Does the Allegory of the Cave Demand Jesus?

This is an essay I wrote in response to Plato's "Allegory of the Cave"

DOES THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE REQUIRE JESUS?

Every person seeks to understand the world around them. We use our minds to ask if things we sense are real. We wonder about a greater truth. Although everyone seeks to know what this greater truth is, or if it is, very few people ask how it is we can come to know this truth. “The Allegory of the Cave” found in Plato’s Republic is one of the most widely read pieces of literature in history. Its traditional interpretation limits its scope to the discipline of education. This is understandable as Plato opens the allegory by saying, “compare the effect of education and the lack of it upon our human nature” (Republic, 514A). However, the allegory also has significant ramifications in the field of epistemology. “The Allegory of the Cave” demands an epistemology of divine revelation.
Plato uses Socrates to narrate the allegory. Socrates was Plato’s mentor; Plato frequently uses Socrates as his mouthpiece to avoid ridicule from his contemporaries. Socrates starts by describing a large cave, with an entrance at the top leading out of the cave into the light. In the cave, a group of men are bound in shackles facing one wall; they have been there their whole life. Their heads are fixed so they can see only the wall in front of them. There is a fire above and behind them. In front of the fire is a ledge on which another group of men walk carrying various objects. The light from the fire projects the images of the men and their objects onto the wall in front of the men in shackles (imagine making shadow images on the wall by sticking your fingers in front of a flashlight). The bound men can see only the shadows on the wall in front of them. They assume that the images they see are reality because the images are all they have ever known.
Next, Socrates imagines what would happen if someone were to drag one of the chained men out of the cave, into the light. At first, the man would be blinded by the sun. But, as his eyes adjusted to the light, he would see the true forms of the shadows he had previously perceived as reality. He would see for the first time the outlines in the cave were more complex than he had known, that they have color and nuance. He would realize that everything he experienced in the cave was only an adumbration of reality.
Socrates uses the cave to represent the realm of the sensible, what you can experience through your five senses. The area outside the cave represents the realm of the intelligible, what you can conceive only in your mind. Socrates believes he escaped the cave by reason. Socrates feels that by contemplating the form of the light, you can escape the cave. You can move from the realm of the sensible to the intelligible—also known as the invisible—by the “contemplation of the divine” (Republic, 518E).
Socrates says education is the attempt of someone who has escaped the cave to descend once more into the cave to rescue those still bound. Socrates believes he is the one charged by the god with the task of going back into the cave and pulling people out. He must educate them: “It is to fulfill some such function that I believe the god has placed me in the city” (Apology, 30E). He predicts that the people in the cave would be reluctant to leave; they might even kill anyone who tries to “free them and lead them upward” (Republic, 517A). His prediction comes true; the people of the city were so infuriated by his attempts to educate them that they executed him. At his trial, Socrates tells the people of the city that by killing him they are harming themselves because they would no longer have anyone to educate them. They would not have anyone to free them from the cave, “if you kill me you will not easily find another like me” (Apology, 31A).

