Well, Bill, your book, God and Abstract Objects, addresses this topic. And you also contributed to a book beyond the control of God, edited by Paul Gould. So we're looking at an article by Dr. Gould, the Christian Platonism of CS Lewis. So Bill, can you tell us about that with CS Lewis a Christian Platonist? Well, Kevin, this really depends on what you mean by Christian Platonism. I personally think the expression is something of an oxymoron. I think Platonism and Christianity are fundamentally incompatible with each other. And therefore you've got to redefine your terms in radical ways if you're going to talk about a Christian Platonist. I'm inclined to say about Christian platenism. What the Pope said about Islam and Christianity a few years ago, he said, the only good things come from Christianity, not from the other component. And I would say that about Christian platenism too. And he good in it is from Christianity, not from platenism. Paul begins the article, let's begin with platenism. Perhaps the central notion of platenism is the two tiered nature of reality. There's the realm of eternal and visible and immutable forms are being and there is the temporal visible and changing world of becoming. It is Platonism's adherence to a transcendent realm beyond the world of our sensory experience that has been particularly attractive to Christians. With this brief sketch of Platonism, I want to describe the mood, method, and doctrines of Christian Platonism. What do you think about that definition so far, Bill? What's important to understand, Kevin, is that platenisms' transcendent realm, beyond our sensory experience, is not the transcendent realm of the Hebrew Bible. Certainly, Jews and Christians have believed that God is the creator of the heavens and the earth as Genesis 1, 1 says that He transcends the physical universe, and therefore is a spiritual reality beyond the universe. And so Christianity and Judaism affirm the reality of this transcendent realm. notice how different this is from what Platonism thinks of the transcendent realm. Paul says, rightly here, that for the Platonist, it is a realm of eternal, invisible, immutable forms or ideas that exist. This is not a personal spiritual reality. These are impersonal ideas that are thought to transcend the physical world. And so when Paul talks about the temporal, visible, and changing world of becoming, what's important to realize is that for Platonist's changing temporal world is ultimately unreal, that it's a sort of shadowy existence compared to the true reality, which is this unchanging realm of these impersonal forms. And that is so contrary to the Hebrew worldview, which sees the created world as the creation of God and as very good. And so Hebrew religion affirms the reality and the value of the material physical world. It does not depreciate it in favor of the spiritual world. And in that sense, the Hebrew concept of two-tiered reality is vastly different than this plateenism that Paul is talking about. Next, he writes, first, Christian Pleaton is a marks out a particular kind of mood

