Hellenistic Christianity or Christianized Hellenism?

One topic that has come up a fair bit in my research as well as my Barth reading group is the interaction between Hellenism (ancient Greek religion / philosophy) and Christianity. Western Christianity has a distinctly Platonic taste to it. We perceive God as a spirit, a non-physical entity not effected by time. We ascribe to God perfection of the highest orders: kindness but as true Kindness, love but as true Love, just but as true Justice. We naturally comprehend God as a self sufficient timeless perfect spiritual being and have a hard time understanding him as actually Three in One.

There are reasons for this. During the dawn of Christianity the Roman Empire had become 'Hellenized.' The teachings of the ancient Greek philosophers dominated the understanding of the world, time, and the divine. After Jesus' death, Resurrection, and ascension waves of believers took the Gospel message all over the Roman Empire (and beyond) and what do you think was the first real opposition they ran into? Hellenism. Some scholars of religion believe that early Christianity was heavily influenced by Hellenism and that the true understanding of Jesus and his followers is now forever lost under layers of Hellenistic Christian tradition. However, I've a read a few other scholars who believe it was the other way around, that Hellenism was effected by Christianity, not the other way around.

I am by no means well read on this topic, I am just trying to work out my personal thoughts for the time being. The first great theologians after Paul were indeed of a Hellenistic background. Origen, Augustine, Tertullian, Irenaeus, indeed all of the leading theologians of the early Church were Hellenistic to start with and were trying to become Christian. They began by holding up both Hellenism and their new found faith in Jesus and the Revelation of God in Jesus and tried to connected the two by building bridges. The meticulous and logical Greek philosophers spoke concerning the divine in a way that everyone (even many people today) believed in. The very idea of God consisting of three persons was impossible according to Hellenism, but this was the conclusion that they all came to, and the definitive break with Hellenism. God had revealed himself to be more than the perfect mono-being unaffected by temporality, he showed himself to both transcend time and able to (and willing to) enter into it with us as a fellow man! He showed himself to not consist alone but in community with himself. And so the early Church grappled with this reality and broke with Socrates. All sorts of heresies took root where Hellenism was still embraced; Arianism, Gnosticism, Nestorianism, and all of them were rejected.



That was a long time ago, but even today we have natural Hellenistic tendencies. We speak of God as a unitarian God, as if God were just 'God' a perfect holy being somewhere 'up there' who may or may not exist and not as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who has revealed himself and comes down to live with us. We assume that true goodness is goodness of the spirit or heart and we do not immediately recognize that the physical creation is a part of God's very being through the incarnate Son and the covenant of Grace, the plan to redeem all of creation even the physical creation!

This is an interesting topic, and I wish I knew more. Perhaps I will study it for fun when I have time.

Greg Out

Rethinking the Apostles' Creed

The Apostles' Creed is an ancient Christian document born out of a time of theological confusion and conflict within the early church. I wanted to use it as a guide for my internship but alas, I perceived it incorrectly. The following are my reflections put into writing. But first, the Creed itself.

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord.

Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary:
Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried: He descended to the grave:
The third day he rose again from the dead:
He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty:
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead:
I believe in the Holy Ghost:
I believe in the holy catholic church: the communion of saints:
The forgiveness of sins:
The resurrection of the body:
And the life everlasting. Amen.

I had wanted to use the Creed as a guide or outline as to what Christianity is. I had perceived the Creed as a type of ancient litmus test created for the purpose of boiling down Christianity to the basics and stopping heresy. Then I met with my instructor and he told me to go back and reconsider the purpose of the Creed.

After some research (primarily with Robert Jensen) and reflection I believe that I was right in many respects but also mistaken in my original direction. The Creed was indeed born out of theological conflict. The instability of Origen's theological system of bridging Hellenism to Christianity was the backdrop of the theological rift manifested by the conflict Arius / Eusibius and Alexander / Athanasius. The center of the rift was the question of the identity of the Jesus, the Son of the Father. According to Arius the Son would have to be a created being, a lesser God and not the same as the Father since Hellenistic reasoning could not comprehend any division in the true divine. Arius and his teachings were branded as false teaching and he was excommunicated from the Church. Many bishops were sympathetic to Arius though and things began to get a little ugly as an epic power struggle began to unfold. The new Christian Emperor decided to call a meeting and bridge the rift before the empire had a chance to unravel itself due to theological disagreement. And so the council of Nicaea met together and decided against Arius, that the Son was homoousias (of the same essence as) the Father.

So there we go, the Creed was indeed formed out of the purpose of combating heresy but not as a guide or outline of Christianity but as a clarification of which God Christianity was all about. It turns out that the God who has revealed himself in Jesus, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is not the same God as the God of Hellenism with Christian clothes on.

The Creed went through a few more changes and clarifications until we had the Constantinople Creed, aka The Apostles' Creed as it is above, but it is not any outline of Christian doctrine, it is an outline of the Christian God.

This has immense consequences for my project. If I want to be true to the Creed then my project needs to be about Who the Christian God is and not about what Christians believe about him. I need to introduce people to the Christian God, not go on about Christian doctrines like the text that originally inspired this project (ironic).

Greg Out.