Even among world historical figures, Socrates would be uncommon. His life was marked by an irony which brought together opposing qualities. He rarely travelled beyond Athens, yet his influence has been felt throughout the world. Though he was often invited to lavish dinner parties, he lived on a very simple diet. Possessing a towering intellectual capacity, he was more at home with everyday people. Though he wrote down none of his teachings, we possess about 35 of his dialogs. Some aspects of his life remain unclear, but what doesn’t is that his influence is impossible to overestimate. His crowning achievement in advancing God’s Story of Grace is that he took philosophy (the pursuit of wisdom) and brought it into reach for everyday people and everyday life to improve the quality of how they–even we–live. He did this because it was, as he believed, his calling from God. In so doing, he made the well-lived life something which was more possible for everyone to attain.
In this article, we will look at Socrates impact at the time he lived and how his influence moved the world further in God’s plan.
Who Was Socrates?
His Life
He lived from 469–399 B.C. He lived his whole life in Athens, other than when he travelled in the military. At its height his native city had a population of around 180,000 is 430 B.C. By his death it was reduced to about 100,000 due, in part, to ongoing war with Sparta. As a man of Athens he fought bravely in the wars with the Spartans. His friend Alcibiades said that Socrates saved his life when he was wounded by standing over him and warding off enemy attack. He was reported to be fierce in battle. There is, also, some evidence he may have been a stone mason since his father was. But his primary calling and life’s work was that he became a prophet to the Athenian people. He founded no academy like his pupil Plato. He never sought out a public platform, but instead he chose to live very simply with few clothes, meager food and basic shelter–even rejecting the gift of land which was offered to him. He felt the call of God (as he understood God) to call men to examine the meaning and purpose of their lives. Historian Paul Johnson states that he “compared himself to a gadfly, stinging the Athenian horse of state…out of its complacency and comatose inertia.” He engaged in discussions with all kinds of people concerning topics like friendship, justice, courage, citizenship, etc. He believed his most important contribution to Athenian society was to call people to virtue for only with virtuous people can a society flourish.
His Death
Overtime he became a well-known public figure. This increasing attention was not always positive. The playwright Aristophanes made a satirical and mocking drama titled The Clouds which portrayed Socrates as a money greedy corruptor of youth. This play had a negative impact on his reputation with some of the Athenian public. He remained unangered, responding: “If the criticism is just, I must try to reform myself. If it is untrue, it doesn’t matter.” Eventually jealous political forces had him arrested and convicted of presenting “different gods” and “corrupting the youth.” After being tried in a kangaroo court he was sentenced to be executed. He is famously remembered for his calm and magnanimous embrace of death, speaking to his friends about the virtuous and good life until his very last day.
What Set Socrates Apart?
He was led by God. He rejected the myth centered polytheism (belief in many gods) of his day. Like Heraclitus, he did not really criticize or show contempt for the traditional gods of the Greek world, but he did not reverence or follow them; further he called people to think beyond them. He appears to have been a monotheist who believed there is only one God. For this Athenian teacher, belief in God was not an abstract idea but a strongly felt reality. He once said, “Athenians, I cherish and you. But I shall obey God rather than you.” On another occasion he professed, “To practice philosophy has been indicated to me by God…” He felt this through such means as dreams, prophecies and other means.
His belief in divinity was also in sharp distinction to one of his sharpest debating partners, Protagoras, who gave the famous adage: “Man is the measure of all things.” As a materialist, Protagoras taught materialism which is the belief that there is nothing more than physical reality. Socrates rejected this because of his own experience as well as his belief that our deeper moral commitments require a deeper resource or basis than merely ourselves.
He believed all humans possessed an immaterial soul. He taught that the body needed to be guided by the soul. The idea of the soul was not new, but after Socrates’ the concept of the soul would be forever changed. Before the great thinker, the soul had been viewed as a ghostlike and shadowy substance which eventually gets banished to a murky existence of hades after the death of the body. After Socrates the soul was seen as the core of human intelligence, meaning and morality. With a proper philosophical understanding and training in wisdom the soul can guide one’s life to virtue and a well-lived existence. With his examination of the soul and the inner life of man, he would open the way eventually to the study of psychology.
He held to and promoted moral absolutes. For example, it was exceptional that he advocated that retaliation or revenge is always wrong. He instructed an early version of “turn the other cheek.” In Greece it was largely thought that a just man is one who does good to his friends and harm to his enemies. Socrates would have none of this. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates is quoted saying: “A just man is one who does good to his friends, certainly, but also does good to those who have harmed him, thereby seeking to convert an enemy into friend.”
He lived among the common men. At this time, Athenian Greece was singular in the world because a craftsman might become a general, a wrestler a philosopher, a poet could found a colony. Though there was an aristocracy, the man of common means could still excel. Paul Johnson asserted that just as Winston Churchill perfectly reflected the spirit of Great Britain, Socrates perfectly reflected the democratic spirit of ancient Athens. He got along with all kinds of people from different classes and backgrounds, highest to lowest. He had a genuine curiosity in people. This interest he showed made people feel important, and it helped to strengthen the democratic character of the city.
Socrates Advance of God’s Story
Socrates brought the LOGOS (WORD) closer to men. In Acts 17, some 450 years after Socrates, Paul stood at the Areogapus (meeting place for political councils in Athens), the very place Socrates often deliberated. It was there that Greek philosophers wanted Paul to make a public case for his “strange ideas” (Acts 17:20) for which he was advocating. Paul, then, gives a masterclass in building a missional communication bridge with a different culture. In his introduction, one can see hints of his drawing upon Socrates’ influence as he references “an unknown god.”
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
Acts 17:22-23
Athens worshiped many gods, but Socrates did not. Athenians accepted their religious traditions, often without question. Socrates did not. He advocated a god that was not known. Perhaps it was this “unknown god” of Acts 17 Paul proclaims. Perhaps this is the LOGOS which was first proclaimed by Heraclitus, nearly 100 years before Socrates, and would eventually be declared by the apostle John, when he declared Jesus to be the Word (LOGOS) in John 1:1. As I wrote in a previous article:
LOGOS, which means Word or Speech, communicates the idea that we see indirectly an intelligible rationality behind the universe. It does so in the fact that words, whether heard through the ear (speech) or seen through the eye (writing), shows the evidence of an intentional and intelligible presence, even when we do not see a person present. This evidence of intentionality and intelligence, logically, points to a personal being behind all of this–God. Though this creative and personal being is not directly seen, his speech is. In the midst of the chaos of the world, there is behind all of it an ordered logic (e.g., math and science) and appearance of a creative purpose (e.g., love and justice). The Bible affirms this in both the Old and New Testaments.
This is seen in the Old Testament.
1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them. (Psalm 19:1-3)
Of those outside the Hebrew world, Socrates appeared to grasp this better than anyone before him and made this reality more accessible to the Greek and gentile world.
Socrates made a life of purposeful moral living more accessible to the common man. He is famous for saying, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” The ancient philosopher modeled how everyday men could think through moral questions and issues to live a more wise and virtuous life. Perhaps the Roman statemen Cicero best summed up the great sage’s contribution to the world historical development best:
“Socrates was the first to call philosophy down from the heavens and to place it in cities, and even to introduce it into homes and compel it to inquire about
Cicero
life and standards and goods and evils.”
For this, we can have much gratitude to Socrates for bringing the truths given by heaven more closely to us on the earth.
Story of Grace 