/lit/ - Literature

>>21631077
Read From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith by Louis Markos

>>21631077
Christianity is just platonic Zoroastrianism but somehow theologically weaker than either of them

>>21631116
Said exactly like someone who doesn't have a clue about Platonism, Eastern Religions or Christianity. Well done, you're a dumbass

>>21631384
I am sorry that you haven't realized that. Maybe you should read the things you claim to know. Good luck dumbass

>>21631077
A lot. Plato was a proto-Christian after all. A tough pill to swallow for many, but what's right is right.

>>21631077
Platonism had a significant influence on Christianity. Clement and Origen of Alexandria, Augustine, and the Cappadocians all took influence from Plato, but more importantly from neo-Platonists like Plotinus, who had rendered Platonist thought into a frame which could be adopted by Christians. i.e. Trinitarian thought.
>>21631437
I don't think it's right to call Plato a "proto-Christian" just because he had influence on the Church fathers 500-800 years after the fact. If you were going to call anyone a proto-Christian, I think it would be Plotinus.

Early Christianity, medieval Christianity or modern Christianity? Either way Aristotle was infinitely more influential on Christianity than Platonism.

>>21631465
>who had rendered Platonist thought into a frame which could be adopted by Christians. i.e. Trinitarian thought.
Early Trinitarian thought appeared before Plato was even born and was fully developed before Plotinus was born.

>>21631491
>Early Christianity, medieval Christianity or modern Christianity
Same thing.
> Aristotle was infinitely more influential on Christianity than Platonism.
You mean on Catholicism, not on Christianity (i.e. Orthodoxy)

Saint Maximus the Confessor shows the right way to use Platonic philosophy, as opposed to the wrong way, such as Origenism.

>>21631532
>i.e. Orthodoxy
I'd argue that Orthodoxy was influenced more by Pyrrhonism through Photios than Platonism and Philo.

>>21631573
How so?

Certain ideas from Plato were tortured into a Christian framework by certain other thinkers but I don't see how you can really argue that there's any part of Plato's thought that is core to Christianity given that there, well, are no parts of core Christian doctrine that come from Plato.

After all, most of Christian philosophy was a nominalist acid bath trying to argue against both Plato AND Aristotle's Realism, so the core part of Plato's thought (the transcendent Realm of the Forms) was rejected by most Christian thinkers. Likewise, Plato's rejection of revelation and his hyper focus on reason and empiricism are both rejected by most Christian thinkers (in fact today every branch of Christianity except Mormonism argues that revelation is the only way to get knowledge at all about anything). This is to say nothing of the fact that Plato was a devout worshiper of the Olympians and Christianity is violently opposed to that.

>>21631601
>After all, most of Christian philosophy was a nominalist acid bath
This is totally wrong. Nominalism is a heresy. Orthodoxy believes strongly in universals and essences of objects. That is an important aspect of Orthodox theology. For example, Jesus Christ has both divine nature and human nature. You can't have this idea of a "nature" if you are a nominalist.

>>21631601
>Christian philosophy was a nominalist acid bath
What do you mean?

So many anons on this board get their understanding of Christianity from people like Nietzche and think they've got it all figured out.

>>21631601
>Likewise, Plato's rejection of revelation and his hyper focus on reason and empiricism
Do you mean Aristotle...? Plato's epistemology rests on recollecting from a previous life which is aking to revelation, and he had no focus on empiricism at all.

>>21631614
He is objectively wrong. Christianity is not nominalist. Essences are an important part of Christian theology and anthropology and philosophy.

>>21631620
Christianity is not entirely anti-nominalist... see Abelard, William of Ockham, Berkeley... It just depends what one means by it.

You have to remember (HAHAHAHAHA) that PLATO is more like PLOOTO amirite guys. ie the greek plooto stole everything from the Hindus.
Plato's retarded idea is that because an uneducated slave can prove some basic maths theorem by following some rules XYZ, it means ''his soul knows maths from before he was even born''.
The same rhetoric is used by the Poos in brahminism, mahayana and vajrayana, ie "the buddha says you can get enlightened by doing XYZ, so it means ''enlightenment is your true self''".
Plato and the Poos have the same problem has any primordial heaven believer: the problem of evil and karma.

12% shared words

Analysis of transhumanism from Orthodox Christian perspective!
https://www.youtube.com/live/qKiaAALbxLI?feature=share

Fr. Savas Ageioritis in the Orthodox Church performed an exorcism on someone who became possessed by a demon after getting the covid vaccine. The demon confessed to him that the covid vaccine was created in a Freemason black magic ritual and it has demons inside it.

The culture develops ideas and writers attempt to formalize them in different ways. Plato influenced Christianity but also the same underlying schools of thought influenced both Plato and Christianity.
Same with similarities in religions. There are often common roots that are now lost instead of the religions as we know them today copying each other directly.

