Against The "Hellenization Thesis"
This post is not meant to pick on Moltmann. Nor is it to disallow that at some points, perhaps even in extensive ways, some of the formulae as stated in the concepts and idiom of the Fathers need revising. This post has the humbler goal of stating just how difficult it is to develop and sustain causal historiographical claims of philosophical influence, and this for a variety of reasons.
1.) Smorgasbord: As Paul Gavrilyuk has pointed out at length, "Hellenization" is a completely unhelpful term out of the gate, as there was a staggering array of philosophical schools and opinions, who all disagreed with one another. To "Hellenize" is already in this sense simply vacuous--it means nothing. It is rendered even more imprecise because...
2.) Saturation: ..."Hellenization" can also theoretically work at different levels. What does one mean by the claim? Typically, when "Hellenization" is mentioned, the claim is meant pejoratively to reference that it has perversely affected a theologian's work at the theoretical level. Yet, as Jaroslav Pelikan has noted, this is to simply to fallaciously assume that all "hints" of Hellenization evince a deeper theoretical connection to some aspect of Greek Philosophical theory. But this is not so clear cut: what is misconstrued as (philosophical) Hellenization could actually be the manifestation of aesthetic sensibility, rhetorical styling, vocabulary, etc. ... rather than the "deep structure" co-optation of theory.
3.) Reification: Part of the difficulty lay in the very assumptions made regarding the boundaries of theology and philosophy, which of course any claim regarding the philosophical "contamination" of theology trade upon. As such, "thought forms" like "Hebrew" and "Greek" are idealized and serve as self-contained nodes of interaction. It serves us to quote Lewis Ayres at length why this is problematic:
[T]he opposition Greek and Hebrew, or Greek philosophy and Christian theology, is one of the most important examples of a wider narrative trope that relies on oppositions between idealized thought forms. Some versions of this trope are of course one of the more lamentable aspects of early Christian heresiology, but it is also important to note that a particular version of engagement via typification has been important within modern theological thought.And this is problematic precisely because
Relating the history of a doctrinal theme as the story of two competing and abstract ideas has enabled systematicians to invoke the history of Christian thought without the need for deep textual and contextual engagement [emphasis added]...this involves subtle strategies regarding assumptions about the nature and function of philosophy and about the appropriate use of the text of Scripture. This strategy presents philosophies as self enclosed systems of thought that frequently overcome theologians who attempt to appropriate them and that are only naively used piecemeal to expand on and explore the plain sense of Scripture ... it is thus only a short step for theologians to assume as a working model that the history of Christian thought presents them with a history of accommodations to particular philosophies, or negotiations between self-enclosed philosophies and the Gospel (Nicaea and Its Legacy 390-391).4.) Eclecticism: Another problem with the thesis of "hellenization" is how it misses the "pick-and-choose" aspect of how the Fathers' utilize non-Christian thought. This "ad hoc" methodology renders suspect that any of the Father's were blindly absorbing philosophical thought wholesale. Certainly one can disagree with individual decisions, but to cite the reason as "philosophical corruption" is here simply to miss the mark.
5.) Decontextualization: Indeed as Anna Williams points out, quite ironically
This commentators who see the Fathers'Christian judgment overridden by their enthrallment to the 'wisdom of the Greeks' not only fail to take full account of how much they reject or adapt, [but] as well how much they modify simply in virtue of the way in which they combine [Greek wisdom]. (Divine Sense, 18).This, again, does not simply have to do with the deconstruction of elaborate Greek systems. As with Pelikan's point above in #2, here Williams notes that even the differing assumed audiences of Plotinus and Christianity mean concepts take on differing tones--whereas Plotinus' works were aimed at the "educated, leisurely classes" (Divine Sense, 13) the elitist contemplative character of this sort of neo-Platonism shifted into discussions of the habits even ordinary lay-Christians could achieve--even if the terminology and concepts often (apparently) retained vestiges of the earlier philosophical idiom.
