Reply #16: Platonic dichotomy [View All]

[Deep13]

The idea that God and those things that are spiritual are somehow holy while the Earth and physical things are not has nothing to do with anything taught be Jesus and I would be surprised if it had anything to do with Judaism either. St. Paul gleened these ideas from Greek philosphy, especially Plato, who taught that there is a realm of forms and a realm of ideals. The forms, physical things including people, were merely the imperfect reflections of the ideals. Paul was a Roman citizen and was familiar with classical philosophy.

The idea that the whole of of it is all of the same nature seems a lot more logical to me than Platonic idealism. Further, we know for a fact that the Earth, humans and heavenly objects (basically the entire universe minus the Earth) are all made of the same stuff and follow the same natural "laws."