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A
Today on the sand, the Great Books podcast, we are discussing Plato and St. Augustine, particularly looking at Plato's influence on this Doctor of the Church. We are joined by the always wonderful Dr. Chad Pecknold out of CUA, who's an Augustinian scholar. And we discuss all the different ways that we can see the platonic influence on St. Augustine, looking at the Confessions and other works, understanding what he did and did not take from Plato. It's wonderful to see Plato's influence in history, particularly after reading so many Platonic works. And so we're going to look first this week at Plato and St. Augustine, then Plato and St. Boethius. Yes, St. Boethius and then Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas. And then we will be almost ready to read Dante's Purgatorio for Lent. If you have not read Dante's Inferno, go read Dante's Inferno first and and then read Dante's Purgatorio for us for Lent. We have seven episodes already up and posted videos etc to help you read the Inferno. You can read that now. Then join us for Purgatorio for Lent. In the meantime, enjoy this wonderful conversation with Dr. Chad Pecknold on Plato and St. Augustine. Welcome to Ascend, the Great Books Podcast. My name is Deacon Harrison Garlick. I'm a husband, father of five, and serve as Chancellor General Counsel for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa. We're recording on a beautiful afternoon here at the Chancery. If you're new to Ascend, we're a weekly podcast that helps guide you through the great books. For example, if you want to read Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Dante, Plato and others, we have podcast videos and written guides to help you or your small group read these great texts. Go check us out on X, YouTube, Facebook and Patreon. We appreciate all our supporters who actually have access to a whole library of written guides on these great books. Go visit thegreatbookspodcast.com for our reading schedule and more information. Okay, today. So today we are jumping back into our study on Plato by kicking off a new series of conversations that look at Plato's influence on thinkers throughout history. So we're going to look at Plato and Boethius, Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas, and another episode on Plato and Plotinus. But today we are looking at Plato and St. Augustine. And so to guide us through this wonderful conversation, we have an excellent guest. We have Dr. Chad Pecknold, the Associate professor of Systematic Theology at Catholic University of America. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2005, and since 2008, he has been a professor of historical and systematic theology in the School of Theology at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. he has many good books and articles out. Also, he's on X. Go follow him there. I always appreciate his writings. But he also has a new book out called Fire on the Altar, Setting Our souls ablaze through St. Augustine's Confessions, where it says that he's setting out to free readers from liberal and individualistic distortions of Augustine's anthropology in his confess confessions. Dr. Pecknold, welcome to the podcast.
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B
My pleasure. Good to be here.
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A
So tell us just a little bit about your new book.
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B
So, yeah, so I, you know, I, my specialty is really Augustine, City of God, but, you know, and I've been trying to write a book on Augustine and politics for a while. And so it's really Augustine and the City that I've been focused on. And, but I also teach the Confessions and I have a particular view of the Confessions which matches my view of the City of God. And they kind of go together. And my friend Scott Hahn said, well, why don't you just do, before you do your city book, why don't you do a book on Augustine and the soul and make Confessions the kind of center of it? And so that's what I did. And so this is a kind of prequel to my book on Augusta and the city city, and it's called Fire on the Altar because it's a very eucharistic reading. I, I'm always frustrated with attempts to fit Augustine into a romantic 19th century subjectivist kind of framework in which we're reading an autobiography or something when we read the Confessions, when in fact he doesn't want to draw you into yourself or himself, but he wants to draw you into the Church. And so that's a much more liturgical, much more ecclesial reading of the text in which we come to see a much more communal Augustine than we typically see with the modern readings of Augustine's Confessions.
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A
Yeah, no, it looks fantastic. I certainly need to pick it up and read through it. You talk a lot about anthropology. I see, on the kind of the description of the book and having an authentic Augustinian anthropology, that's something I want to circle back to because I'm interested in how Plato has influenced St. Augustine's understanding of the human person. But maybe if we kind of jump into just like Plato and St. Augustine and how Plato influenced him, because, you know, there's lots of little touch points of St. Augustine to try and figure out how this worked. Can we just get like, who is St. Augustine? Like some of our readers, some of our listeners might not actually have a great understanding of who he is. So like, what's the snapshot of who St. Augustine is?
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B
Well, Augustine is born in North Africa. He's born in 354 in Roman North Africa or North Africa is, is Roman at the time. His, his mother's Berber or at least half Berber, you know, and his father Patricius, or we say Patrick was Roman and he was, you know, desirous of his son to be part of the Roman imperial class. And, and indeed Augustine did pursue that. He, he went to Carthage and studied rhetoric, which was a ticket to kind of an imperial career. And indeed he does pursue an imperial career. And he, he becomes a, a well known rhetor, a Roman orator in Rome and then eventually goes to Milan and becomes the imperial rhetor in Milan, which was a state office. There was only, you know, a handful of these very coveted imperial positions in rhetoric. And it's hard for us to capture what that means, but it's like, you know, law schools kind of the, the best analogy where you, you go to law to learn how to win arguments through oration. And that's kind of the place of the imperial rhetor. A lot of, a lot of those in the senatorial class would study with professional rhetors. And that was what Augustine's life was before he converts and then he can, he goes to Milan and he meets Simplicianus, who was a kind of Christian Platonist, a priest of the diocese of Milan, and he meets of course Bishop Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, and they're both Christian Platonists and that's where he discovers Platonism.
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A
Yeah, that's a fantastic summary. My patron saint is actually Saint Ambrose because my birthday is on his feast day, so I have a devotion to him.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Also have a son named Augustine that came out of that devotion as well. So where do you think, like the best place to start is if we're trying to actually understand like Plato's influence on St. Augustine. Like, do we need to map something out? Is there a history here? Like, where's the best place to start?
