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Journal of Theological Interpretation 4.

2 (2010) 169-186

God and Greek Philosophy in Contemporary Biblical Scholarship


M A T T H E W LEVERING
UNIVERSITY OF D A Y T O N

Abstract H o w should Christian biblical exegesis relate to G r e e k philosophical insights, b o t h as they are found in t h e biblical text and as they might be used to illuminate t h e realities described in t h e biblical text? After setting forth some of t h e background to this longstanding issue, I seek a p a t h forward by asking h o w Greek philosophy functions in three valuable recent works of biblical scholarship, Daniel Kirk's Unlocking Romans, Kavin Rowe's Worl Upside Down, and Richard Bmckham's Jesus and the God of Israel. Key Words God, Scripture, philosophy, Aristotle, Plato, Gregory immortal, eternal, immutable, Hellenism ofNazianzus,

In Christianity and the Social Crisis, Walter Rauschenbusch registers a common complaint against medieval biblical exegesis: "During the Middle Ages men thought they saw their abstruse scholastic philosophy and theology amid the simplicity of the gospels. They found in the epistles the priests and bishops whom they knew, with robe and tonsure, living a celibate life and obeying the pope." 1 This portrait, though a caricature,
Author's note: Thanks to Mark Weedman for the invitation to present this research to the "Development of Early Trinitarian Theology" session at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, and to the panelists and participants in that session. 1. Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (ed. Paul B. Raushenbush; New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 39 - 4- For a similar view regarding Greek philosophical distortion of the gospel, see Jrgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom (San Francisco: Harper, 1991). A number of contemporary theologians have critiqued Moltmann's position; see Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000); Janet Martin Soskice, "Athens and Jerusalem, Alexandria and Edessa: Is There a Metaphysics of Scripture?" IJST8 (2006): 149-62; Michael Allen, "Exodus 3 after the Hellenization Thesis," JTI3 (2009): 179-96. Robert W. Jenson's position is more metaphysically complex than Moltmann's, but he too builds on a strong sense of "the old dissonance between the metaphysical principles of the Greeks and the storytelling of the gospel" {Systematic Theology, vol. 1: The Triune God {Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997}, 112). For responses to Jenson's

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contains some truth. When medieval exegetes read in Scripture about the church, they assumed a significant degree of continuity between the earli est church and the church they knew. This assumption is not limited to medieval Christians. When Paul, for example, urges the Corinthians to "strive to excel in building up the church" (1 Cor 14:12), Christian readers today generally assume that by the grace of the Holy Spirit we can build up this same "church." Perhaps more telling is Rauschenbusch's reference to "abstruse scholas tic philosophy." Medieval exegetes were heavily indebted to ancient Greek philosophy, which informed scholastic modes of exegesis and theology. At the outset of his discussion of Christ's Passion, for example, Thomas Aquinas cites Book V of Aristotle's Metaphysics, where Aristotle treats various meanings of the word necessary.2 The influence of Greek philoso phy appears not only in the scholastics, of course, but also in the Fathers. Consider Basil the Great's interpretation of Christ's sitting at the "right hand of the Majesty on high" (Heb 1:3): "Form, shape, and bodily position cannot be invented for God; these factors are alien to the absolute, the infinite, the incorporeal."3 As one would expect, Basil inherits a tradition of philosophically erudite exegesis flowing from Clement of Alexandria and Origen, among others. 4 The Fathers take insights from various Greek and Roman philosophers, without committing themselves to any particular philosophical system in all its dimensions. 5

metaphysical claims, see David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite The Aesthetics of Chris tian Truth (Grand Rapids Eerdmans, 2003), 160-66, Francesca Aran Murphy, God Is Not a Story Realism Revisited (Oxford Oxford University Press, 2007) 2 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q 46, a 1 3 St Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit (trans David Anderson, Crestwood, N Y St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1997), 31 On the complex relationship of Basil's theology of God to that of Numenius, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and other late ancient philosophers, see Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity (Oxford Oxford University Press, 2009), I 7 _ I 8 , 34~37> 159-60,164 4 For background, see Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition A History of the Develop ment of Doctrine, vol 1 The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1971), 31-55, Henri de Lubac, History and Spirit The Understanding of Scripture according to Origen (trans Anne Englund Nash, San Francisco Ignatius, 2007 [1950}), 30-31 5 See A Williams, The Divine Sense The Intellect m Patristic Theology (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2007), 17-18 In its concern for rigorous reasoning, Williams notes, "patristic theology is highly systematic, showing its authors' relentless awareness of their reflecting a wholea picture of the cosmos and of human life coram Deowhose origin lies in the divine mind and which therefore must be orderly and intelligent, even if human beings are only imperfectly able to grasp its content or design The systematic awareness of patristic theologians reflects the role of the intellect in their theology they expect in what they write to reflect the divinely ordained order of the cosmos The ratio of theology, subsis tent in its systmatisation, reflects the divine ratio and the divinely given human ratio which is able to grasp both, and so to adore" (p 3)