Pierre Hadot in his What is Ancient Philosophy? makes the same point from a different angle. He notes that any appropriation of philosophy into Christian discourse was already to deconstruct it as "philosophy." This is because antique philosophy was viewed as purely a work of reason by Christian theologians--rather than, as it was, a mode of spiritual practice aimed at achieving the broad (and broadly misunderstood) goal(s) of eudamonia--often misleadingly translated by the English "happiness," or "pleasure," but which probably means something closer to the "good life." Yet to abstract the theoretical tools and resources of a Plato, an Aristotle--even an Atomist like Democritus--is already to begin to disassemble "Greek thought".
Or, to take a material example, the a se God of Patristic and Medieval theology is often seen as utter capitulation to, say, Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover." Yet here, the difference that (for example) the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo makes is completely ignored: The a se God of Christianity is actually nothing like Aristotle's Unmoved Mover--and this is precisely (and ironically) because of the Christian God's independence from the world. Aristotle's God is self-sufficient, yes. But he (it?) is also finite and limited precisely because he is not only unaware of the world he created, he created it (unawares) by a sort of intrinsic necessity. The Christian God, by contrast, precisely by creation ex nihilo is intentionally and volitionally turned toward the world in love in the free act of creation. It could fill several books by itself, but it is hard to over-stress the difference ex nihilo makes to the context of these two ideas of g/God. In extension, the doctrine of the Incarnation was likewise revolutionary in this sense, even where retaining earlier "philosophical" idiom.
As such, we should also mention in this category that it is relatively simple to display similarity between thinkers; it is much less easy--short of explicit statements like many 13th century theologians who follow Aristotle on this or that--to demonstrate causation.
6.) Election: A particularly poignant aspect that is often overlooked is: why are "philosophical" solutions being adopted in the first place? Here "Hellenization" often (as Point #3 above mentions) assume "absolute" categories of theology, philosophy (Gospel vs Greek) etc. ... in which one is "invaded" by the other (note the conflict-metaphor). But as Wolfhart Pannenberg says, quite perceptively, the reason that the ad hoc, eclectic, decontextualized thought world of non-Christian sources are engaged in the first place is because they appear to helpfully address, in one way or another, problems that are already latent in the Christian tradition:
In the history of ideas absolutely nothing is clarified and understood by the phrase: this or that has ‘influenced’ something or other. Thus even the remolding of the Christian message into a form that was understandable and attractive to Hellenistic thought may not be attributed only to a Hellenistic ‘influence,’ or to an infiltration of alien elements into what was originally Christian…the history of ideas is not a chemistry of concepts that have been arbitrarily stirred together and are then neatly separated again by the modern historian. In order for an ‘influence’ of alien concepts to be absorbed, a situation must have previously emerged within which these concepts could be greeted as an aid for the expression of a problem already present. (Jesus: God and Man 2nd ed., 153f).As such, we have to ask ourselves: what problem was this (alleged) philosophy meant to address? Famously, of course, homoousion has a tortured history, but its production was not philosophical importation but in regards to matters of Biblical exegesis.
7.) Temporal: Chronologically speaking, part of the difficulty of the "Hellenization" thesis is that many of the so called "Hellenistic influences" are themselves actually, chronologically, developing alongside or after Christianity. Once upon a time it was thought, for example, that Gnostic (or proto-Gnostic) sources, were influencing John's Gospel. This so-called "descending and ascending redeemer motif" supposedly made its way into the Christian consciousness as they attempted to explain the significance of Christ. Today, however, both with the discovery of the Nag Hammadi documents which show non-Gnostic development of, e.g. the Light and Darkness themes in John, as well as the fact that we have no extant Gnostic sources pre-2nd century, it is much more likely that Gnosticism patterned itself on Christianity, rather than vice-versa (indeed if Irenaeus is to be believed, it was Simon Magus--the same man recorded in Acts--who was responsible for initiating certain sects of Gnosticism after his unsuccessful bid to buy the power of the Holy Spirit). Such observations can often go for neo-Platonism, as Anna Williams points out (Divine Sense, 11): it is frequently difficult to disentangle just who is influencing whom.
All of this is not to say that philosophical influence can never be identified--quite the opposite. It is, however, to suggest that the Patristic and Medieval thinkers we so quickly and fashionably excoriate, while not without flaw certainly, are being read with anachronistic and uncharitable eyes. We are better than this. The next person to speak of Augustine's "Platonism" or Aquinas' "Aristotelianism" without further comment (much further!) needs their knuckles rapped.
