1

THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE

AS A PHILOSOPHICAL APOLOGETIC TO DIVINE KNOWLEDGE

By Jared C. Wellman

“I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it;
and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”
-Jeremiah 31:331

The Life of Plato

In its span, history has observed many influential personalities. In all realms of

knowledge there are those who have forever changed and influenced their respective vocation.

In the philosophical realm, one of these personalities is Socrates.

Most historians agree that Socrates was a substantial influence upon Western philosophy,

but very little is actually known about him. For the most part, Socrates is an enigmatic figure

known best through the classical accounts of his students. Of his students, the most prominent

was arguably Plato. In fact, if it were not for Plato, much less would be known about Socrates.

“Plato’s dialogues are the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity.”2

If historians agree that Socrates’ influence on philosophy was substantial, then they

would naturally agree that Plato’s influence was supreme. Not only have Plato’s writings

illuminated the understanding of Socrates, but also the understanding (and development) of

1
All subsequent Scripture references are taken from the New American Standard Bible (NASB) unless
otherwise noted.
2
Sarah Kofman, Socrates: Fictions of a Philosopher (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1998), 5.
 2

Western philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead has written that the “history of Western

philosophy is merely a series of footnotes to Plato.”3 “[He] helped lay [its] foundation.”4 His

influence upon the craft has been significant, to say the least.

Diogenes Laertius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers, and therefore a

biographer of Plato. In his work, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, he wrote

about Plato’s life and education, (among other things). He noted that, “Plato was the son of

Ariston and Perictione and a citizen of Athens. [He] was born in the eighty-eighth Olympiad, on

the seventh day of the month of Thargelion [and] died at a marriage feast in the first year of the

hundred and eighth Olympiad, having lived eighty-one years.”5 Regarding Plato’s education,

Laertius wrote,

And he was taught learning in the school of Dionysius. He learned gymnastic exercises
under the wrestler Ariston of Argos, and it was by him that he had the name of Plato
given to him instead of his original name; ([this was] on account of his robust figure as he
had previously been called Aristocles after the name of his grandfather). It is also said
that he applied himself to the study of painting and that he wrote poems and tragedies.
And it is said that Socrates in a dream saw a cygnet on his knees who immediately put
forth feathers and flew up on high uttering a sweet note and that the next day Plato came
to him and pronounced [to] him the bird which he had seen. And from henceforth as they
say being now twenty years old he became a pupil of Socrates.6

It can be seen from an early age that Plato was enamored with knowledge and wisdom—the two

characteristics that would later define his life. His upbringing seemed to cultivate these ideals.

As Plato grew, physically and intellectually, he resolved to carry wisdom out to its fullest

potential. This is evidenced by the many works he produced and the content therein. In perhaps

3
C. Stephen Evans, Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics and Philosophy of Religion (Illinois: Intervarsity
Press, 2002), 93.
4
"Plato" Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2002.
5
Diogenes Laertius. The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. (Bibliolife, 2009), 114.
6
Ibid., Emphasis mine.
 3

Plato’s most recognized work, Republic, he developed an allegory that has transcended even

modern philosophy—The Allegory of the Cave.

The Allegory of the Cave is only one of Plato’s analogies. Other analogies include the

Theory of Forms, the Sun Analogy, and the Divided Line, respectively. Each analogy is used to

further Plato’s belief that the material world, as it seems to us, is not the real world, but only a

shadow of the real world. Since Plato used Socrates to dialogue his propositions, it is best

understood that these analogies are an extension of his teachings.

One of the more important facets of these analogies is the deism represented therein.

This is to say that Plato’s deistic beliefs are materialized in these analogies. In the Divided Line

analogy, for example, “the relation between perceiving ‘likenesses’ and perceiving the things

they are likenesses of is compared to that between mathematical understanding of physical

things, like diagrams, and pure understanding of the ‘forms,’ including that ‘Form of forms,’

which is ‘the Good.’”7 It is with this objective—the “Form of forms” or “the Good,”—that I

write this paper. It is, in my conviction, plausible to consider that the essence of Plato’s Allegory

of the Cave extends farther than Plato had originally intended.