Socrates makes two epistemological assumptions. First, that the things we experience with our five senses are not the ultimate reality. Since we are bound by our physical circumstances, we have no way of knowing if the things we experience are reality. The men in the cave cannot discover the light by more closely examining the shadows in front of them. They will not escape the cave by using their senses to gather more information about the cave. In the same way, as humans stuck in space and time, we cannot escape the sensible world by studying it more carefully. This is the mistake many naturalists have made in modernity. They assume there is nothing besides the physical world. They refuse to entertain the idea that the things they hear, taste, touch, smell, and see are merely shadows of some bigger reality. Socrates assesses correctly that the things in the sensible world point us to something more.
Second, Socrates assumes by contemplating the divine (which is represented by the light) he can discover its form. He believes he can find the nature or essence of the divine through reason. To put it in terms of the allegory, he can escape his bonds in the cave by engaging his mind. By employing his intellect he can break free of his entrapment in the sensible realm. Socrates claims reason can lead him to an accurate understanding of the nature of reality. This is his epistemology: reason, not the senses, brings understanding about the intelligible. Reason is how comes he knows what he knows.
The flaw in Socrates’ epistemology is he trusts too fully in the capacity of his intellect to unveil the nature of the invisible. Socrates believes reason has freed him from the cave. In reality all it has done is show him there is something more than the cave. He is still bound in the cave. He believes the mind is the key that unlocks his shackles.
However, the mind is limited. It cannot comprehend the nature of the divine; it is not equipped to do so. Socrates fails to see that even his reason is shaped by the sensible realm; his reason is in the cave. The mind can conceive that there is something more than the sensible realm or the physical world. But, since it is stuck in the physical, it has no way of thinking about the nature of any reality outside of its experience. The intellect can only conceive that there is something more. It cannot discover what this something more is like. Since the mind has not experienced this something more, it cannot tell us about its nature or its qualities. Reason has no language by which to define this something more. Reason can only imagine about things it has not seen; it cannot know them. It does not have the power to bring us out of the cave; it can only bring us to recognize the existence of the light.
Imagine you lived in the year 1490. You could look out over the ocean and think, “There could be land somewhere over the horizon”. But you could only think about that land in terms of the geographic features you are familiar with. If the land was altogether different than any land you have ever seen, you would have no means of contemplating this new form of land. Now imagine as you stare across the ocean, a ship appears on the horizon. It brings people from the other land. Only they can reveal to you the nature of their land. Your reason is limited by your experience.
In the same way, something outside of the cave must go into it to free those bound there. We need something external to the physical world to step into it and describe the nature of the nonphysical world. Socrates believes that he is the one to go back into the cave to tell of the intelligible realm. The problem is that he has not experienced the intelligible realm. He is like the person who looks across the ocean and dreams of a distant land. He has no understanding of the invisible realm, just as the person who looks across the ocean has no understanding of the land beyond the horizon. In order for him to learn anything about the invisible world, it must be revealed to him by something that has experienced it.
This is exactly what Christians believe the Bible is: God’s revelation about the invisible world. God steps into the world, our realm, to tell us about Himself. Since our language does not allow us to understand the invisible, God puts Himself into language our minds can comprehend. If God wishes to reveal Himself to us and if the sensible realm is all we know, then God must translate Himself into the words of the sensible realm.
The ultimate manifestation of God’s nature is Jesus Christ, the God who became human in order that we can know God. Notice the parallel between the imagery of the allegory and the Bible’s description of Jesus: “He is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15 NRSV). The invisible (God) became visible (Jesus), so that we might know the form of the invisible. It is the exact same imagery. God is “speaking our language”. He is communicating to us about his nature in terms we understand. Jesus is the ultimate revelation of the nature of the invisible realm. The Bible also uses the imagery of light saying Jesus is “the light of all people. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:4b-5 NRSV). God is equating Himself to the light in the allegory, which represents the invisible realm. Jesus, not Socrates, is the one who comes into the cave to free us because Jesus is the only one who knows the invisible. The beautiful message of the Bible is not that we can find a way out of the cave into the light, but that the light has come into the cave.
Many would argue it is irrational to believe in divine revelation. Yet, this interpretation of “The Allegory of the Cave” shows that it is the only rational option. Our senses are clearly unable to glean the nature of the invisible world because they are only able to gather information about the visible world. Our intellect can provide us with no sufficient definition or description of the invisible because it is has not experienced the invisible. Socrates is certainly correct in his assessment of our situation: we are indeed chained in a cave. Some of us say the cave is all there is. Most of us engage our minds to see there is, at the very least, the strong possibility of a greater reality. We are left with our imaginations screaming that there must be something more. We dream with C.S. Lewis when he says, “All [our] life in this world and all [our] adventures have only been the cover and the title page” (The Last Battle, 210-211). Without divine revelation, without the Bible and Jesus Christ, we have no way of knowing what this something more is.

Oh the Torment Bred in the Race.