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Granted that Greek philosophical insights influenced the Christian tradition of biblical interpretation and theology, do Greek philosophical insights also play a role in Scripture itself? Treating "the perennial issue of the Christian encounter with Hellenism" in his Gifford Lectures on the Cappadocian Fathers' natural theology, Jaroslav Pelikan observes that words such as logos (John 1:1) and hypostasis (Heb 1:3) came "to the Septuagint and then to the Christian vocabulary from the language of Classi cal and Hellenistic philosophy and science." 6 Martin HengeFs Judaism and Hellenism similarly remarks on the presence of Stoic ideas in the Wisdom of Solomon. 7 Indebted to the Wisdom of Solomon, Paul speaks of God's "invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity," and argues that this divine nature can be and "has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made" (Rom 1:2).8 In Acts, Paul observes that "the Deity" (o ) is unlike any "representation by the art and imagination of human ity" (17:29), an insight that he shares, as he recognizes, with many Greek philosophers. The Fathers follow this path as well; as Robert Louis Wilken remarks, "Christian thinkers sought out points of contact between biblical language of God's transcendence and Greek philosophical conceptions of the nature of God." 9 Yet Christians worship a very different God from the gods worshiped by even the most philosophical Greeks and Romans. In addition to wor shiping multiple gods and being unaware of the communion of the Trin ity, the election of Israel, and the incarnation and paschal mystery of Christ, Greco-Roman philosophical culture included beliefs such as "the
6. Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theol ogy in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism (New Haven, CT: Yde University Press, 1993), ix, 3. As Pelikan points out, this Greek influence makes it unsurprising that Christian ortho doxy was transmitted by the Cappadocians with "some 'fundamental assumptions' that were rooted in {Greek] natural theology" (p. 185). See also Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003); Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Ox ford University Press, 2004), 390-92. 7. Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2003 {1974}), 149. For a survey of the pioneering work in this field, largely done by Jewish scholars, see Yaacov Shavit, Athens in Jerusalem: Classical Antiquity and Hellenism in the Making of the Modern Secular Jew (trans. Chaya Naor and Niki Werner; London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1997), 281-336. 8. For discussion, see John J. Collins, Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 231. Collins draws a line from Wisdom of Solomon to the prima pars of Thomas Aquinas's Summa theologiae (p. 232). See also Ralph Marcus, "Divine Names and Attributes in Hellenistic Jewish Literature," Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 3 (1931-32): 43-120. 9. Robert Louis Wilken, Remembering the Christian Past (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 38. While emphasizing the transformation brought about by the Fathers' biblical doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, Weinandy also notes the Fathers' view that "biblical revelation was compatible with some of what philosophy taught" {Does God Suffer? 108).

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transmigration of souls, the materiality of the divine nature, the coexistence and coeternity of matter, and 'the ananke of heimarmene.,,,I Indeed, Paul observes that, although the Gentiles claimed "to be wise, they became fools" (Rom 1:22). The crucified God proclaimed by Paul appears to them as "folly" (1 Cor 1:23). At Corinth, therefore, Paul chooses "to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" rather than adopting "lofty words or wisdom" (1 Cor 2:1-2). By contrast, when Basil draws on Greek philosophical insights to describe God as "the absolute, the infinite, the incorporeal," has Basil sufficiently accounted for the original context of these insights? n Is there a way to affirm the NT's critique of pagan idolatry without holding that Greek philosophical insights must always be redefined before being applied to Israel's God? This essay explores this question by examining the approach to Greek philosophical insights taken by three recent works of biblical theology: Daniel Kirk's Unlocking Romans, Kavin Rowe's World Upside Down, and Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the God of Israel. Although each of these books makes a major contribution to biblical scholarship, I suggest that Kirk and Rowe (in quite different ways) overstate the incommensurability of the N T and Greek philosophical ideas about God. By comparison, Bauckham shows how the N T appropriates certain Greek philosophical insightswhich remain intelligible from a Greek perspectiveeven while employing these insights to describe a God whose death and resurrection would have seemed "folly" to Greek philosophers. I2 Bauckham's approach
10 Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture 194 11 Luke Timothy Johnson criticizes Paul for "totally [adopting] the Hellenistic Jewish view of Gentile religion" and for consistently showing "the same deep disdain for anything specifically Gentile in character" {Among the Gentiles Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity {New Haven, CT Yale University Press, 2009}, 4) In 1 Cor 10 20, for example, Paul states bluntly that "what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God I do not want you to be partners with demons " The Septuagmt's translation of Ps 96 5 (LXX 95 5) is influential here "the gods of the nations are demons " Even the book of Acts, where Paul is presented as saying that the Athenians "are very religious" (Acts 17 22), consists m what Johnson terms "a series of turf battles between the apostles and representatives of Hellenistic religious practices, resulting in a literal expansion of 'God's kingdom' throughout the empire" and, from Acts' perspective, in the defeat of the demonic activity at work in Greco-Roman magic, divination, and goddess worship (p 6) Johnson links his approach to the positive outlook of many Renaissance humanist scholars toward Greco-Roman religion, whose views contrasted with the concern of early Protestant scholars that early Christianity, under the influence of Greco-Roman religious practices, corrupted "the simplicity of the Gospels" (p 11) Yet although Johnson supposes that his approach will enable Christians "to assess the ways in which they truly are different and must agree to remain different" (p 283), it would seem that understanding the Christian difference requires the biblical critique of idolatry, which Johnson rejects as too polemical 12 I cannot here address A Williams's view that the NT's own language is itself fre quently incompatible with Trinitarian theology ("Does 'God' Exist?" SJT58 [2005} 468-84) As Williams summarizes the problem, "{I}nasmuch as predicating action of some entity called 'God' suggests that 'God' is a subject, and indeed a subject capable of agency, use of the word

