“the_conscience, I suspect you have attributed more to betty boop’s use of the word “reason” than she actually expressed. More specifically, to arrive at your conclusion that she elevates “reason” equal to or beyond “faith” would be attributing motives that I have never, ever heard betty boop express.”
I’m not attributing any motives to bb I’m just taking her at her word when she says she subscribes to a pretty strong form of Platonism which in fact does elevate reason as the ultimate good.
betty boop is my dearest sister in Christ!
She loves God surpassingly above all else. Her profound appreciation for Plato – and mine – are set way beneath the overarching Truth of Jesus Christ.
Indeed, Justin Martyr also believed Plato was prophetic, making references to Christ without even realizing it – much like Caiaphas and Gamaliel. Paul also remarked on the Greek poets.
Then stood there up one in the council, a Pharisee, named Gamaliel, a doctor of the law, had in reputation among all the people, and commanded to put the apostles forth a little space;… And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God. – Acts 5:34-39
Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, [Ye] men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you… For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. – Acts 17:22-18
Then I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and, behold, there stood before the river a ram which had [two] horns: and the [two] horns [were] high; but one [was] higher than the other, and the higher came up last. I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and southward; so that no beasts might stand before him, neither [was there any] that could deliver out of his hand; but he did according to his will, and became great.
And as I was considering, behold, an he goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground: and the goat [had] a notable horn between his eyes. And he came to the ram that had [two] horns, which I had seen standing before the river, and ran unto him in the fury of his power.
And I saw him come close unto the ram, and he was moved with choler against him, and smote the ram, and brake his two horns: and there was no power in the ram to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground, and stamped upon him: and there was none that could deliver the ram out of his hand.
Therefore the he goat waxed very great: and when he was strong, the great horn was broken; and for it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven. – Daniel 8:1-8
Logos is the Greek term meaning “the Word.” Greek philosophers like Plato used Logos not only of the spoken word but also of the unspoken word, the word still in the mind -- the reason. When applied to the universe, Greeks were speaking to the rational principle that governs all things.
A Greek philosopher named Heraclitus first used the term Logos around 600 BC to designate the divine reason or plan which coordinates the entire universe. Monotheistic Jews used Logos to refer to God, since He was the rational mind -- reason -- behind the creation and coordination of the universe.
Thus, John (the author of the biblical book of John) used a very special word -- Logos -- that was meaningful to both the Jews and the Greeks during the first century AD.
The Essenes
The Qumran sect's origins are postulated by some scholars to be in the communities of the Hasidim, the pious anti-Hellenistic circles formed in the early daysof the Maccabees. The Hasidim may have been the precursors of the Essenes, who were concerned about growing Hellenization and strove to abide by the Torah.
Archeological and historical evidence indicates that Qumran was founded in the second half of the second century B.C.E., during the time of the Maccabean dynasty. A hiatus in the occupation of the site is linked to evidence of a huge earthquake. Qumran was abandoned about the time of the Roman incursion of 68 C.E., two years before the collapse of Jewish self-government in Judea and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E.
The chief sources of information for the history of this fateful time span are the Qumran scrolls and the excavations, but earlier information on the Essenes was provided by their contemporaries: Josephus Flavius, Philo of Alexandria, and Pliny the Elder. Their accounts arc continuously being borne out by the site excavations and study of the writings.
The historian Josephus relates the division of the Jews of the Second Temple period into three orders: the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes. The Sadducees included mainly the priestly and aristocratic families; the Pharisees constituted the Jay circles; and the Essenes were a separatist group, part of which formed an ascetic monastic community that retreated to the wilderness. The exact political and religious affinities of each of these groups, as well as their development and interrelationships, are still relatively obscure and arc the source of widely disparate scholarly views.
The crisis that brought about the secession of the Essenes from mainstream Judaism is thought to have occurred when the Maccabean ruling princes Jonathan (160-142 B.C.E.) and Simeon (142-134 B.C.E.) usurped the office of high priest (which included secular duties), much to the consternation of conservative Jews; some of them could not tolerate the situation and denounced the new rulers. The persecution of the Essenes and their leader, the teacher of righteousness probably elicited the sect's apocalyptic visions. These included the overthrow of "the wicked priest" of Jerusalem and of the evil people and, in the dawn of the Messianic Age, the recognition of their community as the true Israel. The retreat of these Jews into the desert would enable them "to separate themselves from the congregation of perverse men (IQ Serekh 5:2).
