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He might have lived almost 2,400 years ago, but I promise, he’s helped shaped the way you think. In fact, most of the world still thinks like he does. So who was he?
Here in the Western world, most of us are Greek. Now genetically, we might be Scottish, Mexican, African, English or Dutch, but to a large extent, the way we think is Greek, and that’s because, for many years, the Greek Empire ruled the world.
Even long after the collapse of that empire, Greek philosophy still formed the foundation for how we now think in the Western world. Names like Socrates, Pythagoras, Aristotle and Plato are practically household words even though a large percentage of people have never actually read anything they wrote.
But just because you haven’t thumbed through books like Aristotle’s “Ethics,” or Plato’s “Republic” in a little while, that doesn’t mean your thinking hasn’t been shaped by those books, because to a large extent your whole framework of thinking has been given to you by the Greeks. Now, I realize that in modern society, there’s been this huge influx of Eastern thinking on top of everything else, but still, the foundations of Western civilization pretty much remain Greek.
Inarguably, perhaps the most influential of the Greek philosophers was a man by the name of Plato. Now, some people think his real name was Aristocles, but that’s neither here nor there, because the whole world today knows him as Plato. And they know him as the student of the great philosopher, Socrates, who lived some 2,400 years ago in the city of Athens.
Chances are if you went to college, you were forced to wade your way through some of Plato’s books, like “The Apology of Socrates,” or “The Republic,” and even if you haven’t, you’ve still been immersed in those writings since the moment you were born, because most of the world today has been affected by those books in some way or another.
Now, because this is a program about biblical thinking, I’m not going to spend a lot of time going through Plato’s philosophies or expounding on his version of wisdom, except to point out something very important. It turns out that Plato’s approach to life has something very important to say about the human condition, and it points us directly to the Word of God.
So, today, let’s start with something known as Plato’s “Theory of Forms.” Now, I know when you tuned in, you weren’t exactly bargaining for a course in philosophy, so I’m not going to give you one, but stay with me for just a moment and I think you’ll see why we have to do this.
In the mind of Plato, he recognized that our whole world is full of imperfections, and, of course, you don’t need to be a Greek philosopher to figure that one out. We’re all painfully aware that life on planet Earth falls a long way short of absolute perfection.
But Plato took the time to ask the question, “Why?” And beyond asking why there’s imperfection, he also asked how we know imperfection exists. “If something’s not perfect, how do we know that?”
Let’s take this desk, for an example. For all intents and purposes, it’s a pretty nice desk, and by the time you receive this television signal, you’ll never see most of the flaws and imperfections in it. Let me assure you, there are flaws. There are scratches on the surface, and there’s this drawer that kind of opens funny, and there are other signs of wear and tear.
Now, again, that’s not a very profound observation, because we’ve all got a few articles of furniture like that somewhere in our house. But the real big question is, how we know those things are imperfections? Who’s to say that a scratch on the surface of a desk isn’t an improvement? And who’s to say that a malfunctioning drawer doesn’t make the desk worth more on the open market?
I guess the bottom line is this, somewhere along the way human beings developed a natural sense of perfection, and we are painfully aware when something isn’t perfect.
And that’s kind of where the philosopher Plato steps in. He would argue that the reason we sense imperfection is because somewhere out there in the spiritual realm, real perfection actually exists. And by using our intellect, we can tap into the world of perfection and compare it to the physical world all around us.
So, out there somewhere is this idea of the perfect desk, and all the desks that exist here on Earth are just imperfect copies of the ideal desk. They’re material objects that exude the qualities of being a desk, says Plato, but they’re not really perfect desks.
Now, I know that all sounds like somebody had a little too much time on their hands, but bear with me because this is really important. The philosopher Plato looked at the world and decided that everything material and physical, the stuff you can actually touch with your hands, he said of it, “That’s less than perfect.”
In essence, he broke down the universe into two different compartments. He gave us the imperfect, material world we live in—all the things you can touch with your hands. And then he said there’s the perfect spiritual world of forms. He said that’s where all the perfect ideas are. The ideals. And even though we physically live in the imperfect, material world, Plato said our brains are the way we access the perfect, spiritual world. And that just by thinking about it, we become aware of our imperfections.