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helps us to understand the critical appropriation of Greek philosophical insights undertaken by patristic and medieval theology.
BIBLICAL NARRATIVE AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY: THREE CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES

Daniel Kirk: Historical Narrative versus Essentialist Attributes In his Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God, Daniel Kirk distinguishes strongly between biblical "particularists" and what might be termed philosophical universalists. The latter do not pay sufficient attention to God's actions in history as narrated in Scripture. Instead, they presuppose certain philosophical attributes of God and then impose those attributes on the biblical narrative. As an example, Kirk points to a theologian whose critical appraisal of Aristotle's role in theology might make him seem fully a biblical "particularista Martin Luther. Reading Rom 1:17, "For in it {the gospel} the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith," Luther assumes that the "righteousness of God" is God's attribute of holiness. Humans lack holiness and therefore need to receive this attribute from God; God imputes his attribute of holiness to sinful humans. As Kirk observes regarding Luther's view of God's attribute of "righteousness" or holiness: "the echoes of Plato are important here."^ Identifying "Plato's god of ideal form and perfect moral goodness" and "Aristotle's unmoved mover" in the Christian tradition, Kirk cites Augustine and Anselm as prime examples of Christian theologians who describe the God of Israel without direct reference to the biblical narrative (although they also describe God in numerous places by reference to the biblical narrative). The Westminster Shorter Catechism comes in for the same critique. It defines God as "a spirit; infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth." *4 Kirk contrasts these answers to "what is God?" with the biblical concern
'God' violates a fundamental principle of Christian theology At one level, there is nothing new in this assertion, no novelty in stipulating that 'God' designates divine nature subsisting in the Father, the Son and the Spirit and nothing else. Yet despite the clarity of the tradition on this point, Christians have continued to use the word 'God', most problematically as the subject of verbs denoting personal agency which have a definite direct object, and this usage creates and fosters the impression, either that anhypostatic divine nature itself is somehow capable of agency, or that divine actions pertain neither to the Father, nor to the Son, nor to the Spirit, but to a fourth divine hypostasis named 'God'" (pp. 476-77). Gilles Emery treats this problem in his The Trinity: An Introduction to Catholic Doctrine on the Trinity (trans. Matthew Levering; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming). 13. J. R. Daniel Kirk, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 3. 14. Ibid., 1-2; the citation is from Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q/A4.

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for "who is God?" or "which God?" Universal terms cannot identify Israel's God, because "God's identity is inseparable from a particular people and from certain actions performed on behalf of that people." To imagine that one could know God through universal terms would be to fail to know the God who reveals himself historically, "in limiting and particular actions."1* Kirk is no doubt aware of the biblical passages that describe God in terms of attributes. Jesus teaches that "[n}o one is good but God alone" (Luke 18:19). He urges his followers to "be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt 5:48). He proclaims that "God is spirit" (John 4:24). 2Timothy, too, praises God in a manner similar to what Kirk critiques: "To the king of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever" (1:17). As we have seen, Paul remarks that "{e]ver since the creation of the world his [God's] invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made" (Rom 1:20). James observes that "God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one" (1:13), and he adds, "Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change" (1:17). When ijohn tells us that "God is love" (4:16), this corresponds with Jesus' teaching that God's goodness is infinitely greater than ours: "What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke 11:11-13). In the Bible, these attributes are never separated from God's acts in history. The Psalms bear witness to this unity of the divine attributes and God's creative and salvific actions. Consider Ps 146, where the psalmist describes God as Redeemer and Creator and then proceeds to apply the attributes of power and understanding to God: "The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars, he gives to all of them their names. Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure" (146:2-5). Similarly, Ps 145 proclaims God's goodness and righteousness in light of God's creative and redemptive actions. The psalmist states, "On the glorious splendor of thy majesty, and on thy wondrous works, I will meditate. Men shall proclaim the might of thy terrible acts, and I will declare thy greatness. They shall pour forth the fame of thy abundant goodness, and shall sing aloud of thy righteousness" (145:5-7). Is it right, then, to blame the Westminster Shorter Catechism for stating that God is "a spirit; infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth"? Kirk puts the an15. Kirk, Unlocking Romans, 2.