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B
Yeah, I mean, obviously there's texts of Augustine, which I'll talk about in a moment, but I think, I think a lot of people get lost, you know, historically in this, you know, for there's kind of two historical schemas that I think you need to understand to get a good picture of where Augustine is situated. You Know, Augustine comes, you know, he's, he's the coming at the very end of the line in terms of Platonic development. And so you kind of have to go way back. And I think it's even helpful to go back behind Plato, because the classical big picture, which centers on Athens and not Rome, actually begins with pre Socratic thinkers in Athens who are trying to figure out causation. They're trying to think like, why do we have something rather than nothing? And that's a really important and basic philosophical metaphysical question. And the pre Socratic philosophical tradition could not get beyond some sort of element of matter. So even famously they think of, you know, fire and air and water is like these elemental origins. Why do we have all of these things, these material things? Because they come from these elements which are not matter themselves, but they're like the elementary spiritual form of the matter. And they can't get beyond that. And Socrates is the philosopher who breaks this up and says, well, this is still earthly minded. And the reason why these philosophers couldn't get beyond matter was because their lives were impure. And so Socrates develops this whole dialogical philosophical system, you know, rooted in logic. Dialogue for the ancients is going through logic. It's not like being nice and to your neighbor and saying nice things to your neighbor. That's not what dialogue is. Dialogue is actually following the logic through questions to certain conclusions. And so Socrates pursues this and he ties it to virtue, that you have to live a good life. And so philosophy for him, in Pierre Hadot's terms, becomes a way of life. And his way of life is through talking. And he talks to really bright students like Plato. And what they pursue through the dialogue is a way of moving from the visible material structures of things that you see with your senses to thinking about what are the causes of those things that we can't see. And so Socrates and his students, they arrive at a different answer, like, what does everything have in common? Well, everything that exists, you know, the, the pre Socratic said, well, everything must have something in common. It's fire, it's the element of water or something. And Socrates and Plato discover it's not actually any of these things. The only thing that everything has in common is existence. Existence is the thing that everything has in common. And so the mind is then must be capable of rising to something which isn't visible, something that we can't see, something that is immaterial, existence itself. And this is how they arrive at transcendence. And that is the basic founding of the first Academy of Athens. That's the birth of really proper antique metaphysics. And that, of course, you know, Aristotle comes along as part of this symposia. You've got Plato and Aristotle with slightly different metaphysical views on how things that we can see relate to things that we can't see. But that's the first academy. It's followed by the second and third academies, which are skeptical, which are asking very skeptical questions. The Aristotelians become peripatetics and they leave Athens and also the Platonists leave Athens and they go into many different directions. And this leads us to the second historical schema, and that is that you have the Platonists proper, which belongs to the first and second and third academies. And then after that you have Platonism blooming into the Roman Empire, moving away from Greece into the Roman Empire, into the. The most powerful centers of the Roman world into places like Milan, into places like Rome, into places like Carthage. These are very, very powerful centers that have schools, that have learned men. And this becomes what's called middle Platonism. So you move from the antique Platonism of the academy in Athens to the middle Platonism, which is very distributed, to the late or sometimes called Neoplatonism of Augustine's time. And that's the. That's largely where we have to situate Augustine. That's when Platonism has fully expressed itself throughout the Roman Empire and it's developed in stages. Now the most interesting thing to note, and this is very important for understanding Augustine's relationship to Plato, is that it's in the middle Platonist and Neoplatonist periods that Platonism becomes highly religious. You know, I mean, it's. I think people know that for Plato, philosophy is a kind of spiritual discipline, right. That you're becoming what Plato called a homoousis Theo. You're becoming like God through contemplation. Right. I think people know that just, even, even Socrates's notion that the mind, that one's life has to be purified in order to see the causes of things. And so everything about the first academy was actually about the mind's purification. You had to purify the mind partly through the exercise of virtue, but then also through the taking away of material things in order for the mind to be able to transcend the material world into that which is non being, which is above everything. So right from the beginning, it is about ascent to something like the divine. But that movement becomes kind of charged with, basically from right before Christ in the first century to about the third century. This is about what we call middle Platonism, Plato's kind of basic instincts get developed religiously. And this is the period in which a whole systematization of Plato's thought, a whole hierarchy is developed in which there are intermediaries between ourselves and God. Well, daimons people probably remember Socrates's daimon, right? Have you talked about Socrates's daimon?
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A
Yeah, we, we've talked about it in, we've covered the apology. Yeah, for example.
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B
So I mean, Socrates's daimon is a very sort of rudimentary sense. And you remember his daimon is this voice inside of him that tells him, you know, usually what not to do. But it's like a good voice that, that guides him any credit. So it's this divine spark, we might call it a conscience, but he called it a daimon. And the daimon is a mediator between yourself and God. And so the middle Platonists developed this whole hierarchy of daimons. And for Socrates and Plato, the daimon is just good. But by middle Platonism, daimons can be good or bad. So you can have daimons who are like tricking you, telling you to do the wrong thing. Like that's the opposite of Socrates's diamonds. Or you can have diamonds that are like Socrates's diamonds who help you. They're all in this kind of sub lumer realm of soul guidance. And they can be very benevolent like angels, or they can practically be devils who are constantly deceiving you. Now as soon as you're developing Platonism like that, that's highly religious, right? And that's, that's developing right, concurrently with the spread of Christianity. And so that's, that's the first thing to really note is that now all of a sudden Platonism is looking almost like a competitor to Christianity all of a sudden. I mean that, that's kind of how it's often viewed. And so there are, there are Roman pagan thinkers who are utilizing Platonic thought to compete with Christianity. And Augustine's highly attuned to this because on the other hand you have Platonists who are trying to have perfect symmetry between Platonism and Christianity. Most famously, Augustine talks about this man in a very, very famous rhetor of Rome or orator of Rome called Marius Victorinus. And he talks about Marius in the Confessions as, as in fact, the priest Simplicianus talks about him as, as one who wanted to say that he was already Christian because he was perfectly Platonic and that being Platonic made you a Christian. And Simplicianus and Augustine of course want to Correct this idea that Platonism is not itself Christianity, but it's close to Christianity. So you had on the one hand middle Platonists and then Neoplatonists who want conflict between Christianity and Platonism. And then you had Platonists who thought that Platonism was just a form of Christianity. Augustine comes in as in between or neither of these things. He doesn't think that Platonism is Christianity. He says it's the closest philosophical approximation to Christianity. But it's also wrong to think that Platonism is without error. And that's what someone like Marius Victorinus thought. It's without error and therefore it's perfectly compatible. No, Augustine comes into the late Platonic period with already concerned that Platonism is fundamentally religious because it's got this whole religious syncretistic framework by the, by the late Neoplatonic period and because it's intrinsically religious and because it is, is both somehow monotheistic oriented to God, but also pagan because it has all of these intermediary daimons within has to be at least partly right and partly wrong. And that brings you up precisely to where Augustine engages Platonism in Milan in the 380s.
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A
Yeah, that was really well said. I appreciate you mapping that out for us, just like getting like a foothold. So who would be like some good examples of a middle Platon thinker versus then moving into like the Neoplatonics? Like who would be. Can we differentiate, differentiate between those thinkers?
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B
Yeah, I mean usually the, the, the, the kind of founder, the, the person who's most associated with it is Antiochus of Ascalon. Who's who like he, he, he dies in 68 B.C. so he's, he's not quite contemporaneous with, with Christ, but he's often seen as the founder of Platonism. Sorry, of middle Platonism. He kind of, he's the one that really develops the Daimons as mediators between God, the gods and humans. And he really is the one who develops Plato's we say Daimonology which comes, which is all in the Symposium. And so I would say the, the key figure would be Antiochus. Plutarch is also part of this period. Plutarch maybe is more, more well known to people. He is definitely in the, he's born in 46 in AD and he very much ties Platonism, middle Platonism to the mystery cults. So he makes it very much a kind of mystical faith. Platonic philosophy is something which draws you into this immortal ascent. Plutarch is also kind of slightly Gnostic. He puts, pushes Platonism in a kind of, you know, matter is chaotic and bad, and the transcendent one being itself is beyond all matter. Apuleius, he's into the second century A.D. and Augustine is. You could say Apuleius is maybe the most important dialogue partner for Augustine. And that's because Apuleius is the one who really integrates the daimonology with his whole account of faith. So middle Platonism is developing Plato's rational theology into a much more mystical, much more liturgical, much more religiously syncretic, which has like, it's part monotheistic, part pagan, but very liturgical. And so by the time Augustine's seeing, you know, the sacrifice of the Mass celebrated in Milan, he's also seeing a Platonism which is highly ritualistic, highly liturgical.
