There is no other ancient philosophy that has influenced Christianity as much as Platonism. Some theologians even suggest that there is an internal affinity between Christianity and Platonism that makes them equally important to the early churches.[1] But some have also questioned the continuity between Plato’s thought and that of Plotinus, the latter having exerted enormous influence on Christianity under the banner of Neoplatonism. Unless we understand the differences between the two, we are unable to ascertain how much of Christianity is a result of Plato’s direct influence. This paper aims to argue that there is a difference between Plato and Platonism, and that the influence on Christianity was exerted mainly by Neoplatonism instead of Plato himself. In particular, the idea of Good in Plato’s dialogues is incoherent with Christian’s doctrine of God. This paper will first explicate the history of the reception of Platonism in Christianity. Then, it will proceed to Plato’s theory of forms and examine its affinity with the idea of God.
1.
The Reception of Platonism in Christianity
The influence of Platonism on Christianity was exerted
in two opposite ways. On the one hand, as Platonism developed to a state of
mystical religion around the third century, it became a rival religion to
Christianity. On the other hand, the transposition of religious attitude onto
Platonism allowed Christianity to creatively adopt some of their thoughts to
develop its doctrines. The influence of Platonism in Christianity can be
divided into three currents: first, through Augustinianism; second, through the
revival of interest in Pseudo-Dionysius by Maximus the Confessor and Johannes
Scotus Eriugena; and third, through the translation of Liber de Causis in the twelfth century.[2]
In the early development of
Christianity, early fathers had already shown their disposition to Platonism
against other forms of Greek thought. This view is expressed clearly in
Augustine’s City of God, that “none
come nearer to us than the Platonists.”[3]
Most early Greek philosophers held that the principle of all things is composed
of material elements: for Thales, it is water; for Anaximenes, it is air; for
Stoics, it is fire; and for Epicurus, it is atoms. But the Platonists asserted
that the principle of all things is not a material element, but something that transcends
the material. It is eternal, immortal, intelligible, something that is
separated from the material world. Hence, the affinity of Platonism’s principle
and the Christian God attracted Augustine to adopt Platonism in his works, for
it recognized God as the principle of all things, the source of the light of
truth, and the bountiful bestower of all blessedness.[4]
The influence of Platonism on
Christianity did not end with Augustine but re-emerged in several strands
throughout history. One of them was through the revival of interest in
Pseudo-Dionysius by Maximus the Confessor.[5]
According to Pseudo-Dionysius, the cosmos exists in a hierarchical order in
which the creations radiate from God and seek to reunite in him once again.[6]
Built upon Pseudo-Dionysius’s thought, Maximus explicates further the details
on how the cosmos is fractured and how it is healed through Incarnation and
Christian ascetic practices. It can be said that Pseudo-Dionysius’s
cosmological framework provides the foundation for Maximus to synthesize
Christian ascetic tradition and his understanding of Incarnation, in which
creaturely will is united with the will of God.[7] Following
Maximus, in the ninth century, Johannes Scotus Eriugena translated a great
amount of Pseudo-Dionysius’s and Maximus’s works into Latin. With these
translations, Eriugena was the first to introduce Neoplatonism to Western Latin
since Augustine.[8]
Other than this, Eriugena also published his major work Periphyseon, which depends heavily on Neoplatonic thought. Similar
to Pseudo-Dionysius, he asserts a hierarchical order of nature in this work,
where the highest principle is the immovable self-identical One. It is in this
highest principle that all things are engendered (the origin) and return upon
(the final end).[9]
His works were popular among scholars and continued to exert its influence in
the Western world up to the twelfth century.[10]
The third strand of influence was
through the Liber de Causis. This
corpus was once thought to be Aristotle’s work, but later scholarship rebutted
this view and attributed its source to an unknown Neoplatonic writer, who draws
his content heavily from Proclus’s Elements
of Theology.[11]
Drawing from the Neoplatonic idea of a hierarchical cosmos, the universe was
understood as an ensemble of causes and effects. The first cause is the
monotheistic God beyond being and knowledge. In this work, all things are said
to come from God but fall from the goodness of God as they regress to the
material world, and are in need of conversion to return back to the union of
God. As the first cause, God is the condition of all things.[12]
With the translation of this work from Arabic to Latin by Gerhard of Cremona in
1187, it became an important event for the Latin West to turn towards
Neoplatonism.[13]
From this brief sketch of the
history of Platonic influence on Christianity, it is clear that one of the
themes that attracted early Christianity to Platonism was the relation between
the idea of God and the Platonic highest principle, which is the idea of the
Good. There were two other themes that attracted the early Christians as well,
though not as important as the idea of God. One was the idea of the immortal
soul and its aim to reunite with God. The other was the relation between
intuition and the grace of God.[14]
However, in this paper, I can only limit myself to examine the influence of
Plato on the idea of God.