In this paper, I will outline and examine Plato’s Allegory of the Cave as mentioned in his

Republic. While this allegory was originally written to demonstrate Plato’s beliefs about

epistemology and politics, these will serve as only a “footnote” to the objective of this paper.

The purpose here is to examine the Allegory of the Cave and compare it to moral law. Upon

doing so, I will parallel the allegory with Scripture to demonstrate how this ancient philosophical

7
David Cooper, Epistemology: The Classic Readings (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 13. Italics
mine.
 4

analogy can be utilized as an apologetic8 to the Christian propositions of depravity,

enlightenment, and evangelism.

Plato experienced a type of special revelation without specifying the divinity of the

Christian God, and therefore, experienced only a glorified general revelation. Sadly, Plato never

arrived at the proper destination of his rationalizations. This, however, does not mean that his

writings are completely futile in the realm of Christianity.

The Allegory of the Cave

The Republic is written in the form of a fictitious dialogue between Socrates and

Glaucon. Most literary scholars describe this as “Socratic Dialogue.” Socrates is the

protagonist, or the chief character of the book. Self-admittedly9, he is the “sightseer of truth.”

Glaucon is the name of Plato’s literal older brother, and is the student in this book. Laertius

noted that Glaucon, like Plato, was one of Socrates’ inner-circle of students during his lifetime.

Perhaps this is why Plato chose him to represent the student in the Republic.

The Allegory of the Cave is dialogued in sections (514a-518d) of the Republic. Only the

significant portions will be outlined in the following:

Socrates: Here’s a situation which you can use as an analogy for the human condition—
for our education. Imagine people living in a cavernous cell down under the ground; at
the far end of the cave, a long way off, there’s an entrance open to the outside world.
They’ve been there since childhood, with their legs and necks tied up in a way which
keeps them in one place and allows them to look only straight ahead, but not to turn their
heads. There’s firelight burning a long way further up the cave behind them, and up the

8
It is important to understand that the idea of “apologetics” here is used in the traditional sense of defending
Christianity. The unique characteristic about using Plato’s cave to defend Christianity is that Plato was not a
Christian, nor does his allegory speak of Theism. This is the challenge of this paper. It is in my estimation still
plausible to utilize Plato’s cave to convey certain elements of Christianity that do point to a Theistic God. My hope
is that this will be a helpful tool in communicating sin and salvation to a certain level of academiens who otherwise
may not understand, or even be inspired to understand, these principles of my faith.
9
Or, on behalf of Plato.
 5

slope between the fire and the prisoners there’s a road, beside which you should imagine
a low wall has been built—like the partition which conjurors place between themselves
and their audience and above which they show their tricks. Imagine also that there are
people on the other side of this wall who are carrying all sorts of artifacts, human
statuettes, and animal models carved in stone and wood and all kinds of materials stick
out over the wall; and as you’d expect, some of the people talk as they carry these objects
along, while others are silent.
Socrates: Now suppose they were able to talk to one another: don’t you think they would
assume that their words applied to what they saw passing by in front of them? And what
of the sound echoing off of the wall opposite them? They would be bound to assume that
the sound came from a passing shadow. The shadows of artifacts would constitute the
only reality people in this situation would recognize.
Glaucon: That is absolutely inevitable.
Socrates: What would happen if they were set free from their bonds and cured of their
inanity? Imagine that one of them is set free and is suddenly made to stand up, to turn his
head and walk, and to look towards the firelight. And suppose someone tells him that
what he’s been seeing all this time has no substance, and that he’s now closer to reality
and is seeing more accurately, because of the greater reality of the things in front of his
eyes—what do you imagine his reaction would be? Imagine him being dragged forcibly
away from there up the rough, steep slope, without being released until he’s been pulled
out into the sunlight. [Eventually] he would feast his eyes on the heavenly bodies and the
heavens themselves: he’d look at the light of the stars and the moon, rather than at the sun
and sunlight during the day.
Socrates: Suppose that the prisoners used to assign prestige and credit to one another, in
the sense that they rewarded speed at recognizing the shadow as they passed [by]. Do
you think our former prisoner would covet these [old] honors and would envy the people
who had status and power there, or would he much prefer, as Homer describes it, “being
a slave laboring for someone else—someone without property” [Odyssey, II.489], and
would put up with anything at all, rather than share their beliefs and their life?
Glaucon: Yes, I think he’d go through anything rather than live that way.
Socrates: Once he’d distinguished between the two conditions and modes of existence,
he’d congratulate anyone he found in the second state, and feel sorry for anyone in the
first state.10

