Influence on Christianity

Which of the following early Christian views remind you of Plato?

• God is not material• Heaven is a non-physical place of perfection• Evil is a privation of good• The soul is not material• God is eternal• God’s existence is necessary• God is the ultimate truth• Knowing God illuminated knowledge of all else• Everything is dependent on God for its existence• There is a dual reality polarising spirit and matter• God cannot just be accessed via the senses, but through reason, reflection and

revelation• Attitude of contemptus mundi (rejection of the world, the flesh and the

concerns thereof etc) and some forms of asceticism• The purpose of the soul is to ascend to union with God

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Augustine

The ideas of Plato influenced many early Christian scholars, most notably, St Augustine of Hippo (354–430 C.E.), an important and influential early Christian philosopher and theologian.

Research Augustine’s views and the movement of Neo-Platonism.EXTEND

Disclaimer

NB/ Plato could not have directly influenced Christianity, because he lived 500 years before Jesus Christ began preaching. It is only through the influence of people like Augustine and others that Plato could have any influence. 950 years later, the influence of Plato would be replaced, by that of Aristotle, through the work of St. Aquinas.

Plato’s Demiurge

In addition to the Form of the Good…

• Creator and organiser of all things.

See references to the demiurge in Plato’s Timaeus.

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Differences between the Form of the Good and God

• Personal• Immanent and

interested in human affairs

• The person of Jesus (the incarnation)

• Plan for humankind

If God was a Mr Man…

Word Fruit Machineimmanent

personal

Augustine

Demiurgeincarnation

privationContemptus

mundiForm of the Good

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asceticism