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  • From: "Jeffrey B. Gibson" <jgibson000 AT mailhost.chi.ameritech.net>
  • To: Corpus-paul <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: C-P: Paul and Plato
  • Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 20:46:22 -0500


Liz Fried wrote:

> > From: Jeffrey B. Gibson
> Who answered me when I wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >. What is ontological dualism? Sorry.
> > >
> >
> > Ontology is a philosophical term that generally has to do with a
> > theory of the nature
> > of reality, what the really real is like. Plato's ontology. like
> > that of a great deal
> > of Eastern thought, was that the world of becoming--the world of
> > our senses and the
> > world of which the body is a part--was not really real. What
> > **was** real, and
> > therefore of ultimate significance, was the immaterial world of
> > Being -- of which the
> > PSUCH, being immortal, indivisible, and immaterial, was a part.
> > His body/soul contrast
> > has to do with describing the nature of what is really real, and
> > thus contributes not
> > only (a) to the view that what the world is made of is two
> > essential things: the (ever
> > changing, and therefore nor really real) material, and the
> > (permanent, unchanging, and
> > thus really real) immaterial world, of which the soul, and the
> > forms or essences of
> > things like beauty, goodness, courage, truth -- by which we
> > recognize any particular
> > instance or action or object or person as beautiful, good true,
> > etc.; and (b) to the
> > view that the body and the world of sensation of which it is a
> > part and which it
> > transmits to the soul is by its very nature evil. It is no
> > accident that Gnosticism
> > and (neo)Platonism share similar devaluations of the created order.
> >
> > Moral dualism, in which much of Paul's language of SARX is
> > grounded, is centered in a
> > focus on, and an advocacy of one of, two competing (ethical)
> > value systems --
> > affirmations or orientations toward, or evaluations of, how one
> > or a particular
> > people claiming a certain identity (the people of God) should
> > "walk" while **in** the
> > world. It **assumes** a particular ontology (the God of Israel
> > stands behind the
> > created order, the created order is material and material things
> > are ultimately real
> > and good, bodily life is the really real life), but is not
> > dealing directly with it.
>
> OK, I understood all this, I hadn't a name for it. I think Paul's dualism
> is the Platonic kind. Now how could one tell the difference? I think Paul
> thinks the real true Jerusalem is not the earthly one, which is temporal and
> impermanent. The really real Jerusalem is the heavenly one. The "ideal"
> form, as it were.
> I think the importance of Christ to him is that he can die to the body, and
> be alive in the spirit. This strikes me as an abnegation of the created
> order, of the body, of bodily life, and the taking on of what he deems a
> spiritual existence. That to me is the point of Christ's death. By
> participating in that death, you can change from an earthly, temperal,
> fleshy existence, to an a spiritual existence which is eternal life.
>
> Otherwise I don't understand the benefit to be gained from Christ's death.
>
> I appreciate your discussing this with me.
>

A.N. Wilson, not to mention every Gnostic and Aselmian, would agree with you.

But what you are missing here is that Paul does not say he or any one who
exemplifies
the faithfulness of Jesus dies to the **body** (SOMA). He/she dies to a
particular
ethical orientation or set of values about how one, and more importantly,
the corpus
of those who accept Jesus as the messiah of Israel's God, is to be faithful
to that
God. The same thing goes on at Qumran with their dualisms of Children of
Light and
Children of Darkness and to some extent in GJohn with the imagery of light and
darkness. Indeed, John's imagery was often thought to be derived from, and was
frequently asserted as having to be interpreted against a neoplatonic frame
of
reference, until the DSS turned up and showed that this language was ethical
not
ontological.

I think it is fair to say that your claims seem self evident to you because
you are
not as familiar as you should be with, and have not set the language and
imagery of
Paul which appears to you to be Platonic, against other backgrounds in which
the same
sort of language and imagery appears and is used, but with meanings and
connotations
and intent far different from that of Plato.

You also do not take into account here that had Paul been as much of a
platonist as
you allege, this would have been picked up by the church fathers who use
Plato as a
vehicle for their explication of orthodoxy. But to my knowledge (which is
admittedly
sparse at this point) there is none of this.

Now at the risk of sounding paternalistic here -- which is not at all my
intention--,
I think what you need to do before you make more claims about Paul being a
good
Platonist, is to have a look at the Jewett book I mentioned, as well as the
articles
on SARX in TDNT and "Flesh" in _Dictionary of Paul and His Letters_, and
perhaps K.G.
Kuhn's "New Light on Temptation, Sin, and Flesh in the New Testament" in
Stendhal's
_The Scrolls and the New Testament_, to see how, despite some slight external
affinities, Paul's SARX language differs so fundamentally from Plato's SOMA
language.
It would also not hurt you to look at R, Gundry's SOMA in Biblical Theology_
. And at
the risk of bombarding you with reading, you'll want to see David Seeley's _A
Noble
Death_ to see if your claim about what Paul saw the death of Jesus doing has a
snowball's chance in Hades for being what Paul really thought.

Yours,

Jeffrey
--
Jeffrey B. Gibson
7423 N. Sheridan Road #2A
Chicago, Illinois 60626
e-mail jgibson000 AT ameritech.net






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