What is Hellenism, and how did it influence the early church?

The influence of heathenism on the Fathers, particularly of the Alexandrian school, was frightful; no one can doubt that such as Origen and Clement were largely tainted with it. The inroad of the old evils into the western and less imaginative (and therefore more orthodox) Christendom was more plodding Judaism as to its character. Still it did not escape the inroad of evil. There is the worshipping of saints and angels; there is the forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats; there is pretended human righteousness by works and ordinances; there is really the lordship as well as the grace of Christ widely denied. That is, the elements of Judaism, Gnosticism, and heathenism, are all there — their development checked, but there, and characterizing the system — the mass having cast off the lordship of Christ really altogether. This element is restrained, but ever ready to burst out when God's restraint is taken off.

The influence of heathenism on the Fathers, particularly of the Alexandrian school, was frightful; no one can doubt that such as Origen and Clement were largely tainted with it. The inroad of the old evils into the western and less imaginative (and therefore more orthodox) Christendom was more plodding Judaism as to its character. Still it did not escape the inroad of evil. There is the worshipping of saints and angels; there is the forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats; there is pretended human righteousness by works and ordinances; there is really the lordship as well as the grace of Christ widely denied. That is, the elements of Judaism, Gnosticism, and heathenism, are all there — their development checked, but there, and characterizing the system — the mass having cast off the lordship of Christ really altogether. This element is restrained, but ever ready to burst out when God's restraint is taken off.

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.

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.

In the Alexandrian system, as we have it in Philo, and perhaps the Book of Wisdom, much had been borrowed from scripture, much from Plato, who, I cannot doubt, had got his notions from the Feroohers of Zoroaster, and which, except the Feroohers, is reproduced in Hegel and Schelling. Gentiles had traditions; Alexandrian philosophy had shreds of Judaism; but God was lost. Now God, who had compassion on man, took up every link where He could connect Himself in grace with man, while positively confirming His own revelation given in the Old Testament. He could take up the unknown God in Athens, the λόγος in Alexandria, the Paraclete itself as a term. But what does He do? The unknown God is fully revealed with positive facts and divine truth. The λόγος was introduced by Platonic Jews in Alexandria, because God could have nothing to say to the mere creature; and the λόγος might form others, but remained alone in His own nature. For John the λόγος is God, who Himself becomes flesh. The cravings which philosophy had made a false system out of, not knowing God, are met (not a system made out of them) by the revelation of God Himself, the truth of all they sought, and the perfect grace they needed. It put down the philosophy, while it met all the seekings of man in it. It took up the old thoughts thus far; but to say it did not so much bring in what was new is utterly false. All it brought in was new (save as the Old Testament revelation had spoken of it). But it did meet the hungerings of the human soul, which philosophy was wasting by ideas, and told the truth about the traditions which had been perverted into monstrous, idolatrous, and absurd legends.

It was not enough for them to have Christ; they were to walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him, assured in the faith, and not caught by these novel dreams, whether of an intellectual or a religious kind. It was thus an early error, that philosophy might be united to Christianity in order to make divine revelation more palatable to earnest, thoughtful minds. It had been all very well, they thought, to preach Christ at first simply; but now that it was no longer a question of a few lowly Galileans, why not address themselves to the great and wise of the earth, sick as many were of heathenism, and repelled by cold Judaism? And, if so, why not meet them as much as possible on their own ground? Why not engraft into Christianity some of the common sense of Aristotle, or, still better, the lofty aspirings of Plato, or yet more readily such high and noble sentiments as Philo represents in his Biblical essays?

In their unconverted days the Corinthian believers had been familiar with the philosophies of the Grecian world and accustomed to range themselves under their leaders of thought into philosophic schools. They had boasted in all this human wisdom — "the wisdom of this world" and of "the princes of this world," for without a doubt many of the leaders of Greek thought were princes in the realm of intellect, as the Romans were princes in the arts of government. They committed the folly of importing these worldly ways into the midst of the church of God, and assuming that leading Christians were to be esteemed as princes in things religious — were to be followed and magnified into leaders of schools of religion.

In their after-history, Israel desired to be as the nations, and to have a king over them, when Jehovah was their King. They corrupted themselves, and lost their distinguishing glory. And when do we find corruption stealthily creeping into the early church? Is it not in philosophical wisdom, and admiration of teachers? The glory of the church is the presence of the Holy Ghost in the midst of her. The introduction of human wisdom, admiration of teachers, and all that was most esteemed among men, would virtually displace the Holy Ghost, so that His power, His teaching, His guidance would practically be superseded. Viewed in the light of heaven, and as from heaven, this introduction of human wisdom in the church was by the Apostle seen to be corruption. Presbutes, 1850.

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.

The Fathers of the second and third centuries were deeply infected with the Alexandrian philosophy which denied that the true God comes down to the earth, or that man's body ever goes to heaven: an error derived from the East. Christ refutes both absolutely in His own person. Justin Martyr, the Hermas of the second century, Clemens Alex., and Origen were all heterodox more or less.