Folia Theologica 19. (2008)

Perendy László: Judging Philosophers - Theophilus of Antioch on Hellenic inconsistency

JUDGING PHILOSOPHERS

195

that these statements are made by conjecture. For he says [Leg. iii. 683 b-c]: 'If, then, stranger, some god should promise us that if we could undertake for a second time our examination of the laws, we should hear discourses not inferior or shorter than the discourses so far spoken, I should go a great way.' Obviously he spoke by conjecture; and if by conjecture, then his statements are not true.

One must, instead, become a student of the legislation of God, as Plato himself admitted when he said that accurate learning cannot be obtained unless God teaches it through the law [Meno 99 e]." (Ill 16-17)

nXáxcov yáp, à>ç npoetpfjKa|i£v, Sr|Xc6oaç raxaKÁ^apov yeyev- fjaGat, Ecpr) pf| nàar)ç xrjç yfjç, àXXà xœv neőícov póvov yeyev- fjcGat, Kai xoùç Siacpuyôvxaç èni xoîç i>\j/r|Â.oxàxoiç őpeaiv aùxoùç (povonç) SiaaeacnaGai.

"Plato, as we have already said [hi. 16], showed that there was a deluge, but he says that it took place not over the entire earth but only over the plains, and that those who fled to the highest mountains were saved [Leg, iii. 677 a-b]." (Ill 18)

Plato (nXáxcov) was bom c. 429 "in Athens of an aristocratic family. (...) After the death of Socrates in 399, he travelled extensively. (...) On return from Sicily he began formal teaching at what became the Academy. Details of Plato's life are surprisingly sparse. (...) The dating of his works has to be established on internal evidence, and is subject to scholarly dispute.

Plato's fame rests on his Dialogues which are all preserved. They are usually divided into three periods, early, middle, and late. (...) The early dialogues establish the figure of Socrates, portrayed as endlessly questioning, ruthlessly shattering the false claims to knowledge of his contemporaries. [...] In the middle dialogues, concern switches to the philosophical underpinnings of this notion of a form, possibly in response to pressure on Plato to justify the dialectical method as more than a sceptical game. The middle dialogues are not in dialogue form, and do not exhibit the Socratic method. (...)

It is the middle dialogues that defend the doctrines commonly thought of as Platonism, and the positive doctrines are certainly uncompromising. A pivotal concept is that of the forms. These are independent, real, divine, invisible, and changeless; they share features of the things of which they are the form, but also cause them (so they are