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
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