Platonism holds that there are two worlds: the visible,
material world and the invisible, spiritual world. The visible or
phenomenal world is in tension with the invisible or conceptual world.
Because it is imperfect and a source of evil, the material world is
inferior to that of the spiritual. In this view, the human soul originates
in the heavenly realm, from which it fell into the realm of matter. Though
human beings find themselves related to both of these worlds, they long
for release from their physical bodies so that their true selves (their
souls) might take flight back to the permanent world of the celestial and
divine.
Plato's
view of the cosmos was then transposed to man. The body was a prison for
the soul. The immortal soul -- pure spirit -- is incarcerated in a
defective body of crumbling clay. Salvation comes at death, when the
soul escapes the body and soars heavenward to the invisible realm of
the pure and eternal spirit.
This
had a widespread influence upon the history of Christian thought. "The
most important fact in the history of Christian doctrine was that the
father of Christian theology, Origen, was a Platonic philosopher
at the school of Alexandria.” -- Werner Jaeger, “The Greek Ideas of
Immortality," Harvard Theological Review 52 (July, 1959): 146.
Unlike
the Greeks, the Hebrews viewed the world as good. Though fallen and
unredeemed, it was created by a God who designed it with humanity's best
interests at heart. So, instead of fleeing from the world, human beings
experienced God's fellowship, love, and saving activity in the historical
order within the world.