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A
Good, I appreciate. Yeah, that's good. I appreciate you mapping that out. So maybe just like, as an aside, but something that I'm thinking about here, as you're kind of giving us the lattice work that we're kind of growing up to on to reach St. Augustine, is that in the midst of all of this, Christ comes.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And we also have. We also have a Jewish thought that is continuing in its Old Testament, and then we also are going to have the Incarnation and then we're going to have the New Testament. And it doesn't seem to me. Right, say, if you pull From Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg address, I want to make a distinction here between Platonic thought and just broadly Hellenistic thought.
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B
Yeah.
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A
But he mentions that this Hellenistic thought basically has an indelible mark upon Christianity. And what I. What I want to point out here is, is that you really can't talk about Christianity outside of this Hellenistic framework.
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B
Right.
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A
This is something that I think the Reformers got wrong as well, that there was like some kind of pure biblical Hebrew faith that then came into a pure biblical New Testament. And then somewhere this Greek concept kind of crept in. It was alien and it corrupted it. Can you say anything about how maybe broadly the Hellenistic thought, but maybe even Platonic thought itself influenced those later years of the Old Testament and then very much influenced the New Testament?
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B
Well, I mean, two things just immediately come to mind when you say this. I mean, I think, you know, the dehalanization thesis is. Is actually just an anti Catholicism. It's, you know, it's rooted in the Protestant Luther's desire to treat philosophy as the Whore of Babylon, you know, and. And really Catholicism, you know, is wed to the ability of the mind to come to know God from the things which have been made as St. Paul says in the first book of Romans, his letter to the Romans, we can know God from the things which have been made. And that's precisely what Plato's doing, that we can know something of God. We can move our minds, can move from the perceptual, visible things which have been made to the causes of those and the uncaused causes of those things. And so I think, you know, necessarily, Christianity is wed to a Platonic realism, a Platonic metaphysical realism. The Old Testament question is, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that, but it immediately brought to mind Philo of Alexandria because just like there was a kind of constant dialogue between middle Platonism and Christianity, there was also a dialogue between middle Platonism and Judaism. And Philo of Alexandria is the best exemplar of that. And I think what both the Christian and the Jewish interest in middle Platonism demonstrated was a certain kind of conceptual, spiritual, metaphysical approach to Scripture. You see that in Philo of Alexandria. You see that in, you know, figures like Jerome and Augustine, they bring with them this really rich metaphysical realism for understanding what Scripture is pointing us to. So that's what comes to mind is. Is the Platonism, the philosophical ends up not being in conflict with your way of reading Scripture, which is what it is for at least Luther, but in the early Christian period. This philosophical realism, which comes from the first academy in Athens, contributes to the richest possible way of reading Scripture under different tropes, under different types. The fourfold sense of Scripture is almost unthinkable without this kind of metaphysical realism. That's behind the scenes.
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A
Yeah, no, very good. Yeah. On the Old Testament side, what I was thinking about there, even though Philo is a fantastic example and one that I think has to be certainly merits a lot more attention, it's someone I would actually like to spend more time reading. But you see then towards the end of the Old Testament, that it comes into contact with the Hellenized culture, sometimes in like, a really violent way. So you think of like, first and second Maccabees, but also you see that iron, sharpening iron. So, like, one of the. One of the best examples is the Book of Wisdom, which I think has two really classic examples. One is it lists the four cardinal virtues, the same four cardinal virtues that are listed in Plato's Republic. So you have these, which place republic comes first. And so you have both the Hebrew tradition and the Greek Platonic tradition listing the same four cardinal virtues. You also have, if memory serves, the first time Scripture has made a distinction amongst the Pagans, that. There are the pagans that worship. That we know.
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B
Right.
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A
That worship stones, the Philistines, et cetera. They worship their idols and their gods. But now there's also these other pagans who worship, you know, one God and seek virtue and so these kind of things, you know, because I think that's something to think about. I think you laid it out well. Is that the way you phrased it? I appreciated. Which is even Judaism itself, prior to Christ, was already in dialogue with Platonic thought. And even if you take a step back from Platonic thought and just talk about a Hellenized culture and Hellenized thought, these things are already doing an imprint onto Judaism right before the incarnation. And these things then inform the history. Because obviously St. Paul tells us that Christ came in the fullness of time. So you have a very deep interplay and harmony not only between Greek and Hebrew thought, but then also the Roman. And these kind of three cultures coming together is actually then what cultivated the world for the reception of Jesus Christ.
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B
That's right. And it's, and it's interesting because it, you know, the, the diamondology, which has this whole sort of set of intermediaries in Plato that's all predicated really on the Logos as a divine intermediary for creation. And so, you know, if, if you, if you, you know, and Philo actually makes a lot of this, you know, Philo actually thinks of this in terms of Torah. Right. You know, the, the Logos is the divine Torah as a divine intermediary between God and, and Israel. But, you know, the, the Platonic notion of Logos of reason as this divine intermediary for creation itself becomes hugely beneficial for the transmission of Christianity for people to understand, well, that Logos has become flesh and that Logos died for you on the cross and that Logos has expressed to you divine charity itself. Now, and that, that kind of philosophical framework aiding the Gospel, I think made it explosive. It made Platonism kind of electricy and, and it made it charged on both sides. You could, you could be using Platonism to push against Christianity or he could be using Platonism to push towards, to walk towards, you know, the faith.
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A
Yeah, very good. Okay, so then, okay, let's, let's see if we can push into then St. Augustine. So in the, what we call Neoplatonic, which my understanding is that's, that's a modern term that we've kind of used then to I guess contextualize this time period. But the Neoplatonic, it's typically looked at that Plotinus, then is the Father that's right. This new Platonic.
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B
Correct. Right. I think it's, it's also sometimes called late Platonic, which I think maybe is just a more honest way of, of saying it. I mean, I think it's just Platonism, Middle Platonism and late Platonism is the kind of, the least controversial way of putting it. And Plotinus is often seen as the, the key here because he's, he's later, right? He's, he's late, he's third century. He's, he's, he dies in 270. So Plotinus is very, very emanationist, very, very much all of reality is flowing from, you know, the ineffable, you know, creator to creation and then everything in creation is flowing back. And it's highly, highly spiritual, highly emanationist, highly mystical. It's all about our soul's return to God and, and all about, you know, returning to the form of beauty. Augustine will make a lot of this in his reading of Plotinus, that, that it's, it's all about coming back into union with beauty itself in that. And, and so Plotinus is, and, and of course Augustine's beautiful reading of that is that Jesus Christ is the form of beauty. Jesus Christ is the one to whom we're supposed to be brought into unity. And so being able to take that, this, this late Platonic thought, you know, and you know, you could say is, is some of this, some of this is, all of this is in Plato, but it's not developed. So you kind of need a Plotinus to develop the, the Eudaimonian kind of religious dimensions of this Porphyry. Iamblichus. By the time of Iamblichus, who comes just a little bit later than Plotinus, it's theurgical and it's pagan and it's Egyptian and it's competing with Christian sacraments. But at least in, in Plotinus and to, to, you know, some extent Porphyry, it's still, you know, semi compatible with Christianity and Augustine's reading all of this stuff. Simplicianus, the senior priest in, in, in the Milan Cathedral, gives Augustine in we think like three, you know, 385, 386. He gives Augustine these Libri Platonici, which we don't know what's in it, but he, he is, he clearly is pouring over not only Plato himself, but he's pouring over Porphyry, he's pouring over Po. Plotinus, he's pouring over Iamblichus from, from this late, you know, third Century. He probably doesn't have pro. He doesn't have Proclus yet. But who's, who's one of the latest ones. But he has all of this material and he's making distinctions. He's seeing who's. Who's. Which Platonists are hostile and which Platonists are not hostile.
