How has Greek philosophy influenced Christianity?

But gnosticism, we must remember, was not a corruption of Christianity, though the whole school of gnostics are called heretics by ecclesiastical writers. As to its origin, we must go back to the many religions of the East, such as Chaldean, Persian, Egyptian, and others. In our own day such philosophers would be viewed as infidels and utter aliens from the gospel of Christ; but in early times the title heretic was given to all who in any way whatever introduced the name of Christ into their philosophical systems. Hence it has been said, "If Mahomet had appeared in the second century, Justin Martyr or Irenaeus would have spoken of him as a heretic." At the same time we must own that the principles of the Greek philosophy, especially the Platonic, forced their way at a very early period into the church, corrupted the pure stream of truth, and threatened for a time to change the design and the effects of the gospel upon mankind.

It was the great object of this eminent teacher to harmonise Christianity with philosophy, this was the leaven of the Alexandrian school. He sought to gather up the fragments of truth scattered throughout other systems, and unite them in a christian scheme, so as to present the gospel in a form that would not offend the prejudices, but insure the conversion, of Jews, gnostics, and of cultivated heathen. These principles of interpretation, and this combination of Christianity with philosophy, led Origen and his followers into many grave and serious errors, both practical and doctrinal. He was a devoted, earnest, zealous Christian himself, and truly loved the Lord Jesus, but the tendency of his principles has been, from that day to this, to weaken faith in the definite character of truth, if not to pervert it altogether by means of spiritualizing and allegorising, which his system taught and allowed.

And so it was with the church. Even the philosophers began to take up Christian truth, and in the writings of the fathers we find pretty much what we have here. What fornication is in moral things, such was their illicit commerce with the world in the things of God. There were, I doubt not, witnesses who were made very little account of, save in heaven; but one of the men who had the largest and most lasting influence of all, Augustine, was a true saint of God, and, though it may not mean much, the greatest light of the western church. He had held the name of Christ and had not denied his faith. All agree that these epistles applied primarily to the churches to which John wrote; but many do not see that they also apply to different stages of the church, and describe its various states successively.

But, further, the doctrine of the Ante-Nicene Fathers is anything but satisfactory as to the divinity of Christ. Justin peremptorily denies that the one supreme God, the Creator, can appear as a man in this world; and the doctrine of Christ's not being distinct, as a person, till creation was about to take place, though not without an exception, no one acquainted with them can deny to be general, as expressed by endiathetos and prolhorikos. From the desire to meet the heathen's ideas, and the influence of Platonic philosophy, their teaching on the logos, or word, and what is expressed by the word Trinity is extremely loose and objectionable, to say the least. But if loose and unsound on so fundamental a point - on that which is the very truth itself, and foundation of all truth, the person of the Lord Jesus Christ - on what can we trust them? The final judgment is treated by one as a means of purifying the imperfect. And Augustine speaks of the Lord's supper as thanksgiving for the good, propitiation for the bad, and, though it cannot help the wicked dead, a comfort to the living (that is, by deceiving them): elsewhere he says, it may allay their pains in hell. As to the grace of God, it was hardly known amongst them.

Neither this reference then, to the Greek church, nor that to the Fathers, proves anything, save that the statements of Dr. Milner are unfounded. The Fathers cannot be trusted for doctrine a moment. Justin Martyr declares that it was impossible that the Supreme God could assume a body, and that it was not He who appeared to Abraham. He, I may say all the early Fathers, if we except the good and gracious old Irenaeus, held that there was no personality of the Son till the time of the creation. Hardly any of them — none, perhaps, but Irenaeus — before the Council of Nice, were clear as to the divinity of Christ. All this came from the same source as purgatory, a mixture of Judaism and Platonic philosophy; so, indeed, did saintly and angelic mediation. This mixture of philosophy and Judaism at Alexandria in Egypt was the fertile cause of corruption in the church.

