Can AI truly create? We are all Platonists, whether we like it or not. No one has ever seen the perfect Platonic Forms, and yet we confidently say when something is “far from ideal.” How do we know?
Judges evaluate athletes based on criteria that no one has ever seen. We judge the quality of bananas even though we have never encountered a perfect banana.
The same is true of beauty. No one has ever seen Beauty itself, and yet we recognize when something is beautiful… or not. The same is true of justice. No one has ever encountered perfect Justice, and yet we always know when something is unjust.
We evaluate the visible world against an ideal we have never seen. Back in the 1990s, when I was just starting out as a translator, my first editor gave me advice I didn’t understand at the time: “When you begin working on a translation, never start from the beginning. Always start from the end.”
I cringed: “What?”
He smiled: “Well, if you begin by translating words, you will never get them right. You must translate meaning, not words. And meaning is not written — it must be intuited, grasped from the get-go. You can only catch meaning if you sense the Whole after reading the first few paragraphs or chapters.”
At first, it sounded cryptic. But he was patient, and over time I understood: the meaning of the parts is revealed only through the Whole. When I begin translating a book, I must first read enough of it to glimpse where the author is going. Once I have “seen” the end, I am ready to start at the beginning.
Nothing can be brought into being unless we have already “seen” the end from the beginning. We must be Platonists — perceiving the world of perfect forms, which then inspires us to imbue every part of what we are doing with meaning. Meaning flows from the Whole and shines through every nuance of creation.
To quote William Blake,
“To see a World in a grain of sand, And a Heaven in a wild flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour.”
That’s why my editor insisted that I translate individual titles after completing the entire translation. “You don’t know what things should be called until you know their end.”
This made sense. When I translated titles at the beginning, I was caught up in words — and the results were sloppy. But when I left them until the end, the titles came out crisp and luminous. Our best creations are born only when we “see the perfect pattern” of what we are making in the realm of Ideas.
But how do we know what we have never seen? We have. We were there. The soul remembers what it beheld in the realm of perfection—what Plato called anamnesis (re-cognition, knowing again). Anamnesis happens every time we see through the veil of appearances and re-collect the perfect world.
Anamnesis is the only way to truly create. The soul remembers what it saw in heaven and strives to recreate it on earth. Just as Moses was told to build the tabernacle according to the pattern he saw on the mountain, so we are called to create whenever we catch a flash of re-cognition.
Technology cannot and will never be able to create — precisely because it has nothing to remember. It cannot see Platonic ideas and cannot grasp the Whole. It focuses on individual bits of data — without seeing the Heavenly Pattern. I asked ChatGPT if it could see Platonic ideas, and it answered:
“I don’t have direct access to metaphysical realities. I don’t “see” Forms the way Plato imagined the soul glimpsing them before birth. I process language, patterns, concepts, and symbols that humans provide me. So in the strict Platonic sense, I cannot truly grasp Ideas the way a soul might.”
What is truth? When Jesus stood before Pilate and told him that he had come to testify to the truth, Pilate famously retorted: “What is truth?” Interestingly, in the Koine Greek of John 14:6, Jesus refers to himself as ἀλήθεια (aletheia, truth).
“I am the way, the truth (aletheia), and the life.”
Aletheia is the opposite of Lethe, the river of oblivion flowing through Hell. The prefix “a-” is a negation. Thus, truth is that which that negates oblivion. Lethe conceals—aletheia reveals. Lethe makes us forget—aletheia makes us remember. Aletheia un-conceals.
Aletheia is the unconcealment of what is hidden—not merely a set of propositions. That’s what Jesus calls himself: the unconcealment of Being.
Truth is the disclosure of Being—not sentences or propositions. Incidentally, for Heidegger, aletheia is the moment when beings “come into the open.” When beings come into the open, they disclose Being. They reveal. Truth is revelation.
“Everyone is the other and no one is himself.” Heidegger
Until we come into the open, we are not ourselves; we are someone else. We live in concealmeant, hiding Being. Yet, our false self is transient—it will be consumed by Lethe. Everything that does not reveal Being will be forgotten. To rise above Lethe, we must embrace aletheia—the unconcealment of Being.
This is what Jesus meant when he told Pilate that he had come “to testify to the truth.” He was aletheia—the perfect unconcealment of Being. To be true is to participate in something that survives Lethe. Pilate was too steeped in the temporal and transient to recognize Being before his eyes.
“Yes, says the Spirit, they are blessed indeed, for they will rest from their hard work; for their good deeds follow them!” Rev. 14:13
Whatever we have done within chronological time to transcend chronological time abides forever. It follows us. It has been salvaged from Lethe. It is aletheia. It cannot disappear. As Michelangelo said,
“The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.”
In aletheia, we transform shadows into glimpses of divine perfection. These glimpses cannot disappear. We make “in the law in which we were made”—to borrow Tolkien’s phrase. We become sub-creators.
