Monday, March 14, 2011

How Can We Have a Fair Debate About the Authenticity of the Letter to Theodore When Christian Scholarship Won't Admit that Clement of Alexandria Cites WITH APPROVAL Plato's Idealization of Homosexual and Pederastic Desire

"The Christians were glad to find support for their view in Plato's Laws 838 E. Similarly their hatred of pederasty had precedent in Plato, though the homosexual love of Plato's Symposium was not so supportive." [Henry Chadwick The Church in ancient society: from Galilee to Gregory the Great p. 122]

The discovery of the Letter to Theodore only exposes something in the Stromateis and other Clement texts by centuries of Patristic scholarship. Plato is not in favor of the consumation of homosexuality (or pederasty) but develops his theory of love from a sublimation of these impulses. Any 'Platonizing Christian' who cites with approval from the description of the idealized 'love' Plato is describing in the Symposium and the Phaedrus, would be like to have accepted and used a gospel like the 'Secret Mark' described in the Letter to Theodore. Indeed it is nothing short of the perfect embodiment of the fusion of Christianity and Platonism.


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