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A
Okay, so there is like the mature St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo.
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B
Yeah.
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A
How did he use Plato and Platonic thought in articulating Christian thought and theology? But as you've mentioned, though, the Platonic thought played a particular role in the young St. Augustine's conversion.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Can we kind of talk about maybe what is it that he found in these Platonic texts that he was given? Like, what benefit did they play him and his kind of maturation towards Christianity?
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B
Yeah. So most people know that Augustine, Augustine's Monica, his mother is a Christian, his father Patrick is a pagan. So he has a mixed upbringing. It wasn't uncommon, you know, to not be baptized, to wait, delay baptism until, you know, one was about to die. This was, of course, the case with Constantine too. And so he doesn't get baptized. And his mother permits this. But his mother Monica prays for 30 years for him to become Christian. He finally does, but in that interim period, he becomes all sorts of things and he spends nine years as a Manichean. Now, Manicheans are not Platonists. They, you know, they, there's certain kinds of Platonism that's influenced by Manicheanism, but it, it was an actual religion with an actual cult with. You prayed. If you were an adept like Augustine, you prayed four times a day. Almost, almost like how we think of Islamic calls to prayer. Certain sets, times of day where you fold your carpet out. Manichean, a Manichean like Augustine incorporated all kinds of religious ideas into his life. And then he becomes disillusioned. He tells us this in the Confessions. He becomes disillusioned with Manichinism. He, he is clearly influenced by skepticism and he, and clearly influenced by the use of logic to question the tendency of, of, of many Manicheans to rely on flowery rhetoric rather than true ideas. And so he becomes a skeptic for a brief period of time. And it's kind of in the end of his skepticism that he rather, the skepticism kind of helps cure him of his Manichean errors, but, but also the skepticism prepares him to receive these Platonic books which he begins reading. And he reads the Platonic books. In Milan, we think for the first time he had discovered Cicero's Hortensius much earlier in Rome, probably maybe as early as Carthage. But he knows something of the Ciceronian wisdom tradition. He knows that philosophy is about the love of wisdom. And he comes to learn that the Platonists teach that there is a God and that this God has an eternal word, and that the. The eternal word of, of supreme being is something that is totally transcendent. It's raised high beyond all things, and that the mind can be raised to union with this eternal being. And if they make a certain kind of intellectual ascent. So the first thing that Augustine discovers is that the Platonists have this kind of contemplative exercise for hap. For achieving union with God. And that's the first thing that attracts him. Now. Now, Augustine will later say this is. This was enormous intellectual pride, and he was an intellectual superstar, right? And so, but the, the. The attraction was to have contemplative intellectual union with, with the cause of everything. And so you and I might hear that and say, oh, yeah, well, that's. Yeah, that's what Platonists think. But Augustine says, I want to do that. I want to imitate that. And so this is what he does in the first instance, he tries to imitate, as if to test their claims that you can make this ascent. And so he does. He makes these Platonic ascents by which you go through procedures of trying to take away the takeaway, look at a book or something, or look at something material, and then begin asking about what is the good? And you, you move from the perceptual reality up and take away all the material things until you rise to the conceptual reality. You might look at a picture of you and your wife, you know, on your wedding day, stuffing cake into your mouth. But then you might say, okay, well, let's take away that. What am I really looking at? Well, I'm looking at human love. What's human love? And then you begin your ascent, right? And you can do this all the way up to the one in Platonic Exercises. And so he does this, and he says he reaches the one. He's able to transcend his mind. And he says he sees a light that's not material. He calls it an utterly different light. And this is his first attempt at Platonic. Platonic religion, basically. And he says, I caught the fragrance, but I could not feast. That's how he puts it in the Confessions in book seven. I caught the fragrance, but I couldn't feast. He's. He's made this ascent to God. It's kind of like he. He tells us he hears a word in his heart. And the word is kind of like the same thing that God said to Moses. I am who I am. I am being itself. And so he says this in 7, 10, in. In book 7, chapter 10 of the Confessions, I heard God speak to me as one hears a word in the heart. And this is. This is kind of his first, like, post gnostic, post skeptic kind of awakening. And he says in that instant when God speaks to him, he saw the whole metaphysical scale of being, like, kind of come down like a waterfall before him. And he saw God as the essence of existence itself. And everything that's flowed down is like goodness itself. And everything that you know is evil is just a privation of this goodness. He writes, everything that exists is good. And now I have the total view. So his first experience with Platonism is religious. His first experience with Platonism is this kind of mystical, contemplative vision which he says gives him the total view of reality. Now, that's extraordinary. This is before we get to his conversion in the Milanese garden and before he's baptized. He. He has what you might say is a Platonic religious experience.
- [42:22]
A
Yeah, that's incredible. I want to look at that. In the Confessions, you already kind of referenced this passage, but if you don't mind, I want to read a little bit of this because I found this. I teach the great books for our diaconate program. We recently read through this, and I found his claims here to be really remarkable. So this is Augustine's confession. I'm using the Sheed translation. And so if you bear with me, he says, therefore, you being God, brought in my way by means of a certain man, an incredibly conceited man, some books of the Platonists translated from Greek into Latin. In them I found, though not in the very words, yet the thing itself improved by all sorts of reasons. So these are things he says, he found in the Platonists. He says that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was made nothing that was made in him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not comprehend it. And I found in those same writings that the soul of man, though it gives testimony of the light, yet is not itself the light, but the Word. God himself is the true light which enlightens every man that comes into the world, and that he was in the world, and the world was made by him and the world knew him not. I mean, that's an incredible claim. So, I mean, it's all coming from the Gospel of John. This kind of goes back to.
- [43:53]
B
What.
- [43:53]
A
I threw out earlier about, like, what is the actual Hellenistic or even more narrowly Platonic imprint, even on our own New Testament. But that is an incredible claim that he's saying, look, here are all the things that are referenced by John at the beginning of his Gospel, at the Logos that I found also in the Platonists. I just find it incredible.
