Errors of the Philosophers
The errors of pagan philosophers (Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, et al.) which demonstrate the insufficiency of natural reason without divine revelation, and Scripture's role in correcting them. Plato taught God is corporeal and the soul of the world; Aristotle denied providence and the soul's immortality; Democritus and Empedocles confessed nothing can be known.
Preface and Praise of Sacred Scripture
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Chapter II: On the Object and Breadth of Sacred Scripture
— Plato's eight errors: God is corporeal, God is the soul of the world, souls pre-existed the body, knowledge is recollection, wives in common, falsehood as remedy, cyclical return of ages.
"the grossest errors of Plato are eight in number: for example, that Plato teaches that God is corporeal; that God is the soul of the world"
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Chapter II: On the Object and Breadth of Sacred Scripture
— Aristotle fixes the First Mover to the East, asserts natural necessity, the world's eternity, denies future contingents and immortality of the soul.
"Aristotle... fixes the First Mover to the East; asserts that He moves by fate and natural necessity; that this world is eternal; that there is no determinate truth of future contingents"
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Chapter II: On the Object and Breadth of Sacred Scripture
— Democritus and Empedocles confess nothing can be known; Socrates says he knows only that he knows nothing; Arcesilas says not even that can be known.
"Democritus and Empedocles straightforwardly confessed that nothing can truly be known by us. Socrates used to say that he knew only this: that he knew nothing"
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Chapter I: On the Excellence, Necessity, and Fruit of Sacred Scripture
— The academy of Plato knew nothing of faith, hope, religion, martyrdom, virginity, or divine virtues; Socrates, Pythagoras, Aristotle are children before Scripture.
"these things lay hidden from the ancient wise men, though endowed with an almost miraculous and prodigious power of understanding; the academy of Plato knew nothing of these things, here all the school of Pythagoras is silent"