Plutarch +/- Christ

Our earliest records of ‘professional philosophers’ in Europe date from 6th century BCE Greece. The ‘naturalists’ (e.g. Thales) were quickly followed by the pre-Socratics (5th century), Plato (4th century) and Aristotle (3rd century).  

That was a lot to digest in a short period of time; we’re still burping. It is as if Europe were working double time to make up for a slow start: philosophy had already been around for a  millennium in China, India, Persia, Palestine and Egypt.  

After Aristotle, Greco-Roman philosophy was dominated by the Stoics, the Skeptics, and  the Epicureans. Toward the end of the 1st century CE, Christianity began to breathe new life  into Western philosophy, but it was not until the 5th century that Christian Europe found its Plato…Augustine of Hippo. 

Between Aristotle and Augustine (750 years), there were dozens of important philosophers,  both Christian and Pagan but the polymath Plutarch (c. 100 CE) may help us answer a  crucial question: What path would Western philosophy have taken if Christianity had not  come along to divert the course of history? 

Best known for historical biographies, Plutarch’s philosophical, cosmological, and  theological writing is often overlooked. Unbeknownst to many, toward the end of his life (c.  120 CE) Plutarch served 20 years as one of two priests responsible for maintaining the  Oracle at Delphi. This gave him the opportunity to examine the relationship between  traditional Greco-Roman polytheism and the Eastern monotheisms he had encountered in  the course of his extensive travel and study. 

One of his most insightful works is also one of his shortest: On the Cessation of Oracles. As  if he were reading from the transcript of a 21st century episcopal synod, Plutarch notes  declining public interest in the ideas and practices of ‘established’ religion (sound  familiar?) and he even bemoans the potential impact on the financial prospects of future clergy. (Am I reading Jane Austen?)  

Surrounded by his cadre of 1^st century Greco-Roman influencers, Plutarch asks the  timeless question: Why is religious belief and practice in such decline? (Or, “What’s the  matter with kids today?”) He suggests several possible answers: 

(1) The gods have withdrawn their support and aid in the face of humanity’s persistent  transgressions.

(2) It was never the divine intent to manage the affairs of human beings beyond a certain  stage in their development. Reason was given to humanity to enable it to wean itself  off reliance on the miraculous. 

(3) It is the natural course of events, akin to what we today would call ‘entropy’: “Nature  produces a wasting away and a deprivation… God gives many good things to men  (sic), but not one that is everlasting, so ‘the things of the gods do die but not God’.”  (Sophocles) 

Sometimes, it can be hard to distinguish 1st century Delphi from 20th century Cambridge  (UK or US). And speaking of the 20th century, Ammonius and Theophrastus are clearly  channeling Wittgenstein when they question whether things possible but unproven should  be given weight and, if not, whether it is safe to ignore them entirely. 

One problem remains unsolved, chez Plutarch. How do the divine and human worlds  communicate and interact? According to Plutarch, miracles, rituals, sacrifices are not the  province of the gods per se but of an intermediary class of beings (‘daemons’, our angels &  devils) who facilitate and effectuate divine-human communication with no guarantee of  permanence or even benevolence.  

This is an unattractive aspect of Plutarch’s thinking but really, is it all that unusual? Our  tendency, even today, is to plug any hole in our intellectual wall by positing a brand new  class of being(s) to fill it; can you say aether…or dark matter…or multiverse…or? Every God  is a ‘god-of-the-gaps’…as is everything else. To be is to fill a material gap; to know is to fill a  cognitive lacuna.  

Even so, most philosophers find Plutarch’s solution unsatisfactory. Daemons may facilitate  communication between God and World but who or what facilitates communication  between God and Daemon and/or Daemon and World? The doctrine of ‘intermediaries’ just  kicks the can down the road. 

The crystallizing Christian doctrine of Trinity avoids this pitfall. The Holy Spirit is  ‘intermediary’ between Father and Son, but Holy Spirit is also God. Each of God’s personae (persons) is God, whole and entire. Communication is not intermediation; it’s a state of  being. That’s one reason why John, the evangelist, calls Christ, logos (‘word’). 

Nonetheless, the doctrine of daemons opens a window onto the theological churn of the  era. For example, in Cessation, one of Plutarch’s interlocutors, Cleombrotus, suggests that  there exists a single ‘God’ backed by a multitude of ‘gods’ who function as daemons,  angels, heroes (Norse), and superheroes (Marvel). 

Homer attempted to invest his Olympians with transcendent powers and immanent  appetites. The result is great literature but poor theology. By the time of Plutarch it was still  possible to apply the word ‘god’ to a nymph whose life is co-terminal with a particular tree  or spring. It was also possible to refer to our sun as ‘god’ or to Apollo as ‘sun-god’. And it  was beginning to be possible to speak of god more abstractly: 

“The True One…does not behold an infinite vacuum nor contemplate himself in solitary  grandeur…but looks down on the many operations of god and men (sic).” 

Plutarch testifies to a theological crisis in progress: the categories of Western philosophy  are not yet up to the task of balancing immanence with transcendence. John and Paul offered a  ‘first of its kind’ solution to a very real philosophical problem. 

At the time of Plutarch, the twin doctrines of Incarnation and Trinity were still ‘in  development’. Jesus’ life and teachings gave us all the necessary data points…but we’re  dense. It took 300 years for us to catch on. Even so, Plutarch had better models available to  him than Daemonology. 

It is hard to imagine that Plutarch had not come across the Christian doctrine of  Incarnation. “Who are those folks being eaten by lions?” But if not, he certainly had access  to the ideas of Anaxagoras: Pan in Panti “Everything in everything!”

Anaxagoras  gave us the raw intellectual material we needed to formulate a Trinitarian theology…but  nobody made the connection, not even Plutarch. 

When a proliferation of entities fails to solve your problem, the best thing to do is to invent  even more entities, obviously…right? Isn’t that the ‘definition of sanity’ – to repeat the same  thing over and over and expect a different result each time? No, it’s not! 

So, next stop, other worlds! Plutarch considers the possibility that our universe is one of an  infinite number of universes… or one of 5, or of 50 or 100. Can you say multiverse? In this context, Plutarch considers a model that grabs our attention: “…What absolute necessity is  there for there being several Jupiters…and not one Ruler and Director for the Entirety…a  God possessing Reason and Intelligence…entitled Lord and Father of all?” 

This is dangerously close in concept, and even in vocabulary, to the doctrines emerging in  Christianity. It is tempting to assume that we are seeing its influence in Plutarch’s  work…but there’s zero evidence to support that interpretation and numerous reasons to  suspect it.  

Of course, it is always possible that Plutarch was unintentionally and perhaps unwittingly  influenced by an unrelated third party. But it is also possible that we are seeing evidence  here of convergent evolution. The time was right for radical monotheism!

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Image: Hilma af Klint’s Altarpieces (Group X, 1915) mark the culmination of her spiritually guided abstract series, presenting radiant geometric forms that ascend toward unity and divine order. The three large canvases use gold, blue, and rose tones to symbolize the merging of spirit and matter into a higher consciousness. Together, they serve as visual “portals” between earthly existence and transcendent realms—an abstract expression of multiple, coexisting planes of reality.