Abstract
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle – “Christians before Christ”?
The compatibility of ideas and metaphysical concepts, from Antic
Philosophy to Christian Apologetic and Patristic Theology from the fist ages
gather together many important and commune elements. In the study below,
we have try to demonstrate that the most important philosopher of the antic
world where “Christians before Christ”. Their ideas about soul, virtue,
metaphysic existence and the entity of a single God comes to meet the Holy
Gospel of Christ. Starting with Socrates we can discover a very important
preoccupation for an existential philosophy. He is the first philosopher who
tries to discover a new way of understanding the unseen reality. His disciple,
Plato, goes forward and speaks about an ideal world. In his well-known
Dialogues, he develops the theme of virtue, and also treats the problematic
of Logos. Aristotle, the disciple of Plato, comes with a logical line in the
philosophical interpretation. His is the father of rational philosophy and also
the greatest promotor for the scholastic theology. Also, he speaks about
ousia and physis, two of the most important concepts used in the dogmatic
theology of the Church. Apologetically speaking, the importance of this tree
fathers of the pre-Christian thinking is incontestable. Later, Saint Justin the
Martyr and the others apologists used their concepts to develop the theology
of the Incarnated Logos.