don’t Believe in Being Platonic

Last updated on: December 4, 2015 at 5:11 pm by Bob Robinson

I Don’t Believe in Being Platonic 2015-12-04T17:11:50-04:00 Bob Robinson

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The Greek philosopher Plato can be blamed for a lot of our misperceptions about the Christian life. It seems that, from very early on, Christians couldn’t take the teachings of Jesus, Paul, the other apostles, or even the Hebrew Torah, poets and prophets at face-value. They had to add the pagan teachings of Plato on top of it all. Brian Walsh and J. Richard Middleton write,

“Foundational to all Platonic thought is its dualism, the distinction…between unchanging ideals (‘forms’) and the world of the unstable and changing (‘matter’). Heaven is the true and ultimate reality, and earth is a derived reality—sometimes seen as an illusion, but always viewed as of lesser value. At its worst, Platonism viewed the visible world as ‘the homeland of evil,’ while it saw the world of ideas as the goal of human life and morality. Following Platonic logic, we must deny our creaturely life in the world and strive for the heavenly life of permanence, stability and bliss.” (The Transforming Vision)

I Love You, I Love You Not

So this is how we ended up with the concept of “Platonic Love.” In Plato’s “Symposium,” Socrates counters the argument of the drunken and debauched Alcibiades by advocating for a type of love that transcends the physical, a love that is not vulgarly connected with sex. While there is a connection between Plato’s definition of love and what the early church termed “Agape” love, it does not manifest itself in physical actions – it is purely for the purpose of higher knowledge and reason. As David Naugle wrote,

“Is (Socrates’ example) the kind of life and character one would want for oneself? Or would Alcibiades be preferable? Socrates seems to be guilty of an overweening of the soul or of reason; Alcibiades of the body. The dualism is severe, and therefore the choice is painful. There is deep sacrifice (of soul or body) in either direction. Neither option is attractive, at least not by most standards. But the fact is that Platoís Symposium calls for a decision: Socrates or Alcibiades!”

Naugle offers a solution:

“There is a profound need for another alternative, one that combines the earthiness of Alcibiades and the transcendentalism of Socrates. One that recognizes a legitimate place for love in both the soul and the body. One that is celestial and terrestrial in scope. A formulation is needed that successfully combines all these factors into a wholistic synthesis. This synthesis is not hard to find. It was succinctly stated by a new Socrates, Jesus Christ, who said. ‘And you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, and all of your soul, and all of your mind and all of your strength. And you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself’ (Matthew 22: 37, 39).”

Natural vs. Supernatural

Platonic Dualism has been insidious as it has crept into the pews of the church. N. T. Wright explains:

“The Platonic strain entered Christian thinking early on, not least with the phenomenon known as Gnosticism… The Gnostics believed, like Plato, that the material world was an inferior and dark place, evil in its very existence.”

Gnostics believed that people could be relieved of this inferior plane of existence, freed from their disgusting material bodies through secret knowledge (Greek, gnosis) which “would enable them to enter into a spiritual existence in which the material world would no longer count.”

Not only did the heretical Gnostics embrace Plato’s philosophy, it also subtly crept into the true church. Michael Wittmer states,

“Plato’s spirit-body dualism significantly impacted the early church… It encouraged the more zealous types to forsake the physical world entirely, or as much as they could, and become lonely monks intent on nothing but their individual spiritual growth. And it implies that physical pleasures, such as the act of marriage and the enjoyment of material goods, are at worst evil and at best distractions from the most important things in life”

This World IS my Home, I’m NOT just a-passing Through

N. T. Wright confirms,

“Most Western Christians — and most Western non-Christians for that matter — in fact suppose that Christianity was committed to at least a soft version of Plato’s position. A good many Christian hymns and poems wander off unthinkingly in the direction of Gnosticism. The ‘just passing through’ spirituality (as in the spiritual ‘This is not my home, / I’m just a’passin’ through’), though it has some affinities to classical Christianity, encourages precisely a Gnostic attitude.”

Walsh and Middleton identify some specific vocations that are harmed by this dualism.

There are Christians who work as doctors and farmers primarily as the means for evangelism, but failing to develop a truly Christian alternative to the world’s way of doing medicine or farming.

There are business people who do not have an integrated view of their work as participation in God’s kingdom, limiting the application of their Christian faith to either running an explicitly Christian business like a bookstore, or working ethically while on the job as a “witness,” or making money for the sake of giving it away to their church or to missionaries.

In this paradigm, faith at work is limited to evangelism, ethics, and ministry support.

Walsh and Middleton follow up with these troubling scenarios:

“Seldom does the Christian ask foundational economic questions: What is the purpose of business enterprise? What is the role of profits? Will my particular enterprise be both ecologically sensitive and socially responsible? There are Christians who are musicians, but feel constrained to composing only music that is perceived as explicitly ‘spiritual.’ These well-meaning Christians are merely adding faith to their vocation rather than letting their faith transform their vocation.” (The Transforming Vision)

How can we correct these deficiencies?

Image by K J Payne. Used with permission. Sourced via Flickr.

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