It has been a while since I last posted. I have obviously undergone a few changes in my life-- starting college. I have been immersed this semester in the great thinkers of the Western Tradition and have had so much to think about and read that the idea of blogging brought bile into my mouth. No More! I have decided that the best way to share with all of you what I have been learning and to hear your opinions about it, is to simply post the essays I have been writing for my classes. I will follow this post with my first essay.

Jamaica Day 1.5

Hello All (even though it will probably only be Betsy and Mom who read it),
We all arrived here in Jamaica safely! Our plane ride from Atlanta to Montego Bay was not restful. There was an infant in the seat infront of us (Will, Ryan, and Nathan) two rows infront of Mrs. Wolffe and Catherine. Screaming is too mild of a word to describe what this little one did for the entire duration of the flight. Customs was uneventful; We got through and found a taxi to take us to Galena Breeze. One sweaty two and half hour bus ride later and we had arrived! It was a bit of a surreal expireince for all of us as none of us had left here thinking that we would ever be back. But we are, and it is as beautiful as ever. I am writing this in the large open air dining room over looking the ocean. It is a hot day on the island, 94, and probably about the same humididty percentage. We are staying realitively cool as the breeze off the ocean is very refreshing. And yes, I am trying to brag.
After arriving last night and getting settled in, we had a delicious dinner of jerk pork and chicken. There was another group here, but it was there last night. We spent the night hanging out by the pool, learning a new version of UNO from the summer interns. We fell asleep on the roof of the utlitly shed star gazing. We went to bed early, 9:30. We have spent most of the day installing old programs like: thinking things, mario typing, and the original printshop. It is the first time any of us have worked with floppy disks in a while. All in all it has been a pretty lazy day as the staff has been flipping the camp for the group of 30 that is arriving from Ohio. Tommorow we are going to be at Church and continuing our installs.
That's all for now from Jamaica.

What If continued

One of my earliest posts asked the question "what if Jesus knew exactly what He was talking about?" I have been reading John Howard Yoder's The Politics of Jesus lately. He constructs an argument to prove that Jesus' teachings are a very functional foundation for all ethics. He goes so far as to claim that Jesus' ethical system is universal and sociologically viable. He points out that all though the Church(which I am a part of) often pays lip service to this truth but does not flesh it out in its actions. We ask questions like What Would Jesus Do, but in reality we are terrified of the answer.
What I am realizing about ethics is that more than anything it is an epistemological issue. Ethics is asking what is the right action. However, such a question is unanswerable unless we first answer the question what is right.( which is a cosmological question) And at an even deeper we must ask how can we know what is right. Now we have arrived at epistemology, how can we know reality? The answer to this question inevitalbely defines our ethics.
If all of this seems as abstract to you as it does to me, let me bring it to a more concrete example: "You have heard it was said LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AND HATE YOUR ENEMY. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; in order that you may be that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you what reward have you? Do not even the tax gathers do the same? "
Befor I go any further, let me preface this for all of you who are thinking: "here goes Nathan on one of his pacifist arguments again." This is not about war, I promise. What we have here is a very basic ethical statement by Jesus: the right course of action is to love your enemy and be loving to towards those who do not reciprocate. Yet, the Church has argued for two millineia over the meaning of these words. The split has not come over an ethical disagreement, but an epistemological one. When someone reads these words, they have two choices 1) reject what Jesus is saying because it does not appear to be practical, or viable. 2) to accept that it is true, even though it may seem irrational.
The first response is a typically arrogant human response, and all too often it is my response. As Yoder puts it, this argument says that "it is by studying the realities around us, not by hearing a proclamation from God that we discern the right." To reject Christ's ethical statement is to say that it can not be true. The way that its veracity is tested is against what the natural world seems to order. To reject Jesus' claim as "unpractical" is the epitome of arrogance. It is to say that my experience is more capable of informing reality than God, and therefore I reject God's revelation because it does not compute with my experience of reality. It is to say that I know reality better than God.
The second is to acknowledge that truth may be outside of your sphere of experience. To say, I do not feel that this is true, or have not experienced it to be true, but still esteem it to be so, is to admit that truth may lay outside your ability to define. What we see in all of this is that morality is a question of how you understand truth. Thus morality is an epistemological issue.

