by Cody Glen Barnhart
Before I landed on Clement of Alexandria as my dissertation topic, I waded through a (tangled) web of sources about Origen’s early life: did Origen really study under a Greek philosopher, like Eusebius claims? How does the answer impact our reading of Origen as an important contributor to early Christian theology? Did he augment the apostolic teachings into a philosophical key—which some suggest rendered them unrecognizable—or did he merely plunder the Egyptians like he claimed?
Even though I ultimately didn’t choose to write on Origen, it was insightful to read about how the earliest Christians situated themselves among the philosophers. The first few centuries of the church were unique: because the Triune God works in and through the church (comprised of human beings) to proclaim His gospel, it means that theology is inherently couched in human contexts.[1] To understand the theological landscape of early Christians, then, we need to understand where they saw both continuities and discontinuities with the philosophies of their day.
In this article, I want to explore two guardrails for thinking about early Christian interactions with philosophy:
The earliest discussions of Christian theology used the vocabulary of the surrounding culture, which means they often held overlapping views with the full range of philosophers of their day.
The Christian theological project has always been a distinct enterprise, centered on the gospel and passed down through the church.
The earliest Christians and their vocabulary
When I think about the earliest Christians’ interactions with philosophy, I think about an anecdote that has become commonplace (probably because of David Foster Wallace). Imagine there are two fish swimming along, and when they pass an older fish going the other way he says, “Good morning, boys. How’s the water?” The younger two continue to swim along before one finally stops the other to ask, “ . . . what is water?”
The point of the story is to show how some of the most important realities are completely invisible to us, especially when we are immersed in them. To bring it back to Christianity and philosophy, I want to suggest that philosophy is the water, and early Christians are the fish: the only way they knew to talk about certain categories or ideas like divinity, cosmology, or the nature of being was by using the words invented by those who they had heard discuss these topics, whether that be Jewish philosophers, Greek philosophers, or ideas received through the church. To build on the water illustration above, the earliest Christians were swimming in a culture of philosophy. Even if they didn’t take up the mantle of the philosopher, they were influenced by virtue of their cultural context—surrounding the Christians, there were Jewish philosophies, Greek philosophies, Roman philosophies, and barbarian philosophies. There were philosophical schools with influence, and there were outlying philosophical teachers who had devoted followings. There was a fair bit of overlap between each of these identities, yet they were each distinct, one from another.
Here’s a selection from Justin’s Apology that shows what I’m talking about:
Indeed, Sibyl and Hystaspes foretold that all corruptible things are to be destroyed by fire. And the so-called Stoic philosophers teach that even God is to be transformed into fire, and they claim that after this evolution the world is to be made over again. We, on the contrary, believe that God, the Maker of all things, is superior to changeable things. If, therefore, we agree on some points with your honored poets and philosophers, and on other points offer a more complete and supernatural teaching, and if we alone produce proof of our statements, why are we unjustly hated beyond all others? When we say that God created and arranged all things in this world, we seem to repeat the teaching of Plato; when we announce a final conflagration, we utter the doctrine of the Stoics; and when we assert that the souls of the wicked, living after death, will be sensibly punished, and that the souls of the good, freed from punishment, will live happily, we believe the same things as your poets and philosophers. In claiming that we should not worship the work of men's hands, we agree with the comic poet Menander and other writers like him, for they have declared that the creator is greater than his work.
Justin Martyr, Apology 20 (CUA Fathers of the Church translation)
Justin does a few things here that I think are interesting.
First, he begins by opposing the oracles (Sibyl and Hystaspes) and the Stoics, and then he offers a rival opinion. But, after this, he then goes on to say that Christians repeat some teachings found in the poets and philosophers, name-dropping Plato, the Stoics, and Menander and mentioning how, despite this, Christians are still hated among the Greeks.
Justin draws on familiar language from his milieu to communicate what is distinctive about Christianity (that God, as Maker of all, is superior to changeable things) and what it has in common with the philosophers (the arrangement and conflagration of the world, eternal punishment, and the greatness of the maker compared to his handiwork).
Particularly interesting to me, too, is the fact that Justin doesn’t lean on one singular school or lineage. He doesn’t stake a claim in Plato or Stoicism or Peripatetic philosophy—he suggests that they all use similar language to that which Christians use.
The distinctiveness of Christian theology
Despite this overlap of vocabulary between early Christian theologians and Greco-Roman philosophers, though, there is an important thread throughout it all: the Christian theological project remained distinctive. As Clement says, Christ is the New Song, who was and is the divine source of all things and makes men out of stones and out of beasts (Protrepticus 1.4.4 and 1.6.5). Christian theology is not merely the resurrection of ancient songs. In Christ, it sings a New Song.
