Christianity and the Structure of Being–A Metaphysical Map

From Plato to the Eternal Structure of Being

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🔹 1. Plato (4th c. BCE)

Core Move: Eternal Forms vs. Temporal World

• Reality = unchanging, timeless Ideas (Forms)
• The world of becoming = shadow, illusion, imperfection
• Being belongs only to the eternal; the sensible is suspended over non-being

🡺 Impact: Introduces the first metaphysical dualism
→ Sets up the world of change as ontologically inferior
→ Seeds the logic of annihilation (what becomes can also vanish)

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🔹 2. Early Christianity (1st–4th c. CE)

Core Intuition:

• Incarnation, Resurrection, Eternal Life
• The body is saved, not escaped
• God enters history, time matters

🡺 Tension Emerges:
→ Christian message affirms the eternal within time
→ But lacks a metaphysical framework to explain this

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🔹 3. Christian-Platonic Synthesis (4th–13th c.)

Key Figures: Augustine, Origen, Aquinas

• Creation ex nihilo (from nothing)
• Soul > body, heaven > earth
• Salvation as future, world as passing

🡺 Effect:
→ Christianity adopts Platonic structure
→ Eternal = God; Creation = contingent
→ Introduces metaphysical fragility: what is can not be

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🔹 4. Western Metaphysical Crisis (17th–20th c.)

Descartes → Enlightenment → Materialism

• God as distant cause, or removed altogether
• Matter is inert, mechanical, or accidental
• Time becomes meaningless, Being is provisional

🡺 Nihilism:
→ Whether idealist or materialist, becoming leads to nothing
→ Loss, death, and impermanence become metaphysical destiny

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🔹 5. Persistent Intuitions (Mystics & Prophets)

Eckhart, Paul, Bonhoeffer, Vannini, Christian Mysticism

• Eternity not above, but within
• Resurrection not metaphor, but recognition
• Love sees what cannot be lost

🡺 Breaking Points:
→ Doctrines strain under the weight of annihilability
→ Glimpses of a deeper structure appear

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🔹 6. Severino and the Structure of Being (20th–21st c.)

Reversal:

• What-is cannot not be
• Becoming = contradiction
• The world, the self, the body = eternal presences

🡺 Final Resolution:
→ Overcoming the last dualism: Being vs. nothing
→ Christianity fulfills itself not by escaping the world, but by recognizing its necessity

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🔸 Final Insight:

The eternal is not elsewhere. It is here.
What Christianity long intuited in symbol and promise, the structure of Being affirms as necessity.
Nothing is lost. No being perishes.
This is not the end of Christianity.
It is the moment it becomes what it truly is.