Here’s how Plato himself described it. He pictured the world like a bunch of people living in a cave. Now, in today’s world, where the simple things like civility and decency seem to be a thing of the past, it’s not that hard to picture us as a bunch of cave people. But that’s not quite what Plato meant. He was comparing this whole world to this shadowy cave where reality is a tough thing to really wrap your mind around.
He pictured our whole human race chained together and forced to look only at the back wall of the cave. What do we see when we look at the back wall of the cave? Nothing but shadows. Whenever something real walks past the mouth of the cave behind us, light from the outside world casts a shadow on the wall of the cave. And, of course, because all we ever see are those shadows on the back of the cave, we think that’s very real. But those shadows are just shadows; not the real thing.
Now, a thinking person is going to figure this out. They’re going to notice that the shadows change as the level of light goes up and down, or as they move across differently shaped rocks poking out of the wall. A thinking person is going to figure out what’s going on, and that thinking person, in Plato’s opinion, is a philosopher. He’s just used his brain to figure out that the shadows are just imperfect pictures of a higher reality.
Now, that’s how Plato explained this whole theory: Everything around us is a shadow. He said that by using your brain and appealing to wisdom, you can explore the higher realities that gave birth to the imperfect world all around us. And if you pay attention carefully, you can still find that kind of thinking underneath a lot of modern thinking. It’s known today as Greek Dualism, because it divides the whole universe into these two, neat compartments.
And while it forms the basis for a lot of people’s thoughts, the question we should ask ourselves is this, “Given that it’s affected so many people, is Plato’s theory biblical?” Now, it’s become such a mainstream part of our life that our natural tendency is to say yes, but let’s slow just a little bit and think about this.
Was Plato right when he said that our world was full of imperfection? Absolutely, but he assumed it’s always been that way, and the Bible tells us a completely different story. Let’s review what the opening chapter of the book of Genesis actually says (Genesis 1:1-4):
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.”
Now, here’s where the Bible and the Greeks part company. As you read through the Creation account as it is described in the Bible, you’ll notice that God seems very happy with our material, physical world. In fact, as God comes to the end of the first day of Creation, where He created that mystery not quite yet unraveled by modern physicists, that mystery known as light, He looks at what He made and He says, “That’s good.”
And as you go through the rest of Genesis chapter 1, you find the same thing at the end of every day. God makes something and He thinks it’s good. And when everything is finished and the material world has been created, you find this statement at the end of the chapter in verse 31 (Genesis 1:31):
“Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”
You know, it’s kind of a subtle difference, but it’s very important. Plato said that the whole world is full of imperfections. The Bible, in its later chapters, would completely agree with that. In fact, you’d have to be blind not to notice some of the imperfections in our world.
Plato also said that the world around us is just a shadow of something better, and I guess to a tiny extent, the Bible would agree with that—because our world has been deeply affected by our sin. Our world has become only an imperfect representation of what it used to be.
But after that point, the comparisons stop, because the Greeks argue that the physical world—anything that you can actually touch or taste or see—they said it’s evil. Now, evil might be a bit of a strong word, but I want to underline something really important. The Greeks believed that real physical existence was undesirable, and what they were essentially doing was placing the blame for life’s problems on the created world itself.
Even though they weren’t Christians, and they didn’t understand God the way that you and I do, I still want you to think about the natural consequences of that kind of thinking. In the final analysis, if you’re going to adopt the thinking of the Greeks, you’d have to blame the Creator God for making such an awful place for us to live, and for keeping the higher, better existence for Himself.
Now, I know that some people are going to say I’m drawing conclusions that Plato never drew. And maybe that’s true, but we can’t escape the fact that his kind of thinking has trickled down through 2,400 years of human history and still haunts our minds today.
For a lot of people, blaming God for everything wrong seems to make perfect sense. We’re told that God lives in the perfect glories of Heaven on the one hand, and then we’re told by some people on the other that He created this world through the process of evolution, subjecting us to many millions of years of brutal suffering.
Now Plato never said that, because he was completely unfamiliar with our modern theory of evolution, but the thinking isn’t really all that different. It pits the imperfect material world against the perfect spiritual world, creating the situation that completely ignores the real problem.
