A Survey of Christian Epistemology

one is either in contact with the Ideal world and therefore in possession of it as knowledge or one is a poor earthworm and knows nothing at all. Some reality must be given to the world of sense inasmuch as learning seems to be possible. Perhaps the indwelling of the soul in the body is not altogether in vain. Perhaps there is a closer relation between soul and body than we are willing to admit. Perhaps even the fate of both will be the same. At least the incarnation of the soul in the body has some meaning for the world of sense.

The nasty problem why there should be an incarnation of the Ideas at all is not here discussed. The Cur Deus Homo problem will meet us again and again. It has been and still is a bone of contention between the two main opposing systems of thought. It is especially charged that theism is here in desperate straits because it believes in an absolute God who was self-sufficient. Such a God could, it is asserted, have no reason for becoming incarnate or for creating any beings that were to exist outside himself, since he was already self-sufficient. We only mention this matter here in order to call attention to the fact that the greatest exponent of Greek thought had no solution to offer when he came to consider this problem. Whether later antitheistic thought has found a solution remains to be seen. Even in Plato’s maturest thought as expressed in the Timaeus, there is only a faintest suggestion of the idea that it is perhaps the soul’s function to bring together two opposing forces in the universe, namely, spirit and matter. And this lack of any notion of reconciliation that at all approaches the Christian idea on that subject corroborates what was said above about the assumption on the part of the Greeks, that the mind of man is naturally sound. It is assumed that there is no reconciliation to be made between God and man. And if there is any reconciliation to be made at all, it is the mind of man that is to do the reconciling. Thus the mind of man does not need any reconciliation to God by God, but it can itself reconcile the physical universe to God. Instead of needing a Mediator, the mind of man sets itself up as mediator if there is to be any mediator at all.

But we must return to the argument developed by Plato. What we have so far reached is that, according to Plato, all soul is immortal This does not necessarily imply that every soul is immortal. All soul, Plato thinks, is self-moved. And everything that is self-moved is immortal. The human soul is not definitely proved to be immortal, but since it is connected with the cosmic soul as a whole, it may reasonably be expected to be immortal too. For suppose that the human soul should perish. Then there would be no guarantee that the world-soul as a whole would not also perish.

It is of particular importance here to observe that the final basis of the argument is the assumed eternity or at least endlessness of the existence of the universe. Plato nowhere identifies time and eternity, but he does the next thing to it. For all practical purposes his conception of time as “the moving image of eternity” amounts to saying that the eternal and the temporal are equally ultimate aspects of one general Reality. When we say “ultimate” here we do not mean that the temporal and the eternal were equally valuable in the eyes of Plato. Quite the opposite is the case. The eternal is sometimes presented as being the only valuable aspect of reality. But this does not change the fact that, according to Plato, time and eternity are equally underived. Eternity is not derived from time, but neither is time derived from eternity. And this is the fact that makes Plato’s position once for all irreconcilable with any consistent interpretation of Christian theism.