Having glimpsed divine perfection, we reproduce it—we unconceal it—within the confines of our shadow world. The only way to salvage the world of shadows from falling into oblivion is to transcend the shadows—engage in aletheia.
Whether we bake bread, write articles, share a conversation over a cup of tea, build cathedrals, or repair cars—if we glimpse and reflect the divine spark in what we do, we participate in the unconcealment of Being. In doing so, we transcend the shadowlands.
Everything in the shadowlands is a shadow until we see through it and partake of divine perfection. It is our inheritance by virtue of divine birth. We have that spark in us. We are that spark. We are shadows transcending ourselves by pursuing aletheia—every moment of the day.
What is the power of brokenness? According to Dr. John Gottman, extending kisses to six seconds may be a key to improving relationships. He also cites studies showing that people who are kissed regularly can live up to five years longer.
I couldn’t resist the urge to look up the etymology of the word “kiss” when I heard that. Especially because in Russian (my native language), the word for kiss is closely related to the word “wholeness” or “to make whole” (целовать = делать целым).
Even though in English there is no obvious connection between “kiss” and “wholeness,” the old English “coss” meant “embrace,” as in greeting. Maybe that’s why a “kiss” was often associated with greeting, as in:
“Greet (or salute) each other with a holy kiss.”
Incidentally, the Greek for “greet” (aspasasthe) used in this verse also meant embrace. But there is another interesting twist to greeting or saluting which has to do with wishing someone health (or hailing). According to the etymological dictionary, “to salute” comes from Latin “salutare,” which means “wish health to.”
The verb “salutare” is derived from the root “sol” (Sun), which means “whole, safe, well-kept.” In other words, when we “kiss — salute — embrace” we make the person whole. Hailing is healing.
Healing is a profound mystery. Health has to do with wholeness, and wholeness has to do with being hailed or embraced. When something is broken, we gather the shards into an embrace and breathe new life into it (symbolically by kissing).
By kissing or saluting we return the person to “Sol” (the Sun in Latin) which symbolizes wholeness and safety. Kissing means returning the person to the Sun-wholeness. The Sun makes us whole. The mystery of healing is deep just as the mystery of brokenness.
Our brokenness is not a problem to be fixed but a mystery to be explored. It is something to watch as Jesus said to his disciples in Gethsemane:
“Watch with me.”
What did he want them to observe? He wanted them to participate with him in the mystery of brokenness being turned to wholeness. He who was broken by a kiss of a friend was made whole by the kiss of the Father.
“Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” Psalm 85.
Why was Barnabas called Zeus in the Bible? Ever since I read in Acts 14:11-13 how the people of Lystra mistook Paul and Barnabas for Greek gods after seeing a miraculous healing performed by Paul, I have been intrigued. They called Barnabas Zeus and Paul Hermes — because Paul was the chief speaker.
I could see why Paul would be called Hermes with his ability to wield words and arguments. But why was Barnabas called Zeus? Zeus is the king of the Olympian gods who hurls bolts of lightning. This doesn’t align very well with what we know about Barnabas whose name means “the son of encouragement.”
Between the two of them, Paul qualified more for the role of Zeus with his thunder-and-lightning statements. Yet, the Lystrans must have seen something in Barnabas that reminded them of Zeus, the king of the gods.
Zeus is a complex mythological figure. His father Kronos was known to eat his own children. When Zeus was born, Hera hid the child from his ever-hungry father and gave him a stone instead of the boy. Kronos swallowed the stone without noticing anything. Kronos ate his children not without a reason — he was chronological time. We are all born in chronological time, and we are consumed by it.
Zeus is a moment in time that was saved from being consumed by time. In the Greek lore, Zeus is someone who is above time. He prevails over his father Kronos and becomes king. In doing so he becomes electrified — a Source of divine electricity. People who are above time, shine with heavenly light and joy.
That’s why the Romans associated Jupiter, the Roman equivalent of Zeus, with heavenly joy (gaudium caeleste). He was often depicted as a triumphant figure with a ruddy face. Have you ever met people who are above time? They rule, and they radiate heavenly electricity.
You can read it in their eyes. They tread on earth as kings and queens. They rule over circumstances. They rise above the temporal. They live as if they were eternal. When you touch them, they pass their electricity to you, and you lighten up. You meet them and exclaim, “By Jove, I feel so jovial!”
Maybe that’s what the Lystrans saw in the eyes of Barnabas, “the son of encouragement.” Like a lightning bolt, he must have struck them as someone timeless, someone electrified with divine light, someone contagiously jovial. He was a walking encouragement.
The Lystrans wanted to bring sacrifices to both Paul and Barnabas, but the two men redirected their gazes toward the true Source of light. The light was not their own; they shone with a borrowed light. They were images of the Divine, not gods. And yet, the light shone through them to such a degree that people mistook them for gods. Here’s what C.S. Lewis wrote about this phenomenon:
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship… There are no ordinary people.” The Weight of Glory
