"The
world into which Christianity came owed much to the specific influence of Greek
thought."
Certain factors in the world of thought into which Christianity
came belong to Universal ancient Religion and are of hoary antiquity.
All men
except a few representatives of philosophical sophistication believed in the
existence of a power or of powers invisible, super human and eternal
controlling human destiny and to be worshiped or placated by prayer, ritual or.
Sacrifice. The earth was viewed as the centre of the universe. Around it, the
sun planets and stars ran their courses. Above it was the heaven; below, the
abode of departed spirits or of the wicked. No conception of what is now called
natural law had penetrated the popular mind. All the on-goings of nature were
the work of invisible powers of good and evil who ruled arbitrarily. Miracles
were therefore to be regarded not merely as possible they were to be expected
whenever the higher forces would impress men with the important or the unusual.
The world was the abode of innumerable spirits, righteous or malevolent who
touched human life in all its phases and who even entered into such possession
of men as to control their actions for good or ill. A profound sense of
unworthiness, of ill desert and dissatisfaction with the existing conditions of
life characterized the mass of mankind. The varied forms of religious
manifestation were evidences of the universal need for better relations with
the spiritual and the unseen, and of men’s longing for help greater than what
they could give one another.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY, SOCRATES
Besides these general conceptions common to popular religions, the
world into which Christianity came owed much to the specific influence of Greek
thought. Hellenistic ideas dominated the intelligence of the Roman Empire, but
their sway was extensive only among the more civilized portion of the
population. Greek Philosophic speculations at first concerned itself with the
explanation of the physical universe. Yet with Heraclitus of Ephesus (about BC
490), though all was viewed as in a sense physical the universe which is in
constant flow is regarded as fashioned by a fiery element the all-penetrating
reasons of which men’s souls are a part. Here was probably the germ of the
logos (…..) conception which was to play such a role in later Greek speculation
and Christian Theology. As yet, this shaping element was undistinguished from
material warmth or fire. Anaxagoras of Athens (about BC 500-428) taught that a
shaping mind (….) acted in the ordering of matter and is independent of it. The
Pythagoreans of Southern Italy held that spirit is immaterial and that souls
are fallen spirits imprisoned in material bodies. To this belief in immaterial existence
they seem to have been led by a consideration of the properties of numbers-permanent
truths beyond the realm of matter and not materially discerned.
To Socrates (B.C. 470?-399), the explanation of man himself, not
of the universe was the prime object of thought. Man’s conduct; that is morals,
was the most important theme of investigation. Right action is based on
knowledge and would result in the four virtues-prudence, courage, self control
and justice which as “the natural virtues” were to have their eminent place in
medieval Christian theology. This identification of virtue with knowledge, the
doctrine that to know will involve doing was indeed a disastrous legacy to all Greek
thinking and influential in much Christian speculation notably in the
Gnosticism of the second century.
In Socrates’ Disciple, Plato-(BC 427-347), the early Greek mind
reached its highest spiritual attainment. He is properly described as a man of
mystical piety as well as of the profoundest spiritual insight. To Plato, the
passing forms of this visible world give no real knowledge. That knowledge of
the truly permanent and real comes from our acquaintance with the “ideas” those
changeless archetypal universal patterns which exist in the invisible spiritual
world- the intelligible world since known by reason rather than by the senses-and
gives whatever of reality is shared by the passing phenomena present to our
senses. The soul knew these ideas in previous existence.
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