2.
Plato’s Theory of Forms as a Problem of Language
The idea of the Good is not just one
of the ideas among others. In the
Republic, Plato accords a special status to this idea of the Good, which
early Christianity equated with the idea of God. However, recent scholarship
has begun to question this attempt of identifying the Good in Plato with the
Christian God.[15]
The fundamental problem of this disagreement lies in the meaning of forms in
the Platonic dialogues.
Under the interpretation of Platonism, forms
are some universal, intelligible, perfect and unchanging entities that exist
beyond the sensible world. This complete separation of the world of forms from
the sensible world leads to the advocation of a two-world theory, in which the
two worlds are incommensurable with each other. However, did Plato assert a
two-world theory? To answer this question, we need to look into Plato’s theory
of forms.
In the Republic,
Plato says that Form “completely is”,[16]
“purely is”,[17]
“perfectly is”,[18]
“really is”.[19]
It is more real than its sensible instances that fall between what is and what
is not.[20]
But, what does Plato mean by “is”? Does the assertion of forms as being more
real than their sensible instances warrant the existence of forms in complete
separation from the sensible?
The Platonic dialogues begin with a
basic question: “What is …” (τί ̓έστι)?
The meaning of έστι (is/to be) and
its noun οὐσία has been greatly
discussed among scholars. One of the plausible interpretations is that of
Gregory Vlastos. In his degrees of reality doctrine, Vlastos interprets “οὐσία” as “reality”, and “τὸ ὄν” as “that which is real”.[21]
However, Vlastos argues that the terms “real” and “reality” are not to be
understood as “existence”. Instead, real simply means that which is cognitively
reliable.[22]
Richard Ketchum agrees with Vlastos that Plato’s οὐσία is not to be understood as
existence.[23]
However, in contrast to Vlastos, he opposes the idea of interpreting οὐσία as reality. If forms are real
because they are cognitively reliable, we can similarly say that forms are
cognitively reliable because they are real. The problem with Vlastos’s degrees
of reality is that it does not explain the necessary condition on which the
forms are said to be real. The fundamental problem “is not why all and only
forms are real, but rather why all and only forms have that being that really
is, and why all and only forms really are.”[24]
Thus, instead of taking οὐσία and τὸ ὄν as “reality” and “that which is real”, Ketchum
understood it as “being” and “that which is”.[25]
From Vlatos’s degrees of reality, Ketchum brought the
discussion to the degrees of being. According to him, there are two senses of
“being” in Plato’s dialogues.[26]
First, in the absolute sense which refers to forms as the ideal paradigm (to
really be). Second, in a relative sense as particular beings (to be). It is
important to note that, in Ketchum’s sense, the word “being” does not mean
“existence”. The distinction between being and real-being is not to propose
separate existing entities, but to make a distinction between the types of
predication of things.[27]
The verb ̓έστι (is/to be) can be
predicated to things that really are on one hand, as well as to things that
merely are on the other hand. All and only forms really are (in absolute sense)
because they unqualifiedly possess their predicates. Whereas, sensible objects
possess their predicates only in a relative sense by participating in the
form.The central question of τί ̓έστι
in Plato’s dialogues is not to abstract the universal quality that is shared
among similar things but to define the predicate or οὐσία that distinguishes
one thing from the others.[28]
Thus, the problem of οὐσία is a
problem of the essence or beingness that defines a thing as it is. The problem
of οὐσία is a problem of definition.
