Jews, Greeks and the Universals: Truth, Goodness and Beauty

 "Plato formulated what he named the “universals” as the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. He held that if we are to live a whole and mature life, the three had to work together harmoniously in us. The American church has deleted Beauty from that triad. We are vigorous in contending for the True and energetic in insisting on the Good, but Beauty, the forms by which the True and the Good take shape in human life, we pretty much ignore. Plato, and many of our wisest teachers who have followed him, insisted that all three—Truth, Goodness, Beauty—are organically connected. Without Beauty, there is no container for Truth and Goodness, no form, no way of coming to expression in human life. Truth divorced from Beauty becomes abstract and bloodless. Goodness divorced from Beauty becomes loveless and graceless." --Eugene Peterson

So many Christians want to say that Jerusalem has nothing to do with Athens. However, the Beloved Apostle, who was a Jew, uses the Greek concept of the Logos to describe Jesus, as he gives us a second "genesis" story in the first chapter of his Gospel.

So many people think that the Greek idea of God is also only about ineffability and immutability. But Plato's idea of participation is a philosophical way of talking about relationship, and Aristotle's idea of substantial form can be a way of thinking about incarnation. THomas Aquinas saw that, and gave us a remarkable medieval synthesis of Greek philosophy and Christian faith.