Quotes About Platonists

Since critics appear notoriously dogmatic and pugnacious, it seems that meaning (a)—admitting relativity—is not what they mean. Is criticism then a form of theology (the only other field that claims access to the mind of God?) Or are we to take it that they are all Platonists?

Charlemagne's grandson, Charles the Bald, went further in providing a congenial atmosphere for philosophy. The leading philosopher of this period was John Scottus Eriugena, and he not only taught at the court but was also protected by his royal patron when his critics accused him of heresy.3 Culturally, Charles the Bald emulated Byzantium; it is no accident that his court philosopher learned Greek and translated and assimilated the Greek Christian Platonists

Not everyone, however, bought the formula. Traditional Platonists found themselves like MIT graduates being confronted by people who claim to have learned plasma physics taking an Internet class over the summer. They were furious about what was happening and fought back hard.

Every soul and spirit has some degree of continuity with the universal spirit, which is recognized to be located not only where the individual soul lives and perceives, but also to be spread out everywhere in its essence and substance, as many Platonists and Pythagoreans have taught.

Jesus and his first followers, as Second Temple Jews, believed as well in an eschatology of new creation. This did not involve the abolition of the present world and its replacement with a totally different on. Nor did it imply the steady evolution-from-within of the Stoics, let alone the escapist 'eschatology' of the heading-for-heaven Platonists. They believed in the redemptive transformation of the present world into a new one.

One Corinthians 15, one of Paul's longest sustained discussions and the climax of the whole letter, is about the creator God remaking the creation—not abandoning it, as Platonists of all sorts, including the gnostics, would have wanted.