But, what is the relation of οὐσία to things? To make it clear from the outset, Plato did not
advocate dualism that separates οὐσία
from the sensible world. According to Ricoeur, the relation of essence to
things presented in Plato’s dialogues is a relation of inheritance. Οὐσία is in things.[29] This
relation is not a singular relation, but a dialectical one. Ricoeur holds
similar views with Ketchum that there are two senses of the word “to be”: as
absolute being (beautiful itself) and as copula (things are beautiful). But he stresses that every assertion of being must
involve the dialectical relation that οὐσία
is in things, and things inversely have οὐσία.[30]
The being of οὐσία is what things
have. One cannot do without the other.
This dialectical relation of οὐσία and things suggests the indispensable aporetic relation of
the one and the many that appears frequently in Plato’s texts. The sensible
world is always in a state of becoming, where any reliable ground of knowledge
is impossible to be established. In realizing the limitation of our sense
perception, the function of οὐσία as
a unitary form is to substitute the plurality of sensible objects with a
unitary cognitively reliable form or definition. This form exists not as an
entity, but in the mediation of language as a definition. Thus, in Ricoeur’s
opinion, the problem of οὐσία is the
problem of language. [31]
It is the problem of naming the οὐσία
that defines a thing in that which it always is.
Gadamer similarly asserts that the theory of forms is
a problem of language. In his reading of Phaedo,
Plato begins his theory of forms with the story of Socrates’s “turn to the logoi”. In recognizing the finiteness of
human understanding, the turn to language is the only way we apprehend the
world.[32]
Rather than through the direct experience of senses, things appear eidetically
through the mediation of language.
What is intended by the word, is something remaining
amidst the fluctuation of perspectives. This that remains—posited as ground—is
the permanence of the appearance (eidos),
that which always constitutes the thing, its essence. In fact what Socrates
seeks is thus to be found in language: an unchangeable ground with whose
declaration the entity is understood in that which it always is. The identity
of what is meant is presupposed as the sameness of the Eidos, and the multiplicity of changing beings that have constantly
shown themselves to the senses in different ways, and have escaped the grasp of
understanding, is thereby grasped in the unity of the ground.[33]
For both Gadamer and Ricoeur, the
relation of οὐσία to things is a
relation of language. Language connects words to things. Through language, word
functions as a verbal copy to summon us to the reality in things. By connecting
to things, words do not imitate the fluctuating appearance of things but the
permanent ground of οὐσία which
constitutes the thing. As Ricoeur said, “to do a philosophy of essence [οὐσία] is to assign language to the
essence [οὐσία] that judges it.”[34] Οὐσία, in this sense, is not a separate
entity that exists outside this world, but an unchanging ground in language
that establishes the stability of significations in the act of naming. In other
words, οὐσία does not refer to an
existing being. Rather, it refers to the realism of significations. Οὐσία is the measure of language.[35]
3.
The Dialectical Relation of One and Many in the Idea of Good
Plato’s theory of forms always has
its beginning in the plurality of things. The primary role of forms is to go
beyond the plurality of things towards a unitary ground of οὐσία. As a function of unity and identity, form introduces a stop
to the changing phenomenon, prevents things from their constant flux as they are
given a distinct οὐσία. This
principle of distinct determination invokes a sort of unity upon the plurality
of things. Thus, according to Ricoeur, Plato’s ontology is a pluralist ontology
because the οὐσία are immediately
plural. As there are many different things, there are also many οὐσία that correspond to things. But at
the same time, each of the οὐσία is
itself a function of unity and identity. This dialectical relation of the one
and the many is first reflected in the primordial discrepancy between οὐσία and phenomenon mediated in
language.
As argued by many philosophers, such
as Saussure and Wittgenstein, a word does not function on its own but always in
relation to other words. The meaning of a word is affirmed only through its
differences with other words. Similarly, οὐσία, which is affirmed in language, has
its signification only in relation to other οὐσία.
“Being is what it is and at the same time it is not the other beings.”[36]
It is within the relational network of οὐσία
that their significations can be established. Thus, in addition to the
principle of distinct determination that affirms the plurality of οὐσία in things, these οὐσία need to be brought to the
principle of unification and order within their relational network. Οὐσία has to be enumerated first in
sensible things, but these distinct οὐσία
need to be put into a network of relationships to inaugurate their meanings.
