Christianity in Antiquity
Prof. Christopher Kelley
Research Paper
Jared Anthony Cook
April 19, 2003
Barbarians in a Hellenistic World
In the millennia God first spoke to Abraham, those whose faith rests in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have encountered one constant struggle both personally and corporately in their encounters with the world. The conflict between a simple faith in God and the thought, philosophies and religions of those outside the covenant has been an almost ever-present challenge to the children of Abraham. People of Faith have constantly been forced to come to terms with those outside, always seeking the best ways to both protect the integrity of their own belief and to articulate the promise of the Covenant to those outside.
While the children of Israel remained in Egypt, this conflict was of course not ideological�being rather simple persecution. Following their exodus from Egypt, the children of Israel experienced a degree of respite from any longstanding external conflict while in the desert�and God�s commands for the annihilation of those already occupying the Promised Land seem to have been intended to prolong that respite�but, of course, Israel�s faithlessness even when not forced dwell among pagans led to their expulsion from their land and a period of diaspora that continues to this day for both Christians and Jews.
To preach the faith in an environment defined by that faith is fairly simple; as the Law orders, ��these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, nad shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on they gates� (Deut. 6:6-9, KJV). That is, the children of the Covenant are to immerse themselves in the Word of God and give no heed to any other�but they have seldom had the luxury to do so unhindered. As they have lived among the pagans of the world, the children of the Promise have had but two options in their encounter with the world: either to deny any validity to its thought and to cut themselves off from it, or to engage it, adopt its methods and language, further develop it and sanctify it by their use, until the culture becomes imbued with the Faith.
From the moment St. John spoke of Christ as the Logos, Christians have embraced the second way, and even to this day most of the world�s traditional Christians maintain that the faith�s encounter with pagan philosophy, culture and language is one which can, by the grace of God, imbue that culture with the grace of God and thus play a part in the redemption of creation. And Jews for their part, generally speaking, withdraw within the confines of their faith, writings and language and set themselves apart from the world.
But it was not always so. In the centuries following Alexander�s conquest more of the known world than any conqueror before him, the Jews in exile began to engage the cultures surrounding them. The Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek by the Seventy in Alexandria and the Jewish communities around the Mediterranean basin began to attract believers from the pagans among whom they lived. Thousands of pilgrims�Jews and Gentiles alike made the yearly pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the great feasts. And, when Christianity burst upon the scene in the months and years following the Lord�s ascension, the ripest fruit for the plucking of the Apostles and their disciples was found among these Gentile believers.
As exemplified by the translation of the Septuagint, the effort to communicate the faith to those raised pagan required that both Jews and Christians learn to at least some degree how to speak of the promises of the Covenant to those not raised within it. For those raised within a completely different tradition must acquire an understanding of the faith before they can simply believe in it�to understand and believe requires that the faith be communicated in the language of the convert. Moreover, in the Diaspora, even those born to the faith find themselves struggling to achieve simple belief in the face of the constant bombardment from conflicting traditions in their daily life. Throughout the Mediterranean world, such pressures had already necessitated the expression of the Jewish faith in language understandable to the world�the Christian Great Commission made the effort utterly indispensable for the Christian teacher.
From the translation of the Septuagint until the latter portion of the first century, however, the Jews participated greatly in the apologetic effort. Especially in Alexandria, those raised in both faithful Judaism and Hellenistic society could not help but attempt a synthesis of the two, especially as the members of the upper class pursued an education suitable to their station. The Christians only continued this work as their numbers and influence grew in Alexandria. And in that city, called the second metropolis of the Roman Empire, we find two of the greatest and earliest apologists of Judaism and Christianity: Philo and Origen.
These two men, writing a little over a century apart from one another, represent some of the seminal work of Christian apologetics. Much of Philo�s work has, it seems, been repudiated in the Jewish the rejection of all things Hellenistic in the final decades of the first century, but Philo himself gives us a snapshot at Judaism before the effort to distance itself from Christianity drove it to the farthest reaches of conservatism�a snapshot of the very Judaism which was transformed into Christianity by the advent of Christ. And Origen, of course, while following very much in Philo�s footsteps, has himself likely exerted a greater influence on those who followed him than any other single theologian in the history of the Church. It is, after all, essentially his synthesis of Christianity and Hellenistic philosophy which, refined and corrected by the great Church Fathers of the fourth century, finally elevated Greek thought that final step which had been so long sought by the greatest of the philosophers.