- [44:12]
B
Yeah, no, I mean, he, he is, he really sees, you know, everything good in Plato is perfectly aligned there with, with John's Gospel. And, you know, this is why you could have a Marius Victorinus, because you, you could actually, you could actually arrive at the idea that, well, yeah, this is just Christianity before, you know, avant le lettre. This is Christianity before it arrived. Right. You know, it, it says almost everything that John's prologue says, but it doesn't say the most important thing. And that's where Augustine becomes a Christian, because he realizes intellectually. He realizes intellectually that what's the key difference between that Platonic, you know, emanation and John's. Well, the key difference is that the word becomes flesh. The word becomes flesh in John. The word does not become flesh in Plato. And, and this is, this is also why he says, I, I caught the fragrance, but I couldn't feast it. In other words, I, I, I could, I could smell that this was God, but I couldn't touch, feel it, couldn't touch my senses because that word had not become flesh. It was not consubstantial with me. In other words. And so this, this becomes the kind of nub of the intellectual problem. The intellect can see that being itself is the transcendent cause of all that is. He gets this kind of concatenation, this kind of waterfall view of being itself which is raised high beyond all things, pouring down all this goodness. He can see that. He can see that the Platonic happiness, the goal of the mind's contemplation, is only going to be possible by union with that cause. But he can also see that we can't have contact with him. We can't have any contact with that God that lasts. At least we can catch the fragrance, but we can't be really united to him. We can't really feast. And so he says that they lack this one thing. In the shadow of the cathedral at Milan, he realizes they lack the Word made flesh, whose sacrifice alone can truly unite us to feast upon God eternally, to be happy forever. The Platonists know that our intellect can only be happy seeing our cause, but they don't have the thing which can attach us to God, which can unite us to God. We need this glue. Augustine loves to use the word, the Latin word ad harare, which is the word we get for adhesive. And he says we, we have to abide, we have to adhere, we have to have the proper means of being attached to God. And the only way we can be properly attached to God, the only way in which we could not only catch the fragrance, but also feast, is if we were attached to Jesus Christ, if we were attached to the Word made flesh, then we could feast.
- [47:37]
A
Yeah, well said. Yeah, it's incredibly beautiful. And then as he becomes Christian and then obviously the moment with him and Monica in the garden is gorgeous. It's a, it's a beautiful moment. But still, actually, even in that Christian context, still described in a deeply Platonic way, as they have this like spiritual ascent that goes upward and then seems to go inward and then towards God himself.
- [48:00]
B
So you have the vision in Ostia, which is later, that's after baptism. Right. So in the garden. So, so the, the Platonists are, they help, they aid his intellectual conversion to Christianity. But you, you remember in the Confessions, he, he has this kind of turning of his, his mind to God and he, he kind of becomes, he tells us he's convinced, he's intellectually convinced in the truth of Christianity and largely on the, on the back of seeing both the truth of Platonism and its lack, and precisely through that comparison with the Johannine prologue, you know, the, the Platonic books are like a preambula fide. They, they take him by the hand, they lead him to God, but they, they can't unite him to God. And he knows this intellectually. And it's, it's what he says is that his, he can't move his own will to be united to Christ. And it's, he's, he's vexed by this. He's vexed by the fact that he can't actually unite himself to Christ just by thinking. I find this really fascinating. You know, as, you know, as professors, as intellectuals, as, you know, we think, well, I can, I read myself into the Church, you know, I, I'm the cause of my salvation. And, and Augustine's way more honest about this. He's like, well, I'm intellectually converted, but how do I, how does, like the seat of my soul, my whole Soul get united to Christ. How does my will get united to Christ Jesus? I can't do it. I can't. I can't make myself do that. And it's in a little garden in Milan in which he hears these children singing famously, you know, the tale lege song. He hears children saying, singing a school rhyme, Tale lege, tall Lege. Take up and read, take up and read. And he interprets it as take up the scriptures that are in his hands, which happen to be the letters to, of St. Paul. And he reads Romans make no provision for the flesh but put on the Lord Jesus Christ. And this he says, is what pours over him and tears flow from his eyes and it's, it's like God did the work for him of moving his will for him. And that's what puts him. And he goes to, he goes to Ambrose and, and Ambrose sends him into catechetical preparation and he goes off to Kashikiocum to prepare for baptism. And that is like a nine month preparation where he continues reading the Platonists.
- [50:58]
A
By the way, I appreciate what you said there about the juxtaposition that he can't think his way into the church, that there has to be this configurement of the will and that he actually has to will it. You see that as he's struggling in the garden. I've always loved the imagery where he's talking about his flesh as like this cloak that he just can't pull off there. Because what's really interesting is how not jarring, but there is such an interesting juxtaposition that here's Augustine who clearly seems to be the smartest person to any room that he walks into. And yeah, his, his conversion though then is precipitated by children singing a song and him basically flipping open the scriptures and reading a random verse out of it. Like it's very kind of antithetical to what you think this great church Father Doctor of the Church would do in his own conversion. It seems to be very much like an introduction to humility, that there is this like humble path, grace works on him and then he can respond to that.
- [51:55]
B
I think that's right, that you know, that the sort of, you know, the intellectual work has been done but there, there has to be something which operates on him at an even deeper level. I also think there's something Platonic about this too because you remember the first academy, Socrates and Plato. It's all about intellect and virtue. It's not an. Your intellect's only going to get so Far, you know, the pre Socratics didn't get very far. And why is that? Because their virtues weren't far formed. Their, their appetites weren't formed. They needed to live a certain form of a virtuous life in order to remove those obstacles which were, which were barring the way for their intellect to see God. And, and that's kind of what happens in that Milanese garden. And, but it's, but Augustine tells, it, tells it to us in a way that helps us to see that it's God who must actually move the heart. God must move our hearts. God must work upon us. And that's grace. And that's why Augustine's the doctor of grace, because he recognizes that we can do a lot intellectually, but ultimately it's God who moves us. It's God who must move us into union with Him Himself.
- [53:18]
A
Okay, speaking about the will, can we kind of talk about maybe his anthropology and how he pulls from like a Platonic anthropology and what that looks like in the Confessions? So like, broadly speaking, my understanding is like, particularly when you read through the Confessions, one of like the subtle attentive reads is that he, he tends to list things in threes and oftentimes those three things will actually correspond to the three parts of the traditional tripart Platonic soul.
- [53:48]
B
Right.
- [53:48]
A
So you've got your intellect that loves truth, you've got your spirited, your thematic that loves nobility, excellence, glory, honor, victory. And then you've got your appetitive power that loves pleasure. What's interesting is that he plays off this throughout the whole text. But then later on he ties them to three particular types of sins that he reads in First John. And so these are the three sins that in First John that are listed. That the intellect suffers from a lust of the eyes, eyes there being used as an analog of the intellect, spirited for pride of life and the appetitive for lust of the flesh. So on one hand he seems to have like a deeply Platonic anthropology that he then has kind of mapped on, or it corresponds to a biblical New Testament anthropology as well. But then something I always hear about, even like our own conversation here, is that then a St. Augustine has a very strong understanding of the will and that a lot of Christianity's focus on the will and its role in our anthropology actually comes from St. Augustine. Can you kind of parse this out a little bit for us?
