Laws and the Telos of Religion

And each person lives in this way, revering and imitating as best he can the particular god in whose cohort he follows, as long as he remains uncorrupted and is living out his first life here; and in this manner he interacts and behaves towards his loved ones or anyone else…

…Now, if they have not embarked upon the practice before, then they attempt to learn at this stage from any source they can, and they search themselves, and following the traces within themselves they find that they are well equipped to discover the nature of their own god on account of their intense compulsion to look towards that god. And reaching out to him by means of memory, they are inspired, and adopt his habits and activities in so far as it is possible for a human to partake of the divine.

Phaedrus 252d–e

Theaetetus 176b states that the goal of our life is to become like God. In our previous post, we showed how the demiurgic Intellect operates through souls. We also saw in the Phaedrus that each person belongs to a band or cohort associated with a particular god. If becoming like God is the telos of human life, and we are meant to follow a particular god, then this immediately raises a practical question: how does one know which god one is meant to follow, and how does that following actually occur?

In the passage above, Plato describes precisely this process. He explains that by following the traces within ourselves and by attending to the compulsion that draws us toward a particular god, we can come to recognize who our leader god is. Our innate character, dispositions, and desires are not accidental; they function as signs that orient us toward the god whose activity we are meant to imitate. In this way, self-knowledge becomes inseparable from theology.

Because the gods are without jealousy or envy, there is no reason to think that this search would provoke divine resentment. On the contrary, the gods are not offended by our desire to find our proper leader; this desire is itself the mark of divine orientation. The process is necessarily personal and involves genuine self-discovery. Yet it is not arbitrary. Once a person begins to orient themselves toward the god whose nature aligns with their own deepest tendencies, that alignment becomes increasingly evident in practice.

Often this recognition begins not with a single god but with a broader attraction to a pantheon. One may first feel drawn to a religious world before discerning the specific god who stands as one’s leader within it. For example, those who find themselves naturally drawn toward the Norse pantheon may well discover that their leader god belongs among that company. Plato’s framework allows for this gradual clarification without collapsing into relativism.

This process of assimilation underscores why Plato places such importance on having a correct understanding of the gods. If our conception of the gods is distorted, our imitation will be distorted as well. If our only knowledge of the gods comes from inherited opinions, especially from poets who misrepresent divine nature, we risk assimilating ourselves to something less than the true god. In that case, even sincere devotion can lead us astray.

Thinking God’s Thoughts?

Based on the Aristotelian formulation that God and Intellect are identical, it is tempting to assume that “becoming like God” consists primarily, or even exclusively, in thinking God’s thoughts. On this view, participation in the highest noetic activity would represent the summit of human life. But Plato never frames the path to God in this way. In fact, he consistently presents the approach to God in moral and religious terms rather than purely intellectual ones.

O men, according to the ancient tradition, God, holding the beginning, end and middle of all of the things that are, proceeds without deviation along nature’s circular course. Justice always accompanies him and is the punisher of those who depart from his divine law. So anyone who intends to be happy holds to justice and follows her in humility and good order, while anyone who gets carried away by pride, or excited over wealth or honours or a pretty body, inflames his soul with arrogance through impetuosity combined with stupidity. He then feels the need neither for a ruler nor for a leader; he believes he is competent to lead others, and he is left alone, forsaken by God, and having been forsaken, he co-opts others who are like himself, behaves erratically and causes all sorts of confusion. To many people he seems to be someone significant, but he very soon pays the deserved penalty to justice, and brings utter ruination upon himself, his household and his city. Now, since these matters have been ordained in this way, what should an intelligent person do, what should his resolution be, and what should he avoid?

Laws 4.716a

Here, Plato begins to articulate what it actually means to follow God. The first Delphic maxim, “ Follow God,” is given concrete content. Justice, humility, and alignment with divine order are the modes by which one follows God, while pride, greed, and lust represent the ways in which one turns away. The issue is not ignorance of doctrine but disorder of soul.