Comments
It may be assumed from his provided context data that he is not alone in this kind of mission, and works with others he mentions, both closely aligned with him and people who are peers and superiors in the movement. Many of these are fellow Judeans, though several are gentile themselves. However, even as gentiles, they are not Christian as opposed to Judean/Jewish. They belong to the edges of a vast melange of plural Judaisms, most of which we have lost because of the events of the following period from ~70-130, and the refocusing that happened because of the wars.
When I say "thoroughly Judean," and refer to a period in which Hellenistic Judaism was connected catechetically to the Hellenistic gentile users of scripture, this is what I mean. There was a long period in which formerly-pagan gentiles were being converted, throughout the diaspora, and a shorter one in which they were also being accepted in different ways throughout the diaspora, and in which there was an intra-Judean conflict as to the place of gentiles in Christ.
So when I refer to a thoroughly gentile period by contrast, which I would call Christianity as opposed to Judaism, we have examples that live in the second century already, out in natively pagan Hellenistic communities. We don't know how people like Justin and Origen became Christian, but we do know they did not view their religion as Judean, nor did they read the scriptures with anything like traditional Judean emphases. They are something separate and new, communities of gentiles with no desire to connect their faith with Judaism or Jerusalem.
Somewhere, during the wars most likely, there was a separation by which Jews became stigmatized and gentiles broke from them, and yet Judean heritage was appropriated and kept and used as though non-Judean by formerly-pagan Christians, who developed their own history and theology and worship using their own contexts. These became our Fathers, with all of the supersessionism that goes with that. They become not just non-Judean, but anti-Judean. Hellenistic Judaism and Hellenistic gentile Christianity are parallel offspring of a single history.
Perhaps that sounds like a fairly stark claim, and I can't tell you how it happened because nobody wrote that history. Josephus tells history for the empire, in favor of a Judean tradition that denies variety we have evidence for, and otherwise we have a variety of later ecclesiastical histories, but the wars from ~70-130 replace the history of peacetime variety with the history of how things got to the point where Jerusalem was razed to the ground by imperial troops, and who was to blame. We have no history of the transition that enables pagan-gentile Christianity to live on its own foundations in polemical relationship to Rabbinic Judaism as the only two survivors. But if I were to place my bets on any workable version of the "Hellenization Thesis," the transition to pure and polemically anti-Judean formerly-pagan Christianity is the place I'd point. People who grew up with commonly-available versions of philosophy and also Christianity, and had no recourse to the origins of their texts.
This is probably an impossible question, but--if you were a betting man--what would an end-game of this revamped "Hellenization" thesis get you? A different sort of attack on early metaphysical thought as supercessionist? I suppose there are just too many unknowns and variables at this point, but what would your hunches lead you to believe the import of this revamped historiography would have for systematic theology and its relation to Patristic thought? I'll await your essay ;)
I agree with your points nearly top to bottom as regards any propositions that attempt to set up some Fathers over others, or to identify and isolate hypothetical philosophical contagions. But I would rather defend against Patristic argumentation altogether, relativize it and establish it as merely the resources of our peers in theological effort, rather than our superiors in a tradition that always knows more than we ever will. I'll follow with an example of my use of this move in a game I'm playing for Hebrews.
In Hebrews, which of all New Testament texts is most alien to the Christian reader—perhaps second to the Apocalypse, which has become far more familiar in Modernity—there is no advantage to the speculative interpretations of earlier generations of readers. No amount of temporal proximity suffices to overcome the distance of this text from even its earliest pagan-gentile Christian readers, whose presumptions were shaped by encountering it in the Pauline canon. If we have reason to believe that they did not correctly understand the Judean missionary Paul—as we do—then we have still more reason to believe that they did not understand the more thoroughly Judean and non-Pauline sermon that a later hand had perceptively titled “To the Hebrews.”