According to Williamson, Philo was almost certainly born in Alexandria�the Jewish population of which, he later wrote, exceeded that of Judea at over a million�around 30 B.C. As a native of the city he lived an intellectual life which evinced both great loyalty to the faith of his fathers and high esteem for the best philosophy of the Greeks among whom he lived. The Jews of Alexandria, Williamson, �seem to have been the most thoroughly hellenised of the Diaspora. In fact, it has been suggested that in the period in which Philo lived Alexandria was Hellenism. If that is true, as it probably is, then Philo lived within a Jewish community exposed intimately to the most complete expression of Hellenistic culture existing in his day� (Williamson 6). But he was �a Jew first and an Alexandrian second� (3), with hopes of seeing the two reconciled. For �Philo believed Judaism to be a universal religion, capable of attracting and winning the attention of all�but it did not in Philo�s view, achieve this universality by any abandonment of its fundamental beliefs and practices� (Williamson 3). His writings are clearly an attempt to achieve some sort of synthesis of Hellenistic thought and Jewish faith in order to increase the hold which the law of Moses might have upon a pagan listener. For he foresaw a time when the Laws of Moses would be universally adopted by the nations of the world and the Jews would be justified for their long persecutions by the nations. For Philo, says Williamson, the ideal society of the End �would be a divine commonwealth of nations, with different languages and separate ethnic identities, united in a single state governed by the Law of Moses� (Williamson 26). So Philo, then, was loyal above all not simply to the Jewish ethnicity, but to Judaism itself, regardless of the ethnicity of its adherents. And he viewed Judaism as the sole religion capable of bringing fulfillment to the human being, as it was the only way in which a man could come to see God.
God, of course, for Philo, is One. Indeed, Philo�s God is the quintessential One of Hellenistic philosophy a la Parmenides: One, Active, Transcendent, Creator, Father, Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Perfect Being, the Good, Unchangeable, Simple, Immaterial and even Unnameable. The significant difference from the Greek notion of the One, the Form of the Good, is that, while this god is only a notion, a concept, an idea, Philo�s God, being not only the Existent God who says �I am that I am,� is personal and knowable. As Williamson quotes Philo�s Questions and Answers on Exodus, �the beginning and end of happiness is to be able to see God� (Williamson 69). Indeed, Philo in On Dreams urges �Be zealous, therefore, O soul, to become a house of God, a holy temple, a most beauteous abiding-place, for perchance the Master of the whole world�s household shall be thine too and keep thee under his care as his special house, to preserve thee evermore strongly guarded and unharmed� (Williamson 69). But this is a paradox, that an Unnameable, Unchangeable and Perfect Being should be knowable by men�and it is the explication of this paradox that gives Philo probably the most difficulty. The paradox somehow is comprehensible to the human mind on a level other than merely rational, but any effort to articulate it is incredibly difficult. Thus it is an incredibly complex synthesis of Hebrew and Hellenistic conceptions of God which we find in Philo�s work�for he did not wish to deny any of the highest philosophies as practiced by Socrates, Plato or Aristotle, yet desired above all to remain faithful to his faith. To explain his doctrine is the stuff of books, not portions of papers�we may include here snapshots into his thought, but no more.
In order for a God who met the fundamental Greek demands of a Supreme Being to communicate with a world that was self-evidently far-removed from Him, it is necessary for there to be a mediator of some sort or other. Philo embraces the Hellenistic idea of the Logos to fill this role and explain how, for example, a man such as Moses could ever have attained the heights of knowledge of God that he did, and indeed how other men might hope to do the same.
First, a note from Williamson about the word Logos. �Logos means, among other things, the rational thought of mind expressed in utterance or speech. It is something present within the total reality of God himself�the term Logos came to be used by Philo for the divine Mind� (Williamson 104). The word Logos was already used significantly in the Septuagint as the Divine Word by which creation came to be�and there is of course the obvious association of Word with Law within the Jewish tradition.
The place of the Divine Mind, the active Word of God, for Philo, was a mediator�the action of the Logos in the creation of the world already established such a role for the Logos as the means by which a transcendent God interacts with his Creation, but Philo went much farther than that, speaking of the making of man in God�s image. �For nothing mortal can be made in the likeness of the most high One and Father of the universe but only in that of the second God, who is His Logos� (Questions on Genesis 150). Thus, the Logos is the express image of God (in a manner which Philo, of course, never intended to be taken as any contradiction of fundamental Hebrew monotheism), and just so, man is created in the image of the Logos.
But, as Williamson cautions, viewing Philo�s Logos as merely an intermediary is incomplete at best�and more likely completely inaccurate. �To regard the Logos as an intermediary in the proper and fullest sense would perhaps involve a departure from the Jewish view of God as a living God, himself active in the world and history�a step not taken by Philo. It cannot be emphasised enough that the Logos for Philo is God�s Logos, the incorporeal Word of Thought of God, not a distinct and separate being having its own divine ontological status, subordinate to God� (Williamson 107). The difficulty, however, comes when one realizes that Philo does often speak of the Logos as in some manner distinct from the Most High One, the Father.
