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2.1 - The Bible and Early Christian Platonism

from II - History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2021

By
Mark Edwards
Edited by
Alexander J. B. Hampton  and
John Peter Kenney
Alexander J. B. Hampton
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
John Peter Kenney
Affiliation:
Saint Michael's College, Vermont
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Summary

Early Christians were certainly inclined to look upon Plato as an ally. The first part of this chapter considers how far Eusebius and other apologists succeeded in making out the case that the Bible and Plato proclaim the same God. In the second part it proposes that the Johannine concept of the Logos was at once more foreign to Plato and more palatable to certain of his followers than Augustine supposed it to be. It concludes by examining two indictments of the hermeneutic method of the Fathers – first, that they co-opted the Platonic device of allegoresis to overwrite the plain sense of the scriptures, and secondly that under Platonic influence they surrendered faith to philosophy in their mystical readings of the Song of Songs.

Keywords

anthropomorphismLogoscreatorallegory
Type
Chapter
Information
Christian Platonism
A History
 , pp. 143 - 161
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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