Ever since antiquity, scholars of Plato have been evenly divided between those who identify Plato’s supreme god with a form (usually, the form of the good) and those who identify Plato’s supreme god with a soul (usually, the soul of the cosmos). But Plato never aims to give us a science of god; he aims to show us how to become like god. I distinguish three Platonic ascents to the divine: a metaphysical ascent to the form of the good; a cosmological ascent to the cosmic soul; and a religious ascent to the proper civic cult. These three ascents form a nested hierarchy, such that the cosmological ascent presupposes the metaphysical ascent, while the religious ascent presupposes the cosmological ascent. The metaphysical and cosmological ascents culminate in the religious ascent because becoming like god for Plato is a civic project. A philosopher can save herself only by saving her city.

We cannot understand the relation of Socratic philosophy to ancient Greek religion unless we first distinguish between the natural religion of the philosophers, the mythic religion of the poets, and the civic religion of the polis. These are not three religions but three differing interpretations of Greek religion. The Socratic philosophers attack the religion of the poets in order to reform the civic religion in the light of natural religion. All three kinds of Greek religion are focused on the relations between gods and humans and on the question of whether a person can traverse the chasm between human and divine. In Greek mythology and cult, some heroic human beings, like Heracles, were able to become gods. For the Socratics, philosophers are the new Greek heroes, able to divinize themselves by dint of rational discipline.

To be human is to want to be better– if not a better person, then at least better at something. The first premise of this book is that we cannot strive to become better without some notion of the best; logically speaking, better implies best. The second premise is that the idea of the divine serves as the limit case of what is best in our practical reasoning; it is a conceptual truth about god that nothing better can be conceived. The third premise is that our ideas about the gods are an invaluable window on human nature. I then set out my principles for the interpretation of the Socratic philosophers and the Bible. Finally, I discuss the existing scholarship about “becoming like a god” in Greek philosophy and how I see this book in relation to it.

Both Socratic Greek philosophy and biblical religion endorse the human aspiration to become as much like a god or God as is humanly possible. This fact testifies to the important role that ideals of perfection play in human life. Against this fundamental similarity, however, important differences arise. First, in Socratic philosophy, deification rests on human not divine initiative. Socratic deification is primarily the product of rational self-discipline. The Bible, however, rejects as prideful this Greek ideal of self-deification. Biblical deification rests on divine not human initiative. Second, the gods of the Socratic philosophers are personifications of reason rather than divine persons. The gods of the philosophers are paradigms to be imitated rather than persons with whom we are in relationship. Third, the gods of the Socratic philosophers are cosmic gods whom we approach through the study of the orderly motion of the celestial bodies. By contrast, the biblical God is a divine person whom we approach through loving union with other persons, divine and human. Greek salvation takes us from here to there, from earth to heaven; biblical salvation takes us from now to then, from the present to the future.

Aristotle’s theology is best understood in relation to Plato’s. Like Plato, Aristotle offers no science of god, but he does offer philosophers a way to immortalize themselves through the study and contemplation of the cosmos. First, Aristotle arrays all classes of substances, from the elements to the gods, in a single progressive hierarchy. Every substance in the cosmos, he says, strives to become as much like god as its own nature permits: each class of substance perfects itself by imitating the class above it. A person’s life, says Aristotle, develops through the classes of plants, animals, and humans—before striving to imitate the divine by contemplating the stars. We become like the god by climbing the ladder of classes of substances. Second, Aristotle’s god governs the cosmos not by managing it but purely by being an example of perfection—an example that magnetically draws all things toward him. The perfect happiness enjoyed by god inspires all other classes of substances to love and to imitate him. Similarly, a philosopher governs his household and his city not by managing them, but merely by the attractive power of the example he sets of godlike happiness.

