Interlacing Christian and Platonic Social Imaginaries

On a scale from one to ten, how suitable would it be to furbish one’s residence with a picture frame without displaying a photograph inside of it? Such is the relationship between the Christian and Platonic social imaginaries. The Platonic social imaginary can compatibly frame the picture of Christian faith and open up the possibility of deism. However, the frame simply gives emphasis and prominence to the picture; the two essences are not compatible enough to function interchangeably. Perhaps we must adapt a Catholic social imaginary in order to look past how the Platonic views work as an icon to point towards a higher deism. Through examining figures such as St. Augustine and Anselm, Plato, and the way that these social imaginaries interlace

through the movie The Matrix, one can establish a healthy relationship between the Christian and the Platonic social imaginary.
Approaching this exposition calls for an acknowledgement of my own Christian social imaginary interceding as a bias in the matter.

Such reflection brings to light how a pre-rational social imaginary can confine a Christian inside of the Platonic allegory of the cave. In Plato’s analogy, the cave inhabitants cannot be criticized for thinking that their way was the only way because it was all they ever knew. Following along the same train of thought, this brings to question whether it is wrong for the Christian social imaginary to believe that its way is the only way. In two sentences, Plato answers the question of why Platonic views should be considered compatible with Christian faith. He says, “Each of you in turn must go down to live in the common dwelling place of the others and grow accustomed to seeing in the dark. When you are used to it, you’ll see vastly better than the people there” (Republic, VII, 519 d-e). Just as Plato marks levels of hierarchy between the higher spiritual realm and the lower material realm, one could translate Plato’s cave allegory into a hierarchy of the higher “real” world and the lower “perceived and deceived” world. Just as moving outside of the cave signifies the “real” world, while confinement inside the cave depicts the “perceived and deceived” world. This also can be compared to the Christian social

imaginary.
Many of the deistic voices under scrutiny in this class are rooted in the Platonic social imaginary. For example, Anselm’s ontological argument for God’s existence is grounded in the platonic social imaginary through his difference between the imagined and conceived. Augustine also uses Platonic structures to make sense of God. In fact, Augustine was actually a Neo-Platonist, as he became infamous for combining Christianity and Platonic philosophy into Manichaeism. Augustine takes the Platonic thought of a hierarchy of being and replaces Plato’s concept of the highest “good” with “God.” He sees God as the source of the light of knowledge in place of when Plato uses the example of the Sun shining that light (Republic VI, 1128). Like Plato, Augustine saw the hierarchy of the material temporal realm being lower than a higher spiritual realm. Augustine possess a similar sense to what Plato calls the forms. As Plato states in his participation theory, the forms and ideas abide in all material. Augustine replicates this theory to insert that God abides in all things (Confessions, 136). As Augustine quotes the books of the Platonists, it’s startling how much of the content could be confused as Christian Scripture (Confessions, 147-149). However, Augustine’s revelation lies in an important factor that separates the Christian from the Platonist: the incarnation theory of God descending and becoming human.
The Matrix ties together the shoelaces of Platonist and Christian social imaginary. Those living in the “perceived and deceived” world of the Matrix can be compared to those living in the Platonic cave, while those who ascend out of the cave into the “real” world are the equivalent of those who live in the world of Zion without being controlled by the virtual reality pods. The Christian social imaginary relates to in Ephesians 2:1-3 by saying that those in the “perceived and deceived” world are those dead in sin, following the ways of this world and gratifying the cravings of flesh. The only way that this Scripture says one is made alive, or brought out of the cave/Matrix, is through transcending the perceived material realm through the salvation of Christ. This same salvation of being emancipated from the perceived realm can be seen through the figures of Neo and the character who leaves the cave. However, this dualist act of liberation comes at a price in all three examples, as each exhibits that the result requires a considerable act of adjustment and often persecution from those not on the same level. It could be said that a Platonic social imaginary opens up the possibility for deism even more readily than today’s contemporary social imaginary of modernity. While Plato’s concepts of dualism resemble the porous self, empirical modernity resembles the buffered self.
My immediate first instinct when approached with Platonism was to reject it as being incompatible with Christianity. That’s because I was conditioned in such an exclusively Christian social imaginary to assume that acknowledging anything other than Christianity would be heresy. However, “it is by the refutation of heretics that the church’s meanings are identified, and sound teaching clarified” (Confessions, 155). Using this thesis, one could debate that virtually anything from Buddhism to atheism can be compatible with Christianity. This then raises the question of how accommodating Christianity should be. As Augustine, Plato, The Matrix, and other voices demonstrate, there can be a healthy relationship between the frame of the Platonist and the picture of the Christian social imaginary. A picture can serve the same purpose without the frame, but the frame can’t serve the same purpose without the picture. What would happen if we regarded all of these facets of this thing we call life as an icon?