What I Want

I think that there is a common misconception amongst Christians that the life that is lived in Christ is one that is only about not getting what you want. While the Christian is required to deny the sinful impulses which are innate to us, in a much larger sense, the life Christ has for us is far better than the one the World has to offer. I think that often Christians talk about future glory and the life that will come. They think that they must not enjoy their life now. They do not know how to enjoy God.
I think however that God wants us to enjoy Him. C.S. Lewis once said that if God could give us something better than Himself, He would. If there were a better way than God's way for you, God would want that for you. That is the kind of love He has for you. However, the life of a disciple of Jesus is the most fulfilling, the most correct option. Simply put, it is the best. God desires what is best for you. He does not ask that you deny yourself in a way that makes you miserable, but rather that you deny your sinful urges and follow His far superior path. The best thing for us is God!

Our Responsibility

So, it has been a while since my last blog. I have been trying to think of a discussion topic that would generate some interest. And, I have been totally unsuccessful. But I think I have come up with a question that may generate some conversation.
Does God require anything from disciples of Christ?

The Kingdom of God

I was at a world missions conference about a month ago, and one of the speakers said something that I have been reflecting on a lot . He said that the Church runs into problems when it becomes political. He used the crusades as an example. He said that the Kingdom of God is a person, spiritual idea.
It took me a while to realize the contradictory nature of that claim, but the irony is that the Kingdom of God is a politically charged phrase. It is a clear allusion to a political system(monarchy). So, the conclusion that I have come to is the Kingdom of God is not an apolitical term, but rather a redefining of our political consciousness. The Kingdom of God is radically different from all other systems of politics, but it is still a political idea. Politics is nothing more than how an individual interacts with a larger society. Working from this definition, it is easy to see how Jesus redefines(or better put reaffirms) God's political vision.
In God's Kingdom the strong are put to shame and the weak are lauded. The wise become foolish and the foolishness of God is esteemed. The Kingdom of God seeks not to dominate the world through coercion and violence, but to restore the world through love and grace. It does not seek to destroy enemies, but to make enemies friends. The measure of economic success in God's Kingdom is not volume of production, but amount of distribution.
Now, it is important not to neglect the spiritual nature of the Kingdom. It is the foundation of our politics. Our concept of politics is modeled perfectly in the spiritual nature of our faith. Take the resurrection of Christ, it models perfectly what should happen to our old nature. Or baptism, it symbolizes the washing away of your old mind set, your old life, your old politics. At the core of Christianity, we find relationship. YAHWEH is a God who desires to be known. He seeks a relationship with His creation. That is what we find in Christ. God seeks to reconcile Himself to His creation through the death of His Son. The death and resurrection of Jesus is the pivotal point of all history. Both political and spiritual history. Christ dies on the cross and restores creation to its Creator. The transformation of individuals, was supposed to create a community that transforms.
The Church is that community. It has a pressing social and political agenda. The Church does not go bad when it has a political message, it goes bad when it has the same political message as the world.

The Little Girl in the Coffee Shop

I was just sitting in one of my favorite coffee shop haunts enjoying a red-eye and engaging in my favorite semi-creepy habit: people watching. It is amazing how God shows up in the little moments. I was watching a young girl maybe 3 or 4 with curly blonde hair and blue eyes devour a chocolate muffin. She was relentless in her pursuit, sparing no concern for the chocolate residue on her fingers and building around her mouth. Her beleaguered mother watched with split attention as she tended the small baby boy in her arms. The girl took pause from her delicious morsel to survey her surroundings, perhaps distracted by the change in music stations.  As she looked around inquisitively, her mother succumbed to the great temptation of her gender, chocolate. The little girl's attention was refocused by her mother's intrusion upon her scrumptious treat. She was not caroused by her mother's invasion of her sacred sweet. Her expression of childlike curiosity was instantly replaced with a look of scorn. It is the kind of look that only the caprice of a four year old can produce. She began to fuss complaining to her mother that it was her muffin. She was obstinate complaining that her mother stole "her" muffin. How could her mother be so cruel as to take her cherished muffin? Her mother then calmly explained that it was she who had provided the muffin, she who had bought it, she who had faithfully provided everything for her daughter right down to the muffin. What a dumb little girl right? How could she be so blind as to not see that the muffin never belonged to her in the first place?

