Plato vs. The Bible

         To start, God in the Christian view contains Omni-traits. He contains absolute power, goodness, freedom, intelligence and does not depend on anything to continue existing. He has no beginning and no end, as the Bible says, He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He is reasonable and all-knowing. He created man in his own image and allowed man to know him and desired for man to seek him, to find fulfillment and completion in loving him, because of this love that He gave man a free will. He enabled us to choose between entering a genuine relationship with him or reject him. And it is through this rejection that sin and imperfection came to the world. But once again He demonstrated his love by a redemptive plan, through Jesus Christ. This is the Christian point of view.

Moving on to the Platonic Natural Theology, it says that the divine is rationally intelligible. That man can use his reason to understand the transcendental truths and perfections found in the world of forms. Forms in the Platonic Theory refers to the assumption that beyond the world of physical things, there is a higher, spiritual realms of forms, apprehensible only to the mind. That things (form of man, stones, love, justice, etc.) in this world are only imperfect copies of these perfect forms. . Everything in reality is created in forms, as there exist within humanity itself an ideal concept in which we call humanness. From this, we must say that all good Forms came from a good creator, as chaos cannot form order. In addition, Plato realized that the world is in constant motion, but objects do not move by themselves, there must be a force that makes it move. However, the human body can initiate motion itself, and the Mover of the Human Body is the Soul. Plato also gives us a conception of a finite God, one that leaves little room for freedom. The Platonic God is subjected to creating the best possible world, and for striving for perfected order. The Platonic God cannot choose to not create the world, but is “subjected to an inner moral need for emanating order and law.” (West 9). “The Platonic Deity is only the maker or moulder of a coexistent matter or spatial receptacle, not a creator exnihilo.” (Wild 9). This finite God is subjected to being always good. The Christian God, however, has true freedom, and could have easily chosen not to create the world. In a Christian point, God created everything from nothing while in the Platonic viewpoint, they believed in molding of the organized world from preexistent matter.

In conclusion to the given information, Plato refer to knowledge as God. He believed that to reach divinity you must have reasoning and be intellect which is contrast to the Christian viewpoint. Plato also believes in reincarnation in a divine aspect. That when you die, you reincarnate into a much higher form that can be called as God. Unlike what Christianity had taught us. That in death there is no reincarnation but incarnation, going to heaven. But we should understand the fact that Plato helped set the intellectual stage for the early church. Platonic theory for me, suggests us to think rather than be contented with what we hear. It wanted us to seek knowledge and have our own stand against certain issues, and not rely on what we just have, and not to believe what we just heard or be contented on what our minds have. But to exercise the knowledge given to us by the Most High.

References:

http://leonardooh.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/168/

http://www.academia.edu/1082782/The_Similarities_between_Platos_form_of_the_Good_and_Christianitys_concept_of_God

http://www.jeffriddle.net/2006/02/platos-republic-and-biblical-worldview.html

http://www.nyu.edu/classes/keefer/hell/plat2.html

https://blog.logos.com/2013/11/plato-christianity-church-fathers/