Plato then sharpens the point:

So, what conduct is dear to and follows after God? There is one, and there is an ancient account of this which says that like is dear to like, once there is due measure, while things that are unmeasured are dear neither to themselves nor to the measured. Now, for us, God more than anything else would be the measure of all things, much more so than any “man” that some refer to. And someone who is to be dear to such a being as this needs to become like this himself, to the very best of his ability. And so, by this argument, he among us who is sound-minded is dear to God for he is like God, and he who is not sound-minded is unlike Him and at variance with Him, and so too is the unjust man, and the same argument also applies in general.

Laws 4.716c

Here measure names the standard by which we orient our lives. Vice and injustice arise when we make ourselves the measure rather than God. Anything treated as the ultimate standard other than God results in lack of measure. Plato’s claim is even stronger: those who set themselves as the measure are not only unlike God, they are not even like themselves. Their own nature is distorted because the human soul is ordered toward likeness with God. To live well is to recognize God as the measure and to embody that recognition in action.

Crucially, this assimilation is not reducible to intellectual contemplation. Plato immediately turns to religion, not inward speculation, as the primary means by which this likeness is enacted.

Now, there is another principle that follows from all these, and in my view it is the most exalted and truest principle of all: that, for the good person, to sacrifice to the gods and to commune with them constantly through prayers, offerings and every possible service of gods is the noblest, the best, and the most effective way to a happy life, and the most appropriate by far. But for the bad person, the very opposite is naturally the case, for he is impure of soul, while the good person is pure, and it is never right for a good man or god to receive gifts from the defiled. So, for the unholy, any great endeavour in relation to the gods is in vain, but for all those who are holy, it is always opportune.

Laws 4.716e

The most effective path toward assimilation, Plato tells us, is religion itself: sacrifice, prayer, offerings, and every possible form of service to the gods. These acts are not bribes or attempts at manipulation; they are practices that orient the soul toward divine order. While our leader gods naturally hold pride of place in this process, Plato is clear that piety should extend across the divine hierarchy.

The lesson is unmistakable. Assimilation to God does not consist solely in “thinking God’s thoughts” or purifying the intellect in isolation. Even if Aristotle is correct in identifying God with Intellect, and Plato himself identifies God with Orphic Zeus, the mode of assimilation is moral and religious. Because God operates through souls, it is our devotion and love toward these higher souls that becomes the vehicle of likeness. Without this orientation, we lose sight of God as the measure and fall into impiety. Any substitute measure leads inevitably to ruin.

This does not diminish the importance of intellectual purification or philosophical wisdom. It does, however, show that such activity is insufficient on its own. Some people may live lives of genuine virtue and piety without ever engaging explicitly in theoretical contemplation. Throughout Laws, the principle that like attracts like functions as a moral and religious law, not merely an intellectual one. To become like God is to be just and pious with wisdom (Theaetetus 176b).

Impiety as Metaphysical Error

Atheism

In Laws Book 10, Plato turns to impiety directly. Rather than focusing only on impious acts, he seeks their root cause. He concludes that moral corruption flows from religious and metaphysical error.

We should now say what is to happen in any cases where someone acts outrageously towards the gods, in word or in deed, by what is said or what is done, beginning with a preamble as follows. No one who believes in the gods, as the laws prescribe, has ever deliberately done an impious deed or let loose an unlawful word. If anyone does so it is because one of three things befalls him. Either, as I was saying, he does not really believe in them, or secondly he believes that they exist but do not care about us humans, or thirdly he believes that they are easily appeased under the influence of sacrifices and prayers.

Laws 10.885b

The first form of impiety is atheism. Plato identifies its cause as a metaphysical mistake: the denial of soul as the primary principle of reality. Those who deny the gods reduce all causation to material processes.

They don’t know that soul is among the things that come first, having come into existence before all of the bodies, and more than anything else controls all their changes and transformations. And if this is indeed the case, mustn’t anything akin to soul, of necessity, be prior in origin to anything associated with bodies, since soul is older than body?