There is far more involved in the Logos, much of it apparently contradictory and confusing. Let it suffice to say this, at least. John�s formula at the beginning of his Gospel is something which, if not precisely in line with Philo�s notion of the Logos, is only a slight stretch. Philo could probably even have himself spoken every word in the first few verses. �In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men� (John 1: 1-4) KJV). Indeed, Philo, from what can be told of his ideas, would probably not have disagreed with St. John until verse 14: �And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth� (John 1:14 Indeed, Philo, from what can be told of his ideas, would probably not have disagreed with St. John until verse 14: �And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth� (John 1:14). Which is, of course, the point at which Christian doctrine leaves that of the Jews behind. Philo strongly denied any possibility of anthropomorphic gods.
The point is not to say that Philo was a proto-Christian�but only to demonstrate how very easy it would have been to introduce Christianity to Orthodox Judaism of the early first century. The concepts were all in place�hence it is no accident that St. John begins his Gospel with the Logos. It is a concept equally comprehensible to Greeks and to the Jews of his day�Philo and others like him had laid much of the groundwork necessary for Christian evangelization.
For the moment , however, let us move on to Philo�s explanation of Creation. In his On the Creation, in Volume I of Philo, he speaks thus of Moses� account of the Creation, apparently of a creation ex nihilo. �There are some people who, having the world in admiration rather than the Maker of the world, pronounce it to be without beginning and everlasting, while with impious falsehood they postulate in God a vast inactivity; whereas we ought on the contrary to be astonied at His powers as Maker and Father, and not to assign to the world a disproportionate majesty� (Philo 9). After praising Moses for his perception and his excelling in philosophy, Philo finally says that he, �holding the unoriginate to be of a different order from that which is visible�assigned to that which is invisible and an object of intellectual apprehension the infinite and undefinable as united with it by closest tie; but on that which is an object of the senses he bestowed �genesis,� �becoming,� as its appropriate name. Seeing then that this world is both visible and perceived by the senses, it follows that it must also have had an origin.� (Philo I 12-13). �He says that in six days the world was created, not that its Maker required a length of time for His work, for we must think of God as doing all things simultaneously, remembering that �all� includes with the commands which He issues the thought behind them. Six days are mentioned because for the things coming into existence there was need of order� (Philo I 13).
Philo also asserts that, along with the creation itself came the beginning of time: �Time began either simultaneously with the world or after it� (Philo I 21).
Some writers, such as Winston in his Introduction to Philo of Alexandria, assert that it is unclear whether or not Philo holds to a creation ex nihilo, or instead merely considers that God �created� the world from preexistent stuff. Without entering into the intricacies of the argument, let it be said that Winston�s argument is primarily one from the absence of an explicit statement of a creation from nothing. Yet, operating within the philosophical language and understandings with which Philo was far from unfamiliar, it seems very strange that he would hold to anything preexistent that was not created by God Himself. And, at the least, the following summary of Creation surely seems to indicate that even the most fundamental matter of the universe was created by God, and not merely discovered and moulded.
�For God, being God, assumed that a beautiful copy would never be produced apart from a beautiful pattern, and that no object of perception would be faultless which was not made in the likeness of an original discerned only by the intellect. So when He willed to create this visible world he first fully formed the intelligible world, in order that he might have the use of a pattern wholly God-like and incorporeal in producing the material world, as a later creation, the very image of an earlier, to embrace in itself objects of perception of as many kinds as the other contained objects of intelligence� (Philo I 15).
He explains further in this manner. �First, then, the Maker made an incorporeal heaven, and an invisible earth, and the essential form of air and void� (Philo I 23). And then went on to make what might be called �forms� of all else that he had in mind to create.
With that said, it seems passing strange that God would find himself compelled to create even the Forms of the creation, yet used pre-existent matter for the actual creation. One might point to the work On the Eternity of the World as evidence to the contrary, but according to Colson�s introduction to his translation of the work in Volume IX of Philo�s works, �this is certainly the one whose genuineness can be most reasonably doubted� (Philo IX 172). With that said, we will set aside the question of Philo�s views on creation ex nihilo and press on to his doctrine of the nature of man.
