Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 91
GREEK PHILOSOPHY. We respectfully yet strongly disagree with him when he assumes that the same applied to Socrates' own experiences. Only two pages after what he has concluded about the nature of the supernatural commands of others, the author has to admit that the God of Socrates was different: 'Because, as we saw earlier, unlike their gods,. Socrates' god is invariantly good, incapable of causing any evil to anyone in any way at any time. . Since to deceive a man is to do evil to him, Socrates' god cannot be lying. " 15. Further, in the same chapter, he rightly attributes a concept of worship to Socrates which was distinctly opposed to the so-called worship of the Athenians. The worship of Athenians according to him was: 6 . . . an art of commercial exchanges between gods and men. '16. Their worship had to be rebuffed because they, the. Athenians, make gods appear dependent on them by whatever is offered at their altar, but the God of Socrates who is wrongly referred to as "gods" by the author: 6 . . . stand in no need of gifts from us, while we are totally dependent on their gifts to us…. . ,16. Evidently, Socratic treatment of Athenian worship is with reference to their polytheistic godhead which may be referred to in plural, but it should be remembered here that the word 'god', whenever used in plural by Socrates, does not always indicate the Athenian gods which were just a product of their fancy. A careful study of Socrates reveals that by the term 'gods', he sometimes refers to angels or any other spiritual form of life above men and under God. 91