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timony as follows: "Is the righteousness revealed in Paul's gospel a divine ethical quality? Or is it God's saving activity in faithful adherence to his covenants with Israel?"16 I would suggest that it may well be both a "divine ethical quality" and "God's saving activity." Why would these two be mutually exclusive? Kirk holds that "the specific identity of God as the God of Israel entails a recognition that the standards of judging God's actions (that is, for determining whether or not God is righteous) are themselves determined by the Scriptures of Israel." J7 But Jesus himself, when describing God's goodness in Luke u , appeals not to the Scriptures of Israel but to the example of a human father who gives his son a fish rather than a serpent and an egg rather than a scorpion. Certainly, this example is by no means opposed to the Scriptures of Israel, but why would one need to say that these "standards" of goodness are "determined" by Israel's Scriptures alone? Could they not also be determined by our recognition of the created order in which serpents and scorpions do not appease our hunger but instead hurt us? If we could only judge whether God is righteous by appeal to the Scriptures of Israel, then Jesus' description of goodness in "universal" termsnot giving one's son a scorpioncould lead his hearers astray. On this view, "universal" attributes of God need not be opposed to faithful description of "the God of particulars, the God whose righteousness is tied to a particular story in which God has promised to act in a particular way and to bless a particular people." 18 God's righteousness is enacted and revealed in this particular history of the blessing of his particular people, but the "standards for judging God's actions" are not solely determined by the story. They are also determined by our recognition of certain ethical qualities that belong to goodness. A god who would give us a scorpion to eat would not be the good God. This point does not undermine the truth that "God has tied his character to the blessing of his faithful people." *9 God's characteristic righteousness requires his action to accomplish his eschatological promises for the salvation of his people. One can agree that, when Paul speaks of "the righteousness of God" (Rom 1:17), he has in view God's eschatological restoration of Israel through the resurrection ofJesus. This observation that God's "righteousness" is God's historical action in Christ Jesus, however, does not mean that God's righteousness is not also an attribute. Greek philosophical understanding of the divine in terms of spirit, beauty, goodness, love, eternity, and so forth is not wrong. 2 Indeed, as Scripture itself suggests,
16. Ibid., 6. 17. Ibid., 7. 18. Ibid., 8. 19. Ibid., 11. 20.1 should add that Greek "popular" religion, in which context Greek philosophical culture continued to operate, employed particular stories so as to understand its gods. See

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without these sorts of concepts of Goddrawn from philosophical reflection on the order of creationunderstanding the biblical witness to the God who acts in Israel would become much more difficult. Kavin Rowe: Rival Narratives Kavin Rowe's World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age seeks to move past the notion that Luke-Acts, written by a Gentile convert, is sycophantic toward the Roman Empire. As Rowe demonstrates, Acts portrays a radical reconfiguration of the understanding of the divinethe Creator God whose victory takes place in the death and Resurrection of Jesusand likewise portrays the disruption of Roman culture that results from the new way of life proclaimed by Paul and the other apostles. Seeking to highlight this reconfiguration, Rowe has some strong things to say about the relationship of philosophy and Scripture. I will focus on Rowe's account of Acts 17:21-31, where Paul preaches at the Areopagus of Athens. For Rowe, literary techniques belong at the center of discourse about God; the world is a place of competing narratives, narratives that shape our way of life and that in turn are shaped (and made intelligible) by our way of life: "our way of reading the world is always and necessarily bound up with the lives we are living," because "practices shape our sight." 2I To speak of a "moral or metaphysical order" is to identify the narrative that frames our lives or, as Rowe puts it, "that underwrites the reality in which it makes sense to do these things {particular cultic practices}."22 Christians "construe reality" on the basis of faith in the crucified and risen Jesus; to be a "Christian" is "to wager one's total perception on the insiders' reading of those who follow the Jesus who was dead."23 There is no "independent order" outside the competing narrative construals of reality. 24 Truth therefore has a "practical contour or shape," because it is tested and revealed in our practices, our "entire pattern of life."2* The book of Acts, Rowe concludes, offers a way of knowing that is "irreducibly particular."26 It follows that "to affirm that God has 'created heaven and earth' is, in Luke's
Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 182-83. See also Hans Urs von Balthasare discussion of Homer in his The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 4: The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity (ed. John Riches; trans. Brian McNeil et al.; San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989 {German original, 1967}), 43-77, as well as his exploration of Plato on pp. 166-215. 21. C. Kavin Rowe, World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 151. 22. Ibid., 145. 23. Ibid., 156. 24. Ibid., 160. 25. Ibid., 161. 26. Ibid., 176.

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narrative, simultaneously to name the entire complex of pagan religiousness as idolatry and, thus, to assign to such religiousness the character of ignorance." 27 This does not mean that pagan culture, including pagan philosophy, possesses no "goods"; on the contrary, Luke anticipates the presence of these goods. 28 They are goods, however, that are in need of salvation. As Rowe points out, not every "individual facet of pagan existence is directly affected by the Christian theological critique. At the very least, there remains, in Peter Brown's terms, the 'neutral technology of life.'" But the radical reconfiguration of God's identity around creation and resurrection nonetheless makes clear that "the difference between Christianity and paganism is deeper and more comprehensive than our modern linguistic habits tend to reveal." 29 Before inquiring into how this affects theological reception of Greek philosophical insights, I wish to raise some questions regarding Rowe's way of phrasing the difference. To what degree can those who differ in their theological narratives nonetheless share (commensurable) insights about reality? Gregory of Nazianzus suggests that some shared knowledge about the existence of bees is possible: "bees devise honeycombs which hold together with hexagonal, matching cavities, made elaborately firm by a partition and by the subtlety of alternate straight lines and angles, in hives too dark for them to see the