To summarize, this allegory describes a situation in which prisoners are chained down

and forced to only see, and “hear,” shadows of reality. The allegory suggests the idea of one of

these prisoners breaking away and experiencing total reality for the first time, only to come back

10
Cooper, Epistemology: The Classic Readings, 27-31. Italics mine. This is a considerably long quote, but
the information is important to the discussion and therefore included here for a full synopsis of the allegory.
 6

to share the truth with a group of stubborn unbelievers. Socrates says of these unbelievers, “if

they could grab hold of [this man] who tried to set them free and kill him, [they would].”11

While the purpose of this paper is not necessarily about the epistemological or political

features of the allegory, it is still important to consider their objectives. Epistemologically, this

allegory was written as an apologetic against ancient skepticism to express that knowledge is

obtainable.12 David Cooper, in his work Epistemology, traces the origins of skepticism that led

to the inspiration of Plato’s Republic. He concludes by differentiating between a “broad” view

of skepticism and a “narrow” view of skepticism. For Cooper, a broad skeptic is one, “who

denies or casts doubt on the availability, at least to us humans, of objective knowledge.”13 A

narrow skeptic “does not deny that there is an objective order, knowable perhaps by a creature

with superhuman intelligence, but only denies that we humans have the capacity to establish,

with any certainty at least, what that order is.”14 It is broad skepticism that prompted Plato to

write his Republic. Cooper notes, “Much of Plato’s thinking was a direct response to skeptical,

especially relativistic, assaults on knowledge.”15 “[It is important] to note that in Plato’s

epistemology is an intrinsic connection that exists between being (what is real) and knowing.

How humans know is related to what is.”16

11
Cooper, Epistemology: The Classic Readings , 29.
12
Ronald H. Nash writes that “Plato opposed seven prevalent beliefs of his day. [These are] hedonism,
empiricism, relativism, materialism, mechanism, atheism, and naturalism.” Ronald Nash. Life's Ultimate Questions.
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Company, 1999), 60-1.
13
Cooper, Epistemology: The Classic Readings, 4.
14
Ibid.
15
Ibid., 6.
16
Ronald Nash. Life's Ultimate Questions. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Company, 1999), 69.
 7

A second characteristic of the Allegory of the Cave is that it is political. It can safely be

argued that while the epistemological elements of Plato’s philosophy are present in the Republic,

the purpose of his work is to purport a political agenda of philosopher-kings. “Plato is trying to

show that ‘communities [should] have philosophers as kings’ (473c), or put less royally, as

‘guardians.’ The main reasons for this are that philosophers possess knowledge that others lack

and that they stand in a special relation to goodness.”17 Plato’s epistemology seems to naturally

flow from his political agenda. This is seen in the following dialogue between Socrates and

Glaucon:

Glaucon: Who are the true philosophers?

Socrates: Sightseers of truth.
Socrates: Grant me this, beautiful is the opposite of ugly. In so far as they are two, each of
them is single?18
Glaucon: Yes
Socrates: The same principle applies to moral and immoral, good and bad, [etc.]. This is
what enables me to distinguish the [common] sightseers and the ones who want to acquire
some expertise or other from the men of action from the people in question, the ones who are
philosophers in the true sense of the term.19

These philosophical elements are all important in understanding Plato’s allegory, but

there is one transcendental characteristic that propels the objective of this paper. It is

summarized best in one of Socrates’ earlier statements in the Republic: “goodness gives the

things we know their truth and makes it possible for people to have knowledge. It is responsible

for knowledge and truth.”20 This is to say that goodness, for Plato, is the driving factor for all

knowledge and truth. Without it, knowledge would be unobtainable. “Goodness” is the invisible

17
Cooper, Epistemology: The Classic Readings, 14.
18
Paraphrased
19
Cooper, Epistemology: The Classic Readings, 15. Italics mine.
20
Ibid., 23. Italics mine.
 8

code that only the “true sightseers” have come to understand. Without it, you are lost and

nothing more than a “common sightseer”—a “[person] in question.” .

