Plato (c. 429-347bc)
Meditation and Denial of the Senses
Plato is one of the best known of the Greek philosophers (along with Aristotle), and he had a tremendous impact on Western culture. Both the Catholic and Protestant churches were heavily influenced by him at some point or other, depending on the time period and the particular group.
The Early Church and many Early Fathers were held by his ideas, resulting in a rejection of the senses, the arts, and this world in general. They found most similarities in the writings of the Apostle Paul, and even considered Plato to be a "closet Moses," believing he must have had a Jew among his disciples who introduced him to the Genesis creation account, resulting in Plato's Timaeus.
Plato saw the material world as a prison, and the material body as a prison to the soul. Plato believed in a supreme Creator god, but he had nothing in common with matter and had to create minor deities to handle the creation of matter and anything material. All the stars were literally celestial "beings," and their souls when they sinned in some manner, were cast down into the material world and forced to work their way to deserving to be released from the material world. This was done through meditation and denial of the senses, as a type of "works" salvation.
The sad part of the story is that many began to interpret Scripture through the lens of Plato, rather than scrutinizing Plato through the lens of Scripture. Augustine of Hippo was one of these, and he is known to have said that "with the change of a few words and sentiments," Platonists would become Christians because of the similarity of his writings to the Gospel, remarking that many of them had done so in his day (On True Religion iv.7). The ideas of Plato resulted in a desire to flee the material world by some, and an effort to deny the senses in many. The Desert Fathers, the hermits, the anchorites (to a smaller extent), and many others were affected.
As the Roman Church moved toward Aristotle with the Counter-Reform, the Greek Orthodox remained under the influence of the Pseudo-Dionysius and does to this day. When Martin Luther and John Calvin turned to Augustine for support, some of Augustine's predilections for Plato crept into Reformation ideas, resulting in a suspicion of the arts (particuarly in England and Switzerland), as well as a rejection of theater, some forms of art, and some forms of music. Luther was more favorable to the arts than Calvin and others, I think largely due to the influence of his friend Lucas Cranach, an artist who became the godfather of Luther's children (seeMartin Luther).
The philosophies of men are quite dangerous if they are used to aid in the interpretation of Scripture, and we will see that this has happened over and over throughout the history of the Church.
