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Introduction to Part II

from II - The first encounter of Judaism and Christianity with ancient Greek philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2011

Lloyd P. Gerson
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Summary

In this section, we begin the treatment of Jewish and Christian thinkers who were among the first to encounter ancient Greek philosophy in a systematic way. The relationship between Judaism and Christianity (and later, Islam) as religions, on the one hand, and their theological formulations, on the other, is an ongoing theme through this book. The Hellenized Jew Philo of Alexandria is perhaps the first to see in Greek philosophy the vocabulary and the conceptual framework for articulating Biblical revelation. The principal challenge Philo faced was how to express in the language of Greek philosophy the personal nature of the first principle of all and the relation that existed between that principle and the Jewish people. The history of ancient Greek philosophy is often characterized as having separated itself from the personalized Homeric gods in favour of more rational and so more impersonal causes. But it was not so much the personal as it was the non-rational aspects of the personal that Greek philosophical theology wished to abandon. Philo’s efforts to provide a systematic allegorizing of Scripture was to be enormously influential in both Jewish and Christian attempts to commensurate the philosophical and the theological.

In Justin, Clement and Origen we have three of the earliest major thinkers to argue that Christianity was a philosophy, indeed, that it was the culmination of Greek philosophical thinking. It is already evident from the Pauline Epistles that Christianity and Greek philosophy were apt either for conflict or harmonization. This option for the latter will be reprised and also repeatedly rejected up through the Reformation and beyond. Tertullian’s (c. 160–c. 220) famous query, ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem or the Academy with the Church?’ is an emblematic reaction to the more eirenic or perhaps strategic efforts of the above three. It was their approach, however, that mainly prevailed. In them, we see much of the common currency of Greek philosophical language employed in a way intended to preserve the distinctiveness of the Christian message.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

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  • Introduction to Part II
  • Edited by Lloyd P. Gerson, University of Toronto
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity
  • Online publication: 28 May 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521764407.016
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  • Introduction to Part II
  • Edited by Lloyd P. Gerson, University of Toronto
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity
  • Online publication: 28 May 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521764407.016
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction to Part II
  • Edited by Lloyd P. Gerson, University of Toronto
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity
  • Online publication: 28 May 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521764407.016
Available formats
×