Horatio Parker

The Logos and the Form of the Good are the same thing ie everything intelligible about the universe.

As an example, this moment, this Now as we experience it is beyond what we can say about it. While we can say many things about it, date, time, location, weather, state of mind etc we can never express the totality of it. That inexpressible all is like the One and the Good, and what we *can* say about it, ie it's intelligibility, is it's Form or Logos.

Expressed mythologically in Christian terms, the Father is the One and the Good, and Jesus is God intelligible the Logos. Or Jesus is God's Form. But they aren't separate things; Jesus is the portion of God that is intelligible.

As for how it relates to the intellect, it's a structuring of ideas, a method of relating concepts, a way to describe reality.

Elijah

That is a pantheist, not panentheist understanding of God/Logos. The Logos and the Form of the Good aren’t the same thing, and are distinct from the observable creation. The Logos and the Demiurge and the Word are the same though. The big distinction is that the Father in Platonic/Christian ideology is unknowable. Not because of all the attributes of the physical world but because the Law of Identity says that the creator is different from the creation. A creation which according to Plato includes the actual ideas we see within the mind. This means that we can’t even conceive of the idea/Form of God.

Logos not only can be conceived in the mind but it is at work as you put well “structuring of ideas, a method of relating concepts”. Now people don’t always operate on Reason but instead just imitate the behavior they see in the “traditions of men”, but when they do operate on Reason they are personifying the Logos just like a ball participates with the form of a sphere. If a person is believed to personify Reason perfectly then he is the corporal embodiment of that spirit on earth. Nothing mythical going on at all there.

Horatio Parker

The Logos and Demiurge are not the same. The Form of the Good or Logos is the Thought In The Mind Of God. It's a product of the Demiurge.

Of course it's pantheist in a sense, because the entire universe emanates from and participates in the One. Being a Whitman fan, I prefer Transcendentalist.

I see you're quoting Aristotle. I'm not student of Aristotle and would not trust him as a source for understanding Plato. I've never compared him to Plato myself, but I've heard a lecture on his accounting of the Pre-Socratics and he is inaccurate and deceptive.

Whether or not writings are myth depends on how they are written. The above is not in the form of a myth, but scriptures are.

Elijah

Not wasn’t generally thought to be so in the time of Jesus. Here is the relative passage from Timaeus.

But the father and maker of all this universe is past finding out; and even if we found him, to tell of him to all men would be impossible. And there is still a question to be asked about him: Which of the patterns had the artificer in view when he made the world -- the pattern of the unchangeable, or of that which is created? If the world be indeed fair and the artificer good, it is manifest that he must have looked to that which is eternal; but if what cannot be said without blasphemy is true, then to the created pattern. Every one will see that he must have looked to, the eternal; for the world is the fairest of creations and he is the best of causes. And having been created in this way, the world has been framed in the likeness of that which is apprehended by reason and mind and is unchangeable, and must therefore of necessity, if this is admitted, be a copy of something.

There is a clear distinction between the unknown creator god and the intelligible god that is considered a copy or image of the original. When Plato is talking about God’s influence on the world it’s hard to know if he is talking about shaper of the world, since he states that he isn’t able to talk about the actual God who created everything. By the time the Jesus story is having an effect, the question isn’t if the Gods are different but if the intermediary is to blame for the problems in the world like Marcion and the Gnostics would suggest.
Do you mean transcendence, which is in opposition of what pantheism says, because with pantheism there is nothing to transcend the universe because the universe is all there is. Panentheism is what is going on with Plato and the early Christians. God is distinct from the creation and the creation includes spirit that we can perceive with the intellect. You have to be able to distinguish matter from spirit, by motion and rest, and distinguish spirit from God by what can be apprehended by reason and what is unknowable. If you try to throw it all into one ball and call it unknowable then that is pantheism but that isn’t what is going on here.
His worldview isn’t much of an issue in the discussion, but his logic is having an impact on what is being said and discussed. But for curiosity’s sake where do you think Aristotle got it wrong about Plato?
You can use the label "myth" if you like, but comparing it to a Greek myth like what Homer wrote is completely incorrect, and if calling it a "myth" is going to lead people to believe that is what you are suggesting, then you need to look for a more effective label. If you don’t get across the idea that it is a Greek philosopher personifying reason, and trying to establish an example for others to follow, that leads to a better society. You don't want people to think you are suggesting a demigod taking power from a cartoon understanding of God with his death and talking about a cartoon land you go when you die. You need to produce a rational understanding and not a cartoon, and if you use the word “myth” people are going to assume you have a cartoon understanding of Jesus.

