Hellenism in the Early Church? Refutation of the Mormon Charge

 We have seen from the earlier articles that Mormonism itself, while accusing traditional Christianity of going wrong because it was hellenized, is itself full of Platonic ideas, ideas which have no basis in Scripture or the faith of the early Church. Specifically:

• Pre-existence: not supported in Scripture- taken from Plato
• Cosmological ideas: not supported in Scripture- taken from Plato
• Denial of creation ex nihilo: not supported in Scripture- taken from Plato
• Degrees of heaven: not supported in Scripture- taken from Plato

Next we shall see that the LDS doctrine of the “Apostasy” is built on a great big contradiction.

The LDS doctrine of the apostasy maintains that as a consequence of the loss of the true doctrine, post-apostolic Hellenization took place. That is to say, the early Church supposedly took over Greek philosophical ideas in a process that took some time, i.e. the ancient doctrines were not all lost at once.

In particular, Mormons reject the Christian doctrines of Trinity and the deity of Christ because they claim these ideas were introduced into Christianity through the corrupting infuence of Plato’s philosophy. This is truly ironic given the findings of the earlier articles, viz. the presence of pure Paltonic teachings in Mormon doctrine. Mormons sometimes go looking through the early Church Fathers in an effort to find a scrap of evidence of their particular beliefs in the early centuries. This process involves wholesale denial of the vast majority of the Early Church Fathers, but that doesn’t seem to bother the Mormons, they just see what they want to see.

One of the main source used by Mormon apologists to “prove” the apostasy by means of Hellenistic influence is Edwin Hatch’s, “The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church” (1895; London: Williams and Norgate). On page 350 of his book he writes: “A large part of what are sometimes called Chritian doctrines…are in reality Greek theories and Greek usages changed in form and colour by th einfluence of primitive Christianity, but in their essence Greek still.”

(The reader may remember Hatch from Part I; he was the one who claimed the foundation of the denial of the [Chrisitan] doctrine of creation ex nihilo was a Gnostic named Basilides. Yet at the same time he tries to blame Platonism!)

So is there any truth to the Mormon claim that hellenization meant the apostasy really happened? Read on…

 

Some scholars, for example Heinrich Dörrie, in his “Der Platonismus in der Antike” (Frommann-Holzboog Verlag: Stuttgart) follow the approach of such writers as Epiphanios of Salamis who decried Platonism as pure pagan heresy and thus views Platonism as a totally different religion, in the words of the Mundae Library, “completely distinct from Christianity and therefore unable to influence it.”

Others, such as von Ivanka, in his “Plato Christianus” (Einsiedeln: 1954) following Eusebius of Caesarea’s acceptance of Plato as a disciple of Moses, “admits that some Christian theologians had accepted substantial elements of Platonic teaching.” A third group transformed Platonic tenets in accordance with Christian views. (These citations from Mundane Library )

In addition to the examples mentioned above, we could also mention Tertullian who claimed there was no common ground whatsoever between Christianity and Greek philosophy (ergo his famous quote “what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Tertullian, De Praescriptione Haereticorum 7.9). But St. Justin Martyr had no problems with finding common ground between the two for the sake of evangelization.

But what was the essential difference between the Fathers and the Greek Philosophers?

For one thing, such ideas as pre-existence of the soul, 3 degrees of heaven, metempsychosis (reincarnation) and the existence of “forms” (eternal ideas) were excluded straight away. But also, and more importantly, Christianity and the Christian God are presented as a mystery, Which cannot be conceived of as progressing through various intermediate stages to the material world (a la Mormonism). The creator/Demiurge of Plato was replaced by the Judeo-Christian God by the fathers.

From the website Was Early Christianity Corrupted by ‘Hellenism’? by Dr. Paul R. Eddy we read

“Finally, we must address the claim that the doctrines of the deity of Christ and the Trinity are later Hellenistic pagan corruptions of the early and ‘pure’ Christianity. Two responses will suffice to show the weaknesses of these claims. First, the claims of those like the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses that New Testament Christianity was corrupted by later Hellenistic influence fail to account for the fact that it is the New Testament data itself which led the early Christian fathers to confess the deity of Christ and the Trinity of God. Second, recent research has forcefully shown that the early Christian idea of Christ’s deity developed not in a Hellenistic context but in a distinctly Jewish thought-world.” (emphasis mine)

He continues with a quote from scholar Richard Bauckham

..”early Christians included Jesus, precisely and unambiguously, within the unique identity of the one God of Israel . . . The earliest Christology was already the highest Christology…

and further on:

“the Christian faith rigorously guarded its unique religious identity in the midst of the religious and philosophical diversity of the ancient Mediterranean world.”

