Texts in Conversation
Plato's Timaeus describes the cosmos as a single living body that God shaped into one ordered whole. Colossians uses similar language to describe Jesus the one in whom all things hold together.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Plato Timaeus
Classical
32 is such that as the first term is to it, so is it to the last term, and again, conversely, as the last term is to the middle, so is the middle to the first — then the middle term becomes in turn the first and the last, while the first and last become in turn middle terms, and the necessary consequence will be that all the terms are interchangeable, and being interchangeable they all form a unity. Now if the body of the All had had to come into existence as a plane surface, having no depth, one middle term would have sufficed to bind together both itself and its fellow-terms; but now it is otherwise: for it behoved it to be solid of shape, and what brings solids into unison is never one middle term alone but always two. Thus it was that in the midst between fire and earth God set water and air, and having bestowed upon them so far as possible a like ratio one towards another — air being to water as fire to air, and water being to earth as air to water, — he joined together and constructed a Heaven visible and tangible. For these reasons and out of these materials, such in kind and four in number, the body of the Cosmos was harmonized by proportion and brought into existence. These conditions secured for it Amity, so that being united in identity with itself it became indissoluble by any agent other than Him who had bound it together. Now of the four elements the construction of the Cosmos had taken up the whole of every one. For its Constructor had constructed it of all the fire and water and air and earth that existed, leaving over, outside it, no single particle or potency of any one of these elements. And these were his intentions: first, that it might be, so far as possible, a Living Creature, perfect and whole, with all its parts perfect; and next, that it might be One,
Date: 360 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Colossians 1:17
New Testament
16 for all things in heaven and on earth were created in him—all things, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions, whether principalities or powers—all things were created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and all things are held together in him. 18 He is the head of the body, the church, as well as the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he himself may become first in all things.
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Notes and References
... The Stoics considered the universe to be a living being. In this context the body could be used to describe some aspect of the universe as being a living creature which grows and develops. Cleanthes says, For, just as, in the case of the individual, all his bodily parts take shape in the proper periods of time from the seed, so all the particular parts of the universe -- animals, plants, and so on -- take shape at the proper moments ... Cicero utilizes the idea of the body as a living organism which grows and develops. This idea includes the notion of the body's structural composition, but encompasses more. The universe is like the human body in that as an organism it is governed by nature and produces growth from itself ... The Stoics appear to have used the macrocosm-microcosm analogy to refer to the universe as an organism in a similar manner to Plato ...
Lee, Michelle V.
Paul, the Stoics, and the Body of Christ
(pp. 46-51) Cambridge University Press, 2006
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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