The Value of Plato
While reading Ronald H. Nash’s The Gospel and the Greeks, I came across the following quote of A. H. Arrstrong which came from his An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy. These comments, according to Nash, illustrate Plato’s relevance for Christian thought. I found them worthy of consideration.
Everyone who believes in an objective and unchanging standard of morality governing public as well as private life, in the soul as immaterial and immortal and the most important part of man, in the governance of the world by Divine Reason and in the existence of eternal archetypes or patters of all things that come to be and pass away, with which our behaviour and thought must conform, everyone who believes all this or an important part of it can claim to be in the tradition which goes back unbroken to Plato and Socrates: though the later development of teh Platonic school and, much more, the transforming influence of Christianity have very much altered the content of these beliefs, yet the tradition of their development has been continuous. However much we may find ourselves in disagreement with Plato on really serious and vitally important subjects, the nature of God, the eternity of the cosmos, the uncreatedness of matter, the value to be attached to the body and to sense experience… yet in other vital matters we are still of his school. As against the hosts of materialists, relativists, pragmatists, positivists, deniers of any eternal universal and objective truths or standards, who dominate so much of our thinking today and whose feebler predecessors were dealt with by Plato in his time, we who still hold to the older tradition are on Plato’s side and he and Socrates are on ours, and we should reverence them as of the greatest among the founders and fathers of our thought.
Armstrong has succinctly identified the major areas of commonality and difference between Christian teaching and Plato. I couldn’t agree more with his commendation of ancient philosophy. There is much to gain by reading and understanding the arguments of old as they are still fresh and relevant today. One who is equipped with such knowledge will be be better able to defeat today’s false philosophies.