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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: speech. The ideal of the Greek state found an expression in the
deification of law: the ancient Stoic spoke of a wise man perfect in
virtue, who was fancifully said to be a king; but neither they nor Plato
had arrived at the conception of a person who was also a law. Nor is it
easy for the Christian to think of God as wisdom, truth, holiness, and also
as the wise, true, and holy one. He is always wanting to break through the
abstraction and interrupt the law, in order that he may present to himself
the more familiar image of a divine friend. While the impersonal has too
slender a hold upon the affections to be made the basis of religion, the
conception of a person on the other hand tends to degenerate into a new
kind of idolatry. Neither criticism nor experience allows us to suppose
Statesman |
