Platonism leads to ecumenism
Is encountering someone giving up your identity, or increasing it to the fullest?
Over the last year I’ve delved deeply into the works of Plato. But ultimately, Christianity is different…
The church councils were very influenced by Platonic metaphysics. Platonism starts from the One, which has no distinction. This One gives its identity freely through emanation.
How does one get closer to this one? By stripping away all distinction. The one is not goodness, it is higher. It is not unity, it is higher. It is the ultimate apophatic theology (that is, negative theology), as opposed to kataphatic theology. By stripping away distinctions one reaches up to that one.
Encountering another
Each entity (be it person), exists with distinctions. It is the ultimate goal of ecumenism (and of platonism), to do away with that. Each distinction is an impossibility of meeting another. By ignoring parts of ourselves, we can encounter the other. By ignoring more, we can encounter more. By the ultimate ignorance of distinctions in ourselves, we can encounter everyone. This is what is meant with the Platonic One. This one is in everything and everything is in this One.
But one can already see the problem with this, the encountering of another causes loss of identity. This is what one sees in Vatican 2, where one encounters the other, while losing the conception of God, where the islamic god is made same to the Christian God (has one even heard of the Trinity)?
Incarnational logic
It is only through incarnational logic (or metaphysics), that one can come to a higher understanding. The Divine nature of Christ gives nothing up to the human nature, the human nature gives nothing up to the Divine nature. Christ is fully man and fully God. There is no emptiness, there is no nothing. There is no golden mean between the human and the divine nature.
The two natures “encounter” eachother in the person of Christ. They are united.
It is ultimately the mistake that each encounter and uniting leads to giving up of identity. It should be the other way around, through encountering the other, one comes to the fulness.
Plato leefde lang voor Hipparchos die pas in 128 BC de precessie der equinoxen ontdekte.
Die precessie is te wijten aan een 25 800 jarige cyclus die "het Platonisch jaar" werd genoemd.
Heeft Plato dan die cyclus ontdekt ? Hield Plato zich bezig met astronomie ?
(because you delved deeply into the works of P)
Excellent writing. Just thinking of the Incarnation brings me to a state of humility. It is the pattern of human experience.