f you’ve never had a discussion with Plato, well, strap in, because that’s what we have here.
Journey with us on the story of tenured Philosophy professor (in Ohio) Dr. Alex Plato. Born and baptized PC USA (a “liberal” Protestant denomination, Presbyterian) in Oregon, Plato had a special science teacher at a public high school that taught him young earth creationism and some apologetics. Though his dad did not believe, his mother did, and took the family out of the liberal church into a more Biblically solid Baptist church. This led to the young Plato attending college at a Baptist college, where, in his words, “I tried to become an atheist.”
He was unsuccessful in that endeavor.
He discovered apologetics, then philosophy, which naturally led him to the Mecca of Apologetics and Philosophy at the Masters level, Southern California, where Dr. Dallas Willard lived and taught for several decades (USC), mentoring dozens of PhD activist (my word–in a good way) scholars, activists for the truth, evidence, and common sense. Alex attended and graduated from Biola University in Lost Angeles County still not an atheist — a failed atheist — on a journey to a deeper Protestant faith. There, his Dallas-Willard-trained epistemologist mentor, Dr. R. Douglas Geivett, Ph.D., introduced him to Dietrich von Hildrebrand, Dallas-Willard trained ethicist Dr. Scott Rae, Ph.D., introduced him to Elizabeth Anscombe’s defense of traditional morality, and a theologian introduced him to the Oxford historian and historical Jesus defender N.T. Wright.
At Biola, our mutual Philosophy of Religion (visiting professor from Oxford) Richard Swinburne started the first lecture by saying “we must follow the evidence wherever it leads.” That’s a motto that stuck with Alex, for evidence is what points us to the truth, and it’s the only thing that gets us there or on the right track. What else would we follow if not evidence ?
Dr. Plato found himself dissatisfied with protestant churches , though, during this time. The building, the music, the sermons, everything but the coffee and doughnuts, seemed to get in the way of worshipping and knowing the Lord God of the Bible in the way Alex felt was most appropriate.
Short story long, Alex took a year off to teach and be a security guard. During this period of relaxation, he gained clarity. He wanted a Ph.D. in Philosophy under a guy named John Greco, epistemologist at St. Louis University which is in St. Louis. Turned out, when he got there to that Jesuit school, he returned to Elizabeth Anscombe, found himself living with a Catholic family, attending mass in Latin, singing Gregorian chant, and adoring the beautiful architecture entirely missing from most Protestant churches. He took in the tradition, found himself in it, earlier and yet later than the Reformation, in a way that took him by pleasantly by surprise.
Dr. Plato, Ph.D. then was hired at the Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, to teach courses in the core (Philosophy of Human Nature, Ethics, and Metaphysics) as well as Philosophy of Community, among other things. He got tenure due to teaching excellence. There, his role is to be available to students and to facilitate conversations with them and among them about things they should be discussing in order to avoid the cliches so common in our public discourse.
Strap in. There are tangents. But we always come back and summarize so you don’t get lost (if you hang in there). There are also nuggets and gems of gold in the tangents. This is not scripted. It’s a real conversation.
