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| How Plato Has Been Able to Approach So Nearly to Christian Knowledge.
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Chapter 11.—How Plato Has Been
Able to Approach So Nearly to Christian Knowledge.
Certain partakers with us in the
grace of Christ, wonder when they hear and read that Plato had
conceptions concerning God, in which they recognize considerable
agreement with the truth of our religion. Some have concluded
from this, that when he went to Egypt he had heard the prophet
Jeremiah, or, whilst travelling in the same country, had read the
prophetic scriptures, which opinion I myself have expressed in
certain of my writings.306
| 306 De Doctrina
Christiana, ii. 43. Comp.
Retract. ii. 4, 2. | But a careful calculation of
dates, contained in chronological history, shows that Plato was
born about a hundred years after the time in which Jeremiah
prophesied, and, as he lived eighty-one years, there are found to
have been about seventy years from his death to that time when
Ptolemy, king of Egypt, requested the prophetic scriptures of the
Hebrew people to be sent to him from Judea, and committed them to
seventy Hebrews, who also knew the Greek tongue, to be translated
and kept. Therefore, on that voyage of his, Plato could neither
have seen Jeremiah, who was dead so long before, nor have read
those same scriptures which had not yet been translated into the
Greek language, of which he was a master, unless, indeed, we say
that, as he was most earnest in the pursuit of knowledge, he also
studied those writings through an interpreter, as he did those of
the Egyptians,—not, indeed, writing a translation of them (the
facilities for doing which were only gained even by Ptolemy in
return for munificent acts of kindness,307
though fear of his kingly authority
might have seemed a sufficient motive), but learning as much as he
possibly could concerning their contents by means of
conversation. What warrants this supposition are the
opening
verses of Genesis: “In the beginning God made the heaven and
earth. And the earth was invisible, and without order; and
darkness was over the abyss: and the Spirit of God moved over the
waters.”308
For in the
Timæus, when writing on the formation of the world, he says
that God first united earth and fire; from which it is evident that
he assigns to fire a place in heaven. This opinion bears a
certain resemblance to the statement, “In the beginning God made
heaven and earth.” Plato next speaks of those two intermediary
elements, water and air, by which the other two extremes, namely,
earth and fire, were mutually united; from which circumstance he is
thought to have so understood the words, “The Spirit of God moved
over the waters.” For, not paying sufficient attention to the
designations given by those scriptures to the Spirit of God, he may
have thought that the four elements are spoken of in that place,
because the air also is called spirit.309
Then, as to Plato’s saying that
the philosopher is a lover of God, nothing shines forth more
conspicuously in those sacred writings. But the most striking
thing in this connection, and that which most of all inclines me
almost to assent to the opinion that Plato was not ignorant of
those writings, is the answer which was given to the question
elicited from the holy Moses when the words of God were conveyed to
him by the angel; for, when he asked what was the name of that God
who was commanding him to go and deliver the Hebrew people out of
Egypt, this answer was given: “I am who am; and thou shalt say
to the children of Israel, He who is sent me unto you;”310
as though
compared with Him that truly is, because He is unchangeable,
those things which have been created mutable are not,—a
truth which Plato zealously held, and most diligently commended.
And I know not whether this sentiment is anywhere to be found in
the books of those who were before Plato, unless in that book where
it is said, “I am who am; and thou shalt say to the children of
Israel, who is sent me unto you.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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