Plato and Plotinus

while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:18 NASB

Eternal – The commitment of the West to the Platonic ideal of unity found in the abstracts of the Good, the True and the Beautiful in a world apart from that of ordinary living is, in the words of Jonathan Sacks, “the attempt to impose an artificial unity on divinely created diversity.”[1]

The influence of Plato and his school of thought embodied in Plotinus cannot be overemphasized. Virtually all of our thought categories about spiritual reality show traces of Plato and Plotinus, especially our ideas of heaven and of the incarnation. Let’s consider just the first of these two.

What do you think when you imagine heaven? Do you imagine a place (?) where life is continual comfort, where everyone enjoys a mansion (but who will clean the bathrooms?) and where work is no longer necessary? Does heaven feel like a continuous vacation? More importantly, is heaven the residence of Truth, of real Beauty, of the eternal Good? Is there no tension in heaven, no challenge, no effort expended? Is heaven the place of final dream fulfillment where all the small details that make life difficult on this earth evaporate in one great hymn to God’s glory? How much of your concept of heaven is really just the negation of what you don’t like on earth, a projection of what you think “paradise” should be like? By the way, “paradise” is not the same as the biblical idea of heaven, although it has very ancient roots in pagan empires. When Paul says that he knew (knows?) a man who went to the third heaven (the NLT cuts to the chase and simply says “I went to the third heaven,” assuming that Paul writes about himself), what does that mean? Plotinus postulated ten levels of heaven, from the wholly other transcendental abstraction of pure God to the levels of the deme-gods who ultimately brought about the corrupt material world. Is that what Paul means? Is biblical heaven a Platonic spiritual realm where all material corruption and decay is banned and its citizens are bodiless spirits that never age? How much of Plato is in your projection? How much of your heaven has nothing in common with the creation of the earth in Genesis 1?

Is your heaven an abstract idea removed from all the particulars of what it means to be alive? Or do you think like John—heaven coming to earth where life is very much about all the details? Do you have to have a completely “other worldly” fixation in your eternal perspective? Randy Alcorn writes, “we need to ask God to open our eyes to what’s at stake—to the unseen world and the reality of Heaven, our eternal destination. . . Suddenly we realize this present life is but a brief window of opportunity to invest in what will last for eternity.”[2] Alcorn cites Joni Erickson Tada’s statement from Heaven: Your Real Home. The title alone suggests a view of this life that isn’t shared by Jewish thought. Alcorn writes, “if we’re not looking forward to [heaven], we must not understand it.”[3] I wonder. If we don’t understand heaven as the escape from this “temporary” world, what are we to make of John’s claim that the new heaven will come to this realm? How are we to understand life in heaven if it is entirely devoid of any relation to life here and now? What does it mean to be human if we no longer reside in the only place made for human living—here, the place YHVH made perfectly for those in His image?

Just how much Plato can we take?

Topical Index: heaven, 2 Corinthians 4:18, aionios, Plato, Plotinus

[1] Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference, p. 52.

[2] Randy Alcorn, “Why an Eternal Perspective Changes Everything,” in Eternal Perspective, Summer 2015, p. 3.

[3] Ibid.