Plato’s Goodness as Moral Law

Goodness is the prime achievement for all of Plato’s analogies. If the philosopher has

been illuminated by it then he has, in the least, the potential for knowledge, belief, and the

eligibility to be a philosopher-king—a “sightseer of truth.”

Plato’s “goodness” could very well be replaced with Christianity’s “God;”21 [God] gives

the things we know their truth and makes it possible for people to have knowledge. [God] is

responsible for knowledge and truth.” This is in alignment with Scripture. Solomon wrote in

Proverbs 1:7 that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” That is, that having a

proper understanding of God or “goodness” breeds knowledge and therefore makes the believer

of God a “sightseer of truth.”

Plato’s goodness is comparable to his “Form of forms.” It is the ultimate deity. Since

man is a form representing the Form, we are a shadow of the perfect goodness. It is as if we are

inclined to knowledge and truth—as if it is written on our hearts. There is, in the realm of

Christian apologetics, a name given to this “heart-written” truth—moral law. “[Morality is] the

system of rules that ideally should govern human behavior with respect to right and wrong, good

and evil.”22 Apologists use this ideal to purport the existence of God. They call it the Moral

Argument. It is surmised as follows:

21
Here, in a terminological-substitutional sense. God is obviously much different than Plato’s goodness as
He has characteristics and revelations about Him from Scripture that Plato’s goodness simply does not have.
22
Evans, Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion, 77.
 9

(1) Real moral obligation is a fact. We are really, truly, objectively obligated to do good
and avoid evil.
(2) Either the atheistic view of reality is correct or the “religious” one is.
(3) But the atheistic one is incompatible with there being moral obligation.
(4) Therefore the “religious” view of reality is correct.23

Like any argument, the success of the Moral Argument hinges on the first premise. “The

premise [claims] something more: namely, that we human beings really are obligated, that our

duties arise from the way things really are and not simply from our desires or subjective

dispositions. It [claims], in other words, that moral values or obligations themselves—and not

merely the belief in moral values—are objective facts.”24

As knowledge and truth flow from Plato’s goodness, likewise it flows from God, and

specifically, the morality God has written on man’s heart. For Plato, the ultimate goodness was

undeniable. It existed whether the “common sightseers” wanted to see, or believe it, or not.

Likewise, God and His perfect morality exist whether the “common sightseer,” i.e., the unsaved,

wants to believe it or not.

J. Budziszewski is a professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas.

He summarized this absolute-proposition in the title of his book, What We Can’t Not Know.

From the onset, Budziszewski asserts that there are truths that are simply undeniable. He writes,

“However rude it may be these days to say so, there are some moral truths that we all really

know—truths which a normal human being is unable not to know. They are a universal

23
Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics. (Downers Grove:
InterVarsity Press, 2003), 23.
24
Ibid., 24.
 10

possession, an emblem of rational mind, an heirloom of the family of man.”25 Budziszewski

further notes the universal nature of a moral code in writing,

Interestingly, a part of the common moral sense is that there is a common moral sense. It
is not only a recurring theme in philosophy, but a tradition in most cultures and a
presupposition of both Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Philosophers call this common
sense the “natural” law to convey the idea that it is somehow rooted in how things really
are. Chinese wisdom traditions call it Tao; Indian, the dharma or rita. The Talmud says
it was given to the “sons” or descendants of Noah, which means all of us. Abraham was
so sure of it that he dared to debate with God. Paul said that when gentiles do by nature
what the law requires, they show that its works are “written on their hearts.”26

At this point, it would be helpful to include a brief discussion regarding general and

special revelation. Plato seemed to encounter general revelation in a genuine way, and was on

the cusp of special revelation. Moral law and general revelation are closely related27 and we will

do well to understand Plato’s Allegory of the Cave as an apologetic upon better understanding

these two types of revelation.

