The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

II. Timaeus—“Human Soul” Diluted Part of “World-Soul”

It is obvious that we must be acquainted with precisely what Plato taught and why in order to understand and evaluate his arguments, and thus to determine the soundness and validity of his conclusions as later accepted by Philo, Origen, and others—even to this day. Let us therefore examine the heart of another of his key treatises, the important Timaeus, that likewise bears on the origin, nature, and destiny of man. First, as to the universe. CFF1 592.1

1. PLATO’S THEORY OF UNIVERSE AND MAN

The Timaeus, discussing first the origin and nature of the far-flung universe, and then of man, was one of Plato’s latest and most mature productions. It was composed when he was nearing seventy, shortly after 360 B.C. ²⁶ Here the dialogue form gives way to continuous discourse. Dealing with cosmology (the theory of the universe) and natural science, he comes to the generation of the universe (denominated a living sphere composed of “soul” and “body”). Plato discusses the questions of “being” and “becoming” and ceaseless change. And while the reasoning is candidly based on myth, nevertheless, according to Dr. Glenn Morrow, it constitutes a statement of what Plato actually believed. ²⁷ CFF1 592.2

The Timaeus presents the visible world as a creation, based on a planned eternal pattern, brought about “by a cause working for the best,” a creation produced by the activity of the mythical Demiurge (“artificer,” or cosmic “craftsman”), bringing order out of “disorderly materials,” as far as their nature permits, for human souls can do wrong of their own will. This teleological view of the universe was unique, setting aside the cosmogonies of previous philosophers and of popular current mythology. ²⁸ Timaeus thus begins with the “generation of the world” and leads on to the “creation of man.” ²⁹ CFF1 592.3

According to the Timaeus, when the Creator formed the universe as a whole, and the stars therein, with their godlike natures, He commanded the created gods to produce mortal beings (41-43). ³⁰ But He Himself prepared their immortal part in the same “cup” in which He had fashioned the world-soul—the only difference being that they were less pure. CFF1 593.1

2. “WORLD-SOUL” WITH STARS AS “DIVINE SOULS.”

We should tarry long enough at this point to grasp Plato’s concept of the world system, the shape of which he likened to a globe. According to Dr. Eduard Zeller, noted German historian of philosophy, and Protestant theologian and scientist, the earth was held by Plato to be an immovable round ball in the center, at the axis of the universe. The sun, moon, and planets circle the earth, the heaven of fixed stars forming the outermost circle, turning in one day around the axis of the universe. And these motions of the heavenly bodies give rise to time, each heavenly body having its own orbit. ³¹ Then comes this significant summarizing statement by Zeller: CFF1 593.2

“Far from seeing, like Anaxagoras and Democritus, only dead masses in the heavenly bodies, Plato regards them as living beings, whose souls must be higher and diviner than human souls, in proportion as their bodies are brighter and fairer than ours. ³² CFF1 593.3

Zeller adds that since the stars in their motion follow “pure mathematical laws”— CFF1 593.4

“if the soul is, generally, the moving principle, the most perfect soul must be where there is the most perfect motion; and if the motive power in the Soul is accompanied by the faculty of knowledge, the highest knowledge must belong to that soul which by a perfectly regular motion of body evinces the highest reason.” ³³ CFF1 593.5

Thus the cosmos, circling about itself, is “absolutely uniform and harmonious,” and “possesses the most divine and reasonable soul.” Zeller then summarizes Plato’s expanded statement: “The stars are therefore the noblest and most intelligent of all created natures; they are the created gods, as the universe is the one created God.” ³⁴ CFF1 593.6

Such was Plato’s deification of nature. The heavenly bodies were openly regarded as visible gods. CFF1 594.1

3. DUALISM: EVIL WILL NEVER CEASE TO BE

Another distinctive principle that emerges in Timaeus is that of Dualism. Primary (or divine) and secondary (or auxiliary) causes in creation are set forth. The Nous (Mind) is persuaded of necessity to bring the “greater part of created things to perfection.” ³⁵ It will be well to bear in mind this important observation of Dr. Morrow before we proceed: CFF1 594.2

