Monday, October 5, A.D. 2009

Paul on Mars Hill

Dr. Reynolds from Biola University wrote a fine post on the occasion of his class trip to Athens’ Areopagus in “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” In it, he discusses the philosophical controversy into which Saint Paul entered with his sermon to the Athenians. He points out how close the Platonists were to the gospel. Of all the intellectual currents in the Greco-Roman world, Platonism made the most receptive audience for Christianity. It is customary to hear Platonism contrasted with the earthy goodness of creation Christianity, but even our terrestrial doctrines exist within a celestial framework. The ancient Platonists were some of the few pagans who realized that God transcends the world and that the world is God’s creation. The ancient Platonists understood that God is good, eternal, and the source of all being. The ancient Platonists conceived of all being as an image of the beyond being. Given such, Porphyry rather than Origen becomes the philosophical mystery. What explains a man such as Porphyry, other than ancestral loyalty and cultural conservatism?

As my friend Andrew said, religion—or at least Christianity—only makes sense within a Platonic understanding of reality. I fully agree. I suspect that many of the intellectual ruptures of the modern West only became possible by its rejection of Platonism. When God becomes a being among beings, one must give up either his faith or his science. For God’s presence in the world will always be seen as a nullification of the world’s own order, integrity, and intelligibility. To assert such a God is to deny the possibility of scientific knowledge. To embrace philosophy likewise involves a rejection of the divine as superfluous superstition. Only ignorant regressives cling to religion to fill gaps in their ignorance, as the being God has no place in a scientifically understood cosmos. One must make this choice or cultivate bizarre confusions that attempt to carve a place for the divine and for science in the husk of our ignorance. Reason suffers terribly when forced to accept false choices. So does the human soul.

Posted by Joseph on Monday, October 5, A.D. 2009
Religion | Orthodoxy • Saints • Scripture • Paganism • (0) Comments