Horatio Parker

There is a distinction, but the "copy" is God's thinking of the universe; ie intelligibility. There is no second God.

Here's the relevant passage from Republic:

I don't know what the above is, but it's not Platonic.

Properly understood, all things *participate* in the One, they are not the One. Pantheism is your term, not mine. I'm not interested.

Somewhere I read that Aristotle never understood Plato's lecture on the One and the Good. In the Platonic studies I've done his name rarely comes up. Plotinus, Proclus, Dionysius the Aeropagite, those are the cast of characters.

Of course I can call it a myth - it is! Bluster all you like, the distinction is there. Anyone who uses Timaeus or any myth for educational purposes without pointing out the obvious is acting irresponsibly. Plato didn't believe in an empirical Demiurge; it's a device he used.

mountainman

These are excellent points Horatio.

The Church Historian seems to push the progression from Moses to Plato and then to Jesus. That the Greek traditions of spirituality, mathematics, geometry, medicine, astronomy, art, sculpture, philosophy and literature were SUPPRESSED by the Christian regime (for more than a thousand years) appears to be thesis of Charles Freeman, and I agree with him.

sotto voce

'Christian regime'

:hysterical:

Horatio Parker

Freeman:

N/A

I do however, think that the Christians have a point. The message of the Passion by it's simplicity, accessibility and egalitarianism in addition to it's philosophical possibilities, did something the Academy never did. It's like Mozart and Beethoven being overshadowed by a pop songwriter.

sotto voce

The message of the passion is that the suffering of one liberates others from suffering. In each case the suffering is spiritual, not physical; the liberation is of the conscience, for those who are concerned about conscience ("I have not come for the healthy, but for the sick"). Though, if the NT is correct, if all were to be spiritually liberated as is reckoned needful, there would be far less physical and mental suffering, too.

Jesus and the NT writers were dyed-in-the-wool, reactionary to the core, stick-in-the-mud old buffers. They could not escape from their Hebrew Bible. So Christians ignore Plato completely, because Christianity was fully enough defined to exclude Plato and others, just via Genesis alone! The character of the messiah was discernible, to the intently observant, even in Moses' day. All the defining characteristics of Christianity were fully formed before Greece even existed, and the whole systematic theology of soteriology was completely defined before Plato and Aristotle were born. It's almost certain that Greek thought, including the nature of deity, including inspiration for Greek democracy itself, was influenced in some degree by diaspora Jews and their unique history. Abraham, Moses and Israel influenced Plato, if there was any cross-fertilisation.

Note that extra-scriptural writers until c. John Wyclif did not reflect orthodox Christian ideas, and Greek influence on them resulted in mere syncretism of crude Roman paganism with refined Greek paganism. Palpably heterodox, if not wilfully heretical, every single one.

Elijah

You may not agree with labeling the spiritual entity “God” but passage shows a secondary spiritual entity after God that is difficult to discern between the two.

From a little bit above in the Republic.

“And this is he whom I call the child of the good, whom the good begat in his own likeness, to be in the visible world, in relation to sight and the things of sight, what the good is in the intellectual world in relation to mind and the things of mind.”

And from Jesus illustrating he was personifying the intermediary, which is distinct from the Father.

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Why isn’t it Platonic?

If all things aren’t the One then it isn’t Pantheism. Are the things that participate in the One understood to be all material, or is there both spirit and matter participating with the One? If there is spirit, what is the fundamental difference between spirit and matter, and then between spirit and the One?
That makes sense since he wasn’t an idealist. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand the Good, he just rejected the idea of ideals or even a creative principle. He took some of Plato’s ideas and applied them to materialism and came up with Aether and the unmoved mover, whose base action is to cause motion, not to create.

If you are interpreting Plato thru the lens of Neo Platonism then you need to remember that the Demiurge and the Good can get smashed together because they don’t actually believe in the creation of the universe, because it is believed to have always existed, as with the intellectual entity at work within the material. There is no unknown creator because there is no actual creator. But you still need to be careful with that assumption, that there isn’t a more nuanced understanding of the spirit at work.

From Plontis:

3. Thus we have here one identical Principle, the Intellect, which
is the universe of authentic beings, the Truth: as such it is a
great god or, better, not a god among gods but the Godhead entire.
It is a god, a secondary god manifesting before there is any vision of
that other, the Supreme which rests over all, enthroned in
transcendence upon that splendid pediment, the Nature following
close upon it.