“Plato’s God is not omnipotent, as is the God of Hebrew and Christian theology. The divine craftsman frequently finds himself hampered by the imperfection of his materials, and by a certain incorrigibility resident in them. His aim always is to realize the good, but we are reminded again and again that his achievement is limited by what is possible.” ³⁶ CFF1 594.3

That is a fundamental limitation, and it involves another principle. CFF1 594.4

At this point frank and open Dualism appears in Plato. This is amplified in Plato’s important Theaetetus, which holds a “central position in the structure of Plato’s system of philosophy.” Thus: CFF1 594.5

“Evils ... can never pass away, for there must always remain something which is antagonistic to good. Having no place among the gods in heaven, of necessity they hover around the mortal nature and this earthly sphere. Wherefore we ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise” (176). ³⁷ CFF1 594.6

In such matters it is to be borne in mind that “Plato borrowed heavily from almost all of his predecessors, combining their insights to form a single unified theory of reality.” ³⁸ But “evil,” Plato held, “is due, not to the will or design of the Creator, but to the character of the materials upon which he works,” for God is “the author only of good.” ³⁹ CFF1 594.7

4. “SOUL” IS SOURCE OF ALL MOTION

With these three factors operative—the “eternal pattern,” the “materials,” and the “Demiurge”—Timaeus distinguishes between “that which,” as he graphically puts it, “always is and has no becoming,” and “that which is always becoming and never is.” ⁴⁰ “Soul” is the “source of motion”—motion being something “capable of moving itself,” and this self-moving agency being “soul.” ⁴¹ So the Demiurge (or Nous) creates “soul”—first the “world-soul and then the soul of man.” ⁴³ “Soul,” “moving and living,” was, he adds, the “created image of the eternal gods.” “Soul” is therefore “a moving image of eternity” (37). CFF1 595.1

This was a new concept in philosophy, embodying far-reaching effects. Soul is the beginning, origin, and first principle of life. As previously noted, the world itself is allegedly a “living being,” endowed with soul and mind—and that soul is spread throughout the universe. ⁴⁴ That is the essence of Platonism on the soul. As Morrow says, he argues “that all motion eventually presupposes something that is capable of moving itself, and that this self-moving agency is soul.” ⁴⁵ CFF1 595.2

5. “INTERMEDIATE” EXISTENCE BETWEEN “BEING” AND “BECOMING.”

As Morrow further observes, “The elaborate description of the Creation of soul (34c-36e) is difficult to comprehend, and has been the theme of almost endless comment and controversy.” He states that the “soul” is set forth as “so constituted as to have a kind of existence intermediate between Being and Becoming.” ⁴⁶ Further, “the world-soul is a mixture of the indivisible and divisible kinds of being,” ⁴⁷ whatever these terms imply. The three ingredients of being are defined as “essence,” “sameness,” and “otherness.” ⁴⁸ And the account of creation is “the story of successive actions performed by the Demiurge.” ⁴⁹ This brings Plato’s primal principles before us. CFF1 595.3

6. IMMORTAL PART OF MAN FASHIONED BY PRIMAL CREATOR

Plato then discusses a third entity, the “receptacle, or nurse of all generation.” “Because of its formlessness ... the receptacle cannot be apprehended by sense ...; it can only be affirmed as something that must be assumed if Becoming is to occur” (52 c). And this receptacle, he holds, is “as eternal as is the pattern.” ⁵⁰ Then the account of creation “culminates in the creation of man (41b-47c, 69a-90d).” And the next emphasis is upon the “bodily vehicle,” instead of the soul that uses it. “In the Republic, man’s soul is composite, consisting of a divine part (the reason), and two ‘mortal parts’ (spirit and appetite).” ⁵¹ But in Timaeus Plato describes how— CFF1 596.1

“the immortal part, the reason, was made by the Demiurge himself, and from the same ingredients as were used in the making of the world-soul, though much diluted. To the ‘created gods,’ acting as his agents, the Demiurge entrusted the making of the mortal parts of man’s soul and the body in which they are housed.” ⁵² CFF1 596.2