Homosexuals in ministry

So, I have been searching for a topic that will really stir up some discussion, because I am sick of posting something and simply getting comments that affirm what I am saying(not that I don't like being affirmed) but the point of blogging is to work out issues, to discuss, and be forced to articulate.
So, I am posing this question: should churches ordain homosexual clergy?
I will provide you with my brief opinion. In a word, yes. I do not believe that homosexuality is a choice, but rather an effect of sociological conditioning. I do reject the idea that a gay person has chosen to be attracted to someone of the opposite sex.
Yet, the Bible is clear that any sex outside of a committed monogamous marriage is immoral. So, how do we reconcile these two factors? I believe that homosexuality is another sin, like lying, or lust. It is an inclination that must always be fought and resisted. When someone succumbs to the temptation, they must confess and seek forgiveness and reconciliation. But, this sin can not preclude someone from ministry, if it did, no one would be fit for ministry. For some reason in conservative Christianity, we have seen homosexuality as some kind of unforgivable base sin. We are a body of murders, liars, thieves and adulteres, all reconciled to God through the Messiah, and yet we still pass judgement on a homosexual? I am a murder, liar, cheater, and luster, how can I now condemn someone else? The apostle Paul says that there is now no conmdenation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Why I am excited for the marginalization of Christianity

So, now that I have hooked you with my title, let's start a conversation. I think Christianity is headed for the margins of Western society and I am excited. I believe(and statistics back me up) that you are going to see the "death" of Church in the West. I say "death" because I view it as an amazing opportunity for the Church. Christianity is a religion at its best when it is being persecuted. It operates better when its followers are devalued by society. 

Jesus went so far 

as to claim that we are blessed when we are persecuted. And in fact, that is a kind of litmus test for Christians, if we are not being persecuted, we are not being true to the values of God's Economy. 

Christianity has long been the sponsoring religion of 

Western culture(since about 350 AD). Every major Western society(with the exception of perhaps the USSR, if you consider that to be a Western society) has been explicitly or 

implicitly Christian. Christians have been in power, they have been the norm. If you were not a Christian in Western society, you were a heretic, pagan, or at least socially deviant.  

This is simply not the case in the West anymore. We are moving toward, and indeed may have arrived at, a pluralistic society. The Church in the last 50 years has decried this change as a declination in "moral" value. As a result of our complaining because we were not living up to our own standards, we are now seen as: hypocritical, hateful, intolerant,and judgmental. We hold tightly our status as the sponsoring religion, we remind everyone that America was once a Christian nation. We have never stopped to consider that the relationship of the Church to the state may be the most damaging relationship the Church has ever entered into. For several reasons:1) the Church has a difficult time criticizing the government(i.e. the war in Iraq) 2) The Church becomes complicit in any sin the government engages in(i.e. slavery)3) The Church is at serious risk of having its identity confused with that of a nation. 

This third danger is worth exploring further, is the Church in an identity crisis? Can we separate America from the Church? Who is more important, a Christian or an American(it's a trick question)? To someone outside of the influence of both the West and the Church do they see two institutions, or are they viewed as synonymous? Is there a difference between a Christian and an American? Who do you pledge allegiance to first? Is an American Christian justified in killing a German Christian during WW2? We can see the dangers of the mixing of Church and state. 

Furthermore, the marginalization of the Church provides the Church with two great opportunities 1) to be it own peculiar kind of economy/kingdom 2) to empathize with those in the margins rather than create the margins. Let's explore them in order.

