The Greek philosopher Plato can be blamed for a lot of our misperceptions about the Christian life. 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)
Platonic Love is Weird
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. Plato’s “love” does not manifest itself in physical actions – it is purely for the purpose of higher knowledge and reason.
“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 Plato’s 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 our churches. 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.”
The early heresy of Gnosticism taught 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 could be relinquished.
This heretical Gnosticism which embraced Plato’s philosophy subtly crept into the true church.
“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.”
But 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 fail 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 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, or ministry support.
Brian Walsh and J. Richard 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)
Listen to J. Richard Middleton on the Reintegrate Podcast explain
(1) how understanding our future in the New Heaven and New Earth informs how we work in the world today, and
(2) how our being the Image of God, properly understood, provides our purposes in life.
Feature photo by Jason Blackeye from Unsplash
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