First, I argue that the aspiration to become like a god is an inescapable part of the human condition and is as common among atheists as among theists. I set aside the whole question of the existence of the gods and treat theology as a guide to anthropology. Ideas of the divine reveal essential truths about human beings. Second, I explore the ambivalence about this aspiration to divinity – an ambivalence found both in philosophy and in biblical religion. Third, I discuss the relation of philosophy to religion by showing that the great philosophers, especially the Socratic philosophers, have attempted to think through the presuppositions of religious thought. Fourth, I argue that common attempts to contrast Athens and Jerusalem as reason and faith are absurd. I show that the true differences between Greek philosophy and biblical religion emerge only against the background of the common project of attempting to become divine in both Athens and Jerusalem.

Socrates often said that he was merely a human being with no share in divine wisdom or virtue; but Socrates himself lived a life of superhuman self-control, wisdom, and virtue. There is an ironic contrast between his verbal professions of humility and the commanding power of his own heroic life. For example, despite his avowals of ignorance, Socrates also claimed to receive personal admonitions directly from the gods. My portrait of Socrates is based on the contrast between how he saw himself (in the Apology of Plato) and how he was viewed by his students (in Alcibiades’ memoir in Plato’s Symposium). Socrates presents himself as all-too-human, but his students saw him as quasi-divine. Despite his verbal modesty in the face of divine wisdom, Socrates’s own life and death became the very paradigm of how a human being can become godlike by means of rational discipline.

If any book could be said to condemn the whole idea of human beings attempting to become like God, then surely it is the Bible. At the very beginning of Genesis, a serpent (later identified as Satan) tempts Eve with the promise that, if she disobeys God by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then she will be “as a god.” According to the Bible, the root of all evil is pride; and pride means precisely thinking that we could become divine. Jesus himself is condemned by the Jewish priests for the blasphemous arrogance of claiming to be divine. And yet, the Bible also promises the faithful that they can become “partakers of the divine nature.” What the Bible condemns, of course, is self-deification. If we surrender to God’s love and seek intimate relation to him, God promises to transform us into creatures who possess divine sanctity and everlasting life. The biblical God is less a paradigm of perfection that we might imitate and more a divine person with whom we might have a loving relationship. According to the Bible, we are divinized not by merely imitating God but by loving and being loved by him.

Joan was the first woman to lead the armies of a major nation to victory. Often compared to the biblical warrior-prophet, Deborah, Joan fought a holy war to expel foreigners from the promised land of her ancestors. Joan’s battle-standard carried the name of Jesus, but Joan’s claim to hear a private divine voice reminds one of Socrates. However, if Socrates’s voice told him only what not to do, Joan’s voice also told her what to do. Joan’s insistence that France be ruled by the French laid the foundation for modern patriotism just as her military exploits laid the foundation for modern France. Her faith in her divine voice led Joan boldly, even recklessly, to confront the kings and priests of her day, leading her to condemnation and execution by both an English king and a French bishop. King Henry killed her as a traitor; Bishop Couchon killed her as a heretic.

Socrates identified hubris as the principal obstacle to wisdom and knew that most people will not listen to reason until they are taken down a few notches. Martin Luther King similarly knew that Southern white leaders would not negotiate in good faith until their racial hubris was challenged. Socratic questioning created a personal crisis, that is, a teachable moment, for those subjected to it; King’s protests created a political crisis and a teachable moment in those Southern towns subjected to it. Martin Luther King is well known for his stirring denunciations of American racism, militarism, and poverty; King is less well known for his denunciations of the complacency of the Christian church in America, both Black and white. Yet King’s prophetic witness led to his persecution by political leaders as well as his excommunication from his own Black Baptist Church convention. Americans like to think of their country as the promised land, but for many of its Black citizens, the American experience has been more like bondage in Egypt than freedom in Canaan. In King’s prophetic vision, America will be redeemed by the suffering of its Black citizens, especially in the South. Like Moses, King hoped to liberate his people from bondage; and like Jesus, King would liberate his people not by conquest but by redemptive suffering.