1) The Church can now be as "weird" as Jesus. When we were the sponsoring religion, we had a certain image to keep up, now we are already viewed as weird, so why not embrace it? Why not celebrate the fact that we worship a king who was crucified by a power weaker than He? Why not marvel at how the small can topple the big? Why not be grateful that we are no longer the big? Why not create our own culture/economy/kingdom which esteems the value of every human life? Why not reject money as a motivation? Why not forgive those who hurt us? Why not feed the hungry? Why not laud the fact that the only way to become great is to become nothing? Why not run toward our savior like a child to his Father?

2) Being in the margins makes us acutely aware of the pain and suffering of the ones sharing the space with us. We can now empathize with the poor, oppressed, and down trodden. They are no longer projects, but equals. They are no longer the products of our lifestyles(hopefully) but fellow mourners. We have a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate that the margins aren't so bad, and that maybe, just maybe, that is where God wanted his ragtag group of nobodies to be all along. Maybe He knows that it is in the margins that we are most likely to encounter Him.

Tune in next time for a discussion on the similarities between the culture of the early church and the post modern church. ( I use that word to designate a time in history, not a philosophical viewpoint)

From converts to disciples

For my entire life, I have been told that salvation does not come through works. I have had Edwards,Calvin, and Luther quoted over and over. I do believe that salvation can not be earned. I do think that my good could never outweigh my bad. I am so very thankful that it is grace that redeems me. I am so thankful that the righteousness of Christ has been imputed into me. But I think it is time that we acknowledge that we must become doers of the Word. It is time for our actions to start reflecting the fact that we have been washed clean. I wonder why we(being Christians) go on and on about the magnificent work of Christ personally washing us from sin, and ignore every other person around us. We only worry about our personal sins, we never see that our sin effects other people, and we never try to become righteous. We are not concerned with the oppressed, voiceless, blind, imprisoned, or poor. We do not try to ease their sufferings. 

I think that the lack of our works, comes from the preaching of our Gospel as an insurance policy. We have preached over and over that the blood over Christ will act as fire insurance, that if you believe in Him, you do not have to worry about Hell. The problem is we have turned Christianity into a personal, introspective religion. We do not create a community of people who have been and are being redeemed, concerned with doing the same for others. We do not understand that being a member of the Kingdom of God, means being about reversing sin. We have focused on what Christ did for me and to me. But we never realized that the forgiveness of our sins was a means to an end.  God's story in history is the story of defeating sin. It is not about anything but victory over sin. 

Sin is the antithesis of God. He hates it. He is passionate about seeing it ended. He sent Christ into the world to reconcile man to Himself. Yet, we have turned God's actions intended for His glory into something that personally benefits us. In a way, we have turned salvation into an excuse to sin. We can be generally apathetic about the sufferings of others because we only have to survive this life to be with God. Yet, we have the ability to be with God right now. God is found in all of the hurting people. 

Our world has been ravaged by sin. It effects man at every level: socially, psychologically, economically, politically, physically, and spiritually. The Church has been given the job of reversing the effects of this great scourge. We have been given a vaccine, and we have used it to only treat one part of the problem. We have made Christianity into something less than a complete lifestyle. We have made it into something you believe like santa claus. If you believe in santa you get some presents. If you believe in Jesus, you get to go to Heaven. We have never told people what Jesus said His followers were in for. We fail to mention that a disciple of Jesus has to hand over all of his possessions, possibly change vocations, stop seeking luxury, and study tirelessly. We have made Christianity far too easy! We have gone from a movement which demanded all of you to a movement that demands a prayer of you.

I was driving through Dallas Texas once, and I saw a sign for a Church advertising 30 minute services. That is the epitome of American Christianity. Jesus is something you need, but it need not take much of your time. We can get you enough Jesus in 30 minutes to last the week. Jesus is not that important. You should spend as much time worshipping, loving, and following Him, as yo do watching the Office. The irony is so stark that I will say no more and let the effect sink in.

It is time that we stop telling people it is enough to pray one time. It is time to stop telling people all they have to believe is a set of statements. There can not be a disconnect between what we believe and what we do. We do not need any more intellectual believers. We need some disciples, people committed to following this renegade rabbi.