The Call to Love

The two authors we spend the most time discussing in Torrey are Plato and Augustine, and rightly so as both have deeply affected Western thought. Much of the development of theology, East and West, has come out of Augustine. I’ve already stressed the importance of Plato in an earlier post, which I’ll be referencing throughout this one.

Loving God

During my freshmen and sophomore years I wrote two papers on “The Call to Love” which took Plato and connected him to Christ’s command to love. While I am a better writer now, I believe the ideas in it have been the most important and fundamental to my spiritual growth as well as how I interact with the world around me. My thought forms around Plato’s tripartite soul and Christ’s command to love him and love others.

My theory originates from Mark 12:30.

Plato like Play-Doh: The Tripartite Soul, The Cave, and The Forms

No blog on the Torrey curriculum would be complete without a look at Plato. While I don’t claim to be an expert (except maybe in puns), I have been taught and trained to both understand and explain Plato. It is possible, however, to read Plato and miss what is happening in the big picture. We read Plato in our first semester and I’m sure I missed most of it. This series of posts will serve as a guide to some of the basic elements of Plato. I believe these ideas are important for everyone to understand, even if they don’t agree with them, for they appear throughout much of Western thought. Having clear definitions of these terms and ideas will hopefully help you read and understand Plato and other books better.

One thing I must say is that this is not a post to replace reading Plato. Reading the primary text is the most important thing for