Plato's Cave and the Garden of Eden

This is a revised entry from over five years ago. I re-post it to solicit the comments of the Opponent and anyone else who can provide some enlightenment.  I am not a theologian, but theology is far too important to be left to professional theologians.

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An archeologist who claimed to have uncovered the site of Plato's Cave would be dismissed as either a prankster or a lunatic.  There never was any such cave as is described in the magnificent Book VII of Plato's Republic.  And there never were any such cave-dwellers or  goings-on as the ones described in Plato's story.  And yet this, the most famous allegory in the history of philosophy, gives us the truth about the human condition.  It lays bare the human predicament in which shadow is taken for substance, and substance for shadow, the truth-teller for a deceiver, and the deceiver for a truth-teller.

The reader may have guessed where I am going with this.  If the allegory of the Cave delivers the truth about the human predicament despite its falsity when taken literally as an historical narrative, the same could be true for the stories in the Bible. No reasonable person nowadays could take Genesis as reporting historical facts.  To take but one example, at Genesis 3, 8 we read that Adam and Eve, after having tasted of the forbidden fruit, "heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the Garden . . . ."  Taken literally, this implies that God has feet.  But if he has feet was he shod on that day or not?  If shod, what was his shoe size?  10 1/2?    Obviously, nothing can have feet without having feet of a determinate size!  And given that the original parents heard God stomping around, then he had to be fairly large: if God were the size of a flea, he wouldn't have made any noise.  If God were a  physical being, why couldn't he be the size of a flea or a microbe?  The answer to these absurdities is the double-barreled denial that God is a physical being and that Genesis is an historical account.  I could give further examples. (And you hope I won't.)

This is why the deliverances of evolutionary biology do not refute the Fall.  (I grant that said deliverances refute some doctrines of the Fall, those doctrines that posit an original pair of humans, without animal progenitors, from whom the whole human race is descended.)  Indeed, it is quite unintelligent to think that the Fall can be refuted from biology.  It would as stupid as to think that the truths about the human condition that are expressed in Plato's famous allegory can be negated or disconfirmed by the failure of archeologists to locate the site of Plato's Cave, or by any physical proof that a structure like that of Plato's Cave is nomologically impossible.

And yet wasn't that what Jerry Coyne, the University of Chicago biologist, was quoted as maintaining? 

Earlier I quoted John Farrell quoting biologist Jerry Coyne:

I’ve always maintained that this piece of the Old Testament, which is easily falsified by modern genetics (modern humans descended from a group of no fewer than 10,000 individuals), shows more than anything else the incompatibility between science and faith. For if you reject the Adam and Eve tale as literal truth, you reject two central tenets of Christianity: the Fall of Man and human specialness.

 I suppose this shows that the wages of scientism are (topical) stupidity.  

Addenda 

1.  I said that the Allegory of the Cave "gives us the truth about the human condition."  Suppose you disagree.  Suppose you think the story provides no insight into the human condition.    My point goes through nonetheless.  The point is that the truth or falsity of the story is unaffected by empirical discoveries and nondiscoveries.  Anthropological and archeological investigations are simply irrelevant to the assessment of the claims being made in the allegory.  That, I hope, is perfectly obvious.

2.  There is another point that I thought of making but did not because it struck me as too obvious, namely, that the Allegory of the Cave is clearly an allegory, and is indeed explicitly presented as such in Chapter VII of the Republic (cf. 514a et passim), whereas the Genesis account is neither clearly  an allegory, nor explicitly presented in the text as one.  But that too is irrelevant to my main point.  The point is that biological, anthropological, and geological investigations are simply irrelevant for the evaluation of what Genesis discloses or purports to disclose about the human condition.  For example, at Gen 1, 26 we are told that God made man in his image and likeness.  That means:  Man is a spiritual being.  (See my post Imago Dei) Obviously, that proposition can neither be established nor refuted by any empirical investigation.  The sciences of matter cannot be expected to  disclose any truths about spirit.  And if, standing firm on the natural sciences, you deny that there is anything other than matter, then you fall into the easily-refuted mistake of scientism.  Furthermore, Genesis is simply incoherent if taken as presenting facts about history or facts about cosmology and physical  cosmogenesis.  Not only is it incoherent; it is contradicted by what we know from the physical sciences.  Clearly, in any conflict between the Bible and natural science, the Bible will lose.