It is to me as evident as possible historically, that the Arian doctrine came direct from Philo, at least from the Alexandrian school of philosophers, or Platonist Jews, who held that the supreme God could not be directly connected with the material creation; and spoke of the λόγος, the Word, as between the supreme God and the creation, begotten perhaps rather than made; yet after all existing as a creature by the will of the Creator, the supreme God. Now, save the dear good old Irenaeus, and a word or two from Polycarp and Ignatius, all the earlier Greek Fathers were of this school. Justin Martyr, a Platonist, taught this doctrine; so Clemens, so Origen. It was Platonism, not Scripture, and deeply infected the assembly. These Fathers are no way to be trusted; they shew it, and this spread west too, in the existence of the words ἐνδιάθετος and προφοριχός: all that is directly and verbally from the Philo school. I accept none of this. I find it met in face by John and Paul, carefully and fully met. I read, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1:1. Wherever my mind can go back to as a beginning as to time, there He was. And that there may be no plea of ἐνδιάθετος that is His inherence as reason without being a person, he adds, "He was in the beginning with God" — always a distinct person. And lest any inferiority should be alleged, Paul tells us, "All the fulness was pleased to dwell in him," for this is the true force of the passage. And so the fact is declared to have been, "For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." Col. 2:9. As a person He emptied Himself, ἑαυτὸν ἐχένωσεν. He could not have done so save as God. A creature who leaves his first estate sins therein. The sovereign Lord can descend in grace. In Him it is love. Then, as in that position, He receives all. All the words He has are given to Him. He is, though unchangeable in nature as God, yet in His path a dependent man. He lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God — is sealed by the Father; the glory He had before the world is now given Him of the Father. Now in this state of obedient servant, with a revelation which God gave to Him, the day and hour of His judicial action was not revealed. "It is not for you," He says to His disciples, "to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power." Acts 1:7. And to this exactly Psalm 110 answers (as has been observed by another), "Sit on my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool." When? Sit there in this place of divine glory till; no more is said. Now, I do not pretend to explain — God forbid I should! — how this is.

173 But this by the bye. That Alexandrian theology was philosophical, and corrupted by philosophy, is certain: Clement, the great Alexandrian teacher, does not conceal it. He says in his Stromata (ed. Potter 1, 319, line 35), speaking of the nourishment of souls, the peace in the word, and the life which is of God; he adds, "For souls have their own nourishment, some growing in knowledge and intelligence, some fed according to the Grecian philosophy, of which, as in the case of nuts, all is not edible." In lib. 7, 2 (1831, 2), "the word teaches all, some as friends, some as faithful servants, some as servants; he is the teacher who instructs the man of knowledge (the Gnostic) in mysteries (this is the esoteric teaching for a few), the faithful by good hopes, and the hard-hearted by corrective discipline and sensible (aesthetic) powers." And afterwards: "He, the Word, it is who gives philosophy to the Greeks by inferior angels; for the angels, by a divine and ancient ordinance, are distributed by nations, but the doctrine of believers is the Lord's part, insisting on the divine care of all." So in book 6, 8 (773), "All things useful to life are given by the Word, but philosophy more especially to the Greeks was given to them as a special covenant, to be as a foundation of philosophy according to Christ." And in book 1, 6 (p. 337) he makes the sower of the parable to have come thus from above from the foundation of the world. What this philosophy was he tells us (338): "Philosophy, I say not the Stoic, not the Platonic, nor the Epicurean and Aristotelian, but whatever things are said rightly by each of these sects, teaching righteousness with pious intelligence; this, as a whole, I call eclectic philosophy." The law, he says elsewhere, was for the Jews, philosophy for the Greeks, till Christ came (6, 17, p. 823), the whole chapter being a long discourse on this subject, each receiving it according to their deserts.

