GOD Plato’s Evolving Theology Plato’s own attitude to religion evolved along with his other metaphysical beliefs In the central part of the Republic the summit of the universe is occupied not by a personal God but by the Idea of the Good, which plays the part in the ideal world of Being that is played by the sun in our everyday world of becoming (508c–e) Everything ultimately owes its being to this absolute goodness, which is itself beyond and superior to being (509b) In the Symposium it is the Idea of Beauty that is supreme, and the priestess Diotima describes to Socrates, in terms appropriate to the religious initiation of mystery cults, the soul’s ascent to the lofty raptures of its vision Humans crave immortality: this craving drives them to procreate and cherish their oVspring, to strive for exploits that will go down in history, and to create works of art of everlasting value But these are only the lesser mysteries of love To reach the greatest mysteries, the candidate should rise above beautiful bodies, above beautiful souls, above the beauty of sciences and institutions, to reach an eternal and unchanging absolute beauty The most noble life consists in the intellectual contemplation of beauty divine, absolute, and unalloyed These rites of love will make the initiate as immortal as any human being can be (206b–212a) Despite the religious context and phraseology, the Idea of Beauty in the Symposium is no more personal than the Idea of the Good in the Republic But in the Sophist this very fact is given as a reason for a substantial overhaul of the Theory of Ideas ‘Shall we be easily persuaded’, asks the Eleatic Visitor, ‘that change and life and soul and wisdom not belong to the most perfect being, and that it neither lives nor thinks, but remains motionless and stately and sacred but mindless?’ (248e) By the time he wrote the Timaeus Plato had reached a conception of God close to that of the major monotheistic religions The topic of the dialogue is the origin of the world we live in: did it always exist, or did it come into being? Because it is visible and tangible it must have come into being; but it is no easy task ‘to Wnd the maker and father of this universe’ (28c) Why should such a one have brought it into being? ‘He was good, and what is good has no particle of jealousy in it; and so, being free of jealousy, he wanted all things to be as much like himself as possible’ (29e).1 God Cf Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Creation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) 101–4 293