General Revelation

In his book, Written on the Heart, Budziszewski outlines general revelation. He writes,

The Bible maintains that God has not left Himself without a witness among the pagans
(Acts 14:17). According to Scripture, [general revelation] comes in at least five forms:
(1) the testimony of creation, which speaks to us of a glorious, powerful and merciful
Creator (Psalm 19:1-6; 104; Acts 14:17; Romans 1:20); (2) the fact that we are made in
the image of God, which not only gives us rational and moral capacities but also tells us
of an unknown Holy One who is different from our idols (Genesis 1:26-27; Acts 17:22-
25
J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know. (Dallas: Spence Publishing Company, 2004), 25.
26
Ibid., 21.
27
Moral Law is a phrase designated to describe, for some, the “Decalogue” of commandments that seem
natural to man. That is, it is innate in man to not murder, steal, or lie, for example. Whether proponents of moral
law believe in the Decalogue or not, it is assumed that it reveals a generality of what moral law includes (there is no
hard list of moral laws). Some philosophers believe that moral truths point to the existence of a benevolent Being.
General revelation is related to this in that God has revealed Himself by the means of natural phenomenon. A man
may be inclined to believe in God by generally experiencing nature, for example. Both of these help direct a man to
God, but it takes special revelation to bring a man to salvation in the God, not just a god. Moral law is, in a sense, a
sub-point of general revelation.
 11

23); (3) the facts of our physical and emotional design, in which a variety of God’s
purposes are plainly manifest (Romans 1:26-27); (4) the law of conscience, written on the
heart, which, like the law of Moses, tells us what sin is but does not give us power to
escape it (Romans 2:14-15); (5) the order of causality, which teaches us by linking every
sin with consequences (Proverbs 1:31).28

It can be seen from reading through Budziszewski’s points that general revelation and moral law

are, in the least, “cousins.” Some scholars suggest that moral law is simply a sub-category

within general revelation. There are elements of moral law evident in all four points of

Budziszewski’s synopsis, but (4) speaks specifically about the order.

Special (or Divine) Revelation

Regarding special or divine revelation, Budziszewski writes,

Examination of Scripture, revelation’s record, shows at least four kinds [of special
revelation]: (1) the works of God in history, by which He set apart for Himself a people
of promise and delivered them from oppression (Joshua 24:1-18); (2) the law of Moses,
which told His people what sin is, though without giving them power to escape it
(Romans 7:7-13); (3) prophecy, which foretold the coming of a Messiah who would save
His people from their sins (Isaiah 52:13-53:12); (4) that Messiah, Jesus Christ, who took
their sins upon Himself (John 3:16; Romans 3:23-24; 5:6-8; 7:4-6).29

The difference between general revelation and special revelation is that special revelation brings

you into a saving relationship with God, rather than just a mere knowledge of His existence. It is

the difference between deism and theism. Noah Lemos describes this thought well in saying,

“One can have propositional knowledge about someone without having acquaintance knowledge

of him.”30 In this, propositional knowledge is comparable to general revelation and acquaintance

knowledge to special revelation.

28
J. Budziszewski, Written on the Heart. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 180-1.
29
Ibid., 180.
30
Noah Lemos, An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge, 2007), 3.
 12

One of the more renowned proponents of moral law is C.S. Lewis. Lewis, in Mere

Christianity, wrote that, “human beings all over the earth have this curious idea that they ought

to behave in a certain way, and cannot get rid of it. [W]e know that men find themselves under a

moral law, which they did not make, and cannot quite forget even when they try, and which they

know they ought to obey.”31 Charles Colson, an advocate of C.S. Lewis, furthers this idea. In

his book, Burden of Truth, Colson writes, “The most important question is whether [moral

standards] are true.”32 The context of Colson’s statement is in lieu of a major’s question after a

lecture at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. The major asked, “I want to know, sir: Is it true? Is

there such a thing as moral truth?”33 Colson spends the rest of his book answering this question

in the affirmative. He and Lewis would agree that there is such a thing as moral law. As it has

been written, even the question of a moral law beckons the thought that it exists; “The idea that

there are certain types of actions that are morally wrong in all circumstances is characteristic of

the natural law theory.”34

Plato’s Cave as an Apologetic

As previously stated, just because Plato never evidently experienced special revelation, it

doesn’t make his writings futile for Christianity. In fact, it can be argued that some of his

writings actually help support Christianity, at least in the apologetical35 sense. James Wetzel has