I am fully satisfied that the East was the origin of much more of all this than we are aware of, corrected partially in these Alexandrian Fathers by Christianity, and already in Plato (and, I suppose, Pythagoras) by Grecian habits of thought. The root of it was, that there was a supreme unknown God who dwelt in the depths of silence, and could have no connection with matter. Hence emanations and the Demiurge, an inferior creator, resulting in Gnosticism — the plague of the early church. Platonism, with its emanated demons and the Alexandrian philosophy, divides into the Christian and heathen parties, Clement giving his perfect Christian the name of Gnostic. Early there was a Jewish party, whom Philo represents. In all Logos was an inferior being, though divine. It resulted, in another form, in Arianism, the doctrine more or less of the Alexandrian ante-Nicene Fathers (not of Irenaeus), combated by Athanasius when it came formally to a head in Arius. Thus it was that Dr. Newman came to be called an Arian. He had imbibed a delight in these ante-Nicene statements. Hence, too, arose asceticism. Matter held, as Plato teaches, the soul down as a nail to the earth; it was to be mortified. Asceticism began in the Alexandrian church, partly indeed by persons who fled in the Decian persecution. Hence forbidding to marry, not that people might be more devoted, but as evil for the Gnostic.

Plato teaches the pre-existence of the soul (Phaedo, 923) and transmigration. Only true saints, who had kept alone from every snare of corporate existence, went, it is suggested, to God: so did Pythagoras. Philo, the Jew, held the pre-existence of the soul, as Plato, and that the air is full of demons up to the moon; and the lower, or inferior class, were disposed to be earthly, and came into bodies. This came from Indian or Egyptian heathenism. Why do I speak of these things? Because the great early doctors of the church, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, were educated in Platonism. Origen, too, embraced the whole system — transmigration, and the renewal of the whole series of the soul's history in another earth. Jerome and Ruffinus (Latins), and even, in part, Ambrose followed Origen in a great deal, as did Gregory of Nyssa, and many others in the East.

But before coming to direct proofs, I would express the conviction that the idea of the immortality of the soul, although recognised in Luke 12:5 and 20:38, is not in general a gospel topic; that it comes, on the contrary, from the Platonists; and that it was just when the coming of Christ was denied in the church or at least began to be lost sight of, that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul came into displace that of the resurrection. This was about the time of Origen. It is hardly needful to say that I do not doubt the immortality of the soul; I only assert that this view has taken the place of the doctrine of the resurrection of the church, as the epoch of its joy and glory.

The comparison of Christianity with previously existing systems, at least with those in proximity to which Christianity first appeared, so as to suggest comparison, is no new thing. Its relation to Judaism was a question early raised, and clearly settled also, while the apostles themselves were yet on the scene. No small part of Paul's particular mission was the setting free the new religion from the bonds of Jewish legalism; while a whole epistle, Hebrews, is given up to the elaboration of the comparison between the two systems. To another category altogether, however, belong the other religions and philosophies with which primitive Christianity came in contact, whether in Greece or Rome. Inspired Christian writings are comparatively reticent as to these, although some there are no doubt who read into New Testament scriptures the reiteration of their technical terms at least. For instance, that the language of the opening verses of John's Gospel, with its use of the "Logos," is reminiscent of the Greco-Oriental speculations of the Alexandrian Philo, or that moral terms in regular use among the Stoics make frequent appearance in Paul's epistles, or again that the noteworthy resemblance between Paul and Seneca, which forms the matter of one of Lightfoot's treatises, proves parallelism in their teachings.

Answer to all this was not at all difficult. For, if, as we believe, Christianity is the sole and sufficient answer to the deepest need of the human heart, that need which even pagan idolaters could not but feel, and which their philosophers could not meet but only falteringly express; if, as one has said, "Paganism brought nothing to Christianity but aspirations frustrated, and yearnings unsatisfied," is it at all to be wondered at if God, in revealing that which alone could satisfy these yearnings, condescended to use, as far as He could, the terms in which these aspirations were expressed? As the late Editor of "Bible Treasury" has said, "The truth is that God in His grace, who knew the bewilderment of man's mind, not dissipated but deepened by philosophy, etc., either anticipated or answered these unbelieving reveries by the revelation of the truth. … Christ, true God and perfect man, is the revelation of God, which sets aside the corrupt Gnostic, the self-complacent Stoic, and the dreaming Platonist. If inspiration employed their language, it was in pitiful condescension to impart the truth of God in Christ, which brings to naught their vain, self-righteous and false ideas. " __