The Greek Philosophers and Christianity
Those Christians who assert a functional unity between the Old
testament and New Testament, and the Old Testament God and the New
Testament God, often deride the influences of Plato or the other Greek
Philosophers in the post-Biblical era
Christianity.
Greek Philosphy and Gnosticism syncretism?
Many Christians have dismissed the second century Gnostics as syncretists.
Syncretising the Greek Philosophy with Christianity, and replacing the
God of the Old Testament with a Platonic God. Paving the way for
the introduction of neo Platonism into the Church through such people
as St Augustine.
These Christians would certainly not countenance the idea that on some
fronts the Greek Philosphers may have had a better idea of the heart of
true God than the Jews.
Lets look at the issue from a different perspective.
If you were to ask Christians for the key distinctive teaching of Jesus during his earthly ministry, what would it be?
What is the one element of Jesus teaching that stands out?
I would suggest that for most Christians the answers would be Jesus
teaching of loving your enemies, 'turning the other cheek' and
not returning evil for evil.
Turning the other cheek
It will not surprise you that 'turning the other cheek' is the
antithesis of the Old Testament God's Law of an eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth, but it may surprise you to find out that 'turning
the other cheek' not a foreign to the Greek Philosophers.
In one of Plato's dialogues centuries before Christ, Plato has Socrates
pretty well denouncing the foundational paradigm of the Mosaic law:
Soc. And what of doing evil in return for evil, which is the morality of the many-is that just or not?
Cr. Not just.
Soc. For doing evil to another is the same as injuring him?
Cr. Very true.
Soc. Then we ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to anyone,
whatever evil we may have suffered from him. But I would have you
consider, Crito, whether you really mean what you are saying. For this
opinion has never been held, and never will be held, by any
considerable number of persons; and those who are agreed and those who
are not agreed upon this point have no common ground, and can only
despise one another, when they see how widely they differ. Tell me,
then, whether you agree with and assent to my first principle, that
neither injury nor retaliation nor warding off evil by evil is ever
right...
Plato - Crito
I would assert that the authoritarian church is the one guilty of
syncretism – its not the synchretism of Christianity with
Platonism, its the synchretism of Christianity and Judaism.
The Coming of Christ is not just to fulfil the hopes and aspirations of one tiny nation.
The Gospel of Matthew clearly states that it was the adherents of a foreign mystery school (The Magi) not the Jewish religious leaders who recognised the coming of Jesus for what it was.
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