Chapter 3: The Bible According to Plato pt.2

Plato would explain this otherworldly knowledge of the Forms by claiming that the soul, or the essence, of humans was eternal, having existed in the world of the Forms prior to its birth into the material world and returning to it after his death. This thought is effectively put forth in his dialogue entitled Phaedo, which chronicles the last conversation of Socrates, just prior to his death by hemlock.

Socrates: If, as we are always repeating, there is an absolute beauty, and goodness, and essence in general, and to this, which is now discovered to be a previous condition of our being, we refer all our sensations, and with this compare them-assuming this to have a prior existence, then our souls must have had a prior existence, but if not, there would be no force in the argument? There can be no doubt that if these absolute ideas existed before we were born, then our souls must have existed before we were born, and if not the ideas, then not the souls.

It is also here that we find the familiar idea of an eternal afterlife.

Socrates: That soul, I say, herself invisible, departs to the invisible world to the divine and immortal and rational: thither arriving, she lives in bliss and is released from the error and folly of men, their fears and wild passions and all other human ills, and forever dwells, as they say of the initiated, in company with the gods.

Interestingly, the concept of an afterlife, of some glorious existence in a perfect space in which the presence of God resides, is absent from the Hebrew Scriptures, as is the eternality of the soul. In the Old Testament, the people of Israel were more concerned with sustaining their national identity than with the promise of eternal rewards. It is within the New Testament, hundreds of years after Plato, that these ideas are brought to the forefront and made into a central tenet of the faith. Through scriptures like the famous John 3:16:

16For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son that whosoever might believe in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

we see that the ultimate goal is an eternal paradise. Paul again invokes the imagery of Platonic dualism while affirming the existence of this other world, apart from the material one, in Philippians 3:20-21.

20But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

and in 2 Corinthians 5:1-4

1Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, 3because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life

Over and over again, the language of a dualistic idealism bursts forth from the sacred writings and, whether speaking of the individual life or an ultimate metaphysical reality, the specter of Plato hovers near.

To be continued…

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