The upshot is that the point I am making about Genesis cannot be refuted by adducing the obvious difference between a piece of writing that presents itself as an allegory and a piece of writing that does not.  Plato's intention was to write an allegory.  The authors of Genesis presumably did not have the intention of writing an allegory.  But that is irrelevant to the question whether the stories can be taken as reporting historical and physical facts.  It is obvious that Plato's story cannot be so taken.  It is less obvious, but nonetheless true, that the Genesis story cannot be so taken.  For if you take it as historical reportage, then it is mostly false or incoherent, and you miss what is important: the spiritual, not the physical, meaning.

The Opponent writes:

I have been telling the Maverick Philosopher here about Benjamin Sommer’s theory of divine fluidity, which is one solution to the problem of anthropomorphic language in the Hebrew Bible. The problem is not just Genesis 1:26 (‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness’) but also Genesis 3:8 ‘They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze’. Can God be a man with feet who walks around the garden leaving footprints? As opposed to being a pure spirit? The anthropomorphic conception is, in Maverick’s opinion ‘a hopeless reading of Genesis’, and makes it out to be garbage. ‘You can’t possibly believe that God has feet’.

Yet Benjamin Sommer, Professor of Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages at the Jewish Theological Seminary, proposes such a literal and anthropomorphic interpretation. As he argues (The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel), if the authors of the Hebrew Bible had intended their anthropomorphic language to be understood figuratively, why did they not say so? The Bible contains a wide variety of texts in different genres, but there is no hint of this, the closest being the statement ofDeuteronomy 4.15 that the people did not see any form when the Ten Commandments were revealed at Sinai.

My response is as follows.

The Opponent, following Sommer, asks: " if the authors of the Hebrew Bible had intended their anthropomorphic language to be understood figuratively, why did they not say so?"  This rhetorical question is grammatically interrogative but logically declarative: it amounts to the declaration that the authors did intend their crudely anthropomorphic language to be taken literally because they didn't say otherwise.  This declaration, in turn, is a telescoped argument:

The authors did not say that their language was to be taken figuratively;

ergo

Their language is to be taken literally.

The argument, however, is plainly a non sequitur.  It therefore gives me no reason to change my view.

Besides, it is preposterous to suppose that the creator of the the physical universe, "the heavens and the earth," is a proper part of the physical universe.  Since that is impossible, no intelligent reading of Genesis can take the creator of the universe to be a bit of its fauna. Presumably, God gave us the intelligence to read what is obviously figurative as figurative.

And if one takes the Bible to be divine revelation, then it is natural to assume that God is using the authors to get his message across. For that to occur, the authors needn't be terribly bright or apprised of the variety of literary tropes.  What does it matter what the authors intended?  Suppose they intended talk of man being made in the divine image and likeness to be construed in some crassly materialistic way.  Then they failed to grasp the profound spiritual truth that they, willy nilly (nolens volens), were conveying.

3.  The mistake of those who think that biology refutes the Fall is the mirror-image of those benighted fundamentalists and literalists who think that the Fall 'stands or falls' with the historical accuracy of tales about original parents, trees, serpents, etc.  The opposing groups are made for each other.  The scientistic atheist biologist attacks a fundamentalist straw man while the benighted fundamentalist knocks himself out propping up his straw man.  Go at it, boys!  The spectacle is entertaining but not edifying.

Related articles

Pope Francis' Attempt to Put a Christian Face on Islam

Maverick Philosopher: The Old Testament is a Cipher

General Terms, Singular Terms, and Direct Reference

Comments

[Ryan]

As I recall, Socrates once said, “I can tell you what I’ve heard the ancients said, though they alone know the truth. However, if we could discover that ourselves, would we still care about the speculations of other people?”. Perhaps he was indicating that we need not appeal to authority if we can reason our way to the truth. Reasoning our way provides the added benefit, besides the acquisition of truth, of being able to support our conclusions rather than simply throw our hands in the air and rest on the ideas of others. That said, I find there are 'ancients' and contemporaries more skilled at reasoning than I. So how about appealing to an ‘ancient’ and adopting his reasoning: Aquinas, The Summa, Question 1, Article 9. Aquinas there is not dealing with the particulars of events in Eden. But he is concerned with the use of metaphor in scripture. With Aquinas, it seems to me, we have a commitment to truth, sacred scripture, sacred doctrine, and careful, internally consistent, coherent reasoning.