As summarized by Williamson on page 68, Philo�s Moses in On the Special Laws asks God to reveal Himself to him. God says that there is no way for Moses to apprehend Him as He is, for that is something which is �more than human nature, yea even the whole heaven and universe, will be able to contain.� Moses then asks only to know �the powers that keep guard around thee.� God says, �The powers which thou seekest to know are discerned not by sight but by mind even as I, whose they are, am discerned by mind and not by sight� (Williamson 68). According to Philo, God can only give to Moses at that time to know Him by �a sort of impress and copy of the active working� of those powers. Interestingly, Philo goes even so far in that work as to equate the powers with the Platonic Forms. But Plato�s Forms are knowable, and it is suggested at least by Williamson that Philo intends to imply that God may come to be known even in His essence to a certain degree, though never completely, in an ascent to some degree resembling that described by Diotima to Socrates in the Symposium, being rather better described as a filling of the man with light and even a transformation of the mind into light. Williamson quotes Philo�s Questions and Answers on Genesis, where Philo says that the mind �becoming light is elevated to higher things, and looking around observes what is in the air and in the ether and the whole heaven together� (Williamson 68).
It appears that this elevation is described at the very end of Philo�s Life of Moses, as he speaks of the great Lawgiver�s death. �Afterwards the time came when he had to make his pilgrimage from earth to heaven, and leave this mortal life for immortality, summoned thither by the Father Who resolved his twofold nature of soul and body into a single unity, transforming his whole being into mind, pure as the sunlight� (Philo VI 593). As Williamson summarizes the passage, �So Moses, at his death, becomes, like God, pure light� (Williamson 57).
Man, then, is apparently created for some sort of passage from this earth. According to Daly in his Introduction to his translation of Origen�s Treatise on the Passover and Dialogue of Origen with Heraclides etc., Philo held to an etymology of the Hebrew word for the Passover �which relates Passover to a Hebrew word signifying �passage.� For Philo, the Jewish Passover recalled the Exodus and allegorically prefigured the passage of the soul from out of the world of sense into the world of reason� (Origen-Daly 8).
Daly continues by explaining that Clement of Alexandria follows Philo in this etymology, even expanding it to be a passage �out of all passion and everything sensible. But he also Christianizes this,� says Daly, �in the Pauline sense that Christ himself is the Passover. For Clement, this seems to mean that Christ had himself traversed this �passage� by his resurrection, which enables Christians also to traverse it for themselves� (Origen-Daly 8). And Origen, of course, as an Alexandrian Christian, follows this line of reasoning and expands upon it in his Treatise on the Passover, illuminating his second century viewpoint of the nature and relation of God and man.
�That the Passover still takes place today,� says Origen in his own introduction to his careful exegesis of the institution of the Passover, �that the sheep is sacrificed and the people come up out of Egypt, this is what the Apostle is teaching when he says: For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (I Cor. 5.7-8). If our Passover has been sacrificed, Jesus Christ, those who sacrifice Christ come up out of Egypt, cross the Red Sea, and will see Pharaoh engulfed� (Origen-Daly 28).
Thus Origen outlines the essential Christian view of the Passover�Christ as the Paschal Lamb, the term pascha referring not to the passion, but to the Passover itself and hence to Christ. He, in his Incarnation, death and Resurrection became for us the way of passage from the world into the glories set before us. These glories are, of course, those of the communion with God which the Christian seeks above all. Hence, we see here Philo�s view taken one step farther into what might well be called a still higher calling, a greater destiny even than that achieved by Moses, so that, as Origen quotes St. John later in his treatise, �To all who received him, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1.12-13). For adoption in Christ has given us the power of so tremendous a salvation, we who are not born of the blood and the will of man and women, and whom He [Christ] recognizes as His brothers when he says: I will proclaim thy name to my brethren (Heb. 2.13; Ps. 22.23)� (Origen-Daly 50). Or, at the least, in the Christian fulfillment the way of passage is made clear in a manner which it escaped Philo to articulate, and that without the necessary dependence upon Platonic philosophy.
Origen�s doctrine of the nature of God is, for the most part, very similar to that of Philo. Nonetheless, he finds himself at great pains to explain the relation of Jesus Christ the Son and Logos of the Father to the Father Himself�that is, how God can be one yet two. This is, indeed, the first and fundamental problem facing him in his Dialogue with Heraclides and his Fellow Bishops on the Father, the Son, and the Soul.
In the course of the dialogue, Heraclides articulated a confession of the divinity of the Word, which Origen then undertook to refine and correct. In the course of his argument, he maintains that �God is the almighty, the uncreated One, who is above all and has made all things,� �that Jesus Christ though he was in the form of God (Phil 2.6), while still being distinct from God in whose form He was, was God before He came into the body,� and that �there was a God, the Son of God and only begotten of God�and that we do not hesitate to speak in one sense of two Gods, and in other sense of one God,� that �the Father is God,� that �the Son is distinct from the Father,� that �while being distinct from the Father, the Son is Himself also God� and that �the two Gods become a unity� (Origen-Daly 57-59). Indeed, the final conclusion is that �We profess two Gods�but the power is one� (Origen Daly 59).
