by Joshua Shaw

Picking up where we left off (here), we will look at one more engagement of Eusebius with Plato before, in the last installment, drawing some final conclusions.

In Book II of the Republic, Plato famously casts the poets out of his “city in speech.” Eusebius quotes from this book at very great length (six Stephanus pages see here), which is to say a full seven-page citation (!). In Eusebius’s scheme, as we saw in a previous post here (second paragraph), the citation from the Republic illustrates Plato’s uncompromising stance over against the “mythological theology” of the poets, which sets Eusebius up to reject Plato on the grounds of inconsistency.

 Of this we will quote the most important part for our analysis, in which Plato argues, against the poets, that God is only the cause of good and that he never changes (II. 379b-d here):

…And is not God of course good in reality and always to be spoken of as such?

     Certainly.

But further, no good thing is harmful, is it?

     I think not.

Can what is not harmful harm?

     By no means.

Can that which does not harm do any evil?

     Not that either.

But that which does no evil would not be cause of any evil either?

      How could it?

Once more, is the good beneficent?

     Yes.

It is the cause, then, of welfare?

     Yes.

Then the good is not the cause of all things, but of things that are well it the cause—of things that are ill it is blameless.

     Entirely so, he said.

Neither, then, could God, said I, since he is good, be, as the multitude say, the cause of all things, but for mankind he is the cause of few things, but of many things not the cause. For good things are far fewer with us than evil, and for the good we must assume no other cause than God, but the cause of evil we must look for in other things and not in God.

and (II.381b-d):

It is universally true, then, that that which is in the best state by nature or art or both admits least alteration by something else.

     So it seems.

But God, surely, and everything that belongs to God is in every way in the best possible state.   

Of course.

From this point of view, then, it would be least of all likely that there would be many forms in God.

     Least indeed.

But would he transform and alter himself?

     Obviously, he said, if he is altered.

Then does he change himself for the better and to something fairer, or for the worse and to something uglier than himself?

     It must necessarily, said he, be for the worse if he is changed.

and (382c-383a here):

…It is impossible then, said I, even for a god to wish to alter himself, but, as it appears, each of them being the fairest and best possible abides for ever simply in his own form. An absolutely necessary conclusion to my thinking. No poet then,  I said, my good friend, must be allowed to tell us that

The gods, in the likeness of strangers, / Many disguises assume as they visit the cities of mortals (Hom. Od. 17.485-486)

And when any of those whom we call friends owing to madness or folly attempts to do some wrong, does it not then become useful to avert the evil—as a medicine? And also in the fables of which we were just now speaking owing to our ignorance of the truth about antiquity, we liken the false to the true as far as we may and so make it edifying.

     We most certainly do, he said.

Tell me, then, on which of these grounds falsehood would be serviceable to God. Would he because of his ignorance of antiquity make false likenesses of it?

     An absurd supposition, that, he said.

Then there is no lying poet in God.

     I think not.

Well then, would it be through fear of his enemies that he would lie?

     Far from it.

Would it be because of the folly or madness of his friends?

     Nay, no fool or madman is a friend of God.

Then there is no motive for God to deceive.

     None.

From every point of view the divine and the divinity are free from falsehood.

     By all means.

Then God is altogether simple and true in deed and word…

Eusebius, after quoting all of this, digests it for the reader and reinterprets all the while making it plausible that he does so with Plato’s–so to speak–approval.

First he states that such disgraceful myths find no place in the Hebrew scriptures and secondly that the two propositions–that God is only the cause of good and never changes–find approbation in Genesis 1:4, Wisdom 1:13f., 2:24, Jerem. 2:21, Prov. 3:12, Mal. 3:6 and so on. Thus what the pagan found so sublime in Plato’s system was given to men long before in special revelation to the Hebrews.

But now for the twist:

If then they [the Hebrew writers] introduce the Word of God as appearing in a human shape it must also be said that they do so not in like manner to the myths of the Greeks: such as Proteus and Thetis and Hera nor again like the gods who “Many disguises assume as they visit the cities of mortals,” did the Hebrew oracles introduce the Word of God as having been made manifest to men, but like Plato himself claims is sometimes necessary for benefitting friends “when (they) owing to madness or folly attempt to do some wrong, then as a useful medicine” the visitation of God to men became necessary… Wherefore they [the Hebrew oracles] say that the savior and doctor made a visit, not at all departing from his proper nature nor again deceiving those who see, but preserved both faithfully (ἀληθῆ), the invisible and the seen. He has been somehow seen as a true man, but was the true word of God, being no magician nor again deceiving those who beheld him, seeing as it seemed also good to Plato that the divine be perfectly true (ἀψευδές καλῶς). “The God-Word being altogether simple (ὁ θεός λόγος ἁπλοῦς ὢν) and true in deed and word…”

If one does not pay close attention here, Eusebius’s strong hand may sweep us along. On the one hand, he wants to affirm Plato’s rejection of the mythology–and he does so with the sentence “Wherefore they say the savior…” On the other, he has to figure a way around the very thing which Plato most clearly denied, that God should be a friend of those who are mad or depraved (i.e., from the Christian view, men after the Fall).

Eusebius here reinterprets (rather than rejecting) Plato’s own words: “But like Plato himself claims is necessary…” He follows this line saying that the human race was given a rational soul according to the “Word of God” and those were “more dear to him (θεοφιλέστερον) than any other living thing on earth.” This of course would not have convinced Plato, but Eusebius’s reader might believe so.

Plato’s Use of Sources

To better see what is at stake, we may receive some help from the great nineteenth-century scholar of Plato, Benjamin Jowett , who, summarizing Plato’s argument, says “(1) God is good; (2) God is true, and this (α) in himself (i.e., unchangeable either from without or from within), and (β) in relation to us –i.e. he cannot lie or appear other than he is” (Jowett, Greek Text of the Republic, vol. II p. 104 here). Then Jowett goes on to notice something more interesting still.

He next elucidates Plato’s use of his source (Homer): “Plato has somewhat unfairly omitted the following line, which expresses a higher feeling, and is therefore unsuited to his purpose” (ibid. 105). This “higher feeling” was namely that the gods are “watching over the violation and maintenance of good order among men” (Od. xvii. 487). Now we know that Eusebius knew that this was the following line in Homer, because he has already quoted it on two other occasions in the PE (III.3, 9 and V.36, 2). What has happened here?

Eusebius has used Plato in the exact same way that Plato used Homer. Moreover, with one hand Eusebius uses Plato to refine Homer and with the other brings back on stage what Homer had previously affirmed, seen in its fuller light as a (vague) premonition of the Incarnation. Brilliant.

Along similar lines is the second use of Plato, which begins “The God-Word being altogether simple”: my readers may now be wondering why this is in quotation marks at all, and they would not be alone. Karl Mras, the tremendously erudite editor of the PE–he spent 40 years in preparing the text across the two World Wars–has placed this sentence in quotations, because it nearly matches a sentence from Plato just quoted by Eusebius, in which it is said, “the God is altogether simple and true in deed and in word.” Eusebius has taken the neuter noun, used as a “generic term” by Plato (Jowett, ibid. p. 102), made it now masculine to match the logos (λόγος), which he has added in and by the slightest changes made Plato consistent with Christianity.

What are we to make of this clever rearrangement of Plato? Is it truthful or faithful? What kind of reader did Eusebius envision for himself and how did he expect this work to be used? One thing is certain: this citational judo would have made Plato proud.