Potential Christian-Platonist Contradiction?
November 11, 2013 at 6:51 pm
(This post was last modified: November 11, 2013 at 6:55 pm by MindForgedManacle.)
A potential contradiction occurred to me the other day between a few theological positions. Christian thought is largely steeped in and influenced by Platonic and neo-Platonic thought (see St. Augustine). For example, some theologians and philosophers of religion see God as essentially being what Plato called "the Good" itself. Further, many also take on what is called the privation view of evil, which essentially says that evil isn't a metaphysical entity itself but a privation, or lack of, goodness. Lastly, they will try to explain away the existence of mass evil and suffering by saying it is the result of the fact that God granted us libertarian free will, because God values a world created with that kind of free will than he would another possible world.
But it seems to me that there is a contradiction in there, and a big one at that. From what I understand, the Platonist believes that things that appear to be good are in fact just pale reflections of the Form of the Good, and thus not actually good in themselves. Rather, they merely partake a bit in that Platonic form. This seems to cohere well with the privation view of evil. However, going further we reach what seems to be a contradiction. If a Christian holds to these beliefs, how can they explain why God created the world? The whole point of the Free will Defense is to explain why God would allow for an imperfect world to exist. But that exposes what I think is a fundamental contradiction between those beliefs. Under the Platonic view, ONLY God is good and the supposed recordings of Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospels support this view often. But that necessarily means that no matter what God creates, it will always result merely in the decreasing of the amount of good that exists because, to quote the aforementioned Nazarene, "Only God is good."
So from what I can tell, there seems to be no way to reconcile the view that the only goodness is God and that God ever created anything whatsoever with the intent of bringing a greater good.
But it seems to me that there is a contradiction in there, and a big one at that. From what I understand, the Platonist believes that things that appear to be good are in fact just pale reflections of the Form of the Good, and thus not actually good in themselves. Rather, they merely partake a bit in that Platonic form. This seems to cohere well with the privation view of evil. However, going further we reach what seems to be a contradiction. If a Christian holds to these beliefs, how can they explain why God created the world? The whole point of the Free will Defense is to explain why God would allow for an imperfect world to exist. But that exposes what I think is a fundamental contradiction between those beliefs. Under the Platonic view, ONLY God is good and the supposed recordings of Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospels support this view often. But that necessarily means that no matter what God creates, it will always result merely in the decreasing of the amount of good that exists because, to quote the aforementioned Nazarene, "Only God is good."
So from what I can tell, there seems to be no way to reconcile the view that the only goodness is God and that God ever created anything whatsoever with the intent of bringing a greater good.