Origen then goes on to explain the manner in which God is one�as a man and his wife are one flesh, and a man united with the Lord is one spirit, so the Son of God is one with God the Father in one God. �For when human beings are joined to each other, the appropriate word is �flesh,� and when a just person is united to Christ, the word is �spirit,� and when Christ is united to the Father, the word is not �flesh� or �spirit,� but the more prestigious word: �God�� (Origen-Daly 60).
He continues to maintain that, at any time in Scripture when God is referred to as One, it is not only the Father or only the Son who is meant, but both together, ending with a final quote from Christ: �I and the Father are one (John 10.30)� (Origen 60).
The distinction which Origen is striving for is that which the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council finally resolved once and for all with the term homoousios, of the same essence. The Orthodox formula as it finally developed holds in many ways with Origen�s distinction of two person�s united in flesh or spirit or God, but instead uses the term �essence� as more accurate and less prone to perversion by Arians or any other heretics. It is indeed in with this final development of the difficulty of explaining the one-ness of Christ the Logos and God the Father that we see the best interweaving of Hellenistic thought with the faith of the Fathers�it is at this point, if any, that it may be said that Greek philosophy has been baptized, this one moment when the Fathers step beyond the language found in Scripture to explain their faith to the world in language which the world can understand and, indeed, cannot misunderstand. But let us continue, looking at Origen�s view of Creation.
Origen upholds a creation ex nihilo more clearly than Philo, for, as he says at the very beginning of his Homilies on Genesis, �What is the beginning of all things except our Lord and �Saviour of all,� Jesus Christ �the firstborn of every creature?� In this beginning, therefore, that is, in his Word, �God made heaven and earth� as the evangelist John also says in the beginning of his Gospel: �In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him and without him nothing was made.� Scripture is not speaking here of any temporal beginning, but it says that the heaven and the earth and all things which were made were made �in the beginning,� that is, in the Savior� (Origen-Heine 47). Origen could not very well do anything but uphold the doctrine. For it is fairly strongly established by the beginning of John�s Gospel, as he recognizes by quoting the first few verses in their entirety by way of explaining how the Creation came to be at the first. In this there is little controversy, unlike with Philo.
Origen, of course, by way of his prolific writing career and simply his zeal and position as perhaps the foremost theological philosopher the Church has ever known, has exerted a tremendous influence on the Church, even down to the present day. His synthesis of Hellenistic philosophy and the Christian faith, as refined by later theologians such as the Cappadocian Fathers and their contemporaries, was the foundation of the actualization of the Christian hope for the redemption of pagan culture and the spreading of the Gospel to all nations.
But it is interesting to note the debts owed by Origen and the rest of the Christian synthesizers to Philo and other Jewish-Hellenistic thinkers of the period preceding Christ�s death. Philo, as a contemporary of Christ, gives us a glimpse of the Judaism from which Christianity grew. Philo�s embracing of the notion of the Logos, for instance, surely laid the foundation even for John�s adoption of the term as referring to Christ Himself. And so it is with much of Philo�s writings. It is easy to see how easily his understanding of the nature of God and man could come to include even the Christian notion of Trinity. Indeed, one might still ask with at least some justification whether Philo himself might not have adopted Christianity had he lived long enough�or even whether he actually did, as some Christian writers have maintained in reviewing his On the Contemplative Life.
But all that is irrelevant. Suffice to say that Philo laid the foundation of a synthesis of Hellenistic thought and Judaism which Origen utilized, refined, and himself handed down to his successors for the final tempering of the system and, ultimately, the conversion of the Hellenistic world.
Works Cited
Origen. Homilies on Genesis and Exodus. Trans. Ronald E. Heine. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1982.
Origen. Treatise on the Passover and Dialogue of Origen with Heraclides and his Fellow Bishops on the Father, the Son, and the Soul. Trans. Robert J. Daly. New York: Paulist Press, 1992.
Philo. Volume I. Trans. F.H. Colson and G.H. Whitaker. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1929.
Philo. Volume I Supplement: Questions on Genesis. Trans. Ralph Marcus. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953.
Philo. Volume VI. Trans. F.H. Colson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935.
Philo. Volume IX. Trans. F.H. Colson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941.
Williamson, Ronald. Jews in the Hellenistic World: Philo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
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