>>21631753
I hate ecumenism and I hate the antichrist
>the popular Greek Saint, Elder Ephraim of Katounakia (died 1998), said when asked about ecumenism, "I went to my cell and prayed, asking Christ to inform me what Ecumenism is. I received his reply, which was that Ecumenism has a spirit of wickedness and is dominated by unclean spirits."[105]
>Similarly, the well-known Saint Paisios of Mount Athos (died 1994) gave many teachings about ecumenism. In a private letter to a priest named Fr. Haralambos on 23 January,1969, Elder Paisios wrote, "With sadness I must write that among all the unionists [ecumenists] I’ve met, never have I seen them to have either a drop or shred of spirituality."[106]
>Opposition to ecumenism comes not only from the laity and from monastics, but also from the Orthodox clergy. The popular ROCOR metropolitan Philaret of New York (died 1985) wrote a series of three "sorrowful" epistles from 1969 to 1975 against ecumenism, in which he called ecumenism an "error".[107]

>>21631437
>Plato was a proto-Christian after all
No.

>>21631614
Exactly what I said.

Alright, let's back it up. Plato said that there was a transcendent Realm of the Forms where the Form of the Tree lives, right? And Aristotle said that that's wrong, the Forms are actually what the Matter is in (we today would say that "the matter is in the shape of the Form", however), meaning that Forms exist inside things. Both of these posit what is called "Realism", which holds that some things are ontologically real; in this context it's what is called a "universal", a discrete thing that all things of a class partake in in order to be part of that class. There are, for example, epistemological realists, which hold that there is a real world outside of our heads (in contrast to certain schools of thought which hold that we can never be sure that there is any reality beyond our senses). Thus, Plato and Aristotle were both realists in regards to the ontological status of universals.

The problem with that is that Plato and Aristotle were both polytheists, and Christians are (silliness about the Trinity aside) monotheists. Christians thus run into a number of problems if they posit an ontologically realist stance regarding universals. The most common stance, held by most Christian philosophers, then was what is called "nominalism". Nominalism is the rejection of the ontological reality of universals. There is no "Form of the Tree", there's just trees. The most common stance held was that we make forms in our heads based off of impressions (hence how you can draw a new tree if I tell you to "draw a tree"). Yahweh has a bunch of forms in his head, but they only exist IN HIS HEAD, thus meaning that they have no connection to the actual trees around you (like how a building's blueprints aren't part of it, they're something separate and are unnecessary for its continued existence).

With few exceptions, most Christian philosophers were nominalists. The Vatican retconned Aquinas as having always been its head philosopher (even while threatening him with excommunication lmfao) so goofy LARPers disagree, but if you want a really fun ride, go look into Gemistus Pletho and follow the chain of reintroducing Plato to the West that he started, and be sure to look at how every single opponent to people reading Plato was a Catholic cleric espousing, you guessed it, a nominalist ontology.

>>21631753
>demons are inside something physical that is widespread
Why don't they just curse demons into the water supply or something then?

>>21631465
>I don't think it's right to call Plato a "proto-Christian" just because he had influence on the Church fathers 500-800 years after the fact.
That's how proto works though

>>21632665
Gonna be real you just made a random slight-of-hand jump from realism to accusing Christianity of nominalism without giving any rationale at all

>>21631753
>>21631867
The absolute mentall illness of jesuits, kek

>>21632696
>Orthodox monks are Jesuits

>>21632696
>Orthodox Christians
>jesuits
????????????????????????????

>>21632701
>>21632712
I use jesuit in the same way some use mohammeddan

>>21632665
>Yahweh has a bunch of forms in his head, but they only exist IN HIS HEAD, thus meaning that they have no connection to the actual trees around you
That sounds dumb but it feels like I'm missing something. Why doesn't it mean the trees are a connection to the mind of God? A building contains the same patterns as the blueprints. The load bearing wall is bearing a load in the blueprint and the building.

I know that memes are silly but this is kind of funny desu.
https://youtu.be/eJLTexiYgXI

>>21631601
This is absurd. Christianity itself according to Paul is NOTHING but accepting faith in Christ. The virgin birth and ethics are not necessary

The revelation shit you made up is stupid and gay.

The fact is that the Roman Catholic Church built its theology around Plato so after you’ve done basic apostles creed stuff it’s platonic / Aristotelian

Christianity is by no means nominalist. What an ignorant statement. Christianity believes in universals. God created them.
This is one of the reasons why we know that evolution is false. A cat for example has the essence of a cat. A tree has the essence of tree and so on.It does not change into a different species over time. This is metaphysically impossible. God created the universe with structure and logic. Things don't simply change for no particular reason.

It doesn't even make sense for Christianity to be nominalist. How could it be? Jesus Christ, being God, having the divine nature, came into the world and took on human nature as well. Now how would that make any sense at all in a nominalist framework? How could we say that Christ became man if we can't even define what "man" is? Without human nature then the term "human" is arbitrary and meaningless.
The same goes for all of creation. God created lions, for example. But how could we speak of lions if there is no essence or nature of lion by which we can define them as a distinct category sharing the essence of lion, distuishable from say a tree or a mountain and so on?

>>21631465
>Plotinus (204/5 – 270 AD)
>proto-christian
The absolute state of this board

>>21631077
Not nearly so much as it influenced Judaism...

