Plato and the cross

The discussion of nature concerning the Son of God in Plato’s *Timaeus*, where he says, “He placed him crosswise in the universe,” was likewise borrowed from Moses.

For in the writings of Moses it is recorded that when the Israelites came out of Egypt and were in the wilderness, poisonous creatures encountered them—vipers, asps, and every kind of serpent—which were killing the people. Moses, by inspiration and activity said to come from God, took bronze, made a figure of a cross, set it upon the holy tent, and said to the people, “If you look toward this figure and believe, you shall be saved through it.” When this was done, he recorded that the serpents died and handed down that the people escaped death in this way.

Plato read these things but did not understand them accurately. He did not grasp that it was the figure of a cross, but understood it as a crossing, and therefore said that the power after the first God had been placed crosswise in the universe.

His speaking of a third also came from reading, as we said earlier, that the Spirit of God was said by Moses to move over the waters. For he assigns the second place to the Logos who comes from God, whom he said was placed crosswise in the universe, and the third to the Spirit who was said to move over the water, saying, “And the third things around the third.”

Hear also how the prophetic Spirit announced beforehand through Moses that a conflagration would take place. It said: “Ever-living fire shall descend and devour as far as the abyss below.”

We, then, do not hold the same opinions as others; rather, everyone speaks in imitation of what belongs to us. Among us these things can be heard and learned even from people who do not know the shapes of letters, people uneducated and unsophisticated in speech but wise and believing in mind, some even physically disabled or deprived of sight. From this you may understand that these things have not come from human wisdom but are spoken by the power of God.