“The Significance of Plato’s Timaeus and Critias in Eric Voegein’s Philosophy,” in Politics, Order and History, editors, G. Hughes, S.A. McKnight and G. Price (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 200
Zdravko Planinc mcmaster.academia.edu
“The Significance of Plato’s Timaeus and Critias in Eric Voegein’s Philosophy,” in Politics, Order and History, editors, G. Hughes, S.A. McKnight and G. Price (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 327-375
This chapter examines Plato's views on theology. Plato inherited Socrates's conviction that a proper understanding of the divine nature is essential to human virtue and happi ness. Hence, god's essential goodness is the thesis that runs most prominently through all his theological arguments. Since this supreme goodness is manifested above all in the cosmic structures created by divine intelligence, it is understandable if Plato turns out to stick resolutely to his insistence that, for all its appearances of imperfection, from a glob al perspective ours is the best physical world that could ever have been created, even by a supremely powerful being. On the other hand, Plato shows less interest than Socrates did in the idea of divine intervention in individual human lives. To that extent his work in theology points forward to Aristotle, who would insulate god entirely from concern with the sublunary world.

In this essay, I contend that Plato’s notion of the Divine or God is companionable – in a telling sense of the word, rather than comparable – with a Christian notion of God in three ways. Firstly, Plato provided proofs for the Divine in his first cause (cosmology) position, maintaining all that exists or transpires essentially has, or had a cause; this is also insisted on in the Christian Doctrine of God. Secondly (teleology), Plato’s precept is that humanity is not on its own, amid creation, in its moral involvement – goodness is embodied in creation – therefore, we can discover, and even encounter, order and perfection by examining the universe; this is demonstrated within Christian Theology and Doctrine. Thirdly (ontology), Plato locates supreme importance in the demesne of the unseen; similarly, Christianity locates uppermost value in things not of this world, but on resources from an unseen realm of the heavenlies – a place of origin and ultimate being.