I don't know how to get pass the fact that historic Christianity is fundamentally both Jewish and Greek at it's core. Plato is everywhere. Aristotle makes a nice appearance too. The Roman Catholic magisterium seems evocative of a Jewish Sanhedrin and I don't see much difference between invocation of the saints and ancestral worship in practice, although the latter is clearly idolatrous insofar as it gives God's glory to another, we still pray for the dead and invoke saints as our patron-ancestors-in-Faith and Mary most of all, as mom.
What am I to make of the similarities I find between Pagan, Jewish and Christian theology and practice? How do I discern whether appropriation of the first two goes too far?
Is the answer Christ Himself. Is he the standard that even the old stories pointed to?
I have this image in my head of the old gods which our ancestors use to worship symbolizing created graces in Catholicism. Of course the old gods were demons in actuality, but the thought is still there: Angelic beings descending a Jacobean ladder as it were, metaphorically, Zeus is baptized, as is Hera and Athena, ect. That is to say, no longer claiming divine status but reclaiming a lost creatureliness. I think of fairies in much the same way. Fairies were serious business once upon a time.
Thoughts?
I am going to attempt to usefully answer your question by addressing separately both the Jewish and Pagan aspects, starting with the latter, because it is more of a stumbling block for more people who aren’t quite fully aware of the concepts:
The early Church did use Plato, and Aristotle, and indeed Socrates, Xenophon, Euclid and Pythagoras, albeit carefully. And indeed, the work of Jewish philosophers was not hsed. A distinction can be drawn in their work between what is actual early science and math, for example, Aristotle’s studies into optics, and the well known work of Pythagoras and Euclid in mathematics and geometry, what we might call pure philosophy, for example, the Socratic Dialectic and Platonic and Aristotelian attempts at understanding forms, ideals, substances, and accidents respectively, and also related fields like metaphysics, ethnic or cultural content, which is often incompatible with Christianity, for example, the sexual morality, or lack thereof, in some Hellenic theology.
Now, some of these men, such as Pythagoras, were also known as religious leaders and mystic, like Zoroaster, who is alleged to have influenced Judaism and Christianity (I believe it is the other way around myself). Confucius is an interesting example of an Eastern philosopher who arguably, if unintentionally, fell into this category, whereas Lao Tze and the other Taoists are more clear-cut examples. The early Church was uncomfortable with this; however, in the case of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, for example, it is a fact that in their own time they were regarded as intellectuals, rathe than religious leaders, per se. And it was also recognized that to a large extent, aspects of religion and philosophy can overlap, because both are concerned with the truth. And we see religious and quasi-religious concepts in the works of more recent philosophers like Maimonides, Avicenna, Voltaire, Kant, Soren Kierkegaard, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, and even in the toxic work of Nietschzoe and Marx. This is especially true in the case of metaphysics.
It is possible, just like the distinction between the pure science, the political views, the philosophy, and the cultural and religious areas in which philosophers work , in most cases to draw a distinction between the aspects of a philsopher’s work which are religious in nature, either based upon the religion they were born into,, such as in Confucius, Maimonides or Avicenna, or based upon novel ideas they themselves originated, such as Pythagoras, Zoroaster, the Taoists, et cetera. In some cases, what remains is not useful to Christianity, but in other cases, it was, particularly the work of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and certain Jewish philosophers like Philo and Maimonides, and the Islamic philosophers, and even Pythagoras and Euclid. For example, when they did science, this can be accepted uncritically if experimentally verified (mostly it is dated, but much of the math remains useful).
Fr. John Behr gave an interesting lecture in which he stated the early Church, in developing a Christian system of philosophy, which we see in the works of Origen, St. Athanasius, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Gregory of Nyssa, Psuedo Dionysius the Aereopagite, St. Augustine of Hippo, St. John of Damascus, and many other early church theologians too numerous to enumerate. He likened it to the commandment in Exodus to “plunder the Egyptians,” taking much of their treasure for use in Israel. In this case, Christianity plundered Pagan philosophy, if and only if their work was useful. Thus, Neo-Platonism, which was a religious cult based on the work of Plato which sought to breath new energy into the dying ancient Greek religion, was obviously incompatible and failed to produce much of particular interest to Christianity. There was extreme caution in particular to avoid aspects which could lead to the heresy of Gnosticism: interestingly, over concerns about his work potentially having a Gnostic aspect, which were later deemed (correctly) to be unwarranted, the early church avoided Aristotle for a time in favor of Plato, only to snap the other way, particularly in the 13th and 14th century, with St. Gregory Palamas, one of the finest scholars of the Eastern Orthodox church, whose work I hold in great exteme, and the Roman Catholic Scholastic, St. Thomas Aquinas, made extensive use of Aristotle, while becoming a legitimate philosopher in his own right on a par with St. John of Damascus or Soren Kierkegaard (Aquinas also used the commentary on Aristotle produced by Averroes, an Islamic philosopher; he referred to the former as The Philosopher and the latter as the Commentator).
Now you might ask how it is we can find truths outside of Christianity, but the answer is General Revelation, and we find a specific Scriptural case of this in the Book of Acts, with St. Dionysius and others converted from the Cult of the Unknown God on the Aereopagus in Athens.
The use of accepted existing philosophy has also historically been of great value for evangelism, as we see in the aformentioned Aerepagus. Indeed, in evangelizing a society, a successful approach is one which evaluates the cultural and intellectual achievements of the society and what they got right, morally and ethically, and uses this as the platform for Christianity. We see this even in antiquity, with the distinct ideas present in Greek Christianity, Latin Christianity, the Semitic Christianity of the Syriac-speaking converts from both Judaism and the other religions of the Near East.
This of course provides an opportunity to talk about the appropriation of Jewish theological concepts. This, I would argue, is obvious and incontrovertible, in that Christianity is the continuation of the ancient Jewish faith, and Hebrew scriptures and Psalms comprise our Old Testament, for they can be seen as clear prophecy of our Lord. Indeed, the bond with Christianity and ancient Judaism and Hebrew religion is so strong that when Marcion, a shipping magnate who tried unsuccessfully to bribe his way into the Church in Rome around 90-100 AD, attempted to separate the two, he was identified as a heretic and refunded his substantial donation, which he then used to set up a rival heretical sect, which later influenced the “Positive Christianity” of the Third Reich, which was also interested in unnaturally separating the Jewish and Christian aspects of the religion, albeit in this case motivated as much by racist hatred rather than spiritural delusion alone.
So I hope that answer is helpful. If you want to dive deeper, I can also probably find on YouTube the homily Fr. John Behr delivered on this subject (he was formerly the dean at St. Vladimir’s Seminary, and how holds the position once held by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, memory eternal, at Oxford).