A mathematical structure is an abstract, immutable entity existing outside of space and time. If history were a movie, the structure would correspond not to a single frame of it but to the entire videotape. Consider, for example, a world made up of pointlike particles moving around in three-dimensional space. In four-dimensional spacetime — the bird perspective — these particle trajectories resemble a tangle of spaghetti. If the frog sees a particle moving with constant velocity, the bird sees a straight strand of uncooked spaghetti. If the frog sees a pair of orbiting particles, the bird sees two spaghetti strands intertwined like a double helix. To the frog, the world is described by Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation. To the bird, it is described by the geometry of the pasta — a mathematical structure. The frog itself is merely a thick bundle of pasta, whose highly complex intertwining corresponds to a cluster of particles that store and process information. Our universe is far more complicated than this example, and scientists do not yet know to what, if any, mathematical structure it corresponds.
The Platonic paradigm raises the question of why the universe is the way it is. To an Aristotelian, this is a meaningless question: The universe just is. But a Platonist cannot help but wonder why it could not have been different. If the universe is inherently mathematical, then why was only one of the many mathematical structures singled out to describe a universe? A fundamental asymmetry appears to be built into the very heart of reality.
And he [was] clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. - Rev 19:3
Indeed, the the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is to me like God’s copyright notice on the cosmos!
In short, our appreciation of Plato must be understood in context with the revelation of God, Jesus Christ our Lord, the living Word of God.
A "pretty strong form of Platonism?" Plato was not a system builder (unlike the philosopher discussed in the article at the top of this thread); nor did he create any "doctrines." He himself constantly insisted that anyone who understood him to be doing that didn't understand what he was doing. But I understand! He created no doctrine, strong or weak. And he certainly didn't elevate reason as the "ultimate good." Pure reason is a tool of analysis; it is not God. When one senses God's "divine pulls" (helkein) in subjective consciousness, this is an event in Spirit, not in reason. It will take reason to analyze the experience into language if it is to be communicated to others. But Spirit comes first, then reason.
Classical philosophy is not at all like what philosophy has become in the post-Enlightenment period. Modern philosophy has tended to gild itself with the prestige of science, aping its methods and virtually divinizing Reason; and so has produced all kinds of "school philosophies" such as scientific materialism, positivism, pragmatism, utilitarianism, etc. All of these are doctrines. (You can easily tell when you're dealing with a doctrine — it has the suffix "ism.")
But Plato's philosophy is not at all like that: It is based on Socratic ignorance.
Some notes on Socratic Ignorance: Socrates, Plato’s great teacher, did not claim to know better than others. He frequently emphasized that he was “ignorant.” The importance of this “confession” is that it “helps to draw the line between dogma and genuine philosophy. It is one thing to state one’s opinion of how things are and should be…. Socrates, on the other hand, started from a position of ignorance and sought the truth. In the end, he has no dogmatic program for us to follow, just a method for seeking truth for ourselves, without any guarantee that we will find it. Philosophy as practiced by Socrates is an open system,” not a doctrine or dogma.
In Plato’s Apology — a word which here does not imply an admission of guilt, as it does in modern usage, but an intention to give a justification for some action or position — Socrates explains why he follows this philosophical path even unto his death. In the dialogue, Chaerephon asks the Oracle of Delphi, “Who is the wisest of men?” Now this Oracle, a/k/a the Pythia, was a priestess reputed to be possessed by the gods and so able to get answers from them. She replied: “No one is wiser than Socrates.”
Socrates evidently was enormously perplexed by this answer. Plato has him say in response:
When I heard the answer, I said to myself, What can the god mean? And what is the interpretation of this riddle? For I know that I have no wisdom, small or great. What can he mean when he says I am the wisest of men? And yet he is a god and cannot lie; that would be against his nature. After a long consideration, I at last thought of a method of trying the question. I reflected that if I could find a man wiser than myself, then I might go to the god with a refutation in my hand. I should say to him, “Here is a man who is wiser than I am; but you said that I was the wisest.” Accordingly I went to one who had the reputation of wisdom, and observed to him — his name I need not mention; he was a politician whom I selected for examination — and the result was as follows: When I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and wiser still by himself; and I went and tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several who were present and heard me. So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away: Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is — for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him. Then I went to another, who had still higher philosophical pretentions, and my conclusion was exactly the same. I made another enemy of him, and of many others besides him…. Therefore I asked myself on behalf of the oracle, whether I would like to be as I was, neither having their knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in both; and I made answer to myself and the oracle that I was better off as I was.“Socrates concludes that it is better to have honest ignorance than self-deceptive ignorance. Socrates may not know the ultimate answers to the questions he raises, but he knows himself. It is this self-knowledge and integrity that constitutes the wisdom of Socrates. The open invitation is for all of us the ask ourselves how much we truly know of what we claim.” See Link for More
Indeed, the practice of Socratic/Platonic philosophy begins with the injunction, “Know thyself.”
