Plato


Authorship

Platonism

The dominant philosophical school among Greeks.

It's a scientific model for understanding religion and god. Platonic thinkers believed there must be a god, but he was transcendent beyond all material things and had no relation with the material world. Only the emanations, the results of his inward life, produce such beings as the Demiurge that would create the material world. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all expressed this idea.

God created the universe ex nihilo, but this idea of a 'god of the universe' can be used by early Christians to communicate, so long as they took care not to slide into Platonism. Platonic thinkers could not accept God could become Man. Stoics could not accept God would have emotions, cry, die on a cross. It was impossible.

(Hillsdale College - Ancient Christianity)