31
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. (San Francisco: Harper-Zondervan, 2001), 8, 23.
32
Charles Colson, Burden of Truth. (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, 1997), vii.
33
Ibid.
34
Mark Timmons, Moral Theory. (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002), 65.
35
Here, “apologetical” means utilizing Plato’s allegory to illustrate certain elements of the Christian faith.
 13

written an article entitled, “God in the Cave,” where he argues this case, for example.36 While he

did not explicitly say this, Augustine would argue this point as well. In his Confessions,

Augustine alluded to Plato’s cave in writing,

Now my good things were not in the outward world, nor were they sought with fleshly
eyes under that outward sun [goodness]. For those who wish to find joy in outward
things quickly grow vain and spend themselves on the things that are seen and are
temporal. In their hungry thoughts they lick the images of these things [the shadows].
Oh, if they would only grow weary of their hunger, and say, ‘Who will show us good
things?’37

Here, Augustine is confessing that he was unable to experience God (Plato’s goodness) until he

witnessed “the sun,” who is God, with his “spiritual eyes.”38 As a depraved man, he desired to

“lick the shadows,” so to speak. Augustine’s hope is that others who are depraved will grow

weary of the shadows and begin to ask, “Who will show us the good?” That is, “Who will show

us God?”

It is with Augustine’s confession that an apologetic of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave can

be formulated. Again, the purpose of this paper is to discuss how Plato’s analogy can

apologetically describe the Christian’s beliefs concerning depravity, enlightenment, and

evangelism. It has already been seen that Plato’s goodness parallels the idea of a moral law, but

now, the allegory will be utilized as an illustration to depict three characteristic beliefs regarding

Christianity.

36
Journal of Religious Ethics 34 no 3 S 2006, p 487-520.
37
Augustine, The Confessions of St. Augustine. (New York: Image Books/Doubleday, 1960), 212-13.
Italics mine.
38
Or, not his fleshly eyes.
 14

The first element Socrates mentions in Plato’s cave is the existence of inhabitants within

it. He says, “Imagine people living in a cavernous cell down under the ground.”39 Socrates takes

this picture further in describing the inhabitants of the cave. He says, “[The people] have been

there since childhood, with their legs and necks tied up in a way which keeps them in one place

and allows them to look only straight ahead, but not to turn their heads.”40 The idea is that the

inhabitants are slaves—physically and intellectually. They are depraved prisoners. Socrates

himself said, “[This is] an analogy for the human condition.”41

The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 deals directly with the depravity of man. It reads,

“…man transgressed the command of God, and fell from his original innocence whereby his

posterity inherit a nature and an environment inclined toward sin. Therefore, as soon as they are

capable of moral action, they become transgressors and are under condemnation.”42 Robert

Stewart wrote an essay concerning this Article in Douglas Blount and Joseph Wooddell’s Baptist

Faith and Message 2000: Critical Issues in America’s Largest Protestant Denomination. In his

essay, Stewart discusses the depravity of man.43 He writes, “The key biblical passage that bears

on this issue is Romans 5:12-19, especially v. 12. In this chapter of Romans, Paul presents the

reader with a parallelism—through one man sin and death entered the world because in that one

man all sinned.”44 Stewart’s essay illuminates the idea that Plato’s cave initially exhibited—that

39
Cooper, Epistemology: The Classic Readings, 27.
40
Ibid.
41
Ibid.
42
Baptist Faith and Message 2000. Article III, Man.
43
The actual title, or sub-point, of Stewarts essay is “original sin.”
 15

men are both originally depraved and that in this depravity, they are slaves. Paul says in Romans

that man is either a slave “of sin resulting in death or of obedience resulting in righteousness”

(Romans 6:16). Apologetically, Plato’s cave sufficiently describes the depravity of man, and

thus the need for rescue.