The Bible teaches that when God made this place in the first place, He said it was very good, and coming from God, whose standard is utter perfection, that’s saying quite a bit. It’s not like some three-year-old child who’s pleased with his splotchy finger paintings. That’s the opinion of the Almighty God.
In its original form, our world was very good, and the problem started when human beings made the deliberate choice to separate themselves from God. Again, let’s go back to the book of Genesis and look at what the Bible says about the problems of evil and imperfection.
Here’s what it says (Genesis 3:17-19):
“Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat of it”: cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.’”
There it is in a nutshell—God’s assessment of the whole problem. It was human sin that gave us suffering and death. It was human sin that led to hard lives full of trouble. And that puts the blame exactly where it belongs, on us. The very moment Adam chose to turn his back on God, all the problems began, and because we surrendered dominion over the planet to a fallen angel, all of creation was deeply affected by what we did.
A curse fell on the human race. But it also fell on the whole world around us. And so everything was radically changed, and that brings me to a rather profound statement found in the book of Jeremiah. It says (Jeremiah 17: 9, 10):
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.”
Now, there are several things I want you to notice. First of all, the Bible says that the stuff we have to suffer in this world is the direct result of our own actions as a sinful human race. When someone robs our house, it’s because the human race let go of God. When genocide ravages the heart of Africa, again, it’s because the human race let go of God.
Now I really want to be careful with what I say, but when hurricanes and tsunamis destroy human lives, it’s also because of human sin. Please note that I’m not saying that the victims had it coming, or that it’s the direct result of their own personal actions. But we have to remember that sin affected the whole planet, and there was no such thing as a natural disaster in the Garden of Eden.
The suffering we live with is the direct result of our collective human choice to turn against the Creator. And so God allows us to live with the consequence of our choice, not because God is trying to get even with us, but because He’s not a dictator like some people would have you believe.
God’s not going to force people to love Him, because that’s not even a possibility. You can’t love if there’s no choice. If you want to walk away from God, He’ll let you go, but He’ll also allow you to reap the consequences of your decision.
That earlier passage from Jeremiah tells us that the human heart is deceitful and wicked, and that means that we’ve gone so far in our rebellion that we’re not thinking straight anymore. Not only are we inherently wicked and sinful, but we also constantly lie to ourselves about it.
The prophet Jeremiah lived some 200+ years before Plato, and he predicted what was coming. We would find some other way to explain human suffering, other than take the blame on ourselves. And that’s exactly what Plato did. He blamed the whole setup on the universe itself.
Not only that, but he started to explain away the problem of human suffering by saying that the world around us isn’t even real; it’s just a shadow of a better place. Now, let me ask you, is there a better place? Is there a better place coming?
No question about it. The Bible says that God plans to make a new Heaven and a new Earth; a better place where Peter said righteousness dwells. But we can’t escape the fact that our present fallen world is very real, and so are the consequences of our human rebellion. If we miss that fact, we’re missing the whole point.
Let me show you something interesting in a passage that I know I’ve probably read you a hundred times before, but it’s important that we look at it again. In the third chapter of the book of Genesis, where Satan tempts Eve to rebel against God, he says something very important in verse four (Genesis 3:4, 5).
“Then the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’”
It’s subtle, but it’s very important. God said the wages of sin would be death. The devil said, “That’s not true! If you eat from the tree you’re not going to die—you’re going to rise to a higher level of existence. In fact, you’ll actually become like God.”
Now, I can’t help but notice the parallels between what the serpent says and what Plato said. Now, please don’t misunderstand me—please don’t send a bunch of letters. I’m not comparing Plato to the devil himself, but we’d be foolish not to remember that human thinking is stained with sin.
Plato essentially taught that the gods were holding out on us—that those with a brain could ascend into the higher planes of reality. And you know, the devil did offer Eve the very same thing. “Listen,” he said, “God’s holding out on you; there are things you will know if you only choose to break free from the world God put you in.”
