Jesus versus Plato

 

                                                                          Jesus versus Plato

Those in the clutches of platonic dualism cannot possibly understand the greatest sermon ever given by Jesus called the sermon on the mount; often referred to as the beatitudes. Platonic dualism teaches this or that. Jesus teaches us to transcend these binaries. We see this struggle all the time. Think about the age old debate between faith and reason. I would suggest that this is an entirely false dichotomy but a prevalent one nonetheless. It is hard to identify all of the areas that this dualism has infected; just because it is so incredibly pervasive. Many people operate under the false illusion that just because they choose this rather than that or that rather than this; then they are somehow not viewing the world through a dualistic lens. It is perhaps best illustrated when  we think about a dry erase marker. If we were to look at it from the side it looks like a rectangle. But if you were to turn it and look from the tip to the end; you would see that it unmistakably  a circle. Well from someone who could only think two dimensionally the idea that it could be both is utterly inconceivable. The fact that one person chooses to say no, it is this rather than that means they are unable to escape the lens with which they are seeing through. Furthermore we also see in a scripture a direct contradiction of Plato when Jesus says that he is incarnationally the way the truth and the life. He is literally saying that he embodies truth. This is a direct slap in the face to Plato. He said that truth existed in abstract forms. He would have viewed a sweaty smelly dirty human being as being the embodiment of ultimate truth utterly laughable.

Comments

[Mike L.]

I share your frustration with dualism. However, I do wonder if the passage you referenced from John's Gospel is free of dualism or if dualism is already a key component in the scriptures. If we read on in John, we see that the author also places the following line on the lips of Jesus, "No one comes to the father except through me". That sounds rather dualistic and additionally it sounds like a departure from the sermon on the mount.

I agree with you about the non-dualistic Jesus portrayed through the sermon on the mount scene in our earliest Gospel texts. I'm not sure about the later Greek versions of Jesus, for example in John's great "I am" statements. I'm also not sure what to do when the Bible uses the Greek philosophical imagery of light vs dark and fixation on ideas about logos, knowledge, and truth.

Jesus may have been opposed to Plato's dualism. I like to think he was, but I'm not sure any of our cherished portraits of Jesus are free from Plato's influence, least not John's.

Lastly, Plato's dualism was not merely displayed as oppositional thinking. Plato also brought substance (body/soul) dualism into philosophical discussions, and that type of dualism also makes its way into the Gospels, again plaguing John's version more than the others. Most of what we know of Jesus today is actually Jesus shown to us through the lens of Plato, as most modern theology has read the entire collection of scripture through the lens of John's Gospel.