Here, Ricoeur proposes the second level of relation in language. Other than the
vertical relation of the one and the many between the sensible and the οὐσία, there is also a horizontal
relation of the one and the many among the οὐσία
or forms. This horizontal relation of forms establishes a structure of
significations that grounds their order and meaning.[37]
The dual relations of the one and the many in language
are: First, at the level of enumeration, which is tied to the principle of
distinct determination, the forms are considered “each time” in themselves,
that is to say, in relation to the sensible of the same name that they
represent.[38]
Then, as one passes from the enumeration to order, forms are unified into a
network of significations that establishes their meanings. This second level of
order is established upon the principle of unification among forms.[39]
These two levels of relation, which correspond to the two principles of
distinct determination and unification of forms, is then brought to the final
unification beyond forms. This principle of final unification, in Plato’s
sense, is the Good.[40]
Thus, in Ricoeur’s interpretation, the Good is not a transcendent being such as
the Christian God. Instead, it is a final unification of dialectical relations
between the principle of distinction and order in language. It is the
unification between οὐσία and
sensible as well as between the οὐσία
themselves. In other words, it is the final unification of the supreme aporia
between the one and the many: not just the many in the one, but at the same
time the one in the many, and their inevitable aporia. [41]
Thus, the word οὐσία in Plato’s dialogue, though can be translated as reality or
being, does not refer to a transcendent being such as God. Instead, being and
beings, both in an absolute and relative sense, simply denote the cognitively
reliable ground in language that connects things to their οὐσία. The Good, in Plato’s sense, does not refer to God either,
but to the unification of the one and the many in language.[42]
4.
Conclusion
The crucial connection between
Platonism and Christianity is undoubtedly the relation between Plato’s idea of
the Good and the Christian God. Due to the influence of Neoplatonism,
Christianity has long identified Plato’s idea of the Good as the transcendent
being that causes all things to exist. But as explicated above, Plato’s theory
of forms is not about asserting a separate realm of transcendent being but the
realism of significations in language. Thus, the identification of the Good
with the transcendent God is questionable.
However, how are we to understand
Plato’s words in Phaedo that “the
Form is divine, immortal, intelligible?”[43]
Ricoeur argues that the “divine” here is not referring to God but is simply a
transposition of religious emotions onto his rational “religion” in philosophy.
The theory of forms takes up the religious theme of the voyage, as it travels
from the shadow of the cave to the light of reality. Having its point of
departure at a blinded situation of impoverishment, the soul calls for
purification as it travels through the voyage towards the idea of the Good. If
the form is the realism of signification, it is said to be divine because it is
the foundation of significations.[44]
The divine is not a God, but precedes God, because the forms are the very being
of the divine.[45]
It is the forms that furnish the being of divinity to the God. “Through the
forces of the things that make it that God is divine.”[46] Thus, through this transposition, Plato aims to
subordinate the mythical Greek religion of his time under his rational
“religion” of philosophy, rather than justifying the superiority of a
transcendent God.
In conclusion, Plato’s theory of
forms does not advocate a dualism of spiritual and sensible worlds. Plato did
not assert a transcendent realm of eternity, and, by that, condemning the
corruptible material world in which the soul is imprisoned and from which it
longs to escape. Similarly, Plato did not identify the idea of the Good as a
transcendent God. His theory of forms is simply espousing the realism of
significations in language. This idea of a transcendent God and the duality of
the world was put forth not by Plato himself, but under the banner of
Neoplatonism headed by Plotinus. This paper does not exclude the possibility
that Plato’s influence might be exerted in other aspects of Christianity, but
these issues are beyond the scope of this paper and demand further studies.
[1] Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theologie und Philosophie: Ihr Verhältnis im Lichte ihrer gemeinsamen
Geschichte [Theology and Philosophy: Their Relationship in the Light of Their
Common History] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996),
37–38.; Paul Tillich, A History of
Christian Thought: From Its Judaic and Hellenistic Origins to Existentialism, ed.
Carl E. Braaten (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968), 50–51.
[2] Pannenberg, 65–68.
[3] Aurelius Augustine, The City of God I.8.5.
[4] Augustine, The City of God I.8.5.
[5] Pannenberg, 65–68.
[6] Andrew
Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London:
Routledge, 1996), 30.
[7] Ibid.,
31.
[8] John Joseph O’Meara, Eriugena.
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 55.
[9] Ibid.,
83.
[10] Ibid., 211.
[11] Pannenberg, 65–68.
[12] The Book of Causes (Liber de Causis), trans. Dennis J. Brand (Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press, 1984), 12–17.
