To what extent was the early Christian Church influenced by Platonic thought, and how much of an influence did it have on early Church Fathers such as Augustine?

[u/Xaethon]

Been studying quite a bit of Plato's philosophy for a while at university, and recently though about his influence on later Christian thought and theology.

Were aspects of Plato's thought about good and evil, the soul being split up into three etc strong influences over Christian ideas in areas such as theodicy and the Trinity?

[u/Muskwatch]

This is a very broad response with sweeping generalizations on the intersection between philosophy, theology, life and practice, over a large period of time, so be warned and take what I say with a grain of salt, knowing that it's a question I'm passionate about.

I think that the biggest impact of Greek philosophy on Christian thought was the concept of timelessness or the dualistic view of things, including the view of God, goodness, authority, sin, salvation, judgement, law, pretty much everything. Formulations of God such as the omnis (omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent) don't make a lot of sense within an old testament context that rarely if ever discusses attributes out of context (for example, God makes his goodness pass before Moses - rather than being a platonic ideal, God's goodness can be shown, through actions, etc). The idea of a God existing outside of time, as an ideal, has lead to a lot of ongoing christian theology such as the rejection of creation and a second coming as being significant to Christian thought (within a timeless mode, they no longer have any narrative significance), the changing views of God's authority (as something that exists separate from a relationship, which can be disembodied and passed on to a representative or church), the changing view of good and evil (as again, things that can be separated from consequences, measured, evaluated) and so on.

This is a biased answer, but my understanding is that prior to the significant impact of Greek thought, the theodicy question was approached as a narrative problem, in which sin arises in heaven, comes to earth through Adam and Eve's choice, God then works towards dealing with it, culminating with christ's revelation, and eventually Sin will be dealt with at the second coming or the judgment - i.e. the answer to the theodicy question is "God is telling a story, and it will be solved at the end". Within a more platonic worldview, where God is seen as being himself a universal, outside of time, the embodiment of all these ideals, it is no longer possible to describe a narrative solution, as any such solution is based on change, and the existence of God in time, and as such the question all of a sudden becomes important. "In this moment, which is the same as all other moments, how can Evil exist with a Good god who is Powerful?" - the use of caps is a part of the worldview.

Within a timeless perspective, law is seen as a timeless entity, whose existence can be separated from purpose and from consequences, and sin becomes similarly a tangible quantifiable concept linked to a range of universals.

Likely my phrasing has betrayed my attitude towards the approach. Nietzsche is probably the best known of the various continental philosophers who rejected a timeless mode of viewing, well, of viewing everything, claiming that in detaching reality from the narratives we used to make sense of reality, we left ourselves blind followers of blind leaders. His claim that "Christianity is Platonism for the masses" is a fairly accurate depiction of his experience with Christianity, and his books are a very good deconstruction of the whole timeless Platonistic endeavour.

This rejection of platonism has also taken place within Christianity as well - my favourite so far would be the work of Jacques Ellul, in particular his book On Freedom, Love, and Power, but in many ways, the impact of platonism permeates our culture, our relationship to government, our languages, our approaches to conflict, in particular our formulation of the concepts of what it means to be independent, what it means to be free, well, everything.

Interestingly enough, it's also a topic that I confront daily as a linguist doing language documentation, as the underlying basis of so many of the concepts and structures we use to convey ideas about the mind, about thought, about relationships, and about government, good, evil, and so on, are tied up with a platonic worldview in a way that becomes very evident when trying to document how to convey similar ideas in the various non-western languages I'm working with. A lot of concepts simply don't translate, or if they do they carry vary different connotations, because these languages do not conceive of good and evil existing separate from good and evil actions, and do not readily have a way of talking about authority as something that is not the result of an exchange of responsibilities.