Back in 1955, a man by the name of Oscar Cullmann delivered a lecture at Harvard in which he pointed out something really important: the difference between Socrates and Jesus. Let me read you just a quick snippet from that lecture, because it’s important:
“For through philosophy we penetrate into that eternal world of ideas to which the soul belongs, and we free the soul from the prison of the body. Death does no more than complete this liberation. Plato shows us how Socrates goes to his death in complete peace and composure. The death of Socrates is a beautiful death. Nothing is seen here of death’s terror. Socrates cannot fear death, since indeed it sets us free from the body. Whoever fears death proves that he loves the world of the body, that he is thoroughly entangled in the world of the senses.”
Now, let me explain a bit. That’s a reference to the death of Socrates as is described in “Phaedo,” a work written by Plato that a lot of kids have had to read in their freshman year of college. And Oscar Cullmann is right. Socrates practically embraces death, because for the Greek philosopher it means that you’re finally going to get away from the horrible problems of physical existence. But then Cullmann compares that to the death of Jesus, and this is really important for us to notice. Let me continue quoting him:
“And now, let us hear how Jesus dies. In Gethsemane He knows that death stands before Him, just as Socrates expected death on his last day…Jesus begins ‘to tremble and be distressed,’ writes Mark (14:33). ‘My soul is troubled, even to death,’ He says to his disciples. Jesus is so thoroughly human that He shares the natural fear of death. Jesus is afraid, though not as a coward would be, of the men who will kill him, still less of the pain and grief which precede death. He is afraid in the face of death itself. Death for Him is not something divine: it is something dreadful. Jesus does not want to be alone in this moment.”
Here’s where the whole issue becomes very serious. The wages of sin, according to the Bible, is death, and that’s the reason Jesus died a horrible death on the cross of Calvary. He was taking our wages for us. And when He faced the weight of human sin and offered to take it on His own back, He trembled. “Father,” He said, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me.”
See, not only was the world a very real place to Jesus, but death was also very real. Sin was very real. And the only escape, the only chance we have, has nothing to do with our brains and everything to do with the cross. If anything, the cross of Christ proves just how real our world is and how real the problems are. The only solution was for Jesus to step into human reality and die in our place.
And maybe that’s why the Apostle Paul, writing 400 years after Plato, said this in the book of 1 Corinthians (1 Corinthians 1:22, 23):
“For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness.”
In the end, the philosophy of Plato denies everything important. Even though it recognizes there’s a big problem with our world, it still denies the ultimate reality of the created world. And more importantly, it denies the ultimate reality of sin and death. Because the human heart is desperately wicked and deceitful, we still look for reasons to blame someone or something else. We still try to find a way to soften the reality of death and minimize the consequences of sin.
And if the serpent who whispered the first lie in the Garden of Eden can still convince us that God’s not telling the truth about ultimate reality, he’s also going to succeed in diverting our minds from the reality of the cross of Christ.
So today, as you stand at the foot of that cross, ask yourself a question. Where did your problems really come from? In the brilliant presence of the Son of God, what does the sin in your own heart look like? As you see Christ hanging there, maybe it’s time to finally admit it and claim the promise of forgiveness.
Is there a better world coming? Yes, there is, and it was purchased with the blood of God’s own Son. And if you read the Bible carefully, you’ll find there’s a new Heaven and a new Earth coming—a real, physical place where we live in the presence of God.
But the question for you right now is this: You need Christ if you’re going to be there. You’ve got to admit that your sins are a problem in your life, and you’ve got to go to Christ as your only hope. There’s no point anymore denying the real problem, so let me ask you, what in the world keeps you from coming to Jesus? Maybe it’s time for us to assess blame correctly and look at the condition of our own hearts. Why don’t we pray together?
PRAYER:
Father in Heaven, today as we look at the cross of Christ, we can see what the real problem is. It’s our hearts, and today we claim forgiveness. We ask that you cleanse us with Your Son’s blood, and we ask it in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Scriptures Used in “How Plato Missed the Mark”
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness."
—Genesis 1:1-4
"Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day."
—Genesis 1:31
"Then to Adam He said, 'Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, "You shall not eat of it": cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.'"
—Genesis 3:17-19
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings."
—Jeremiah 17: 9, 10
"Then the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'"
—Genesis 3:4, 5
"For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness."
—1 Corinthians 1:22, 23