To give a shocking example of what I mean, I use Contra Celsum, Origen’s response to Celsus’s philosophical attack on Christianity. Being the picture-perfect “Christian Platonist,” said to have studied under Ammonius Saccas, one might expect gratuitous praise of Plato; however, when confronted with the Platonic doctrine of the transmigration of souls, he denies it outright: “Our view here does not accept the Platonic doctrine of the transmigration of souls, but a different and more sublime view.”[2] In fact, Origen not only rejects this Platonic doctrine—he explicitly subordinates it to the position he finds in the Scriptures. Compared to the “persuasion such as that of those who profess the wisdom of Plato or one of the philosophers,” the authority of the gospel message proves its superiority by its spread throughout the world: “the demonstration in Jesus’ apostles was given by God and convinced men by spirit and power.”[3] And, from this, he can deny Platonic conclusions. It is not natural logic, Greek theism, or metaphysics that rule Origen’s mind—it is the apostolic preaching, proclaimed and passed down by the work of the Spirit in the church.
Even more forcefully, in one place, Origen suggests that Plato knows not even a hint of the divine nature. Consider this section, again from Contra Celsum:
I admit that Plato’s statement which he quotes is noble and impressive. But consider whether there is not more regard for the needs of mankind when the divine word introduces the divine Logos, who was in the beginning with God, as becoming flesh, that the Logos, of whom Plato says that after finding him it is impossible to declare him to all men, might be able to reach anybody. Plato may say that it is difficult to find the maker and father of this universe, indicating that it is not impossible for human nature to find God in a degree worthy of Him, or, if not worthy of Him, yet at least in a degree higher than that of the multitude. If this were true, and God really had been found by Plato or one of the Greeks, they would not have reverenced anything else and called it God and worshipped it, either abandoning the true God or combining with the majesty of God things which ought not to be associated with Him. But we affirm that human nature is not sufficient in any way to seek for God and to find Him in His pure nature, unless it is helped by the God who is object of the search.”[4]
Origen suggests that Plato’s confession of an indescribable God does not square with the reality that Plato worships something other than the true God, who reveals Himself by speaking humanity’s language in the incarnation of the Logos. In this way, he suggests we may only comprehend God insomuch as we are united to “him made in the image of that mind”—assimilated to Christ, the true human being who knows God in his pure nature and aids us in our pursuit of God. And, because he doesn’t confess this, Plato doesn’t know God.
Origen understood that the monotheistic and Trinitarian confession of the church was distinct from the concept of being that Plato propagated among the Greeks. And, in fact, he even suggests that Plato was derivative of Moses’s doctrines at various points in Contra Celsum.
Conclusion and reflections
So, what does all this mean? What’s the value in everything we’ve just said?
One big conclusion I’ve been thinking about for a few months now is that early Christianity functioned in a similar way to a lot of the philosophies surrounding it. In modernity, we separate the theological from the philosophical.[5] The modern university or college has different degrees or majors for them. Such was not the case in antiquity, where category and institution were much more fluid concepts than we permit them to be today.
Christianity self-presented as an antique philosophy. It was the true and divinely inspired philosophy, sure, but it was a philosophy, nonetheless—and it was formed by various philosophies: Jewish, Greek, Roman, and barbarian. Sure, the study of Greek philosophers and poets was fertile soil as they prepared for the study of God . . . but at the end of the day it was still just dirt.
Perhaps Clement best sums up the relationship between early Christianity and philosophy by calling the Greeks to grow disenchanted with their old fables and songs, to be instructed in uprightness by the model of Christ the teacher, and to realize that, because divine truths are hidden away, the whole of Greek philosophy—like nuts—is not edible.[6]
Further Reading
Here are a few insightful books that do a great job showing the relationship between Christianity and philosophy, most of them focused on antiquity. Many are more academic by nature, and I’m not suggesting I agree with everything in every one of them—but if you are interested in digging deeper, each would be a worthy read in their own right.
The introduction to John Behr’s translation of On the Human Image of God by Gregory of Nyssa
Post-Hellenistic Philosophy: A Study of its Development from the Stoics to Origen by George R. Boys-Stones
Aristotle and Early Christian Thought by Mark Edwards
Origen Against Plato by Mark Edwards
Thinking Being: Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition by Eric D. Perl
One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions by C. Kavin Rowe
[1] I’m not trying to suggest that the earliest Christians were Hellenized in the strict sense. Instead, I’m trying to draw on the historical reality that the Son of God took on the likeness of human form during what we now call “classical antiquity”—an era dominated by the Greek and Roman empires. And, after his ascension, he began building his church within that same context.
[2] Contra Celsum, IV:17. I should add here, too, that I don’t actually believe Origen studied under Ammonius Saccas—but he is popularly said to have done so (likely because Eusebius states this was the case).
[3] Contra Celsum, III:68.
[4] Contra Celsum, VII:42.
[5] Scholar Andy Radde-Gallwitz noted recently in an online exchange that Aquinas didn’t consider sacred doctrine as part of philosophy, which certainly comes to bear on this divide today.
[6] Protrepticus 1.2.1; Paedagogus 1.1.1–3; Stromata 1.1.7.3.
