In book VII of ‘The Republic’ Plato crafts a narrative between Socrates and Plato’s brother, Glaucon. It’s a thought provoking piece that, written roughly 400 years before the birth of Christ, is commonly referred to as ‘The Allegory of the Cave’.
It is said that Plato introduced this work to compare the ‘effect of education and the lack of it on our nature’. I’ve found, however, the paradigm Plato produces may be useful in examining some of mysteries of Christ’s teachings.
To tee this up, I’ve paraphrased the paradigm producing portion of Book VII (below).
A group of men were forced to live in a cave since childhood. They are chained and cannot move their heads. In such a state they can see the wall of the cave before them. The mouth of the cave is located slightly above and behind them and is opened such that a blazing fire placed without casts the shadows of the captives on the wall before them.
Unbeknownst to the captives, men are without the cave. They pass along a path between the opening and the fire carrying figures and statues made of various materials. Some figures are styled as animals, some as shapes. As they do, the shadows of the object they carry fall on the cave wall. Some men talk and others remain silent. The sound of their voices echo off the chamber walls and nothing they say can be clearly discerned.
As the captives speak with each other they talk of what was before them, believing the sounds they heard were produced by the shadows on the cave wall. To them reality would be literally nothing but the shadows that have been shown on the cave wall for their entire life. These men confer honor among themselves on those who were quickest to observe a passing shadow or who best remarked on which went before, or followed after, or which were together. Of course the greatest honor fell on he who was best able to draw conclusions as to which shadow would appear next.
Suppose a prisoner is released. At first he is compelled to turn and look towards the mouth of the cave. In doing so he suffers great pain as his eyes are unaccustomed to the light. He will be unable to see the reality of his condition. Were his captives to attempt to explain to him that what he saw before was an illusion and that he is now approaching a more real existence, what would be his response? Is it at all possible to explain to him with words he could understand the true nature of his existence? Would he not believe that the shadows he experienced his entire life are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?
Suppose now that the prisoner is drug away from the cave and again held in chains in the shadow of a tree. In the presence of the light of the sun he is pained and distraught. The presence of the light now blinds him to reality. Over some few days he grows accustomed to the light of the upper world and gains his sight. At first he sees the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects, and then the objects themselves. He gazes upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night at first better than by the light of the sun by day. Finally he will be able to see all that the sun lights in this world and understand the proper place of the sun, and he will contemplate the sun as it is. His chains are removed and he takes his natural place in his new world.
He is pleased to have found the true reality. And when he remembers his old life and the false wisdom of the cave and his fellow-prisoners he feels great pity for them. He would not choose to return to cave and his chains.
Now imagine that after growing accustomed to this reality he is forced to return to the cave and again placed in chains. Having returned to his previous circumstance his eyes are unaccustomed to the weak light. In the contest where his fellow prisoners recall and predict the shadows, he is the worst. Among this group the honor would flow to those that never left the cave. What if he spoke of the upper world? What words could he use, that the captives would understand, to describe trees, brooks, the sun, moon, stars? If he were to try, he would be ridiculed and thought mad.
Men would say of him that up he went and came down without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, they would catch the offender and put him to death.
Now the Allegory of the Cave continues beyond this brief paraphrase and, again, I recommend it as a good read. For me, the utility of this 2400 year old work comes from applying the paradigm to the teachings (or his attempts to teach) of Christ. For the sake of discovery/ discussion/ argument/ enlightenment/ entertainment consider the following.
- Suppose Christ knew only what were his own thoughts or what was told to him about God and the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ prior to his baptism. He would have been as us; chained to the false reality of the world in which we find ourselves.
- Suppose that his baptism took him from this world and placed him with the Father in the Father’s Kingdom. This much like the captive in the cave that was taken and placed into reality.
- Suppose the Kingdom is so foreign to the mind of man that all of the words we know or create could not possibly express the form of Heaven or the true nature of reality. Could Christ have found the human words to express these concepts to his disciples once he returned to this world?
- It is easy to suppose that Heaven is not a physical place. Nor is it difficult to suppose it is without time and the influence that time has on reasoning and existence. Suppose that the moment (frame/packet of time) when Christ returned to this world after his baptism and the moment when he expired on the cross were exactly the same moment. The moment when he transitioned from and returned to ‘reality’.
I suggest that Christ’s final words on the cross (My God, My God, why have you forsaken me) were uttered when he was returned to the ‘cave’ and not when he was removed from it.