when it comes to intellectual inquiry. This mood can be expressed in terms of a preference for rain forest over desert landscapes. The idea is that reality is rich, abundant, complex, magical, and full of wonders and delights. As Shakespeare's Hamlet describes, there are more things in heaven and earth, or ratio, than dreamt of in your philosophy. Comment on that, Bill. And tell us about the term mood, how it's been used. Now, I don't know why Paul uses the word mood here. As I said on Platonism, the physical material world has only a sort of shadowy existence. And the real world is this unchanging realm of the forms. And so if Christian Platonism has this rainforest mood that celebrates complexity and abundance and diversity and so on. This is a departure from Platonism. As I said, this would be a contribution of Christianity, not Platonism. So who needs Platonism if you've got Christianity? Paul continues, contrast this mindset with a modern preference for reductionism, simplicity, and what is sometimes described in philosophy as desert landscapes. The idea is that the world is simple, reducible to fundamental particles, humian carpulsals or whatever turns out to be the fundamental particles according to physics. And the rest of reality is nothing but organized clumps of these fundamental bits of reality. To say, but one example of what is sometimes called nothing buttery, the CIT cosmologist Sean Carroll describes humans as nothing but organized mud. Nothing buttery, Bill. Yeah, this tendency to say, well, we're nothing but atomic particles or we're nothing but bags of chemicals on bones. And so we're certainly to be repudiated. That's right. But again, you don't need platenism to repudiate that sort of nothing buttery philosophy. That's already repudiated in Judaism and Christianity. When Paul affirms that God is the ultimate fundamental uncost cause, and ungrounded ground of all the phenomenon of the physical universe, that without reference to God, there cannot be a satisfactory account of the origin, identity, persistence, or destiny of the universe. Who needs Platonism? For that, that's part of Judaism and Christianity. And so Platonism really contributes nothing to the mix here. He's talking about essential tenants of the Hebrew Christian world view. And I don't see that Platonism contributes to this. The article continues, finally, Christian Platonism endorses a sacramental ontology. The idea is that the universe is a sacrament for two reasons. First, it functions semiotically as a sign pointing beyond itself to what I'll call the sacred order. Second, the universe is sacramental because God's grace and presence are mediated to creatures through the universe. That is, the universe participates in God. So Bill, what do you think about sacramental intelligence? That'm telling you. Not a tenant of Platonism. Platonism does not point to the sacred. The forms were not thought to be a personal spiritual reality like God. In fact, in Plato's dialogue, the Tameas, he has a sort of God figure, the Demiurge, who looks to the forms as the basis for then constructing the universe. So he's actually a subsidiary being. It's the forms that are ultimately real, this impersonal, transcendent conceptual reality. And certainly Plato did not believe that God's grace and presence are mediated to creatures through the universe. So these are all elements imported into Christian Platonism from Christianity. And in that case, I wondered why, why call it Christian Platonism? Why not just Christianity? And we'll get to a little more on CS Lewis here in just a moment Bill, but in the meantime, Paul concludes part one of this article by looking at four doctrines. He says, this sacramental vision of reality is usually spelled out in terms of a commitment to four doctrines. First, a participatory ontology. This idea is that things in this world participate in God in some way. Good things participate in goodness itself. Beautiful things participate in beauty itself. Individual trees participate in treehood itself. You know, I kind of like the idea that everything participates with God in some way bill. Any part of this that you agree with? Well, I think the difficulty here is that nobody understands what Plato meant by participation. What it means to participate in a form. I do think we can say that God is a sort of exemplary cause for things in the world so that for example, he is the ultimate standard of goodness and beauty and that insofar as things resemble God and his nature, they can be held to be beautiful and good. But I don't think that the language of participation is particularly elucidating. Continuing, he writes, Second, a commitment to divine exemplarism. Divine exemplarism relates to the doctrine of creation and provides an account of how God created. The basic ideas that God creates according to divine ideas. So prior to creating trees, God had in his mind an idea or concept of trees and created according to that idea or concept. Prior to creating CS Lewis, God had an idea of CS Lewis in his mind. On this view, all creaturely reality resembles a divine idea. End of quote. Sounds rather

common, sensical Bill. You know, God had the idea of something prior to creating it. Yes, and the question would be, do you need to be a platenist to have that insight or to believe such a thing and it doesn't seem to me that you do. Of course, God knew what he