Laws 10.892a

To deny the gods is therefore to deny the soul. This leads inevitably to a naturalistic worldview in which no space remains for divine souls as causes. The modern version of this error differs only in vocabulary. Contemporary atheists may explain how natural laws operate, but they take those laws as brute facts rather than metaphysical realities grounded in soul. Gravity “just is.” The forces of nature “just are.” Their existence is assumed rather than explained.

This metaphysical error quickly becomes moral. If the soul is denied, the gods are denied. If the gods are denied, there are no higher moral exemplars. Humanity becomes the measure of all things. The revival of Protagoras in modern moral relativism is no accident.

The Claim That the Gods Do Not Care

The second form of impiety claims that the gods exist but do not care for human affairs (Laws 10.899d). This position often arises from reflection on evil and suffering. Plato insists that this view, too, rests on mistaken reasoning.

Carelessness and indifference are vices, not virtues. Since the gods are good, they cannot be indifferent to what falls under their care.

In that case, is it not completely impossible for us to accept that they do anything at all out of indifference and indulgence, given that they are as we agree that they are? Indeed, among ourselves at any rate, idleness is born of cowardice, and indifference of idleness and indulgence. None of the gods, then, show a lack of care out of idleness and indifference, since they are not possessed of cowardice. Therefore, we conclude that if they do indeed neglect the small and insignificant details of the All, they would do so either thinking that nothing of this sort should be cared for at all, or, alternatively, we can only conclude that they think the direct opposite.

Laws 10.901e

Plato then adds this central claim: we are the possessions of the gods. Because the gods are good, they must care for what belongs to them. This concern extends to all living beings, not only humans. A god who neglected the small would fail at the large, just as a craftsman cannot succeed by ignoring details.

None of this works if the gods are static intellects. The gods must be souls; capable of action, movement, response, and care. Intellect alone may serve as a paradigm, but it cannot act. Souls hear prayers, guide, respond, and govern. We can become like them precisely because we are souls as well.

For gods who issue decrees have prescribed this one especially above all others, and it should be heeded without reservation. For you will never evade its care, neither by being so small as to dive beneath the depths of the earth, nor by becoming so exalted as to ascend to the very heaven. And you will pay them the proper price, either whilst remaining here, or, indeed, when you have proceeded to Hades, or even when you have been transported to a still more fearsome region than these. You will find that the same argument also applies to those people whom you have seen becoming great from insignificant beginnings, through unholy deeds or the like. You thought they had come out of misery into a blessed life, and that you had discerned in their actions, as though in a mirror, total neglect on the part of the gods, not realising how precisely their contribution fits into the entire. So, my most vigorous friend, this decree must be understood. How could you think otherwise? Someone who does not understand this would never have even an inkling about human life, nor be able to contribute a single word on what makes it happy or miserable.

Laws 10.905e

The Claim That the Gods Can Be Bought Off

The third form of impiety holds that the gods can be placated through sacrifices and prayers regardless of one’s actions.

The notion is intolerable. And of all those who are involved in any form of impiety, anyone who holds this opinion may well be adjudged, quite rightly, as utterly evil, and impious in the extreme.

Laws 10.907b

This belief collapses under the weight of everything Plato has already established. The gods are good. They care for souls. They lead toward virtue. To suggest that they would excuse injustice in exchange for offerings is to attribute corruption to the gods themselves.

Conclusion

The purpose of religion, then, is the assimilation of our souls to the gods, and through them, likeness to God himself. Piety ensures that we remain aligned with the true measure of reality.

This consists in treating God as the measure of all things. In practice, that means worshipping the gods through prayer, offerings, and service, not as placation, but as recognition of the cosmic order. We are not bargaining with the gods or sustaining them through sacrifice. We are acknowledging what is greater than ourselves and orienting our lives toward their perfection.

Justice, piety, and wisdom together form the path of assimilation. The goal is not submission, but likeness; not fear, but participation. Through religious life rightly understood, we renew our commitment to divine order and express gratitude and love toward those souls who guide us. In doing so, we become what we were always meant to be.