27. Ibid., 50. Janet Martin Soskice highlights the importance of Philo in these discussions. Because Philo accepts the biblical revelation of creatio ex nihilo, she argues, he understands God in a much different way than does the Greek philosophical culture on which he draws heavily. In this light, she states that "the divine titles with which we are concerned, such as 'incomprehensible', 'simple', 'uncontainable', 'eternal' and One', are treated throughout by Philo, not as divine 'attributes' as we might have them, but as divine 'names', and his interest in naming God is driven by his Jewish piety" ( 'Athens and Jerusalem, Alexandria and Edessa," 152). The result is that "Philo is overwhelmed by the ultimacyand the intimacyof the God of Israel. Aristotle's god in not intimate or provident, and has no knowledge of particulars. Philo's God, as Creator, knows every thing in particular and is a God of Providence" (p. 160). In short, whereas Greek philosophers could identify abstract truths about God, such as "God is One and Prime Mover," Greek philosophers had in view a different "God" because they lacked knowledge of "who God is for us" (p. 159); their God was neither sufficiently transcendent nor sufficiently "for us" (as providential Creator and Redeemer). Yet I would add that the radical insufficiency of Greek philosophical knowledge of God does not mean that Greek philosophical culture failed to arrive at truths about God that N T authors could presuppose and employ (without needing to reconfigure) within a quite-different theological framework. Insofar as some Greek philosophical concepts were and are true (even if radically incomplete), their truth makes possible their appropriation (as philosophical concepts) in other theologies. This point, however, must be understood as a call for nuance rather than as a denial of the Christian (and Jewish) difference. 28. Rowe, World Upside Down, 171. 29. Ibid., 51.

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structure of the comb."3 Jesus too proposes shared knowledge on the basis of our experience of created things: "Look at the fig tree, and all the trees; as soon as they come out in leaf, you see for yourselves and know that the summer is already near" (Luke 21:29-30). For those divided by rival narratives, however, the implications of this sort of knowledge will be different. Jesus urges us to recognize the coming of the kingdom of God by signs, just as we recognize the coming of summer. Gregory of Nazianzus finds in the intelligent hive-construction by nonintelligent bees evidence that God exists and gives order to the universe. Nonetheless, some truth is attained that can be shared by people whose "entire pattern of life" differs: beehives and budding leaves shape our narratives and indeed have a certain independence to which rival narratives must conform. In some sense, there is an "independent order," if only because beehives and budding leaves do not conform themselves to our narratives. For this reason, it does not suffice to explain truth in terms of praxis; what needs more attention here is the speculative apprehension of beehives and budding leaves (and so forth), which manifest themselves to us in their own integrity.31 Indeed, in an important 2002 article, Rowe demonstrates sensitivity to the kind of problem that I am raising. 32 Following Brevard Childs, Rowe argues, "The biblical text is not inert but instead exerts a pressure ('coercion') upon its interpreters and asserts itself within theological reflection and discourse such that there is (or can be) a profound continuity, grounded in the subject matter itself, between the biblical text and traditional Christian exegesis and theological formulation."33 I would like Rowe to extend this insight to philosophy, so as to make clear that the realities that manifest themselves in the world exert pressure on the narrative construals of reality that humans devise. In his 2002 article, Rowe affirms strongly that N T claims about Jesus and the Holy Spirit "required specification in terms of ontology" As he puts it, "That YHWH (kyrios) is both God the Father and Jesus Christ leads of necessity to the question of 'essence,' or 'being,' most acutely at the point of the Christian worship ofJesus Christ."34
30 St G r e g o r y of Nazianzus, On God and Christ The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius (trans Lionel W i c k h a m , Crestwood, N Y St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2002), 56 (Oration 28, n o 25) See also Frederick W N o r n s , " O f T h o r n s and Roses T h e Logic of Belief in G r e g o r y Nazianzen," Church History 53 (1984) 455-64, C h r i s t o p h e r A Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God In Tour Light We Shall See Light (Oxford Oxford University Press, 2008), 72-80 31 O n this point, see E t i e n n e Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience (San Francisco Ignatius, 1999), given as t h e William James Lectures at Harvard University in 1936 See also m y "Beyond t h e Jamesian Impasse in Trinitarian Theology," The Thomist 66 (2002) 395-420 32 C Kavin Rowe, "Biblical Pressure and Trinitarian H e r m e n e u t i c s , " ProEccl 11 (2002) 295-312 33 I b i d , 308 34 I b i d , 307

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In World Upside Down, Rowe weds the truth of philosophical insights to the narrative in which they are embedded. As he sees it, Luke's purpose in Acts 17:21-31 involves "subsuming Graeco-Roman religio-philosophical knowledge into the biblical story. "35 Rowe contrasts Acts with the work of the Jewish thinker Aristobulus. Aristobulus supposes that certain truths about the divine attained by Greek philosophers accord with the revelation of the God of Israel, whereas Acts quotes the same philosophical texts in order "to criticize the basic theological error in pagan idolatry, namely, that because human beings are the 'offspring' of divinity, they can image God in their form."36 For Rowe, Greek philosophical insights become non-idolatrous only when integrated into the Christian narrative with its doctrine of creation and its "radically particularized eschatology."37 On this view, the conflict between Greek philosophical culture and Acts's "rival conceptual scheme" means that nothing in the former may be simply adopted by the latter, as if the two were talking about the same reality. 38 When incorporated into the Christian story, Greek philosophical insights are no longer philosophical. Rowe observes that "Luke takes the terms of pagan discourse but in so doing strips them of their philosophical or theological content by transforming them into terms that, in Luke's view, simultaneously criticize pagan philosophy and point toward the truth of Paul's preaching." 39 Greek language about God and Christian language about God are incommensurable, rival narratives. There is no Greek "natural theology" that can be simply adopted from Greek sources by Christian authors, because the terms mean something different when applied to the Creator and Redeemer. Rowe therefore uses the terms "alters" and "subverts" to speak of Greek philosophical insights within Christian narrative. He argues that these philosophical insights become nonphilosophical when appropriated by Christians: "the pagan philosophical phrases have sensu stricto ceased propounding pagan philosophy. No longer do they speak the thoughts of a system whose intellectual basis exists outside Luke's story." Can any Greek philosophical insights be true, outside of the Christian story of creation and redemption? Not, Rowe seems to say, in Acts, which "allows pagan philosophy to speak truth not on its terms but on Luke's." What is the difference between speaking truth on one's own terms and speaking truth per se? Rowe suggests that the latter is not possible: when Luke quotes Greek philosophy within the Christian hermeneutical framework, "Luke renders hermeneutically
35. Idem, World Upside Down, 36-37. 36. Ibid., 38. 37. Ibid., 39. 38. Ibid., 40. In this regard, Rowe cites Alasdair Maclntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988) and Karl Barths Church Dogmatics 2.1. 39. Rowe, World Upside Down, 201-2 (endnote 179 to p. 40).