BTW: Love your blog and hope to enjoy your continued online work far into the future.

[Astute opponent]

A few points. First, I found the Aquinas passage I was thinking of at Iª q. 102 a. 1 co, about paradise. Thomas says, my emphasis:

As Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xiii, 21): "Nothing prevents us from holding, within proper limits, a spiritual paradise; so long as we believe in the truth of the events narrated as having there occurred." For whatever Scripture tells us about paradise is set down as matter of history; and wherever Scripture makes use of this method, we must hold to the historical truth of the narrative as a foundation of whatever spiritual explanation we may offer.

Second, on the matter of feet, and shoe size, Sommers holds that the appearances of God in the Old Testament were avatars, i.e. corporeal beings of whom we could say ‘this is God’, but with the demonstrative referring to God, rather than the corporeal being.

Third, on the allegory of the Cave. Cornford translates the opening as ‘here is a parable’. The Greek is ἀπείκασον, meaning to express by a comparison. He goes on ‘Picture (ἰδὲ = visually imagine, see mentally, see in your mind’s eye) men dwelling in a sort of subterranean cavern’. Seems a clear signal that this is allegory, no? I come back to Sommers: ‘if the authors of the Hebrew Bible had intended their anthropomorphic language to be understood figuratively, why did they not say so?’.

[BV]

>>Seems a clear signal that this is allegory, no? I come back to Sommers: ‘if the authors of the Hebrew Bible had intended their anthropomorphic language to be understood figuratively, why did they not say so?’.<<

Yes, the Allegory of the Cave is an allegory.

As for the Sommer (not Sommers) question, I answered it twice now and you ignore my answer. Once more:

And if one takes the Bible to be divine revelation, then it is natural to assume that God is using the authors to get his message across. For that to occur, the authors needn't be terribly bright or apprised of the variety of literary tropes. What does it matter what the authors intended? Suppose they intended talk of man being made in the divine image and likeness to be construed in some crassly materialistic way. Then they failed to grasp the profound spiritual truth that they, willy nilly (nolens volens), were conveying.

[BV]

Thanks, Ryan, I'll re-read q 1 art 9.

[Thomas]

Dear BV,

thanks for this post, I agree with your take here. I've never had trouble viewing the genesis account/garden of eaden as metaphorical or symbolic. If you think about it, the spiritual truths that this account is tryinng to get across are very deep and quite complex. I think the garden of eaden is really quite a remarkable and creative piece of work, it is a vehicle, we could say, for transporting certain theological/spiritual truths, themes, and ideas to its reader. What anyone who reads this account should ask themselves is, 'what is the main point this author is trying to get across?' not, 'where is this garden located?'

People might then say 'then we should apply this kind of thinking to the gospel accounts too!' etc. Which is just pure nonesense.

[JS]

I agree with your thoughts here, BV, but let me introduce a slightly different angle. Suppose someone were outside of the Church looking into it as a potential spiritual home. Suppose one agrees with your interpretation above, but then reads the following in the CCC:

"The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man."

What is one then to conclude, given the apparent contradiction between your interpretation and the passage thus cited? Should one abandon one's pursuit of finding a spiritual home in the Church? For that matter, should one who is already formally a member of the Church seek to leave it? Why or why not?

[Astute opponent]

Taking these in turn:
>>Yes, the Allegory of the Cave is an allegory.
My point was that Plato explicitly says it is an allegory, not that it is an allegory.

>>As for the Sommer (not Sommers) question, I answered it twice now
I answered this when we discussed a while ago. There are a number of possibilities

1. They invented the whole thing, and deceptively wrote it as though literally true.
2. They imagined it without divine influence, and wrote it as literally true, but in good faith.
3. They imagined it without divine influence, but wanted to convey a spiritual truth. This is open to Sommer’s objection. Why didn’t they say it was an allegory, just as Plato says the Cave is an allegory?
4. They received it through divine influence, and wrote it as it is, but God was lying.
5. They received it through divine influence, and wrote it as it is, and God telling it like it is.
6. They received it as a spiritual truth through divine influence, but wrote it as literal. This is also open to the charge of deception.