The second element of Plato’s cave concerns this rescue and is that of enlightenment.

“The gospel is the story of a rescue, of a path of salvation which God has opened up to a world

that has forsaken Him and cannot save itself.”45 As just noted, the inhabitants of Plato’s cave are

slaves. They are born into this situation and therefore only know how to exist within it. Until

they are convinced of something different, what they see is what they believe, and what they

believe is what they know, and what they know is only a portion of reality. The portion of

reality they experience is so marred, that it actually has distorted their entire comprehension of

reality. This is the depravity of such a situation—they are living in total darkness. As Socrates

has said, “[T]he shadows of artifacts constitute the only reality people in this situation

recognize.”46

In this context, another word for enlightenment is salvation. Millard Erickson has

written, “salvation consists of three steps: effectual calling, conversion, and regeneration.”47

Enlightenment is the event in which a man experiences, for the first time, the truth of the reality

of the world in which he lives, i.e., salvation. In Plato’s cave, enlightenment is revealed when

44
Douglas Blount and Joseph Wooddell. The Baptist Faith and Message 2000. (Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 33.
45
Budziszewski, Written on the Heart, 179.
46
Cooper, Epistemology: The Classic Readings, 27.
47
Millard Erickson. Christian Theology. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1998), 941.
 16

Socrates describes that one of the prisoners became free. His freedom results in him

experiencing goodness, which is comparable to enlightenment.

While all of the theological elements of salvation are not explicative in Plato’s cave,48 the

most basic idea is—regeneration. “Regeneration is…a change of heart. [It] is the acceptance of

Jesus Christ.”49 In Plato’s cave, the freed-slave experiences a “change of heart” and “accepts

truth.”50 Socrates says,

What do you think would happen if [a slave] was set free from [his] bonds and cured of
[his] inanity? Suppose he finds his way out of the cave and feasts his eyes on the
heavenly bodies, the heavens themselves, the light of the stars and moon, the sun and the
sunlight…and realizes that what he’s been seeing all this time has no substance, and now
he’s closer to reality and is seeing more accurately because of the greater reality of the
things in front of his eyes.51

Now, at least one of the depraved inhabitants has been enlightened to true reality. There is but

one element left in Plato’s cave to serve as a Christian apologetic—evangelism.

Jack Johnson is a musician who, in his song Brushfire Fairytales, writes, “Plato’s cave is

full of freaks, demanding refunds for the things they’ve seen. I wish they could believe in all the

things that never made the screen.”52 Johnson’s song is quoted to make use of the final few

words of the line—“I wish they could believe in all the things that never made the screen.”

Socrates conveyed Johnson’s lyrics when he asked Glaucon to imagine the freed-slave

returning back to the cave to share his new findings with the rest of the prisoners. He says,

48
Justification, sanctification, and glorification.
49
Baptist Faith and Message 2000. Article IV, Salvation .
50
In this context, Plato’s “sun” is comparable to “Christ” or “truth.”
51
Cooper, Epistemology: The Classic Readings, 28. Some portions are paraphrased and concocted to better
detail the experience.
52
www.songmeanings.net. Coincidentally, it was this song in High School that prompted my early interests
in philosophy.
 17

“Now, if he recalled the cell where he’d originally lived and what passed for knowledge there

and his former fellow prisoners, don’t you think he’d feel happy about his own altered

circumstances, and sorry for them?”53 Eventually, the freed-slave does return, but the prisoners

refuse to believe the message that he brings to them. Socrates says, “And wouldn’t they—if they

could—grab [him] and kill him?”54 The idea is, the freed-slave has discovered a remarkable

truth, and feels delighted to share it with those who are still in darkness. He simply cannot keep

this wonderful knowledge to himself. Sadly, however, since this “goodness” doesn’t make it

“onto the screen,” the prisoners “refuse to believe it.” As Johnson sings, so does the evangelist,

“I wish they could all believe…”

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:18 that “the word of the cross is foolishness to those who

are perishing.” Paul’s phrase, “the word of the cross,” is a unique way of describing the truth of

Jesus Christ. In Plato’s cave, the freed-slave’s message is of the truth of goodness, which is

foolishness to the inhabitants who are perishing. Even the X-files’ fictitious Dana Scully has

recognizably said, “I’m afraid that God is speaking but that no one’s listening.”55

Apologetically, it is sufficient to say that Plato’s cave successfully describes the Christian ideal

of evangelism, and further, the zeal therein. Christians simply desire to share the truth of reality

with the world. This zeal prompts the discussion of one final aspect of evangelism—its

immediacy.