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ineffective the original intellectual structures that determined philosophically the meaning of the pagan phrases." 4 By no means do I wish to contest all that Rowe is trying to say here. Greek philosophical culture was implicated in pagan idolatry (polytheism). Socrates's efforts to contemplate the causes of things, to rise from contingent things to eternal realities, contain many errors. Lacking "christological specification" and the "transcendence of the Creator God,"4x Greek philosophers do not get God's identity right. As Rowe says, "even a complex notion of idolatry and the recognition of goods within pagan life do not render the basic difference commensurable: between the affirmation and the denial of the break between God and the world there can be no rapprochement." 42 Consider, however, Rowe's position that Greek philosophical insights, when embedded in the Christian narrative, are no longer in a strict sense "philosophical" because they have been separated from the "original intellectual structures that determined philosophically the meaning of the pagan phrases." First, it may be that Rowe overdetermines these "original intellectual structures." 43 In Plato's philosophy, for example, there is a significant degree of indeterminacy, of admission that Socrates (or Diotima, or Timaeus) does not know quite what he is talking about. Plato's dialogues often gesture toward realities that Plato admits are too difficult for him fully to apprehend. Socrates's Diotima may be right that all humans "long to make the good our own" and thus also long for immortal union with eternal realities, but she leaves unresolved many issues pertaining to these eternal realities. 44 Timaeus argues that "the father and maker of all this universe is past finding out, and even if we found him, to tell of him to all men would be impossible." 45 % t Timaeus reasons that it is at least true to say that the creator "was good, and the good can never have any jealousy of anything. And being free from jealousy, he desired that all things should be as like himself as they could be."4 6 Plato thus seems aware of the indeterminacy of his "pagan phrases," whose meaning is fluid enough to accord broadly with the Christian doctrine of the good Creator. Given sufficient indeterminacy, in other words, why suppose that we are faced, at every instance, with radically incommensurable discourses? Why suppose that
40. Ibid., 40. 41. Ibid., 24, 36. 42. Ibid., 50. 43. For background, see Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (Oxford: Clarendon, 1947). 44. Plato, Symposium 205a, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato (ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns; trans. Michael Joyce; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 557; see also 207a, p. 559. 45. Timaeus 28c, p. 1161-62 (trans. Benjamin Jowett). 46. Timaeus 29e, p. 1162.

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Greek philosophy is at war with the Christian story, which must "subvert" it and reject any "rapprochement" with it? Second, I wonder whether Rowe's description of "original intellec tual structures that determined philosophically the meaning of the pagan phrases" is itself philosophically rich enough. Regarding the best "pagan phrases," should one agree that their meaning is determined by their "origi nal intellectual structures"? Consider Diotima's remark that beauty (the good) exists "of itself and by itself in an eternal oneness, while every lovely thing partakes of it in such sort that, however much the parts may wax and wane, it will be neither more nor less, but still the same inviolable whole." 47 This doctrine of the participation of all finite things in eternal beauty (or goodness) may pertain, in its "original intellectual structures," to a doctrine of the divine ideas that even Plato himself later discarded. Yet beyond its "original intellectual structures," Diotima's understanding of beauty also evidences a profound reflection on existence. In other words, the struc tures of existence, rather than primarily the philosopher's "intellectual structures," may be determinative here for the philosophical meaning of Diotima's vision, even if in Plato's presentation this philosophical meaning remains not fully worked out. Similarly, one thinks of Aristotle's analysis of change and motion in this world, an analysis that leads him to the conclu sion that there must be eternal Act who "is indivisible and without parts and has no magnitude at all."48 Why suppose that Aristotle's propositions are "determined philosophically" by their "intellectual structures," rather than by the structure of existence? Even if Aristotle gets many things wrong (for example, when he tries to understand how eternal Act could think about other things 49), should we rule out the philosophical character of Aristotle's insight when later Christian theologians employ it to help articulate what Scripture means by "the king of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God" (i Tim 1:17)? 5> <