I am sure there are more possibilities. In fact there must be. The considerations are (i) whether the intended sense is true (ii) whether God was using them or not (iii) whether the intended sense was literal (iv) whether the authors were acting in good faith. Assuming all combinations are possible, that gives 16.

>> And if one takes the Bible to be divine revelation, then it is natural to assume that God is using the authors to get his message across. For that to occur, the authors needn't be terribly bright or apprised of the variety of literary tropes. What does it matter what the authors intended? Suppose they intended talk of man being made in the divine image and likeness to be construed in some crassly materialistic way. Then they failed to grasp the profound spiritual truth that they, willy nilly (nolens volens), were conveying.<<

I think the combination you have in mind is (i) false (ii) God was using them (iii) literal (iv) good faith. However this undermines the authority of God, who presumably wanted them to express a spiritual truth, whereas they succeeded only in communicating a literal falsehood. Perhaps they weren’t too bright, in which case why didn’t God choose smarter prophets?

[Ryan]

What I write here is written in all humility – I’m neither accomplished writer, nor philosopher, nor theologian. For the purposes of this entry, I’m more student and occasional spit-baller.

After my brief comment pointing to the Summa yesterday, I thought on the matter a bit more through the evening.

It occurred to me that another of Plato’s dialogues, Halcyon, might provide more grist for the mill. The legend of a woman transforming into a bird is related, then briefly considered in terms of realities more familiar.

To wit: storms, people, and bees, among other things. Savage and powerful storms could convince a person the world is on the edge of destruction. In Halcyon, a storm terrible to behold gives way to a serene day at the beach. People experiencing only calm days at the beach might have difficulty believing in violent dark downpour, flashing lightning, and hurricane winds, had they not seen it for themselves. The contrast to calm sunny weather and the occasionally overwhelming force of inclement weather are a testament to the shockingly different states possible in the natural world. It’s a powerful transformation some must see to believe (one of the merits of Youtube, I suppose). Other examples of marvelous contrast in potency and act include that of human infant versus adult in terms of physical strength and intellect, as well as larva in contrast to mature honey bee. If the differences between infants and adults were not known, they would be difficult to imagine. The same holds for larvae and a colony of honey bees. Or, to use a scriptural analogy, seeds and grain (I Cor 15:35-37)

Now to the question of God’s power. If effects are proportionate to causes, and if the known universe came into being (i.e. is an effect), the cause must be, as Trump might say, yuge. It seems at least within the bounds of possibility that such a cause, if it possessed intelligent will, could in some way take on the form of a human and enjoy the company of sentient beings he created in a garden he made for them. In which case, his shoe size would be only a temporary and small concern. And shoe size should hardly be cause for alarm. It could also be the case that you have an immortal soul – and you have a shoe size, too.

Or perhaps God is simply communicating higher truths through symbols accessible even to young people. After all, even a hardened literalist would say Jesus isn’t literally a lion, because if he was, it would be harder to literally be a lamb.

[BV]

JS,

>>Suppose one agrees with your interpretation above, but then reads the following in the CCC:

"The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man."<<

Please clarify what you take me to be saying that is in real or apparent contradiction to the CCC, and then I'll try to answer.

[JS]

Sure. You make various claims, such as the following, which seem to conflict with the above passage:

"No reasonable person nowadays could take Genesis as reporting historical facts."

"The answer to these absurdities is the double-barreled denial that God is a physical being and that Genesis is an historical account"

"Genesis is simply incoherent if taken as presenting facts about history"

You seem to be saying that Genesis is not and cannot be historical without running into absurdities (I agree). The CCC says that Genesis is historical, despite the symbolic language it uses. In other words, something happened in human history we call the fall (which you would seem to dispute), even though this may not have involved talking snakes and so on.

[Astute opponent]

Eleonore Stump on The God of the Bible and the God of the Philosophers (podcast) is worth a visit. There is also her book of the same, published this year.

[BV]

JS,

I sketched an answer to your sort of question here: http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2011/08/modern-genetics-and-the-fall-science-and-religion-in-collision.html

I muddied the waters above by not distinguishing different senses of 'history.' I was referring to natural history. But history proper does not begin until the point at which man the animal (who of course has animal progenitors) becomes a spiritual being, as I sketch in the linked post.