Table of Contents

I. Introduction

II. The Conception of God in Plato

III. The Conception of God in Christianity

IV. Conclusion

Bibliography



I. Introduction

History and Background

To a person unfamiliar with Western philosophy, an understanding of Plato is necessary. In the history of Western culture, Plato plays a central role among the great thinkers. Plato is known for Uptopia of history, the doctrine of Immortalily of the soul, the doctrine of ideas to explain universal problems, and his epistemological arguments. Plato, like Aristotle, is also important to the development of Christian theology and philosophy.

Plato was born in Athens (428/427-348/347B. C.), of aristoratic parents, during the Petoponnesian War. He grew up a noble family, was highly educated, and was a contemporary of Aristippus ad Antisthenes. He was the greatest disciple of Socrates. Said says that Plato received his first exposure to philosophy from Cratylus and Hermogenes, who taught the systems of Heraclitus and Parmenides. He was known as the great teacher of Aristotle, and the constructor of the doctrine of Socrates. At the age of twenty Plato became an ardent disciple of Socrates; at forty he developed his Academy in Athens. He offered many theories of the universal (cosmology) and conduct (ethics). His doctrine of Ideas approached a treatise of the Demiurge or God.

This paper will investigate Western notions of God in Plato and Christianity. Of primary importance will be how views of God change and how interpretation of God’s properties are related to particular philosophical climates.

II. The Concept of God in Plato

The original conception of God in Plato comes directly from Socratic and sophistic schools and from his own metaphysical and ethical speculations. Additionally, Plato’s notions of God were deeply influenced by Indian and Egyptian thought. For instance, Said quotes Zimmer’s statement that which was used to justify professors of the European and American universities refusal to admit Indian thought in their temple of philosophy. All this is we believe that Plato’s thought seems non-Greek influences goes.

Plato’s conception of God has been interpreted in terms of his major doctrine of Ideas of Forms. In Timaeus Plato introduces a cosmic creator which linguistic analysis shows to be parallel to God. Cornford holds that Plato introduced the concept of a creator God for the first time in Greek philosophy.

According to Said, it is easy to assume that Plato’s creator is the supreme dividnity in the world He creates. However, Etienne Gilson argues that Plato hiself has never called the Good a god. If Palto never has called the Idea of Good a god, why then should an Idea be considered as a god? Gilson explains that an Idea is neither a person nor a thing, and not even a soul. Rather it is an intelligible cause.

In Plato’s religious conception, he treated God as a transcendent and ultimate Being. In the Republic and Timaeus , the world, says Plato, was brought into being for the specific purpose of expressing the Supreme Idea of order and harmony. Plato said, “Being is power,” for him every soul is “self-moved.” Being is power so that every being can itself make harmony and give order to something else in life. Plato said that the Idea of the Good is derived from the following: “Being desired and so imparts motion, and moves all other things by means of that which is. The Idea of Good was derived from Plato’s book in Republic. We would ask that what does Plato’s mean of Good? Said says that the Good is the Author of knowledge, of truth, of logical exactness. The Good is the Author (Creator) of being or essence of all things. Whole substance derive from the Good. “Good is equal to God”, according to the Demiurge which means “Maker of the world.” This equality is held by Plato himself in his cosmology: “Let me tell you, then, why the creator made this world of generation. He was good, and the good can never have any evil…[ and] desired that all things should be good…” Therefore, Plato’s God is a kind of imitation of God and is the doctrine of the persuades Necessity. J. Thomas articulates it in this way: “The sole reason for the formation of the world is that the Demiurge ‘was good’.”

The Idea of the Good plays an important role in theosophical Platonism and can be understood only in the universal explanation of Ideas which Plato gives in his dialogues. We may ask what relation Plato construed between the Idea of the Good and the nature of God? For Plato, a Greek philosopher, the perfection and unity of God meant a higher conception than his own personality. To the Christian, it is difficult to accept this notion because the teaching idea is said that everything is created by the God. However, to Plato this very abstraction is the truest and most real of all things.5 Plato’s posited intrinsic goodness is which is good in itself without depending upon anything else which for its goodness. Therefore, Plato understands God as the Good which transcends, yet includes all things. In Plato’s mind, Good is the supreme Idea, the totally of being, in one word, co-extensive with being.

Both Plato and his student Aristotle make “the Good” central to their systems of thought. According to Plato, “The essential form of the Good is the hightest object of science.” Aristotle asserts, “If it is true in the sphere of action there is an and which we will wish for its own sake, and for the sake of which we wish everything else-it clear that this will be the Good the supreme Good.” We understand that Plato’s Good is like the one of Parmenides or the real being. The Good is the being itself. It is not anything else. It is the One Entity. Therefore, we know that Plato’s view of Good is the highest Form, whether is called “Being” or “the One” or the “Good”, must be not the poorest, but the richest, an universality of real being that is also many.

Therefore, Said states that God or the Good is the real Being of the sensible world. The Good is the beginning and the end of all. The Idea of the Good or God is a metaphysical principle different from and higher than the other forms. 4 B.A.G. Fuller asserts that the Idea of Good in Plato equal to God or is God himself.

In Plato’s Republic he himself explains that the Good is equivalent to God. This means that the absolute Idea (the Good, the one) is the Lord of the spiritual world, as the sun is the lord of the visible world. The God of Plato is the absolute Idea of the Good. From Plato’s point of view, only the Idea is real.

With regard to the God and the Good in Plato’s theosophy, B. Russell holds that ultimately there is only God, or the Good, to whom (or which) the ideas are adjectival. In addition, John Bascom states that Plato held that in the Idea of the Good, God was the supreme creator, and that man was immortal from the indestructible nature of the soul… Bascom represents that the Good means God or pure and divine Form. By understand Plato’s Good as Plato’s Form of God, Bascom is at the same time activating Him and making Him Absolute, and deriving activity from the attraction of the final cause.

For Plato, God is not only the creator of the world, he is also “Demiurge”; meaning He made it and made it on an existing model, namely the eternal hierarchy of Forms.