47. Symposium 211b, p. 562. On participation in the one, see, e.g., Parmenides i6$e-i66b, pp. 955-56 (trans. F. M. Cornford). 48. Aristotle, Physics (trans. Hippocrates G. Apostle; Grinnell, IA: Peripatetic, 1980), Book , p. 182. 49. See Aristotle, Metaphysics (trans. Hippocrates G. Apostle; Grinnell, I A: Peripatetic, 1979), Book A, p. 209. 50. Indeed, in another important recent essay, "For Future Generations: Worshipping Jesus and the Integration of the Theological Disciplines," ProEccl 17 (2008): 186-209, Rowe states, "The need to speak in the language of doctrine is not due primarily to the metaphysical predilections of the Greek world but rather arises out of a dynamic that is internal to the bibli cal text itself "to which he adds in a footnote, "The point here is not to deny the importance of Greek metaphysics for the outworking of Christian doctrine but instead to make a critical move against earlier accounts of the relationship between doctrine and Scripture that would see the former as Greek philosophical distortions of the latter (see, e.g., Adolf Harnack, Das

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In sum, Rowe's goal is to show, in Acts, the "incommensurability between the life-shape of Christianity in the Graeco-Roman world and the larger pattern of pagan religiousness."*1 While Christian faith and practice do indeed differ radically from "pagan religiousness," I hope that Rowe might agree that Acts appropriates Greek philosophical insights critically but not necessarily conflictually. Richard Bauckham: The Value and Limitations of Greek True-God Language In a chapter entitled "The Divinity of Jesus in the Letter to the Hebrews" in his Jesus and the God of Israel^ Richard Bauckham assesses the application to Jesus of Heb 7, which discusses Melchizedek. The key passage in this regard reads, "He is without father or mother or genealogy, and has neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest forever" (7:3). As Bauckham makes clear, these attributes are not intended to be applied to the "historical Melchizedek." Rather, they describe the kind of priesthood that Jesus possesses. For Hebrews, this is a priesthood marked by the fact that Jesus is the one about whom Ps 102:25-27 teaches, "'Thou, Lord didst found the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of thy hands; they will perish, but thou remainest; they will all grow old like a garment, like a mantle thou wilt roll them up, and they will be changed. But thou art the same, and thy years will never end'" (Heb 1:10-12). Bauckham observes that "this is the full eternity of the only true God."*2 For our purposes, Bauckham's comments on the language of Heb 7:3 are of particular interest. Developing an insight of Jerome Neyrey, Bauckham describes Heb 7:3 as "Hellenistic true-god-language," language that first-century Greeks who were philosophically sophisticated used to depict true deity. As opposed to deified heroes or gods, true deity for such philosophically sophisticated Greeks "is unbegotten or ungenerated (agenntos)having no parentsand unoriginated (agentos)having no other kind of originas well as being imperishable forever. "53 Bauckham draws a connection between Hellenistic true-god language and Heb 7:3 in part by noting that "{t}he three terms in Hebrews beginning with the alpha privative (apatr, amtr, agenea/ogtos) are typical of the negative descrip-

Wesen des Christentums {Gtersloh: Gtersloher Verlaghaus, 1999})" (p. 189). Rowe and I share the same concerns, and I am calling simply for a bit more nuance in Rowe's formulations in World Upside Down. 51. Idem, World Upside Down, 50. 52. Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testaments Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 249. 53. Ibid., 246, citing Jerome H. Neyrey, "'Without Beginning of Days or End of Life' (Heb. 7:3): Topos for a True Deity," CBQjft (1991): 439~55-

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tions used in Hellenistic god-language."54 He identifies similar language about the true God in Philo, Josephus, the Jewish Sibylline Oracles, the Jewish Pseudo-Orpheus, and the Apocalypse of Abraham. Because these authors and texts were heavily influenced by Greek philosophy, does Heb 7:3 reflect a translation of Jewish theology of God into Greek categories? 55 Bauckham's argument in this regard is twofold. On the one hand, he notes that both Greek philosophical understanding of God and Jewish understanding of God affirm divine eternity. In this regard, "there was a real convergence here of Jewish and Hellenistic definitions of deity." Although this convergence is limited, nonetheless, it is real. The philosophical attribute rightly describes the God of Israel, as the author of the letter to the Hebrews recognized. On the other hand, philosophically sophisticated Greeks were not necessarily monotheists, whereas the Jewish writers were. As Bauckham states, "Terms which for non-Jewish writers defined a true deity, for Jewish writers define the one and only true deity."*6 In this respect, Bauckham points out that the philosophical attribute gains a new function: it now speaks of the Lord of Israel who proclaims, "I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god" (Isa 44:6). Does this monotheistic context mean that the philosophical attribute, qua philosophical, is subverted? No. Philosophically minded Greeks were right to identify true deity as eternal, although they needed to identify true deity as radically one. The error does not negate the insight. The author of Hebrews finds in philosophically sophisticated "true-god-language" an attribute that is fittingly used to describe the God of Isa 44. So long as one recognizes that the borrowing involves only a particular element of Greek philosophy, distinct from more objectionable elements, such borrowing can be affirmed. The attribute of "eternal," available to Jewish and early Christian authors through their surrounding culture, is true about God. Yet Hellenistic "true-god-language" cannot be counted on to provide the full meaning of the attribute, because Greek philosophical culture mixed insights with errors. Hebrews takes the Greek attribute further (to say the
54. Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel, 246. 55. For further discussion of Philo, see Soskice, 'Athens and Jerusalem, Alexandria and Edessa," as well as Weinandy's Does God Suffer?, 74-82. Like Soskice, Weinandy argues that it "is the concept of creation then, with its one Creator God, that separates Christianity from popular pagan religion, and offers a bridge to Greek philosophy, but a bridge that simultaneously conveys the Greek God from Athens to Jerusalem and, in the crossing, baptizes him into the likeness of the God of Israel" (p. 73). In Weinandy's view, Philo's discussion of God's transcendence is deeply rooted in "the notion of God as Creator" (p. 79). Weinandy cautions that at times Philo seems to understand the "Logos" as a Platonic "semi-divine intermediary or principle between God and the created order," as if God were not directly Creator (p. 81). On Philo, the "Logos," and Middle Platonism, see also Rowe "For Future Generations," 194; Daniel Boyarn, "The Gospel of the Memra: Jewish Binitarianism and the Prologue to John," HTR 94 (2001): 243-84. 56. Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel, 248.

