Knowledge and Love

Early Christianity was inextricably influenced by then current Greek and Roman ideas. What we have in the New Testament is a complex synthesis of ancient and contemporary Jewish ideas, Greek and Roman philosophy, and some genuine creativity—most clearly in the life of Jesus, but also in the first Christian teachers. The early Christians were particularly fond of Plato and of the Roman stoics. Scholars tell us, for instance, that the haustafeln, the household codes of Pauline communities are replicated in stoic writings. There are many similar allusions, borrowings and modifications of then current ideas.

When contemporary fundamentalists insist that we “get back to the Bible” and to the “pure word of God” it is not clear what they desire. I think such comments follow from an idea that the Bible, as inspired by God, was dictated to the writers by God, or that in some way the Spirit of God oversaw the writing in such a way that the writer’s personality and errors were extinguished. It is not only a strange view, but relatively recent. It was not the view of the writers of the scriptures, nor of the early Christians. Its provenance is the turn to modernity and scientism when knowledge, to be true, had to be empirically based in provable facts. The Bible, as inerrant word of God—for fundamentalists—became the deposit of such facts. Story, legend, myth, allegory and poetry were reduced to literal truths. Fundamentalists, like scientific positivists, can only see truth in literalism. Both worlds are all the poorer for it.

The early Christian movement saw no problems in a synthetic approach to truth seeking. All truth was God’s truth, whether spoken by Moses, Jesus, Socrates or Marcus Aurelius who was no friend to the Christian movement, yet whose meditations Christians have used for centuries. Second century theologian, Justin Martyr, believed Plato and Socrates were “Christians before Christ.” Like many, then and now, he saw that the similarities and connections were remarkable.

I detect a borrowing from Plato in Paul’s words to the Corinthian Christians when he speaks to them about knowledge and love, “Knowledge puffs up, love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by God.”

The Socratic dialogues, where Plato writes in the persona of Socrates, usually focuses on one issue—virtue, justice, friendship, love. In the dialogue Socrates and his conversation partners tease out possible meanings of the idea. They test it against lived experienced, modify their understanding and test it again. In the early dialogues, the closest to the “real” Socrates the dialogues end with no solution to the problem. For Socrates, to have knowledge is to know that you do not know. Paul echoes that idea, “Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge.” Knowledge as wisdom does not come easily and rarely to the young. When I was young, fresh and arrogant minister of 24, I knew everything. I was a voracious consumer of theology and doctrine. I had aligned myself with the Puritan/Calvinist School of theology—a vigorous and carefully worked-out system. In any argument and there were many, I had an answer for everything. I knew my stuff! Oh dear! Twenty-eight years later, I am prepared to confess my ignorance. Yes, I still “know” a lot of stuff, probably more stuff than is good for anyone—but what do I “know”? Knowledge puffs up.

The second idea in which I hear Plato is Paul’s contrast of knowledge with love. Love is that which builds human society. Love values the Other as a person in her own right. Love affirms freedom to be. “Amo: Volo ut sis.” I love you, I want you to be. The love of God, the love of the ultimate Good is the way of true knowledge, true wisdom.

In Plato, the love of the good is the ultimate goal of human life, though in the Socratic dialogues Plato uses the Greek word eros and not the agape or philia of the New Testament. Love is the desire for what we do not yet possess. In its lowest forms love takes on the guise of sexual desire, the desire for the Other who we do not possess—the Other who completes who we are. Yet, love does not remain there, for when the other is possessed there is the realization that we are not yet complete. Sexual desire is not bad in itself (as Christians later came to believe), merely incomplete, a step on the ladder to perfection. Sexual desire is desire for the divine Other, though at an early stage of its development. In Plato, desire moves beyond the physicality of sexual needs to the desire for eternity. “Our hearts are restless, till they find their rest in you,” said Augustine echoing again the Platonic thought.

I hear the same echoes in Paul’s words. If you think you have knowledge, you do not. Love the divine, love the eternal, and then you will know truly and be truly known.

+Ab. Andy