Potential Christian-Platonist Contradiction?

[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.

[MindForgedManacle]

To expand a little bit, the consequences of this apparent contradiction is that monotheists cannot use the "God's nature" response to the Euthyphro Dilemma and any greater good theodicy like the Free will Defense.


...Anyone going to respond?

[bennyboy]

I assume you've seen the WLC video on absolute morality? He goes a lot into platonism and differences in the Christian view.

As for Jesus, be careful with quote mining. That statement was made in a particular context:

(Mark)
17 As He was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to Him and knelt before Him, and asked Him, "Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" 18 And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. 19 "You know the commandments, 'DO NOT MURDER, DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY, DO NOT STEAL, DO NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS, Do not defraud, HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER.'"…

You could look at this in a couple ways:
"I'm not God, because I'm denying that I'm good."
"I'm good, because I'm the embodiment of God."
"God is the Form of the good, so stop begging to get into heaven, and emulate that Form as well as you can, because that's the only way."

Jesus also says, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me." You could interpret that as Jesus really claiming to be all those things. You could also interpret it as him saying he's the embodiment of that Form of the Good, so only be behaving LIKE Jesus could you approach the state of bliss that is being truly Good." The idea that Jesus is both God and the Son of God makes some sense if Jesus was so good as to approach the Platonic Form of Good-- it's not a physical truth, but an idealistic one.

You could also use the same idea as evidence that Jesus never existed. If he's the perfect human embodiment of the Platonic Form of the Good, he can't be real-- instead he's a kind of archetypal perfect man. Giving him a first-person voice amounts to Goodness itself calling on mankind to better emulate it-- a pretty strange idea, but given the context of Roman mythology, the idea of having embodiments of human qualities might have had more appeal than a dick God who will flood the Earth or burn cities to ashes on a whim.

If THIS is the case, then a coalition of neo-Jewish philosophers were using a coined mythology to embody a new take on morality. And I think, for the most part, it's a pretty good one. Surely turning the other cheek, and trying to decommercialize religion, would be good things.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I find your post confusing. Perhaps because it is predicated on the idea that God could make something perfect. God cannot make something perfect, because the only perfect thing He could make would be another God. And you cannot have two Gods, so logically anything created must be imperfect. It seems to be a commonplace complaint of atheists. “The world isn’t perfect.” Boo hoo hoo.

[bennyboy]

I find your post confusing. Perhaps because it is predicated on the idea that God could make something perfect. God cannot make something perfect, because the only perfect thing He could make would be another God. And you cannot have two Gods, so logically anything created must be imperfect. It seems to be a commonplace complaint of atheists. “The world isn’t perfect.” Boo hoo hoo.

That's an interesting idea. But why do you feel perfection couldn't multiply itself? Why couldn't one God make others?

[Neo-Scholastic]

I find your post confusing. Perhaps because it is predicated on the idea that God could make something perfect. God cannot make something perfect, because the only perfect thing He could make would be another God. And you cannot have two Gods, so logically anything created must be imperfect. It seems to be a commonplace complaint of atheists. “The world isn’t perfect.” Boo hoo hoo.

That's an interesting idea. But why do you feel perfection couldn't multiply itself? Why couldn't one God make others?

In neoplatonism God is the "All". If you have God + something else the God isn't the all anymore. IMHO Christianity and neoplatonism only work together in panenthesim.

[MindForgedManacle]

I assume you've seen the WLC video on absolute morality? He goes a lot into platonism and differences in the Christian view.

The only relevance Platonism has to this is that the response to the Euthyphro Dilemma by apologists is emphatically a Platonic one. I know this because they essentially answer the dilemma the same way Plato did: by appealing to the nature of the Form of the Good in Plato's case, and to God's natire for Christianity.

As for Jesus, be careful with quote mining. That statement was made in a particular context:

The scriptual bit was admittedly paddimg to an extent. My aim was to show where the similarities to Platonism in Christian theology are likely rooted in passages like that. It's not actually central to my argument.

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I find your post confusing. Perhaps because it is predicated on the idea that God could make something perfect. God cannot make something perfect, because the only perfect thing He could make would be another God. And you cannot have two Gods, so logically anything created must be imperfect. It seems to be a commonplace complaint of atheists. “The world isn’t perfect.” Boo hoo hoo.

My argument certainly isn't that straw man of "Boo hoo"-ing about things not being perfect. I think I can elucidate exactly what I mean:

Christians will tend to answer the Euthrphro Dilemma by saying that goodness is in fact rooted in God's nature, i.e a Platonistic answer. They will also oftentimes hold to the privation view of evil, that is that evil is but an absense of good, not a metaphysical entity in its own right.

But these two theological stances wreck any attempt at a theodicy from the get-go, especially those arguing for a greater good as being the reason God must necessarily allow for evil. If the only good is God - which the Platonistic answer to the Euthyphro Dilemma and the privation view of evil necessitate and entail - then God could never have done anything in the service of producing a greater good. He is the ONLY good. Producing anything entails decreasing the amount pf good in reality necessarily. So theodicies like Plantinga's Free-will Defense can't even get off the ground, since their whole point is to explain evil existing as the necessary result for God to bring about a greater good.

[Little Rik]

I find your post confusing. Perhaps because it is predicated on the idea that God could make something perfect. God cannot make something perfect, because the only perfect thing He could make would be another God. And you cannot have two Gods, so logically anything created must be imperfect. It seems to be a commonplace complaint of atheists. “The world isn’t perfect.” Boo hoo hoo.

Suppose you are God.
You feel lonely and alone so you want to spice up your life.
What you do?
1) You think of something so you transform your mental energy into a space in which you put your mental creation.
2) The air come next but you got to understand that as the space is a thought wave of God also the air is transformation of the space into air as the one below is created by the one on top.
3) The light and heat come next.
4) The water.
5) the matter.
Now you can say that the matter or any other factor that compose this universe are not perfect but at the same time being this creation a transformation of God thought waves into these fundamental factors we also can say that these factor are not perfect.
Considering that these factors ultimately have to go back into God mind then how a thing that is not perfect can re-enter his mind?
The answer is that by clash and cohesion the matter wants to go back where it belong which is in God mind so the only way is to go back by building up consciousness so to enter the vegetable life, animal life, human life and back into God mind.
In other words perfection get less and less perfect only to once again become perfect.
What you say is not wrong but at the same time it does not take in consideration how the system works.

[bennyboy]

lol enrico, assume the position because here it comes. . .

[Neo-Scholastic]

If the only good is God - which the Platonistic answer to the Euthyphro Dilemma and the privation view of evil necessitate and entail - then God could never have done anything in the service of producing a greater good. He is the ONLY good. Producing anything entails decreasing the amount pf good in reality necessarily. So theodicies like Plantinga's Free-will Defense can't even get off the ground, since their whole point is to explain evil existing as the necessary result for God to bring about a greater good.

You present a very insightful and, at least to me, original critique of theodicy. Bravo! I wasn't expecting that one.

At the same time, I'm not certain that this critique applies to Swedenborg's theology, which I do not expect you to know. As a student of him I myself am still working out my understanding the metaphysics of Swedenborg, which I see as Panentheistic in nature.

I cannot speak as to its effectiveness as a rebuttal to Plantinga since I have never seriously looked into his work.

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Suppose you are God.

I may be a pompous ass, but I'm not that arrogant! ;-)

...you transform your mental energy into a space in which you put your mental creation...the air come next ...The light and heat come next...The water... the matter.

Ready, fire, aim. That's not how creation, as I understand it from Swedenborg, works.