I am afraid that this analysis commits the error that Plato consistently criticizes especially throughout the Republic, namely to dwell with appearances rather than seek to advance to the things themselves. Plato is profoundly in accord and superficially in tension with Christianity, not the other way round. The very snippet about the just man who suffers is not coincidentally in concord with Christianity. Plato is interested in the absolute good, absolute truth, an absolute standard which at once is accessible to people but also transcends their (necessarily) relative partake in knowledge. If that is not an apt description of the foundation of Christian epistemology, I don't know what is.
In addition, I do not think that Plato had quite such a low view of the body. I just don't see the evidence for that. It is easy to misread him, though. Karl Popper has famously argued that Plato was a proto-totalitarian; but the overall impetus of the Republic goes in the very opposite direction. The same applies to his view of the body, I think.
I am afraid that this analysis commits the error that Plato consistently criticizes especially throughout the Republic, namely to dwell with appearances rather than seek to advance to the things themselves. Plato is profoundly in accord and superficially in tension with Christianity, not the other way round. The very snippet about the just man who suffers is not coincidentally in concord with Christianity. Plato is interested in the absolute good, absolute truth, an absolute standard which at once is accessible to people but also transcends their (necessarily) relative partake in knowledge. If that is not an apt description of the foundation of Christian epistemology, I don't know what is.
In addition, I do not think that Plato had quite such a low view of the body. I just don't see the evidence for that. It is easy to misread him, though. Karl Popper has famously argued that Plato was a proto-totalitarian; but the overall impetus of the Republic goes in the very opposite direction. The same applies to his view of the body, I think.