How Plato Influences Christianity

One can recognize the influence of Plato’s absolute idealism in the fourth and fifth centuries of the early church, when Greek metaphysical concepts are employed to shore up and defend orthodoxy against heretical trends, particularly Arianism, which denies the co-equal identity of Christ with the Father.

Indeed, Augustine of Hippo (354-430), a prime contributor to early church doctrine, had been well schooled in Neo-Platonism before his conversion. While Augustine quotes the Bible extensively, he tends to interpret it within the neo-Platonic framework. In Teaching Christianity, for example, Augustine writes, “If those philosophers happen to have said anything that is true and agreeable to our faith, the Platonists above all…we should even claim back for our own use what they have said.” 

Augustine of Hippo

The influence of such a perspective is revealed in the same work when Augustine writes, “God does not enjoy us, but makes use of us…For he is the one who supremely and primordially is, being absolutely unchanging.” And in discussing Jesus’ commandment to love God and others as one’s self, Augustine writes, “There is no need of a commandment that we should love ourselves…The end of the commandment is love of God and neighbor.” 

Here is depersonalization, both of God's nature and his relationship to human beings. This philosophy reflects more mechanistic than personalistic and covenantal categories. And this trend continues today when the Christian view of God takes on a distinctly Platonist tone by insisting that God is impassible, indifferent to feeling, invulnerable to suffering, and apart from humanity.

Much of the metaphysical speculation concerning God throughout the Middle Ages, including the writings of Anselm (1033-1109) and Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274), demonstrates a similar preoccupation with the study of God’s Being per se, rather than reflecting the biblical narrative in which humanity is redeemed for communion with the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. 

Anselm

 

Thomas Aquinas

Christ’s divinity is clearly affirmed, but his humanity is neglected. His existence as the representative human being who by his death and resurrection transposes ordinary people into sons and daughters of the living God is passed over. 

The Platonist mind-set gives rise to a theology from above, absolutely concerned with God but revealing little interest in persons, apart from pointing out how far short they fall from God’s ideal Being. This, then, is classical theology: a perspective that values God’s eternal intradivine life (termed the “immanent Trinity”), yet is permeated by a remoteness that separates God from his creation. This perspective shares the dualism inherent in Plato’s philosophy and is found in both Western and Eastern Orthodox traditions.

Compass theory suggests that whenever the Platonist mind-set consciously or unconsciously dominates Christian precepts, God is viewed as mechanistic, impersonal, and fatalistic. As a consequence, permanence of belief and thought overshadows the process of growth and change. 

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COMPASS PSYCHOTHEOLOGY: 

Where Psychology & Theology Really Meet