The role of a "testimony" in the new Church?

[SteelBlue]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

Here he is consciously paraphrasing Plato. Plato is the first Westerner on record to have written of a soul separate from a mutable body. Some say he invented the concept. He called the mind the pilot of the soul. You won't find the concept in the Old Testament. Aristotle elaborated on the idea and modified it somewhat. This is one of the key contributions of Greek philosphy to Christianity, as some say. Indeed, Paul, who of course was a Hellenized Jew and wrote in Greek, himself appears often to be paraphrasing Plato. For a thousand years the world only knew about Plato through Augustine's writings.

Here are a couple of quotes from Plato regarding the soul, that I posted previously:
"Then our souls had a previous existence,...before they took on this human shape; they were independent of our bodies; and they were possessed of intelligence."

"If death were a release from everything, it would be a boon for the wicked, because by dying they would be released not only from the body but also from their own wickedness together with the soul; but as it is, since the soul is clearly immortal, it can have no escape or security from evil except by becoming as good and wise as it possibly can. For it takes nothing with it to the next world except its education and training; and these, we are told, are of supreme importance in helping or harming the newly dead at the very beginning of his journey there."

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by SteelBlue

Here are a couple of quotes from Plato regarding the soul, that I posted previously:
"Then our souls had a previous existence,...before they took on this human shape; they were independent of our bodies; and they were possessed of intelligence."

"If death were a release from everything, it would be a boon for the wicked, because by dying they would be released not only from the body but also from their own wickedness together with the soul; but as it is, since the soul is clearly immortal, it can have no escape or security from evil except by becoming as good and wise as it possibly can. For it takes nothing with it to the next world except its education and training; and these, we are told, are of supreme importance in helping or harming the newly dead at the very beginning of his journey there."

Ah, yes. He sounds for all the world like a Christian here, doesn't he? There's even implicit the idea of a day of judgment (also nowhere to be found in the Old Testament). And elsewhere he and Aristotle disclose their essential belief in monotheism, in my view (see, e.g., Aristotle's "Metaphysics"). And they lived about 400 years before the advent of Christianity. Thanks to Alexander the Great, Paul, though a Jewish noble, knew something about Plato and Aristotle.

[Robin]

r.f.