Did Plato influence Christianity? The path of that influence has an address: the Timaeus, the dialogue in which Plato tells the origin of the world. It was the book that Latin-speaking Christians read for centuries when they wanted to know what the greatest Greek philosopher thought about the beginning of everything, and it was in it that Saint Augustine recognized something familiar. This article follows the book to Augustine: what he saw there, what the Christian faith accepted, what it corrected, and how the Timaeus crossed the Middle Ages.
What Augustine recognized in the Timaeus
Augustine was born in Thagaste, in North Africa, in 354. According to the class, he knew the Timaeus and was struck by how much the dialogue resembles the beginning of the Bible. There are three points of contact, and it is worth separating them.
A world that had an origin. The Timaeus starts from a distinction already introduced in the earlier classes on Plato: there is what always is and does not change, grasped by reason, and there is what changes and never fully settles into being, grasped by the senses. The world we see and touch belongs to the second group. Everything that comes to be has a cause (Timaeus 28a-c), and so the world does too. This is the first thing a reader of the Bible recognizes: the world is not eternal and does not explain itself.
An order that comes from someone good. For Plato, the craftsman who set order in the world was good, and whoever is good does not keep the good to himself: he wanted everything to be as much like himself as possible (Timaeus 29e, paraphrased). The world exists, then, out of generosity, not out of necessity or accident. The Christian tradition recognized in this the goodness of the one who creates.
The same gaze before beauty. In the Timaeus, the world is beautiful because the craftsman looked to the model that does not change (Timaeus 28a and 29a). At the end of creation, the Bible says something similar: "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good" (Genesis 1:31). In both texts, the world is good and beautiful before it is useful.
Augustine does not say that Plato and Moses are the same thing. As a reader, he notices that the pagan philosopher came close to the beginning of a book he already held as sacred. The other Plato-related book that shaped Augustine is a different story: the "books of the Platonists" in the Confessions were by Plotinus and Porphyry, and that path has an article of its own.
What the Christian reads with pen in hand
The class says that the Christian reads the Timaeus "with pen in hand," and the image is exact: he accepts the goodness and corrects the rest. There are two points where the pen presses.
The first is matter. Plato's craftsman works with a matter that was already there, in disorder. The God of the Bible finds nothing ready: he creates everything, and even matter is his work. This correction is the subject of Did God create the world out of nothing? Plato's craftsman.
The second is time. The idea that time is a moving image of eternity, Augustine accepts and carries to its end, and from it comes the famous answer to a question in the Confessions, treated in What was God doing before creating the world?.
The result, as the class summarizes it, is that Christians accepted a goodness that does not keep the good for itself, and corrected the craftsman, who became the Creator.
The Timaeus in the Middle Ages: the only Plato, and not even in full
There is a historical detail that helps explain why this dialogue weighed so much. Until around the 12th century, the Timaeus was the only book by Plato that could be read in the Latin West, and not everyone read it in full. For a long time, to say "Plato" was to say "Timaeus," because few of his works were known.
The "not even in full" part is confirmed by the history of the text. The Latin translation in circulation was that of Calcidius, from the 4th century, and it covered only the first part of the dialogue, up to passage 53c, precisely where the geometry of the elements begins. Other dialogues, such as the Meno and the Phaedo, only reached Latin from the 12th century onward. When the medieval Christian thought about Plato, he therefore thought of a Plato who spoke of the beginning of the world and of the good craftsman, and who stopped halfway, before the most technical part of the book.
This is the book that Raphael placed in Plato's hand in The School of Athens. Whoever wants to see the painting with this gaze will find the way in The School of Athens: what the gestures mean, and whoever wants to read the book itself has the route in Timaeus, by Plato: summary and how to read it.
What remains
The relation between Plato and Christianity, in this book, fits into two sentences. The Timaeus gave Christians a way of looking at the world: with an origin, ordered by a good intelligence, beautiful for that reason. And Christians gave back to the Timaeus what it lacked, a God who does not work with someone else's material. If the order of the world was already there before us, perhaps weariness comes from trying to impose an order that we would only need to recognize. The class ends with that question, and this article leaves it where it stands.
In-depth study
Church History Course, with Prof. Dr. Rodrigo Bitencourt
In-depth reading of the work of Daniel Rops, where the Christian faith of the first centuries and the intellectual world that received it appear in full.
Discover the courseFrequently asked questions
Did the Church Fathers read Plato?
Some did, and Saint Augustine is the example the class shows: he knew the Timaeus and was struck by how much the dialogue resembles the beginning of Genesis. Still, they read what was within reach, and in the Latin world there was little of Plato, so the Timaeus was the main piece.
Did Plato influence Christianity?
He influenced the language in which Christians thought about creation: a world with an origin, ordered by a good intelligence and beautiful for that reason. But Christianity was not born from the Timaeus. Christians accepted the goodness of Plato's craftsman and corrected the craftsman, who became the Creator.
What did Plato say about Jesus?
Nothing. Plato died around 348 BC, centuries before Jesus. What exists is the reading Christians later made of Plato, and the Timaeus was the most read dialogue in that conversation.
Was the Timaeus known in the Middle Ages?
Yes, and it was almost the only Plato available in the Latin West until around the 12th century. Even so, not everyone read it in full, because the Latin version in circulation covered only the first part of the dialogue.
Continue: Did God create the world out of nothing? Plato's craftsman · What was God doing before creating the world? Saint Augustine · Did Plato believe in God? The Demiurge of the Timaeus · Metanoia: The Biblical Meaning and Plato's Turn
Source class (YouTube): Timeu, de Platão | Por que existe um mundo, e não o caos