>>21632786
I think he is saying that even if YHWH hypothetically forgot what trees were, trees would still continue to exist.

>>21631437
Plato argued that the world is eternal and uncreated. That's not very christian,

>>21633100
Yeah that's Masonic.

>>21633100
>the world is eternal and uncreated
Go read Plato, you absolute retard.

>>21631098
Not OP, but thanks. I was looking for something like this, and this looks very good.

>>21632665
>Yahweh has a bunch of forms in his head, but they only exist IN HIS HEAD, thus meaning that they have no connection to the actual trees around you
Actual trees around you exist in Yahweh's head also.
>With few exceptions, most Christian philosophers were nominalists
None of the church fathers were nominalists. And whatever "Christian philosophers" have said after the era of the universal councils is irrelevant to the Christian teaching.

>>21632786
>A building contains the same patterns as the blueprints.
You're overthinking a metaphor. The idea was that Yahweh made all of the things according to his impressions, and that's that. Sound overly simplistic? It is, there's an enormous Aristotelian legacy here that I'm eliding over because no one cares about it anymore.

If you want to know more, feel free to dive right in: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ockham/

>>21633263
Did you respond to the wrong post? This doesn't seem to have anything to do with what I said.

>>21631077
None since Christian doctrines have nothing similar to plato.

Dionysius the Areopogite speaks of the Logoi and the exemplars or archetypes of created things in the divine mind.
Saint Maximus the Confessor speaks in great detail of the natures of created things.
Nominalism is objectively wrong.

>>21631098
>written by a baptist

Lately I am thinking more and more that the rationalism of western church writers such as Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham is insufficient and weak. I am seeing more and more that the real answers are in the Eastern fathers such as Maximus the Confessor and Gregory Palamas and so on. It is a higher level of understanding that I don't see in the western thinkers.

>"Relative truth" is primarily represented, for our age, by the knowledge of science, which begins in observation, proceeds by logic, and progresses in orderly fashion from the known to the unknown. It is always discursive, contingent, qualified, always expressed in "relation" to something else, never standing alone, never categorical, never -absolute."
The unreflective scientific specialist sees no need for any other kind of knowledge; occupied with the demands of his specialty, he has, perhaps, neither time nor inclination for "abstract" questions that inquire, for example, into the basic presuppositions of that specialty. If he is pressed, or if his mind spontaneously turns to such questions, the most obvious explanation is usually sufficient to satisfy his curiosity: all truth is empirical, all truth is relative.
Either statement, of course, is a self-contradiction. The first statement is itself not empirical at all, but metaphysical; the second is itself an absolute statement. The question of absolute truth is raised first of all, for the critical observer, by such self- contradictions; and the first logical conclusion to which he must be led is this:, if there is any truth at all, it cannot be merely "relative." The first principles of modern science, as of any system of knowledge, are themselves unchangeable and absolute; if they were not there would be no knowledge at all, not even the most "reflective" knowledge, for there would be no criteria by which to classify anything as knowledge or truth.
This axiom has a corollary: the absolute cannot be attained by means of the relative. That is to say, the first principles of any system of knowledge cannot be arrived at through the means of that knowledge itself, but must be given in advance; they are the object, not of scientific demonstration, but of faith.
- Fr. Seraphim Rose, Nihilism: The Root Of The Revolution

>>21633176
I did, have you? Plato's god is a craftsman that molds the world, which itself is eternal, based on god's view of the Form of the Good, which is apart from god. He lays it all out in the Timaeus.

>>21633500
>...therefore, christian god

>>21631116
You’re a fool

>>21631077
It influenced the understanding of the trinity in a massive way because of Augustine. Read metizo Augustine. Other than that there are places where they line up, but Plato was trying to turn the pantheon into personality-less forms.

>>21631077
Both Plato and Christianity were heavily influenced by the Orphic myateries, it's well-explained in https://odysee.com/@KnowMoreNews:1/The-Real-Origins-of-Jesus-Christ:6

>>21632696
>Orthodox Church
>jesuits
What did he mean by this?

>>21632720
You can’t. You can’t do that. The word Jesuit already means something distinctly different, and everyone in the world will think you’re talking specifically about Jesuits when you say the word Jesuit. You cannot just say that word and expect people to pick up on your retarded headcanon.

>>21632720
You know you could use Christians for that right? What the fuck is wrong with pagans?

>>21634565
>You can’t. You can’t do that.
Kek jesuits are hilarious

>>21633648
Nothing is explained. They list a million connections without analyzing any of them and then state these connections prove their personal pet theories. This is what dishonest subversion looks like.

>>21635247

>>21631077
Christianity is pretty much platonic. Since Jesus didn't survive for his teachings to be recorded his followers used Plato's philosophy to justify their made up theology when discussion of platonism against all the other teachings was the theme of the era.

>>21633648
This is misleading. Orphic cults were the progenitors of all the cult religions of the time. Plato didn't just get influenced, he was living in the world where ideas of those cults were the norm. Christianity, however, was created much later when every schizo called himself a prophet to copy greeks.

>>21635925
My love for you is also platonic :)