Studying ancient Greek theology differs from the rest of the study of ancient Greek religion in an important respect: despite the influence of tradition and cultural context, rational, philosophical reflection on religion, god, and the gods is very much bound up with the thinking of the individual Greek thinker. This applies as much to the theology of Plato as it does to the theology of, for example, Aeschylus. In consequence, a prerequisite to an understanding of Plato’s theology is an understanding of, or at least an acquaintance with, the rest of Plato’s philosophy. Obviously, this cannot be achieved in the present context. Instead, we shall begin with a brief, preliminary, dogmatic exposition of Plato’s theology. A literal reading of his dialogues is likely to arrive at the following picture of the world:
There is a god who is good {Republic 2, Timaeus) and who, by virtue of his goodness, is incapable of wishing for anything other than what is good or doing anything other than what is good. This god is faced with an expanse of stuff, changeable and lacking all order. But because order is better than disorder, the god sets about, as a craftsman, a demiourgos, to set in order what he has found in disorder. He does so with reference to what is eternal, unchanging, and always the same as itself; these things he uses as models and examples, paradeigmata {Timaeus). They belong to the realm of what can be thought, noeta, not to the realm of what can be seen, horata {Phaedo, Republic, Timaeus). Since what is thus immutable is perceived by the thinking mind, nous, and since whatever has nous is better than anything that does not, the craftsman fashions nous into his creation {Timaeus). But in that which changes, i. e. in the constantly changing realm of stuff, nous can only be present in soul, psyche { Sophist, Timaeus, Philebus). So the craftsman’s first task is to create a soul, so that the changeable world can share in that which does not change {Timaeus). Thus the world has soul {Timaeus, Philebus, Laws 10), and all that has soul in the world shares in that soul; highest among ensouled things are the gods created by the craftsman, next come human beings, created in turn by the gods, and after that all the other things that move by themselves {Timaeus). For of the two types of ‘‘moving,’’ ‘‘moving’’ caused by something else and ‘‘moving’’ moving by itself, it is soul that moves by itself {Phaedrus, Laws 10). Conversely, whatever moves by itself has soul. But it is not fitting that these souls that move by themselves should be dissolved. They are thus everlasting, in assimilation and approximation to what is eternally immutable. This accounts for the regularity and immutability of the order of the stars and planets who {sic!) move in circular motions through the ordered world, the kosmos; they are the everlasting gods {Timaeus). Human souls, on the other hand, have bodies of an inferior kind. When these bodies cease to function, the souls return to where they came from. There, different fates await different souls; ultimately, what fate one’s soul has, here and elsewhere, depends on what one does and what one chooses to do {Gorgias, Phaedo, Republic 10, Phaedrus, Laws 10). That we know anything at all, however, while our souls are here in these inferior, perishable bodies, is due to our remembering what we saw of the immutable, always identical forms of the good, the beautiful, etc., which our souls perceived before our life here, through their sharing in nous, and through their sharing the company of the blessed gods (Meno, Phaedo, Republic 10, Phaedrus). But this knowledge of ours is imperfect as our vision of the forms is interrupted; in this, we differ from the gods. We can only aspire to free ourselves as much as possible from any distractions offered by our physical senses of sight and hearing, etc., and by our appetites for food and all other physical pleasure (Phaedo, Republic 5). In that way, we can become like god as far as that is possible for man. And this, indeed, is the aim in life, homoiosis theo(i), assimilation and approximation to god; this is not ‘‘becoming god,’’ but it is for the soul to become like god as far as that is possible (Republic 10, Theaetetus, Phaedrus, Timaeus, Laws 4), since the only way for the body to emulate immortality is through physical procreation, as in that way part of oneself lives on (Symposium). The god thus emulated by one’s soul in fitting manner is the one characterized as all good and all-knowing. This entails that he cares for everything, and by implication everybody, and that he cannot be swayed by deception or flattery in the form of lies or prayers or sacrifices (Euthyphro, Laws 10).
World History