[13] Ibid.,
8.
[14] Pannenberg, 40;
Tillich, 6–7.
[15] In Plato’s Unwritten Dialectic, Gadamer argues that Plato’s idea of
the Good was distorted by Plotinus, who identified the Good as God, insofar as
the inescapable dialectic of the one and the indeterminate two is lost in his
reading. In his lecture of Being, Essence,
and Substance in Plato and Aristotle, Ricoeur similarly claims that the
Good is not God, but the foundation of significations.
[16] Plato, Republic 477a.
[17] Rep. 477a, 478d.
[18] Rep. 597a.
[19] Rep. 597d.
[20] Gregory Vlastos,
“Degrees of Reality in Plato,” in New
Essays on Plato and Aristotle, ed. Renford Bambrough (Oxon: Routledge,
2013), 1–2.
[21] Ibid., 1.
[22] Ibid., 7.
[23] Richard J. Ketchum,
“Plato on Real Being,” American
Philosophical Quarterly 17, no. 3 (July 1980): 213–220.
[24] Ibid., 213.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid., 214.
[27] Ibid., 216.
[28] Plato, Phaidros, trans. Yu Jung Sun (Taipei:
Business Weekly Publications, 2017), 91–93. Under the traditional
interpretation, Plato’s theory of forms was understood as a problem between the
universal and the particular. The role of forms is to denote the common feature
that is shared by the particulars within the same category. However, Yu Jung
Sun noticed that Plato never uses the word katholou
(universal) in his dialogues. The philosophical question attached to each term
is very different. For katholou, the
question is to define the possibility of the universality of essence. But for ousia, it is to define the necessary
condition on which a thing is what it is. Form as a katholou is a backward reading on Plato from Aristotle’s view.
[29] Paul Ricoeur, Being, Essence and Substance in Plato and
Aristotle, trans. David Pellauer and John Starkey (Cambridge: Polity,
2013), 12.
[30] Paulette
Kidder, “Gadamer and the Platonic Eidos,” Philosophy
Today 39, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 84. Gadamer similarly stresses the
interdependence of forms and their instances. The forms were separate only in a
qualified sense.
[31] Ricoeur, Being, Essence and Substance in Plato and
Aristotle, 13–19. Ricoeur stresses that the Platonic problem of oὐσία is the problem of language. In the
opening section of Cratylus, Plato
attacks Protagoras’s thesis of “man as the measure of all things” and replaces
it with “oὐσία as the measure of
language”. This thesis claims that it is oὐσία
that provides the stable signification in language, and that keeps the thing
from being an arbitrary invention of man. Through oὐσία, Ricoeur seeks to avoid subjectivism and historicism with
regard to language.
[32] Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Amicus
Plato Magis Amica Veritas,” in Dialogue
and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato, trans. P. Christopher
Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 198.
[33] Hans-Georg Gadamer, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 5, Griechische Philosophie I (Tübingen:
J.C.B. Mohr, 1985), 54, as quoted in Paulette Kidder, “Gadamer and the Platonic Eidos,” Philosophy Today 39, no. 1 (Spring
1995): 85.
[34] Ricoeur, Being, Essence and Substance in Plato and
Aristotle, 14.
[35] Ibid., 15.
Does Ricoeur hereby suggest the understanding of language as the assignment of
oὐσία of the thing itself? According
to Ricoeur, oὐσία is the real being
or model, whereas words are the imitation or copy of oὐσία. As a model, oὐσία
pre-exists the words. But as discussed earlier, oὐσία is in things. Thus, it is necessary first to go to the things
themselves in order to imitate them in words. In this sense, language does not
assign oὐσία onto things, but merely
imitates the oὐσία of things
themselves through language by giving it stable signification. In Ricoeur’s
words, it is to assign language to the oὐσία
that judges it. Oὐσία is the
measure of language but not the contrary.
[36] Ibid., 17.
[37] Ibid., 17–18,
36,
[38] Ibid.,
36.
[39] Ibid.
[40] Ibid.,
37.
[41] Ibid., 67.
[42] Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Idea of the Good in
Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 28.
[43] Plato, Phaedo 80b.
[44] Ricoeur, Being, Essence and Substance in Plato and
Aristotle, 129.
[45] Ibid., 132.
[46] Plato, Sophist 249c.
