Surprise Influencers
What young boy or girl hasn’t had a famous celebrity that they admired and tried to emulate? As a little leaguer, my idol was the baseball player Mickey Mantle. He played center field for the New York Yankees, and I was mesmerized. I watched him on television, collected his baseball cards, and even learned to switch-hit from either side of the plate, not successfully, I might add. He had a large influence on my life all through my elementary years and even beyond.
Mickey Mantle
We’ve all had influencers in our lives, people or events that shaped us. What many people don’t realize is that even the Christian faith has been impacted by outside sources, especially the Greek/Roman intellectual tradition and culture. Christian theology didn’t develop in a vacuum but was influenced by the Greek language and its philosophical heritage.
Take the incarnation. The early church struggled to express how God was in Jesus and found language in Aristotelian concepts to explain the mystery of the incarnation. At the Council of Nicaea in 325, early Christian theologians borrowed from Aristotle’s Categories to define how Jesus was one with God. A sect within the church had concluded that Christ’s oneness with God was a generic unity, that is, of similar substance (homoiousia). Other Christians, however, believed that Jesus and God were one or what they termed a “unity of substance,” that is, of the same substance (homoousia).
The distinction between similar and same was highly significant. One view, represented by Arius and his followers, held that Jesus had divine attributes (similar) but fell short of being equal with God (homoiousia), while the other view, endorsed by Athanasius, affirmed that Jesus and God were the same kind of being (homoousia). Neither of these terms occur in the New Testament, although the concept that Jesus is God’s presence does (Jn. 1:1; Philip. 2:6; Col. 2:9).
The council sided with Athanasius, believing that his view better represented the teachings of the New Testament. Aristotle influenced other theological concepts as well, such as how God was one person in three different expressions—what theologians call the Trinity—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Although Aristotle was not a Christian, he influenced how the church theologically articulated the incarnation and also how God exists in three different persons.
The Trinity
During the medieval period, Aristotle was admired by such great church theologians as Thomas Aquinas and the Catholic Church. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Aristotle, along with Socrates and Plato, are consigned to Limbo, a place just outside heaven, but are not condemned to everlasting torment. These philosophers were honored because it was widely recognized that these Greek influencers had contributed in highly significant ways to the Christian faith.
Furthermore, when Paul began his missionary journeys into the Western world of Greece and Italy, he found receptive audiences in many of the cities he visited. Once again, it was the Greek intellectual culture that helped prepare the way for Paul’s evangelistic preaching. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics was well-known by the mid-to-late first century throughout the Roman world, and had introduced ethical and moral principles of conduct that prepared the spiritual soil for the spread of the Christian Gospel. By putting a human face on God in the person of Jesus, the moral principles of the Greek philosophers became personal and not just abstract principles. Do these sentences in Aristotle’s Ethics have a biblical ring?
It is better to suffer injustice than to commit injustice; it is more important to love others than to receive love from others; moral virtue is acquired through a disciplined life; a wise person practices moderation in all things. (From Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics)
The Nicomachean Ethics, written over 300 years before Jesus, is one of the amazing ethical works of antiquity and foreshadows many of the teachings in the New Testament. A number of Aristotle’s ethical instructions could be inserted into the New Testament, and people would easily mistake them for authentic writings of Paul or another one of the apostles.
Aristotle
Another Greek philosopher that Christians can learn from is Socrates (469-399 BC). Socrates was either the teacher of Plato or they were well known to each other. We know of Socrates primarily through the dialogues of Plato. Apparently Socrates was an unattractive man who dressed rather haphazardly, bathed infrequently, and even went without shoes as he walked and encountered people in the market place of Athens in the mid-5th century BC. To say that people thought him strange would be an understatement. Yet, Socrates laid the Western intellectual foundation that later led to science, philosophy, religion, ethics, politics, reason, and so much more.
Although Socrates has been credited as the founder of Western philosophy, he, like Jesus, wrote nothing down. Plato tells us in his Phaedrus that Socrates didn’t write because he felt writing things down weakened a person’s memory. Plus, when words are written down, and circulated among others, they are more open to misinterpretation. Socrates’ method was through personal encounter and conversation. He felt that a personal engagement was the best way to communicate.
Socrates enjoyed playing the devil’s advocate by asking questions. He became famous for asking “What is it?” questions. What is courage? What is justice? What is a successful life? What is the best form of government?
When Socrates engaged someone with a question, the person usually responded rather quickly, believing he had the right answer. But as Socrates began to probe and challenge the responder, it didn’t take long before his dialogue partner realized his answer could not stand up to closer scrutiny. Socrates didn’t offer answers of his own, but he did lead his interlocutors to discover that much of their reasoning was flawed.
Socrates
Socrates has taught me to never become too comfortable with my understanding of truth. What I believe to be set in stone may need another look, another perspective, or possibly revision. If something is true, we should never fear more information or even different points of view. Only when we are insecure with our belief system, do we resist those who challenge us.
When I was an aspiring theological student, one of my best friends had a habit of annoying me with his persistent challenges to my theological certainties and convictions. Sometimes, when we were discussing a thorny ethical or moral issue, I would tell him what I believed, feeling confident that I had thoroughly studied the subject and had arrived at the proper biblical answer. He would smile and say, “But Riley, have you thought about…” Slowly, a wave of uncertainty would spread over me, as I realized he had injected a consideration that had escaped me.
It irritated me to no end that my friend had the audacity to throw a monkey wrench into what I thought was an air-tight explanation. A day or two later, as I reflected on his concern, I came to appreciate his candor in raising the objection. Even though he passed away a number of years ago, I feel his presence every time I ponder a controversial subject: “How would my friend Bob challenge me?” “What would he say that would force me to reconsider my opinion?” He simply would not allow me to settle for superficial answers or half-baked ideas. We all need people in our lives like that.
The Greek thinkers have served a similar purpose in influencing how Christians understand the deep mysteries of faith. They ask provocative questions that can annoy or even frustrate us, but, more importantly, they can help us to see a larger canvas of faith that results in a better perspective of what we believe and why.
Some Christians may push back on Greek influencers being granted such a privileged place in Christian theology. I certainly understand. But God loves to surprise. Remember that Jesus once complimented a centurion—a pagan Roman soldier—by saying that in all Israel he had not seen such remarkable faith (Lk. 7:9). A pagan had greater faith than the most righteous in Israel? Go figure! Oh, how often God surprises us by the path he uses to accomplish his purpose!
