PLATO'S JUST MAN

Quote From Plato’s Republic:

“…Let us place the just man in his nobleness and simplicity, wishing, as Aeschylus says to be and not seem good.

There must be no seeming, for if he seem to be just he will be honored and rewarded, and then we shall not know whether he is just for the sake of justice or for the sake of the honors and rewards; therefore, let him be clothed in justice only, and have no other covering; and he must be imagined in a state of life opposite the former. Let him be the best of men and let him be thought the worst; then he will have been put to the proof…

…The just man who is thought to be unjust will be scourged, racked, bound, will have his eyes burnt out; and at last, after suffering every kind of evil he will be impaled.”

This is a forecast of Jesus written in stilted English.

C.S. Lewis explained it farther in Reflections on the Psalms in the chapter on second meanings;

“…cases in which the latter truth (which the speaker did not know) is intimately related to the truth he did know; so that in hitting on something like it, he was in touch with that very simple reality in which that fuller truth is rooted.

We are prolonging his meaning in a direction congenial to it. The basic reality behind his words and behind the full truth is one and the same.

If Plato, starting from one example and from his insight into the nature of goodness and the nature of the world, was led on to see the possibility of a perfect example, and thus depict something extremely like the passion of Christ, this happened not because he was lucky but because he was wise.”

What excuse have we who have the revealed Word of God to let us see and emulate the holy goodness of Jesus?