Spell check is our friend.
In most any university library you will find many more books on Plato than you will on Jesus.
So I checked the Emory University (my graduate school) main library, NOT the theological school library.
Results:
"Plato" - 2,165 books.
"Jesus" - 21,003 books.
Just in case it was a fluke, I also checked Harvard University's main catalog.
Results:
"Plato" - 8,449
"Jesus" - 53,239
Yale University:
"Plato" - 1,497
"Jesus" - 2,802
But apparently they're a bunch of heathens up at Princeton, my undergraduate alma mater:
"Plato" - 1308
"Jesus" - 845
I suspect, however, from those extremely low numbers - given the size of Firestone Library - that the electronic system does not include less recent books filed under the old (and unique) Princeton catalog system.
It's always a good idea to check these off the cuff remarks before you commit them to paper (or electrons).
Excellent article...thanks for posting it.
The concept of Christoplatonism is found in the book “Heaven” by Randy Alcorn. A complete outline of it is in chapter 6, but briefly it is a mix of Christianity and Platonic fatalism.
I recommend the book for its conceptualization of Heaven. It caused me to think about Heaven more.
Did you ever wonder why Christianity resonated so strongly among the Greeks? Not that it didn’t also spread to Persia, Central Asia (Armenia was the first officially Christian nation), North Africa, etc., within the first century, but the Greeks (including those in what’s now Turkey) really took to it.
Did you know that ancient Christians, as early as the first century, marvelled at how the Greeks had been prepped to understand their Christian message?
Did you know that Plato referred to a monotheistic god, albeit unknown to him, as “logos” centuries before John the Evangelist? Yes, when John called Christ, “Logos,” he was purposely representing a concept formulated by Plato and his followers.
Did you know that when the New Testament cites the Old Testament, it does not cite the Hebrew bible, but rather a Greek version of it?
The Greek religion was deeply antithetical to Christianity, but it was so patently antithetical to the truth that is Christianity that many of its discontents gained deep insight to a truth they could never have completely fathomed.
That’s why the Essenes were fascinated by Greek (Hellenistic) culture. John evidently had been an intense scholar of Greek before joining Christ, and this was no pagan pursuit of his. (Yes, humble fishermen could also be scholars.) His use of Greek has been called virtually native, using clever plays on words, making profound literary references, and displaying intimate knowledge of subtle connotations.
There are a number of factual errors in this writing. First, many theologians, such as Martin Luther and many Roman Catholic theologians taught traducianism, and not that there is an eternal soul. The immortality of the soul is not the same as eternal. Souls are created in time. I do not know of a single teaching in the Christian church that believes that souls have always existed. Plato and Aristotle’s belief that matter is eternal was never accepted by the Church. The issue of the relationship between philosophy (Platonism, stoicism, and aristotlianism) was that philosophy is a handmaiden to theology. Where philosophy contradicts theology, philosophical ideas are to be rejected. The determination of a meaning of a word is determined by its immediate context, not where one first encounters that term. The assumption that people that believe in the existence of the soul apart from the existence of the body are somehow ignorant of Scripture is simply false.
Tertullian was a layman, not a bishop, and he died a Montanist heretic, not a Catholic.
That barely scratches the surface of the many things this article gets wrong.
9When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. 10They called out in a loud voice, "How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?" 11Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed. -- Revelation 6:9-11
Pretty impressive work for a bunch of dead souls, hmmm?
Recommended Reading:
BODY, SOUL, & SPIRIT
By Dr. Peter S. Ruckman
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