was creating and so would have an idea or concept of the thing He is making. Next he writes, third, a commitment to the hierarchy of beings. The idea here is that reality is ordered and structured along a great chain of being organized according to an ascending or descending hierarchy of powers or perfections. This is the ancient idea of great chain of being with God at the top, followed by angels, humans, animals, plants, inanimate things, and finally non-being. So we can seeably kind of make a big chart of how things are ordered here, Bill. Yeah, this was a medieval idea that there is this kind of great chain of being it extends from God as the highest being down to the very lowest being. I don't think it's a particularly platonic notion and I'm'm not even sure that it's true, though it is one that was popular in medieval theology, was thought to reflect the sort of plenitude of God in creation, that God is so great, that his creation must express in all its plenitude, the greatness of God. But that of course is very different than Plato's worldview which didn't have a personal deity in it. Now of course Paul Gould is talking about Christian Platonism but I guess over and over again I just wonder I don't see that Platonism contributes anything to Christian Platonism. Anything good in it comes from Christianity. He wraps up part one here writing, finally, a commitment to the principle of plenitude. A strong version of the principle of plenitude, it states that every possible thing is actual. Christian Platonism, need not and usually does not commit to such a strong version of plenitude, but the idea that God creates a universe full of good things is a powerful and pervasive aspect of Christian platonic thought. Well, that's exactly what I was just explaining about the great chain of being and how the creation in all its plentiful reflects the infinity of God, which is more of a Christian idea than a platonic idea. Bill let's go on to part two and talk a little bit about CS Lewis here. So part two begins to begin, CS Lewis wanted to be identified as a Christian Platonist. One particularly pointed example of this is found in the closing sections of the last battle. The forces of good and evil come to a head, and Aslan usheres in the end of Nornia and the beginning of eternity. Toward the end of the book, the old Nornia has ended and the faithful have entered through a magical door into Aslan's country. As they explore this new world, they notice that it looks like the old Nornia just better, richer, purer, more real, untainted by evil, eternal. And Lord Diggory, who had been present during the creation of Narnia, another wonderful tale found in the Magician's nephew, blurt's out. It's all in Plato. All in Plato. Bless me. What do they teach them at these schools? What we find here, the article continues, and in many places is Lewis using platonic concepts to explain the deep truth of the Christian faith. In this instance, we learned that when this age has passed and God redeems and restores all of creation, the faithful will finally experience life the way it's supposed to be. And a sense our experience will seem more real because it will be untainted by sin and misery and suffering. As Lewis puts it in the great divorce, heaven is reality itself, all that is fully real is heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakable remains. In eternity, the faithful experience intimacy with God and harmony with each other as we worship, serve and explore for eternity the New Heavens and New Earth, Revelation 21. We shall be an assulence country in the shadowlands, another platonic reference common in Lewis. We'll be no more. Shadowlands will be no more. Lewis wished to be understood as a Christian platenist. Okay, Bill, I'm some mouthful. Break it down. Yes, it is. And the problem here is the ambiguity in the word platenism and the way it's used. This is not at all platenism in the classical sense of the word. For example, Plato does not hold that when this age has passed, God redeems and restores all of creation, the faithful will

finally experience life the way it is supposed to be. That's just not classical plateenism. The problem is that people are using the word plateenism in ambiguous ways to express things like the objectivity of moral values and of truth, or the reality of transcendent realms. Or even there is a God, although for Plato the ultimate reality is the good, which is a form, not a personal being. So you see if you're allowed to use platenism, the word now, to mean whatever you want. Well, then it can be very ambiguous to talk about being a Christian platenist. What Paul doesn't mention in this article, very interesting to me, is Lewis's important essay, And these are nonsense words. The essay is Blue Spells and Flallon's Feeers, and many think that this is Lewis's most important essay and most philosophically sophisticated. And I was stunned when I read that essay to find that the way Lewis treats abstract objects and particularly mathematics is metaphorical. He is what is called a figureist who thinks that mathematical language and language of abstract objects is merely figurative language and therefore should not be taken literally.