Hebrews is a found object. While we have first encountered it in the found-art collage of the Pauline canon—some pieces of which were likely composed for the purpose, rather than found—it comes to us in every generation with no surrounding context that we are bound to respect. Indeed, it appears to have been modified to fit that Pauline context, though only at the end. And yet it comes to us, in every time for which we have evidence, as the same finished piece, varying only according to the vicissitudes of manuscript copying and transmission. Whatever the process by which it was produced, Hebrews appears to have entered our manuscript traditions as we see it today, a fait accompli shorn of its history and adopted by people who were equally ignorant of its origins. In text-critical terms, while we have all of the advantages of the New Testament manuscript plurality, Hebrews leaves us in much the same place as do the Hebrew texts of the Old Testament.
As a result, internal evidence is the only reliable source of information for the interpretation of Hebrews. Interpretation is itself the necessary first process, which places the writer of commentary on Hebrews in a position similar to the Amoraim, the generations whose thought dominates both the Babylonian Talmud (or “Bavli”) and the Palestinian Talmud (or “Yerushalmi”). These rabbis developed the practice known as pešaṭ in order to ground the excesses of prior midrashic practice in the simple interpretation of the text. Indeed, “peshat” and “derash” have come to be technical terms for what we might today call “critical exegesis” and “homiletical application,” the interpretation of the text in its own context versus the appropriation of it to speak to another. [...]"
As they did for every text of their acquaintance, the Fathers stepped in to fill that void with speculation. They did midrash, told stories, as much to explain the features of the text that defied plain interpretation as to fill the voids of context that both confused and inspired curiosity. Of course, the more intertextuality the Fathers had to draw upon, the more useful their speculations. Hebrews, as not only a singular work but also a blank canvas, invited them to apply the intertextuality of the Pauline canon while opening itself to analogy with their own worlds. The Fathers had only to explain the differences between Hebrews and Paul’s other letters—but since half of the Pauline canon is forged in Paul’s name, that was a problem for which they had existing strategies. Mapping Hebrews into a pseudo-Pauline universe filled with Christian communities in conflict with Judaism and the Roman Empire, they looked for authors among Paul’s companions, and unaccounted communities where such an address might be needed. Faced with the same voids that face us, in other words, they imagined a universe that made sense to them.
The problem with such Patristic midrash is that we are tempted to take it as authoritative, as the work of our superiors rather than our peers. We are tempted to lean on it, to default to their conclusions as though they were not fanciful and, for the most part, unmoored from the reality of the text. Where we cannot prove our own speculations, we treat them as necessarily inferior—even when we speculate on the basis of far more archaeological and historical knowledge of the context range. The entire field of Hebrews studies defaults, again and again, to the unproven speculations of two centuries later rather than the better-substantiated speculations, and admissions of valid ignorance, of twenty. Where we do not know, let us not pretend that the Fathers did. The solution to this dilemma must be found in a return to peshat on the basis of the text, producing midrash that relies only on the best of our own knowledge, advancing an understanding of the world of the text that acknowledges its irreconcilable difference from our own."
My "beef" (not with you, but what motivated the post originally) is how often these critical moves "against" or "beyond" the Fathers are predicated on false historical consciousness of what the Fathers/Mediealists were about, circumventing close textual engagement for cheaply won tropes which then serve as a fulcrum for critical moves. This is why I appreciated it when McCormack in a fairly recent essay pointed out Barth rejected the "Hellenization" thesis, and yet still wanted overhaul "theism" as he saw it. I think it makes the necessary point that revisionism and acceptation of "Hellenization" (in the form I critiqued) are not necessarily related. It just seems a lot of theologians of the past thirty or so years (especially those championing Trinitarianism) were poor historians. It also seems that the work you are doing is much more interesting than all that, which is great to see.
I found myself attracted to this "Hellenization thesis" in exactly the forms you critique years ago, and I think it recurs again and again because it aims at something that we can see the shadow of, but we have a hard time actually locating. For students, as we all have been at some point, it is often easier to accept a map of right and wrong, and tweak it as we go along. Heck, I think it's easier for us as teachers to give that map, especially when we're forced into survey course methodology.
And you're right, poor theological historiography doesn't help! We want somewhere to put that divide, somewhere this side of which we can safely stand. Part of it may be that we are afraid to let Christianity be wrong all the way down. We are willing occasionally to be wrong ourselves, as long as we can move to something that is right. I'm tempted to call it the problem of foundationalism in theology. McCormack is right, and I might abstract that to say revision need not be predicated on acceptance of a partisan frame.