And he adds, “Thus reason is the truly divine element in man.” ⁵³ CFF1 596.3

Here are Plato’s words: CFF1 596.4

“Now of the divine, he himself was the creator, but the creation of the mortal he committed to his offspring. And they, imitating him, received from him the immortal principle of the soul; and around this they proceeded to fashion a mortal body, and made it to be the vehicle of the soul, and constructed within the body a soul of another nature which was mortal, subject to terrible and irresistible affections—first of all, pleasure, the greatest incitement to evil; then, pain, which deters from good; also rashness and fear, two foolish counselors, anger hard to be appeased, and hope easily led astray—these they mingled with irrational sense and with all-daring love according to necessary laws, and so framed man” (69) ⁵⁴ CFF1 596.5

So, he holds, man’s soul is immortal, unchangeable, imperishable, eternal, but his body is mortal. ⁵⁵ CFF1 597.1

7. SUCCESSIVE BIRTHS IN SCALE OF TRANSMIGRATORY DEGRADATION

Still another singular point is stressed in Timaeus. After describing the “soul of the universe,” Plato here again, as elsewhere, refers to human souls as “equal in number to the stars,” adding that each soul is assigned to a star. ⁵⁶ Plato declares that “according to the laws of destiny,” the “first birth would be one and the same for all,” so as to avoid discrimination. These souls were then to be “implanted in bodies.” Then comes this stunning declaration: CFF1 597.2

“He who lived well during his appointed time was to return and dwell in his native star, and there he would have a blessed and congenial existence. But if he failed in attaining this, at the second birth he would pass into a woman, and if, when in that state of being, he did not desist from evil, he would continually be changed into some brute who resembled him in the evil nature which he had acquired, and would not cease from his toils and transformations until he followed the revolution of the same and the like within him, and overcame by the help of reason the turbulent and irrational mob of later accretions made up of fire and air and water and earth, and returned to the form of his first and better state” (42). ⁵⁷ CFF1 597.3

So it was that the “immortal soul” was fastened in, or to, a body that was in a state of “perpetual influx and efflux” (43) ⁵⁸ Francis M. Cornford, former professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge, summarizes Plato’s concept in this way: CFF1 597.4

“After the journey in their star chariots, the immortal souls are next sown like seed in the planets and committed to the care of the created gods. Only the immortal element in the soul, as the immediate creation of the Demiurge, is indissoluble. The subordinate divinities must add the body and those mortal parts of the soul which temporary association with the body entails” (42 d-e) ⁵⁹ CFF1 597.5

8. ALL ANIMATED LIFE INCLUDED IN “LIVING BEINGS.”

One further position is to be noted. “Soul,” Plato taught, “spreads from the highest to the lowest of living beings.” The variations and gradations are described thus: CFF1 598.1

“For everything that partakes of life may be truly called a living being, and the animal of which we are now speaking partakes of the third kind of soul ... having no part in opinion or reason or mind, but only in feelings of pleasure and pain and the desires which accompany them” (77). ⁶⁰ CFF1 598.2

9. MAN’S “IMMORTAL SOUL” DECLARED HOUSED IN HEAD

We conclude by observing that Plato locates the dwelling place of the immortal soul of man in its mortal habitation thus: CFF1 598.3

“God gave the sovereign part of the human soul to be the divinity of each one, being that part which, as we say, dwells at the top of the body [the head], and inasmuch as we are a plant not of an earthly but of a heavenly growth, raises us from earth to our kindred who are in heaven. And in this we say truly; for the divine power suspended the head and root of us from that place where the generation of the soul first began, and thus made the whole body upright” (90). ⁶¹ CFF1 598.4

And he adds, “Thus our original design of discoursing about the universe down to the creation of man is nearly completed” (90). ⁶² CFF1 598.5

Such are some of the astonishing postulates, utterly foreign to modern thought, upon which Plato built his reasoning, and from which he drew his basic conclusion—the Innate Immortality of the human soul. CFF1 598.6