Why is Hellenism so important to the Catholic tradition and to Christendom?
The Lord Jesus Christ, my Lord and yours, dear reader, was born in, preached in and was crucified, died, buried and resurrected in a Hellenistic world. true under the dominion of Rome and its Latin armies, but nevertheless, Greek ideas, thought and culture, including language were the fabric of the society in which Jesus lived.
We may argue that he spoke Aramaic and indeed He did as the Gospel records, true He was "Jewish" but one gets a sense that "Jew" in the Gospel means something other than how we define this word today (another possible point of digression). Certain Apostles were appear to have been Hellenized Jews, Philip and Andrew are Greek names.
The scriptures in common use were the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures produced in Alexandria.
The Gospel of John starts with an intesely Hellenistic revelation of God, referring to the Logos - further examination of the Hellenic underpinnings of the first chapter of that Gospel are out of the scope of this discussion.
The Logos, the eminent concept which John equates with the Deity and which incarnates and becomes flesh and dwells among us is the essential mystery which overcomes the essentially transcendant God of other monotheistic faiths, most notably that deity proclaimed by Islam.
The Logos is an essentially Greek concept found in Stoic and Platonic sources. Indeed, many Greeks had an unrevealed monotheism based upon the Logos and one which is encountered most definitively in the philosophy of the Stoics. This philosophy, owing much to the insights of Zeno of Citium (335-263 BC) who saw a cosmos arranged through the influence of a universal principle called The Logos. It is this Logos that John the Evangelist proclaims to be God and incarnate in Jesus Christ, Our Lord.
The cosmological order the cosmos which was disordered by Original Sin has been renewed by the sacrifice of the Logos on the Cross. When read with the Hellenistic perspective the sensibility of the Gospels and the Epistles and the Apocalypse (the Unveiling) become much more clear.
Thus, when our Pope, Benedict XVI refers to the dehellenization of western culture, he referes to the loss of that referent - the Logos as the lens through which the scripture and indeed the ecclesial order must be perceived.
Furthermore it is the Greek mind which saw through the use of natural law the presence of the unseen Logos through its effects upon the Universal Order. From observation and the use of reason the Greeks inferred a monotheistic principle which made the Gospel easily adopted and the evangelization of the gentiles successful.
We may argue that he spoke Aramaic and indeed He did as the Gospel records, true He was "Jewish" but one gets a sense that "Jew" in the Gospel means something other than how we define this word today (another possible point of digression). Certain Apostles were appear to have been Hellenized Jews, Philip and Andrew are Greek names.
The scriptures in common use were the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures produced in Alexandria.
The Gospel of John starts with an intesely Hellenistic revelation of God, referring to the Logos - further examination of the Hellenic underpinnings of the first chapter of that Gospel are out of the scope of this discussion.
The Logos, the eminent concept which John equates with the Deity and which incarnates and becomes flesh and dwells among us is the essential mystery which overcomes the essentially transcendant God of other monotheistic faiths, most notably that deity proclaimed by Islam.
The Logos is an essentially Greek concept found in Stoic and Platonic sources. Indeed, many Greeks had an unrevealed monotheism based upon the Logos and one which is encountered most definitively in the philosophy of the Stoics. This philosophy, owing much to the insights of Zeno of Citium (335-263 BC) who saw a cosmos arranged through the influence of a universal principle called The Logos. It is this Logos that John the Evangelist proclaims to be God and incarnate in Jesus Christ, Our Lord.
The cosmological order the cosmos which was disordered by Original Sin has been renewed by the sacrifice of the Logos on the Cross. When read with the Hellenistic perspective the sensibility of the Gospels and the Epistles and the Apocalypse (the Unveiling) become much more clear.
Thus, when our Pope, Benedict XVI refers to the dehellenization of western culture, he referes to the loss of that referent - the Logos as the lens through which the scripture and indeed the ecclesial order must be perceived.
Furthermore it is the Greek mind which saw through the use of natural law the presence of the unseen Logos through its effects upon the Universal Order. From observation and the use of reason the Greeks inferred a monotheistic principle which made the Gospel easily adopted and the evangelization of the gentiles successful.
posted by Corvus | 11:13 AM
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