Heroes and Reformers of History...No. 3
SOCRATES: GOD'S PROPHET TO A PAGAN WORLD
He was not a handsome man. Tradition has it that he had a bald head, great round face and protruding eyes, thick lips, and a snub nose. Anyone who came under his influence, however, soon forgot his ungainly appearance. Born in Athens as the son of a stonecutter, he lived virtually all his life in the marketplace of his native city. Unlike many other men of wisdom who wandered from city to city, he not only lived as a philosopher in Athens all 70 of his years but died as a martyr there in 399 B.C. at the hands of the state, executed because he taught people, especially the youth, that "the unexamined life is not worth living," which caused them to do such things as forsake the temples of the Greek gods.
If Athens can be described as the queen city of the ancient pagan world, Socrates can be identified as God's prophet to that illustrious pagan city. It is my conviction that God was in Socrates preparing the Greek mind for the coming of Christ. He himself was mindful of some such call, for he referred to himself as "God's gadfly" in that he saw it as his mission to sting the Athenians out of their moral lethargy at a time when the people were steeped in superstition and ignorance.
When Socrates walked the streets of Athens there was no knowledge of the one true God of heaven. Paganism ruled the land and the people worshipped gods and goddesses who were guilty of such heinous sins as rape, incest, and murder. It is understandable that Socrates became controversial when he buttonholed people on their way to the temple and asked them why they offered sacrifices to gods who were more sinful than themselves.
Socrates saw his question-asking mission as ordained of God, for he would say things like, "I will go about testing and examining every man whom I think wise as God has commanded me." Like a prophet of the Old Testament he would say, "I am in very great poverty by reason of my service to God." And like other prophets he had a hard time of it because he would tell the seers of Athens, "I believe that only God is really wise." And like New Testament apostles he would say, "Athenians, I hold you in the highest regard and love; but I will obey God rather than you." And he was no less prophetic when he said, "I think that I am the gadfly that God has sent to the city to attack it." He always believed that he was directed by "the sign of God." Once the court found him guilty of corrupting the youth and ruled that he should die by drinking hemlock, he said to his judges, "Now the time has come and we must go hence. Ito die and you to live. Whether life or death is better is known to God and to God only."
While Socrates preached the one God of heaven to a pagan world, there is no evidence that he had any contact with the Hebrew prophets or with any of their writings that may have begun to circulate by the fifth century B.C., and the Jews were the only ones that we know of at that time who had a monotheistic faith. Where then did Socrates get his belief in one God? From the same source that Abraham, another pagan, got his faith, from God himself, who has never left himself without witness even among the pagan nations. God reveals himself through nature, through reason, and through consciousness. Socrates believed he found the true God of heaven in his own moral consciousness, a conviction that was confirmed by reason and the moral nature of the universe.
Socrates was not only a prophet to the pagan world but a tutor unto Christ, for he helped prepare the Greek mind for the coming of the gospel. He was probably the first thinker to speak of man having an immortal soul. Even as he faced death he drew a distinction between the spirit of man and the body in which the spirit resides. When one of his disciples raised the question of how he should be buried, he responded that if anyone had any idea of burying Socrates he would have to be quick, for he would be making his flight from this world. When the disciple made it clear that some disposition would have to be made of his body, Socrates replied that they could do with his body as they pleased, but that they would not be burying Socrates. Such amazing insights as this helped to prepare the Greek mind for Christian concepts.
The old philosopher was convinced that he was called of God to make his fellow Athenians aware of their ignorance, and in doing this he spoke of one God while those around him paid homage to all sorts of gods. Believing as he did that God has placed universal truths deep within man's moral consciousness, he explored the mind in search of ideas, using the technique of question and answer. He gave the world what is known as dialectic or the Socratic method, which assumes that truth will emerge from the morass of error and superstition in the crucible of competing ideas, somewhat like churning produces butter.
What an amazing figure Socrates was in the streets of Athens! Clad in the same threadbare tunic summer and winter and barefoot, he walked leisurely and with little concern among the great and small alike, insisting that the unexamined life is not worth living and that "Know thyself" is the beginning of wisdom. More than most Christians seem to, he took no thought of the morrow, sacrificing any self interest to the pursuit of truth. And in all this he saw himself not simply as a gadfly, of which there were many in ancient Greece, but as God's gadfly. Like Jesus who came 400 years afterward, Socrates boldly challenged pretense and hypocrisy, and his humility of spirit attracted the simple people around him. He had a way of saying "I know nothing," by which he meant that there is so much that he did not know that he could declare himself ignorant.
And yet the Oracle of Delphi, the official seer, declared Socrates the wisest man in Athens. He set out to prove the Oracle wrong. He interviewed all those in the city who were reputed to be wise, only to discover that they all supposed they knew when they did not. Socrates at last conceded that the Oracle was right. He was the wisest, for he realized he did not know while others supposed they did know!
One of Socrates' noblest gifts was Plato, his brilliant student who became the world's greatest philosopher. But one invites trouble when he gathers young men around him and encourages them to think boldly, freely, and independently. It cost Socrates his life, for a major charge against him in court was that he corrupted the youth of Athens. He had an amusing way of responding to his critics. When they granted him a last request, as was customary for a condemned man, he asked them to corrupt his sons as he had corrupted theirs! It was his way of saying that knowledge of the right kind is a virtue while willful ignorance is a sin.
To encourage people to think is dangerous. Socrates took his chance because he had confidence in human nature and believed in the power of reason. A confirmed optimist, he believed that truth will out. He avowed faith in a most unusual proposition, that no evil can befall a good man, not even execution, for even in death he goes to be with God and the wisest of the ages.
If Socrates lived in our day he would insist that the unexamined life is no more worth living today than it was in his time. And self-examination can be a painful experience. Who, for instance, wants to face the fact that he is ignorant, prejudiced, or sectarian? So we resort to self-deception, a game hard to play with the likes of Socrates around. Moreover, Socrates believed in a rare virtue, the cultivation of the soul. One cannot nurture his soul aright, Socrates taught, until he comes to see how superficial, ignorant, and prejudiced most of his thinking really is.
Once Socrates was dead, one of his disciples described him as "the wisest, the justest, and best of men whom I have ever known." It is amazing, isn't it, how often men who morally impact their age are martyred by the very ones they seek to liberate? One writer has cautioned us never to forget two men who sought to change their world — one they poisoned, the other they crucified. — the Editor