- [54:59]
B
Yeah, I mean, he wrote, you know, a lot of people look to, and even medieval struggled with this. They, they look to a very late text on the Trinity for Augustine's anthropology. But there's something very counterintuitive about that because he actually wrote an anthropology before he wrote the Confessions called On the Free Choice of the Will, which is actually one of the most cited documents in the magisterium on anthropology. And he wrote it between 388 and 395. So it's maybe the most important text that he writes right before he writes the Confessions. And so if you really want to understand his anthropology, that's the anthropology that he works out as he, as he just right before he becomes a priest and a bishop and right before he writes the Confessions, you should read on the Free Choice of the Will. And, and actually that's not very tripartite. The, the famous tripartite anthropology of memory, understanding and will is something that Augustine uses to help us understand an analogy to the Trinity as three and one in. In his late work De Trinitate. But in on the Free Choice of the Will we very much get the sense that his anthropology is much more that the intellect is bound up with the will, so much so that the will, the intellect is above the will for Augustine on the Free Choice of the will, but the will is also has a kind of power in, in which it can, it can make the intellect a slave. And, and so really that's the, the, the intellect is above the will in Augustine's anthropology, but the will has this extraordinary power to limit or even misdirect or put throw obstacles up in front of the intellects desire to be brought into union with beauty and goodness and truth. And, and I think that notion is very much what drives his understanding of evil as a privation of the good and also sin as an inordinate use of our freedom. Right? Sin is a misuse of our, of our goodness, a misuse of our loves, misuse of our freedom. And so that intellect, will is really not tripartite. Those are the powers that are really at stake in Augustine's anthropology. You could tell, I probably don't. I know that there is a desire, especially in modern Catholic theology to bring a forth. The nouvelle folks really wanted to bring forth a tripartite anthropology, but I don't. I'm too Thomistic for that.
- [58:16]
A
So you don't see. So what does he do with like. So make sure I understand correctly. So what does he do then with like the thematic or the pleasure? So because it seems in Augustine's Confessions that he is aligning right, these desires with different parts of the soul and then he aligns the sins from first John. So is that like a pedagogical move? Is that only one aspect of the soul and there's these other parts, or how do those two things then actually align with one another?
- [58:43]
B
I mean, I think that it is actually very Platonic around the passions, because, you know, and. And Augustine is maybe the first to take. He takes a very neutral reading of the passions. You know, people probably have a. A basic understanding of. Of the Stoic view of the passions, which is that the passions, whether demotic or appetitive, whether the passions for the Stoics are disturbances, they call them. They're disturbances. They're things that, you know, they're disturbing our intellect's ability to be united to the good. Right, so what you want to do as a Stoic is dismiss all the passions, dismiss all the appetitive passions, all the thematic passions, Any. Any kind of passion. You want to dismiss Augustine's much more. And Aquinas is the same way. He views the passions as. As. As more neutral. That is a passion. Every passion is intrinsically aiming at the good, but it can also veer off into the bad. So there's a kind of neutrality in the passion. A passion is almost like a daimon. It can be good or bad.
- [59:59]
A
Yeah, no, I appreciate you commenting on that. What about this is kind of like the big one that I've been thinking about. Not to save it here to the end, but the ideas, right, the Platonic ideas. And so you get this. You know, we've been studying Plato on the podcast. We've gone through first Alcibiades, the Euthyphro apology, Crito, Phaeto as well. And now we're going to. We're actually gonna take a break and read Purgatorio for Lent as we read Dante's Inferno last Lent. And then we're going to pick up Plato's Republic and kind of, you know, journey through that. And so we're kind of somewhat nascent in understanding the ideas in. In kind of the Platonic corpus. But in short, for those who are unfamiliar, just kind of like a. A brief summary that these ideas or the forms have a metaphysical reality and they're universals. So you think of like a horse. And so the idea of the horse is this perfect horse. It's perfect because it's immutable. It can't change. It's just. It's the full essence of what a horse is. And then all these particulars that we have in this world are very much mutable and changeable and imperfect Instantiations of this universal idea, this form. And so my understanding then, and I'll just throw it out for critique, is that you get then in Plotinus, because one thing, I guess, made the phrase this way. Plato never seems to bridge the gap between the metaphysical ideas and the God. Where, where do these two things actually come together? And so then when you get into Plotinus, he seems to have a much better understanding that no, the metaphysical ideas are in the divine mind, which is a very particular thing for him under his philosophy, theology. So my understanding is that then St. Augustine's downstream from this and he adopts this, but makes obviously a very important edit, somewhat like he said with what was missing in the Platonic texts, which then he says, well, the divine mind is the Logos, it's the second person of the Blessed Trinity. This is what became flesh, it's the one word. So then Christ as the incarnate Son, the Logos becomes the divine mind in which all of these Platonic ideas find their metaphysical address in that mind. And so then, as you know, so everything that has reality here in this creation corresponds to a universal that's in the divine mind. And my, my other understanding is, is that not only then does Augustine kind of give this to Christianity of how this works, but then God not only has an idea of the universal, but he also has an idea of the particular. So for instance, he would not just simply know man, and you and I are particular echoes of that that are then participating in that. But then God also knows the idea of me, the idea of you. And all of this resides in the divine mind and what creation is. The God decided to give, you know, some of the ideas, material existence and some not. So that's like my really brief sketch, but happy to hear your comments or critiques of how the ideas kind of flowed into St. Augustine's thoughts.
- [63:18]
B
Yeah, so I mean, Plotinus it is. You know, I think I mentioned earlier, he's kind of a systematizer and he, he's, he's worked out like every detail of the Platonic hierarchy. And so there's like layer upon layer and layer upon layer of intermediaries between the one and the many. So you've got, you know, the One who's raised high beyond all things is the One. And then you have everything which he has caused, including the ideas which flow from him and are in some sense Him. But. And then the gods and then the daimons and men. And a God is of course, has perfect knowledge of everything on down the chain. And my understanding of Plotinus is That, like Plato, he thinks everything is good all the way down the chain, right? The gods are good. The Daimons can be good or bad. And therefore God is concerned not only with the idea of man, but also is concerned with human affairs. And Plotinus develops the idea that the Daimons themselves are mediators between God and the ideas and the gods, but they themselves, the Daimon mediators, are tossed about by turbulent passions. And this is why a Daimon might be good or might be bad, because they are pure spiritual beings who are tossed about, as St. Paul says, by turbulent passions. And Augustine looks at Plotinus and he looks at this very Plotinian way of looking at mediation and says, this is insane. This is an absurdity. How can we have contact with God? How can we have contact with being itself through mediators who are tossed about by turbulent passions. And so the Plotinian kind of specificity of the whole hierarchy is. Is actually this terrible, tangled mess of mediation in. In which Augustine says, well, the. At least for the Roman Platonists, we can. We can maybe withhold judgment on Plato, but at least for Roman Platonists, at least for Plotinus, Plotinus is actually okay with mediators whose bodies are godlike, but whose souls are the worst, whose souls are tormented, who are more miserable than the most miserable of men. He says in book nine of the Confessions. And so, in a funny way, Plotinus gives us the most mediatorial, most religious account that we have seen yet in the Platonic tradition. But it's precisely because he gives us such a detailed account of, you know, how the Daimons mediate between the gods and ideas, and the one that it sets Augustine up for saying, well, you know what? We need a true mediator. We need a mediator that's not like Daimons and not like God's. We need a mediator who's one with us. And so ironically, just as Platonism is a preambulified, which helps us to arrive at a transcendent vision of God, it's also a kind of negative preambula fide or a negative apologetic in which we come to see, oh, actually, mediation is the problem of faith. We need a mediator who can really be one with us and who can really be one with God and whose passions are rightly ordered. And if we are one with him, he can order our passions rightly.
