The Legacy of Greece: Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield
Philosophy
The Legacy of Greece: Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield
Greece -- Civilization
Harnack traces three stages in the Hellenization of Christianity. 'In
the earliest Christian writings, apart from Paul, Luke, and John', he
cannot find any considerable traces of Greek influence. 'The real influx
of Greek thought and life' began about 130. The exception is so
important as to make this statement of little or no value. After 130, he
says, 'the philosophy of Greece went straight to the core of the new
religion'. A century or so later, 'Greek mysteries and Greek
civilization in the whole range of its development exercise their
influence on the Church, but as yet not its mythology and polytheism;
these were still to come'. 'Another century had to elapse before
Hellenism as a whole and in every phase of its development was
established in the Church.' The process which he describes began, in
fact, as soon as Christian preachers used the Greek language, and was
never so complete as he says. The Logos-Christology, to which he justly
attributes the greatest importance, is already present in St. Paul's
epistles; the name only is wanting; and the sharp contradiction which
he finds between the Christian idea of a revelation made through a
person at a certain date, and the Greek idea of an apprehension of
timeless and changeless truth, always open to individuals after the
appropriate discipline, was faced and in part overcome by the Greek
Fathers. Harnack also regards Gnosticism as an embodiment of the
genuinely Greek view of revelation, forgetting that orthodox Platonism
was as hostile to Gnosticism as the Church itself. In rejecting
Gnosticism, the Church in fact decided for genuine Hellenism against a
corrupted and barbarized development of it. On the other hand, there is
no period at which we can speak of a complete conquest of Christianity
by Greek ideas. There was a large part of the old tradition which
perished with its defenders, who, obeying the melancholy law which
directs human survival, died out to make way for immigrants and for the
formerly submerged classes, the people with few wants, who were
indifferent to a culture which they had never been allowed to share.
One more cause of misunderstanding may be illustrated from the writings
of Matthew Arnold. He divides the human race into Hebraizers and
Hellenizers, and classifies the modern English and Americans as
Hebraizers. The fundamental maxim of Hebrew ethics, according to him, is
'Walk by the light you have'; of Greek ethics, 'Take heed that the light
which is in thee is not darkness'. The Hebraizer is conscientious but
unenlightened; the Hellenizer is clear-headed but unscrupulous.
Professor Santayana has lately noted the same difference between the
type of character developed by the Latin nations and by the
Anglo-Saxons. The Mediterranean civilization, older and more
sophisticated, is careful to get its values right; the northern man is
bent on doing something big, no matter what, and follows Clough's
advice:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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