All of this is merely metaphor. And so Paul needs to interact with that essay, Blue Spells and Flallens fears, before he misleads people by saying that Lewis was a Christian Platonist. certainly in some senses of the word he was, but not when it comes to the reality of this abstract realm of forms. Which I remember the way Paul originally defined Platonism in the first half of the essay. The article continues, next let's consider one of my favorite passages from Lewis's essay, The Weight of Glory. Lewis writes, The books are the music in which we thought the beauty was located betray us if we trust in them. It was not end them. It only came through them. And what came through them was longing. These things, the beauty, the memory of our own past, are good images of what we really desire, but they are not the thing itself. They are only the scent of a flower we have not found. The echo of a tune we have not heard. News from a country we have never visited. Paul makes four observations about this passage bill, but first what are your thoughts on it? Well, I think that the passage is vague enough to be interpreted plateanistically, that there is beauty, that is a transcendent form or reality, and that it is reflected in beautiful things that we see in the world. It's not clear to me that this longing that was so important for Lewis and that he spoke of, so often was a characteristic of Platonism itself. The first observation from Gould, he says, notice the connection between art, stories of music, beauty, and longing. Lewis understood, like Plato, that beauty evokes desires, as the theologian David Bentley heart states in his book, The Beauty of the Infinite. And thus, he, like the poets and storytellers of old, writes what he calls later in his essay, such lovely falsehoods as the Narnia tale. Lewis dubbed this intense longing, most often experienced through engagement with beauty, romance. And thus he intentionally employed what he called romantic imagination in his art and literature to evoke and awaken desire. Well it's certainly a part of Lewis's aesthetics, but whether or not this is plateenism, I think, is ambiguous. You can stretch the word plateenism to mean this if you want, but that wasn't the way Paul initially defined it. So I think these are accurate reflections of Lewis's thinking, but for my money, it doesn't make him a platenist. I'm wondering Bill if we could chase a quick rabbit. Is this often used as an apologetic, perhaps for God, or for something transcendent, is the fact that we have a longing for these things. And because we do that, that is evidence that they actually exist. We have a sense of something to see someone develop that argument or fully, but definitely Lewis did have this argument where we would not have a longing for something that was inherently unfilifiable. And so this longing for God, for spiritual reality, he thought, must be something that has an object. The second observation, Paul says, note the participatory nature of reality on full display. We have beautiful things, books of music, and we have the experience of beauty itself. Yeah, I don't have much to add to that except again the language of participation is very vague and not clear. But it's certainly true that we do experience beautiful things and I think these are a reflection of objective standards of beauty and goodness. Third observation note that this participatory ontology undergirds a distinct and Christian platonic way of seeing, called by the Medieval's continuation or co-seeing. The idea of continuation according to the theologian Julius Johnson is to see two things with one simple act of seeing. In acts of co-seeing, one thing is seen through the other. Thus, continuation is a kind of spiritual vision that enables us to see the second object in this case, beauty itself. Within the first object, in this case, the beautiful things. I love how Harvard Professor Elaine Skari describes our encounter with beautiful things in this world, in her book on beauty and being, just a small wake-up calls to perception that spur lapsed alertness back to its most acute level, more broadly, given the fact that every creative thing points to and illuminates the divine everything for those of us who have ICC as Lewis encourages us, points to and illuminates the divine. Yes, I think we can affirm that as Christians. I just don't see anything particularly indebted to Plato in this as a motor Christianity. There's some deep stuff in there. I remind a reading trying to understand Kant. Yeah, go ahead. It's just very different than Kant. Certainly the notion of appearance and reality is a very long and important theme in the history of philosophy. But for Kant, all we know is appearances. And so ultimately, our knowledge of reality is illusory. We don't know reality. We know only appearances. And that's very sharply in contrast to what Paul is talking about, where it is through the appearances that we see to the reality that is behind it, so that we see examples of kindness and goodness in the world and our family and among our friends. And this helps us to see that there is an objective good kindness or compassion. And similarly, we see a beautiful painting. And that helps us to see that there are objective standards of the beautiful. So that far from being mere appearance as Paul says, we see through these things to the reality that lies behind them. That's what I get for reading Kant. Totally misunderstood. Gold writes, finally, the means of acquiring truth is deeply platonic. One is admitted to important knowledge of reality because of a love and reverence for the new truth glimpsed as Lewis puts it in out of the silent planet when speaking of the hero, Ransom's experience of the Adiyah, through his knowledge of the creatures and his love for them he began ever so little to hear their music with their ears. What we love is seekers of truth, goodness and beauty, shapes what we see in here. Further, in order to gain wisdom, we must turn our souls in the right direction, and we must turn toward the good, as Plato would put it in his discussion in book 7 of the Republic and the allegory of the cave. We must turn away from the stream of experience, as Lewis puts it in the screw-taped letters. Or as the writer of the book of Hebrews puts it We must fix our eyes on Jesus the author and perfector of our faith from Hebrews chapter 12 summation bill Platonism is a multifaceted variegated world view and so it's possible to pick and choose aspects of it and adopt them and

call yourself a Christian platenist. So for example, he says, as seekers of truth, goodness and beauty, we turn our souls in the right direction. Yes, we can agree with that. But when He says we must turn away from the stream of experience and fix our eyes on Jesus, that's not platonic. On the contrary, as I said in the Hebrew worldview, the physical material realm is just as real and just as good as the spiritual transcendent realm. And it's wrong to depreciate it in the name of this plateenistic philosophy. And the ultimate reality to which we turn our eyes on plateenism is not a personal God, it's certainly not Jesus. And so that's quite in contrast with Christianity. So while you can pick and choose certain aspects of Platonism to affirm and call yourself a Christian Platonist, you need to understand that fundamentally, I think this is really an oxymoron because the world view of Platonism as a whole is very

different and I would even say incompatible with the Hebrew Christian worldview.