- [67:41]
A
Yeah, beautiful. Yeah, very well said. Yeah, it looks at. I was looking at. There's a text.
- [67:46]
B
Apuleius is even more important for this because he's even more religious than Plotinus. They just Keep getting more and more, more religious.
- [67:55]
A
Yeah, there's Augustine's text. It's like 83 questions.
- [68:01]
B
Yeah, that's right, 83 questions.
- [68:02]
A
Yeah, yeah. It's not referenced very often, but I actually recently discovered it because I was actually just trying to kind of better understand where does Augustine talk about the ideas, where does he talk about these things, where does he say they're rooted in the divine mind. And actually he takes up ideas as one of the questions in that text, talking about how they like the different terms that they used in the Latin and the Greek and that they have this kind of like, you know, metaphysical home in the divine mind. And so therefore the Logos, right, has the, the Platonic ideas in them. And it really, I don't know, it becomes, I think, very beautiful then to kind of understand how that affects just metaphysics overall, but then also just trying to understand like who we are or what really we are, right, as these kind of thoughts of God that He has elected to give this type of existence to. And also then even how he knows us. Like he doesn't know me just simply as, as I am now, but he knows me as he's known himself, right? Because God knows all things by knowing Himself. So he knows me as he has known the thought of me in the own, in his own divine mind. And there's a, there's an interesting way that you can look then at sanctification and holiness as me, the particular in this kind of chronological temporal realm, trying to configure myself to who God knows I am and I should be. And you know, some of the, I don't know if Augustine does it, but some of the Platonic thinkers later that are Christian will tie this into the stone that everyone gets in Revelation. Revelation talks about the saints receiving the white stone that has their name on it, that only, only God knows that this is who he's known you to be for all eternity. Not because you had existence, because we don't believe in pre existence of souls and things like that. But he had a thought of you because there's nothing new for God, right? So the thought of you is not new. He's known you by knowing himself. And I think this kind of brings in a very beautiful intimacy into the Christian life when we start to kind of dig into who we are. And Augustine seems to be somewhat at the fountainhead of these conversations and also.
- [70:06]
B
You know, because Plotinus stresses so much our need to become like God, I mean, as Plato himself does, but Plotinus especially, and that you saying about the stone. But only God can give us that stone that has our name written. Only God can make us like himself, right? Because that. That stone is. Is the image of God in us, conformed to the perfect image of God in Christ. So only. Only God can give us that stone with our true identity on it, with. With who we were made to be. And what we most often experience is how unlike God we are, right? How unlike Christ we are, how estranged we might be from his eternal and unchangeable ideas, his internal and unchangeable, you know, beauty, his eternal and unchangeable goodness. We're estranged from that very often in our lives. But Augustine's use of Platonism and especially this highly religious middle and Neoplatonic Platonism is actually to stress on our need for a mediator who is one with us, who has become one with us in order that we can become one with God. And that's what Platonic mediation can't do. Platonic mediation just delivers our passions over to fevers. I kind of think there's something providential about how religious Platonism became at this period, in this period of time. It, It's. It's a bit like, you know, the. The Benedict's Hellenistic argument. You know, it. It was at the perfect time of the expansion of Christianity in the Roman Empire. You get this highly religious, highly liturgical, highly mediated account of Platonism in. In which all we see is bad mediators all the way down the line from the one to the many. And Augustine says the cure for this condition is that we need a true mediator who can actually unite us, who can take our mortal, unclean lives and purify them and unite them to God. And this alone can be done by the Mediator, Christ Jesus. He says that in book nine of the King Confession. So it's. It. The Platonic philosophy is so important to understand because he's using it as part of his apologetic.
- [72:49]
A
Beautiful. What I really like about that too is that, you know, so often the Incarnation is seen as something like very alien, very foreign to Platonic thought. Something that's like disjointed. It's not easily grafted on to the thought of Plato and the Platonists over all. But the way. I really like the way you have phrased this of. Well, actually, the Incarnation is the answer to a question that's inherent inside of Platonism.
- [73:16]
B
That's right.
- [73:16]
A
It's a problem that Platonism has. And the Incarnation is actually an answer to that, then perfects what Platonism is trying to do. I love that framing.
- [73:26]
B
And also at the end of the last books of the City of God, you know, Augustine takes up his argument with Platonism again on this line because he says, you know, just as, you know that they need the Word made flesh, they need the Incarnation, they also need the resurrection. They also need bodily resurrection because they can't deal with the problem of death, even though, you know, even though that is, in a sense, the whole problem of philosophy for Plato is the problem of death. But they can't actually conceive because they think material is just too heavy to go up to heaven. So the, the Platonic. The Platonic ideas actually can't ever really be in contact with us and because we can't really ever be in contact with it. So the incarnational problem that Platonism has is also the bodily resurrection problem, which is also to say that we can't have real contact with that happiness that can't be lost with the eternal happiness. And so Platonism fails at the beginning, and it also fails at the end of our lives, and that it actually can't give us hope in our bodies being raised. And we actually want that. It's not enough for us to just contemplate as disembodied people. We want. We want their bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ because we want our whole lives taken up into the contemplation of God.
- [74:55]
A
That's beautiful. Yeah, no, I appreciate that too, which is really an outgrowth of that Incarnation. And I like that a lot because sometimes I think the Incarnation doesn't get enough attention in and of itself. Right. We see the Incarnation as kind of just like a precursor to the cross. So it's like, why did he become in flesh? Well, because he has to go to the cross when really the mystery of the Incarnation has a huge benefit for humanity in and of itself, even outside of the cross. The cross actually, in certain ways is what makes what the Incarnation did available to us. But the Incarnation, I think, needs more attention. That's one reason I like studying St. Augustine in the context of this Platonism, because he seems to then have a very deep appreciation for what the Incarnation in Christ as the Mediator actually brought to humanity.
- [75:44]
B
I also, I also want to say, I don't know if you want to wrap up, but it. But something that is so profoundly elemental to Platonism, purification, that Socrates changes the very nature of antique philosophy by saying that we actually have to have our lives changed to be. To be able to have our minds purified in order to see God. That's what Christianity is. But Instead of just making this all up to us, God comes and does it in a way that unites us to Himself. He does the purification.
- [76:20]
A
Yeah, I really think that as you read the Platonic text, I mean, obviously first and foremost we want to receive Plato qua Plato and understand what is he trying to teach and things like this. But you also see, I think, a certain implicit hunger and desire for certain things. I think you see as a key, like even his religious myths, him this. He's being desirous that the end of all things right at the end of life, there is actually a cosmic justice, that things actually are ordered. I think you see this even in the noble lie where he's seeking kind of an anthropology that actually that we can all participate in a myth that the people can participate in that actually leads them towards what is good, because the Homeric myths are not doing this. He has no divine revelation. So I think that you can see very implicitly certain ways that, I mean, I would even argue that Providence has used Platonism to till the soil for the coming of the Incarnation and that then the Incarnation answers a lot of these questions and has a purifying effect on what is, you know, arguably I think, hands down the most popular philosophical thought at the time of Christ and for the centuries leading on past that.
- [77:28]
B
Yeah, I mean, you know, even I think that's all true. I agree with that 100% though, of course there, there are Platonists who, you know, turn Plato against Christianity and so that's possible too.