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least) by insisting on an entailment of divine eternity, namely, divine unity. In this way, the N T receives certain Greek philosophical insights but does so in a critical manner. The points of contact between the N T and Greek philosophical culture should be neither denied nor pressed too far.
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS

This essay has encouraged caution with regard to the formulation of the relationship of the N T to first-century Greek (or Greco-Roman) philo sophical culture. On the one hand, I do not think it helpful to affirm GrecoRoman practices and ideas without confronting the fact that their errors involved human beings in idolatrous worship. Thomas Aquinas remarks in this regard that God reveals philosophical truths about God because "hu man reason is very deficient [multum deficiens] in things concerning God. A sign of this is that philosophers in their researches by natural investigation into human affairs, have fallen into many errors, and have disagreed among themselves." 57 On the other hand, I think that an emphasis on Scripture's narrative incommensurability too closely weds metaphysics with narrative and undervalues the truths, however partial, attained by human reflection on, for example, beehives and budding leaves. The N T appropriation of Greek philosophical culture can be seen in Paul's view of "God's invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and de ity" (Rom 1:20; cf. Col 1:15); in 1 Timothy's praise of God as "the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God" (1:17) and as "the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortal ity and dwells in unapproachable light" (6:15-16); and in James's statement that "{e}very good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change" (1:17). These texts describe God in terms of attributes that are borrowed from Greek philosophical culture. The truth of these attri butes does not depend on their placement within the biblical narrative of the Creator God, although the full articulation of these attributes (and their separation from associated errors) becomes possible within the bibli cal narrative. These attributes highlight the transcendence of Israel's God, a transcendence that enables God to create and to act for our salvation in history. It follows that what . T. Wright describes as the elements of "classic Jewish monotheism" received significant support from Greek philosophi cal insights. 58 Wright fears that "Western orthodoxy . . . has had for too
57. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, q. 2, a. 4. 58. . T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1999), 101. For reconstructions of preexilic understanding of YHWH and the Shema, see Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israels Polytheistic Back-

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long an overly lofty and detached view of God. It has always tended to approach the christological question by assuming this view of God and then by fitting Jesus into it." 59 As Wright explains, My proposal is not that we know what the word god means and manage somehow to fit Jesus into that. Instead, I suggest that we think historically about a young Jew possessed of a desperately risky, indeed apparently crazy, vocation, riding into Jerusalem in tears, denouncing the Temple and dying on a Roman crossand that we somehow allow our meaning for the wordg0/to be recentered around that point. 60 Certainly, Jesus fulfills God's promises and manifests himself to be Emmanuel ("God with us") by riding into Jerusalem, denouncing the Temple, and dying on a cross. Yet, I hope to have shown that "our meaning for the word god" requires a historical description of what Jesus does that is also attunedas the N T isto Greek philosophical contributions. An adequate Christology requires such "lofty" descriptions as "immortal," "invisible," "eternal," "immutable," and "dwelling in unapproachable light." Because these descriptions are true philosophical insights, they can be used by the biblical authors to describe truly the Creator God of Israel who, incarnate in Jesus Christ, dies on the cross. While remaining philosophical, these insights now describe the triune Creator, who has loved us in Jesus Christ. In his Regensburg Lecture, Pope Benedict XVI praises the "mutual enrichment" that arises from the encounter between biblical and Greek thought. 6l By discerning the "inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry," 62 we can affirm both modes of knowing while seeing at the same time their integrationevident in Scripture itselfin the knowledge of God that Christian believers profess.
ground and the Ugaritic Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005); Nathan Macdonald, Deuteronomy and the Meaning of Monotheism' (Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003). 59. Wright, The Challenge ofJesus, 123. 60. Ibid., 123-24. 61. Pope Benedict XVI, "The Regensburg Lecture," in The Regensburg Lecture (by James V. Schall; South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2007), 130-48 (p. 136). Pope Benedict states that Greek philosophical thought is inscribed within Scripture itself, from "the later wisdom literature" onward: "Biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment" (p. 136). He argues for a "profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the Biblical understanding of faith in God" (pp. 134-35). H e g e s o n t o sketch the history of calls "for a dehellenization of Christianity" (p. 139). 62. Ibid., 138.

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