Reading the words of Socrates I can’t help but think of the possibility of him being a Christian. Honor was the most important thing to the ancient Greeks, but Socrates thinks nothing of it. Being a wise man he must have read the Iliad and all of the other famous works, but his ideas are so unique compared to his time period. His concepts of revenge and justice follow the standard of our God. He talks about his first principle being “neither injury nor retaliation nor warding off evil with evil is ever right.” His ideas are so needed in the Greek culture, especially in the tragedies such as The Oresteia. The family goes by the principle of using evil against evil, and so the cycle of revenge and killing can never be fixed by man. They do not consider justice to be brought about by the gods as the Christian religion does, so they deal with the justice themselves. So does Socrates secretly believe in our God or did he come up with these ideas himself? I guess we will never know the right answer, but he does talk about his belief in God and not in the gods. I think most likely Socrates did not actually know about the Hebrew God, but through his search for the truth he came upon the same theories because they are built into all man kind. Even without the commandment that we should not kill, humans know that murdering is wrong. To me Socrates is the wisest man in Greece because he did not follow any of their traditions, but dug within himself and others to find out the truth about life. Although much of his discoveries were about wisdom, he also had a hard time believing in the Greek gods. He went against the oracle to find the real truth and perhaps in his journey he discovered the truth about God.
Ps. I commented on Sara Dye's post
I definitely noted on what you are saying here. He switches over from god to God within the text several times. No doubt he has a belief in divine matters and divine beings, but maybe it was something he still had not fully come to terms with, thus the switch between god/God. It makes me wonder how much he thought about it during his last days before he faced death; I wonder even more what conclusion he came to, or if he came to one (as we clearly see he has issues with conclusions).
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