- [77:44]
A
But I think on a surface level you'll see that. So you'll see like, yeah, the Incarnation is disjointed from any kind of like, Platonic thought. The bodily resurrection is disjointed from that and even other things. Like, you know, while even like the Logos plays a really heavy role inside of Platonic thought, to my knowledge, Plato never associates the God with the Logos. That's a particular claim. But just because those specific claims aren't there doesn't mean that the antecedents aren't present, that there are these principles that have been set. And then as you've already mentioned, then things like the Incarnation, the bodily resurrection that at first glance seem very, almost anti Platonic, are actually answers to problems inside of Platonism. So I think as you push deeper into these things, you actually see a profound harmony between Christianity and Platonism.
- [78:32]
B
Yeah, I think, I think Augustine, this is why Augustine says it's the closest approximation that philosophy can get to Christianity. And I think that has to be true.
- [78:42]
A
Yeah, no. Very good. Any other kind of like just final thoughts on Plato and St. Augustine?
- [78:48]
B
Well, I mean, I think, you know, I think Plato knows, Plato knows that we owe God, that we have a debt and that we, you know, in some ways Plato is like the restless heart that Augustine begins confessions with. You know, Plato has this restless heart. He knows, he knows that our minds are made for something incredible. Our minds are made by God to know God. But Platonists don't offer the right kind of worship and that the, the, because they don't offer the right kind of worship, Augustine says they can't cling to God because you can only cling to God if you have been united to the one final good who can make us happy. And that's the Word made flesh. And so, you know, Platonism, Platonism you know, raises the desire for God but can't fulfill the hunger for God. And that's why I think that that text I've read a couple times now that Augustine's Platonic ascent could help him to catch the fragrance, but couldn't let him feast. When we think about Platonism and Christianity, I think it's almost helpful to think in terms of promise and fulfillment. Platonism promises us a God who will make us happy, but only Christianity delivers.
- [80:27]
A
And Christianity in the best sense of this word is also far more egalitarian. So this is the idea that obviously everyone is invited to baptism, everyone can participate. It's the river by which, you know, the lamb can swim but that the elephant can wade.
- [80:44]
B
Right.
- [80:44]
A
It has this proportionate depth to the souls that participate in it, which I think you actually see antecedents to, of in Plato, even in his noble lie, etc, trying to find something that all the different souls can actually participate in and be a community that would actually lead them towards something that is good. Your statement on piety is really well received. I mean we've, we've read the euthyphro, we've read the apology. In a lot of ways I think the apology is a continuation of or an answer to what is raised at the end of the Euthyphro. It's like, well what is this piety? What's this debt that I owe? Is it, it's a service to the God? What does that look like? Yeah, well, Euthyphro, it's not like taking care of cattle, that's, we know that it's not going to be a benefit to them. But then when you get into the apology, you see very quickly that then Socrates shows his piety by saying that he's in service to the God, not for the benefit of the God, but for the benefit of himself and for Athens.
- [81:34]
B
Yeah.
- [81:34]
A
And it's interesting because I think, particularly when I read that with people who've never read Plato before, it is very jarring to them that here's a pagan that talks about having a vocation.
- [81:44]
B
Yeah.
- [81:45]
A
That talks about God giving him the daemon to lead him and guide him into what he should be doing, that he actually, he wants to benefit Athens. I mean, it's a much more relational divinity than say even you get in like Aristotle, which I think is what a lot more Catholics are actually used to. So I do think. I agree with that. I think you see a hunger in Plato and in Plato's Socrates that I really like the idea of the restless heart that really isn't satiated until you have something like the incarnation and you have this mediator that can then bring up humanity. Because this is what grace is.
- [82:19]
B
Right?
- [82:19]
A
Grace is actually the divine life in you. So there's a way that God can give you grace and offer you his life and then you have that ascent that's so clearly defined in Plato and Plotinus, etc, but it's God's grace that helps us then to ascend, you know, to a higher plane, to then satiate in God who is beauty itself. And this is going to be seen. You know, we have seen Augustine, which you've done a marvelous job of laying out for us. But then you also have, you know, Dionysus or Dionysius, you have Saint Maximus and the Confessor, you have Saint John Climacus, you have Saint Just a Martyr, you have Saint Gregory of Nyssa. I mean, this Platonic thought just permeates deeply into the early church and I think serves as a, a really good philosophical lattice work upon which Christianity can build.
- [83:05]
B
You know, I, I just want to, I do want to say one last thing because I didn't talk about theurgy, but theurgy is a major component of late or Neoplatonic thought. And Iamblichus and Proclus, these, they were almost Platonic magicians. And you can see the way in which Platonic religion, if I can call it that Platonic religion is necessitated by being rooted in this Platonic restless heart, right where our hearts are restless for God. And, and so there's something almost natural about, like natural religion, about the development, the religious development. Why, why does Middle Platonism and why does late Platonism become so religious almost out of necessity? It has to be, but it's totally Theurgical. And by this, they, they. They meant that we must. We must create the liturgical ritual aspect which will move God. We must. We must create the liturgy. And Augustine's answer, and certainly Dionysius's answer, is no, that's. That's getting it backwards. We actually can only receive the true religion from God. God must give us this. God must give us the liturgy, in other words, and. And God must give us this sacrifice which unites us to God. And. And God must give us and himself in order for us to be able to make an offering which is acceptable to God. And so you get this kind of sense in which everything is moving upward, including liturgy. And it doesn't work in Platonism. Whereas Christianity, as you say, answers all of those religious questions that Platonism has and brings the liturgy from heaven down to earth. And that descent of divine liturgy is how we ascend. And that, you might say, that religious dimension, that religious longing, is only met by the church.
- [85:14]
A
Beautiful. Very well said, Dr. Pecknold. I greatly appreciate you being on today and kind of helping us understand, doing a wonderful introduction to Plato and St. Augustine. Where can people find out more about you and your work?
- [85:27]
B
Well, you could go to the St. Paul Center. I don't know if you can give web website details where my. My book Fire on the Altar is. You can find me on X at ccpechnold. You can find me here on the Ascend podcast.
- [85:47]
A
Yeah, no, very good. And I just want to say to everyone, I mean, Dr. Becknold's a wonderful thinker. I really enjoy, enjoy his writings. So please go check out his articles and books. They've been very helpful.
- [85:58]
B
Yes, you can find me at post.
- [86:01]
A
Yeah, you've had some wonderful articles on Post Liberal Order. That's a. On substack that I think have been incredibly enlightening, particularly taking that Augustinian thought and then applying it to our modern age and just the challenges that we have. So please go check out the writings of Dr. Dr. Petgold. I think they're wonderful. I've learned a lot. And again, Dr. Becknell, thank you for coming on and helping us with St. Augustine and Plato.
- [86:22]
B
My pleasure.
- [86:24]
A
All right, everyone, join us next week, and we will talk about Plato and Boethius with Dr. Thomas Ward out of Baylor. And so go check us out on X and Facebook and Patreon and YouTube and visit thegreaterbookspodcast.com for our reading schedule. And we'll see you next week.
- [86:41]
B
Thank. You.