The following four points are also made by Dr. Eddy in the above website:

• 1.) The Jewish world, from which Christianity arose, had already been touched by Hellenism prior to the birth of Christ. Dr. Eddy cites Martin Hengel’s work (ref. i) which has demonstrated the effects of Hellenism on Palestine in such ways as: forms of government, Hellenized trade, the Greek language (which even became the language of the New Testament) and Greek educational methods. All of which leads to the conclusion that a “pristine” Judaism, as Dr. Eddy says, “untouched by Hellenism, giving rise to an equally untouched early Christianity that was later ‘corrupted’ by Hellenism is simply a false historical picture.” (emphaisis mine)On page 47 of ref (iii), Hengel writes:
  

  “The notion that the souls of the giants who came into being as a result of the marriages of the fallen angels with human women became evil spirits, which emerges in Enoch and in Jubilees, also coincides completely with Greek demonology.”
  “More important than ‘influences’ which are often hard to trace is the deep-rooted convergence in Old Testament-Jewish and Greek thought, for all the fundamental difference…[the] discovery of the individual [in terms of the individual’s eschatological salvation, cf. p. 48 , op. cit] before God is probably the greatest gain of that encounter between the Jewish and the Greek spirits which was so influential and at the same time so passionate.” (op. cit. p. 50).

  Hengel notes in particular the idea of martyrdom as not existing in Jewish thought before the Maccabean period, where it first arises in Jewsh literature (specifically 2 Maccabees 6 and 7). Here was a Greek influence already in Old Testament (or at least intertestamental) times.
  On page 51 Hengel notes that the rabbinic doctrine of pre-existence of souls (not a Scriptural idea) was “largely dependent on ideas from popular philosophy.” Again, Greek influence in Old Testament times. Hengel concludes (p. 53):

  “Since after a more than three-hundred year history under the influence of Greek culture Palestinian Judaism can also be described as ‘Hellenistic Judaism’, the term ‘Hellenistic’ as currently used no longer serves to make any meaningful differentiation in terms of the history of religions within the history of earlies Christianity.”(emphasis Hengel’s)

  
   

• 2.) The work of Peter Green (ref. ii) has shown that the effects of Hellenism on local cultures (not just Palestine) affected mainly those in politics and administrative positions, leaving untouched the traditional cultural worldview. Recent studies have shown that the influence of Hellenism on various peoples in the ancient world was largely superficial, and primarily attracted the ruling class and those with political and administrative hopes. 
• 3.) Judaism and early Christianity, in spite of the above-mentoned Hellenistic influences, according to Dr. Eddy “diligently guarded their religious beliefs and practices from Hellenistic pagan influences, even to the point of martyrdom.” 
• 4.) Most importantly, the historical and archaeological evidence shows that both Judaism and early Christianity carefully guarded their religious views from the surrounding Hellenistic culture; for example, the strict Torah observance of the city of Sepphoris in Upper Galilee. Many other examples could be gleaned from Hengel (i, iii).Hengel addtionally notes, throughout his work, the prevalence of Greek language, inscriptons, architecture in Jerusalem in the period 200BC to the 1st Century AD.
  REFERENCES

  (i) Martin Hengel ( Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period, 2 vols., (trans. John Bowden; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974).)
  (ii) Peter Green ( Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 312-335.)
  (iii)Martin Hengel, The ‘Hellenization’ of Judea in the First Century After Christ (Wipf & Stock Publishers; (March 2003))

   

=> Dr. Eddy’s conclusion: When it comes to early Christianity, it is clear that the religious influences are Jewish rather than Hellenistic paganism. Furthermore, Hellenistic influence while evident is administrative areas, left untouched the traditional beliefs of Christians and Jews.

Given the prevalence of Greek culture in Judaea in the first century after Christ, and the important points made by Eddy above, is it really credible that all of a sudden the Church went wrong because it took up Greek philosophical ideas? This is what the Mormons would have us believe.
How the “History of Religions School” got it wrong

This erroneous view of Hellenic origins of Christian doctrine, which has been refuted thoroughly in these papers, was previously held by a group of early 20th century critical scholars known as the ‘History of Religions School,’ (History of Religions school or “Religionsgeschichtelicheschule” in Göttingen, whose most important contributors included Wilhelm Bousset, Albert Eichhorn, Johannes Weiß and William Wrede, also Richard Reitzenstein and Rudolf Bultmann). Similarly to Mormonism of today, these scholars focused on ideas of religious syncretism and how Christianity might have been influenced by hellenistic religions. These individuals claimed that many early Christian beliefs and practices were actually borrowed from Hellenistic pagan mystery cults. This view has been abandoned by modern scholarship. The evidence, as we have presented above, now demonstrates that early Christianity is best understood as arising from Jewish belief. The now-discredited History of Religions school has apparently passed on the baton to the LDS religion.

Conclusion
We have shown here that early Christianity was not corrupted by Hellenistic influences, an idea refuted by modern scholarship, though brought up as a defense by Mormon apologists to this day in their feeble attemt to prove the “apostasy.”

Did the Early Church Fathers Adopt a New “Hellenized” Religion?