In the autobiographical sketch which Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates in the Phaedo (96a ff.), Socrates tells us that when he was young he had a passion for natural science. This, of course, is as we should expect, for, like all intelligent young men of his time, he must have been intrigued by the speculations of that amazing blaze of thinkers from Thales to Anaxagoras.In like vein, the 19th-century Italian priest and philosopher Antonio Rosmini writes:He tells us that he was busied with such questions as, What is it that makes things come into being and cease to be? But he soon came to the conclusion that that form of inquiry was not for him. He found that he was befogged by those speculations; that by observing objects with the eyes and trying to comprehend them with the senses, he was in danger of blinding his soul altogether. It is important to understand clearly what this means. I take it to mean that Socrates came to realize that the investigation of things, whatever it gave him, could not give him the understanding he sought. He discovered the limits, or rather the limitations, of objective knowledge; the fact that objective knowledge, and the methods productive of objective knowledge, cannot answer any of our philosophical questions.
His dissatisfaction with natural speculation meant that his interest lay elsewhere. The focus of his thought was on those ideas and ideals which are all-important to the humanity of man. And the understanding he yearned for was not to be won by the acquisition of a mere mass of objective facts….
The business of philosophy is to deal with ideas that do not reside in nature, but only in the mind of man, in the sense that they do not come to us from outside, and can by no means be discovered by any objective approach.
There may or may not be an instance of justice in the actual world. What is certain is that ‘justice itself’ is not to be found anywhere in the actual world: we did not find the idea ‘out there’: the idea is neither a description of nor a counter for any existent in the world. It is only in the intelligible world that we find justice pure and simple.
The business of philosophical thought is with ideas; ideas that give shape and meaning and value to our lives; ideas that have their reality in themselves; ideas that can only be understood through their own proper form. The way to understanding is not to search around us, but to examine our minds; to examine our ideas, those ideas which we ourselves bring into being.
Without the particulars of sense there may be no world at all, but all of the particulars of sense put together do not constitute a meaningful world; all of the particulars of sense put together do not give me a moment of reality. That is why Socrates was not concerned with the factual world, but with the forms that give meaning to the world….
He concluded that wisdom is not in objective knowledge. Search as we may, the world will not give us answers to the questions that concern us most. Unless we acknowledge that all of our knowledge is as nothing, unless we avow our ignorance, we shall not even have set foot on the endless road to wisdom. For God alone is wise; and he is the wisest among men who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing. — D. R. Khashaba, Here
“…Philosophy is a word invented by the founder of the Italic school. Cicero describes how Leontius, king of Phliasi, asked Pythagoras to state the art which gave value to his life. The reply was simple: he knew no art; he was a philosopher. From that moment, people who engaged in the investigation of the most important truths were no longer called ‘wise’ … but ‘philosophers’ … that is, lovers and seekers of wisdom.I'll toss in my own two-cents-worth here: All I know is that the more I know, the more I realize how much I don't know; there is no certainty in human knowledge. And so I place my full faith and trust in God's revelations to us.“This remark by Pythagoras was an extremely noble, moral statement whose intimate truth is felt by all. No one, as we know, can call himself wise. The darkness besetting our intellect is profound; our ignorance as mortals is extreme even after a lifetime of meditation. Prolonged efforts and innumerable frustrations, often accompanied by error, bring forth as their fruit only a tiny particle of truth. God alone has the right to be called wise; it is a lie and a pride to call human beings wise. In uncovering this lie and rebuking its pride, Pythagoras made philosophical humility the solid base for the investigation of what is true.” — Antonio Rosmini, Psychology, Denis Cleary and Terence Watson, tr. Durham: Rosmini House, 1999, p. 3f.