For, as if we were to see any one unable to bear a spark of light, or the flame of a very small lamp, and were desirous to acquaint such a one, whose vision could not admit a greater degree of light than what we have stated, with the brightness and splendour of the sun, would it not be necessary to tell him that the splendour of the sun was unspeakably and incalculably better and more glorious than all this light which he saw? So our understanding, when shut in by the fetters of flesh and blood, and rendered, on account of its participation in such material substances, duller and more obtuse, although, in comparison with our bodily nature, it is esteemed to be far superior, yet, in its efforts to examine and behold incorporeal things, scarcely holds the place of a spark or lamp. But among all intelligent, that is, incorporeal beings, what is so superior to all others— so unspeakably and incalculably superior— as God, whose nature cannot be grasped or seen by the power of any human understanding, even the purest and brightest? (Book I, Part 5)

For Plato our intelligence is too often bound as if to the back of a cave where we perceive only rough shadows of created forms.

Plato encourages us to turn from the back of the cave and ascend into the bright light of the sun and the domain of the ideal.

For Origen and many Christian neo-Platonists the body is the cave. The body keeps us in darkness and sin, separate from God.

We understand Jesus to be God incarnate or God in the flesh. Jesus taught his disciples, "take and eat, this is my flesh." Jesus healed and loved bodies.

We might say that Jesus appeared at the back of Plato's cave to beckon us to ascend, but if so he would ask us to begin by taking the first step with our own fleshly foot.