The message of goodness or illumination is simply too important to ignore and therefore

beckons to be shared. Nicholas Denyer recognizes this element and has discussed it in a unique

53
Cooper, Epistemology: The Classic Readings, 29.
54
Ibid.
55
Colson, Burden of Truth, xv.
 18

light. Denyer parallels Plato’s Protagoras56 with the ending of the Gospel of Mark57 to suggest

that the nature of evangelism is indeed dire. He writes,

Protagoras attempts to meet a challenge by a rhetorical tour de force; He brings his

speech to an end by turning to talk of two men in the audience who have not, so far at
least, come to be good.58 [Protagoras ends his speech by saying], for there is still some
hope for them. [Likewise], part of the significance of [Mark 16:8] is that it provides
further confirmation, if further confirmation were needed, that έφοβουντο γαρ ('for they
were afraid') - a two-word clause, where the second word means 'for' - is an astonishingly
abrupt end. But its main significance is this: it provides proof that so astonishingly abrupt
an end could well be deliberate.59

The deliberate ending, in this case, is used purposely to produce urgency in the disciples. There

is no choice but to share their burning message. Denyer’s argument is based heavily upon the

“for” (γαρ) in the Greek language, and the emphasis the word has in a concluding statement. He

concludes, “There is no anachronism whatsoever in the hypothesis that Mark chose precisely

such a means of leaving the reader in what is, after all, a proper frame of mind for someone who

has just read a gospel: thinking that the story of the risen Christ cannot be over yet, and yearning

to hear more.”60 I imagine that Protagoras’ audience would have felt the same, yearning as they

wondered where their “hope” would come from.

To conclude, it is proper to quote Socrates. The philosophical patriarch wrote, “the

capacity for knowledge is present in everyone’s mind. If you can imagine an eye that can turn
56
A dialogue of Plato. The main argument is between the elderly Protagoras, a celebrated sophist, and
Socrates.
57
Denyer believes Mark ends in 16:8, as opposed to 16:20. Regardless, the message is the same. Both
Protagoras and Mark end in anticipation and eagerness for what lies ahead. Mark 16:8 reads, “They went out and
feld from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had gripped them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they
were afraid.”
58
That is, to understand goodness, or in the context of this paper, God.
59
Tyndale Bulletin 57 no 1 2006, p 149-150.
60
Ibid.
 19

from darkness to brightness…introducing sight into eyes which are blind…”61 There is no other

statement in the Republic that speaks so clearly of the moral law that Plato conveys than this.

Plato was so close to special revelation that one can only hope that he somehow managed to

experience redemption—that some freed-slave was able to share true goodness with him.

Ironically, the allegory was designed to represent the goodness he had discovered, when in truth,

he is actually the prisoner still chained up to the wall, seeing shadows of reality, believing that

what he sees is all that exists. His cave included at least three important elements of the

Christian faith, but lacked the thread that holds it all together—a theistic God.

Cooper notes that it is by “Plato’s acquaintance with Forms that he possesses knowledge”

and that this acquaintance is “Plato’s main legacy to epistemology.”62 While this may be true

philosophically, we cannot miss the theological legacy left in Plato’s writings, even if it is

fortuitous. Plato’s analogies may not have been explicative of the theistic God, but they are

surely implicative, at least in some ways. It is a shame that Plato did not specifically believe in

God, for He is the missing, or perhaps substituted, principle to a sobering dialogue.

61
Cooper, Epistemology: The Classic Readings, 30-31
62
Ibid., 14