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Christian Hellenism: An Example Of Catholicity

Christian Hellenism: An Example Of Catholicity

Last updated on: October 29, 2025 at 2:00 am by Henry Karlson

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Christian Hellenism: An Example Of Catholicity 2025-10-29T02:00:29-05:00 Henry Karlson

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Cristian Bortes from Cluj-Napoca, Romania: Four Greek Philosophers Statue In The British Museum / Wikimedia Commons

Christianity arose in the midst of a Hellenized form of Judaism. While not everyone was Hellenized in the same way, and many fought against Hellenism, the Hellenistic culture influenced everyone, including its critics. Some, like Philo, embraced Hellenism more than others, but no one, including those who fought against it, was immune to its influence. This should not be surprising, because often, those who fight against a belief or ideology find themselves learning from and slowly thinking along the patterns of that which they fight.[1] This is why Lewis Ayres is right in saying there never was a form of Christianity which existed prior to such Hellenization:

Even with this definition in place, I do not want to talk about the Hellenization of Christianity. Most importantly because talking about a Christianity prior to a process of Hellenization makes little sense. Many areas in which Jews lived in the time of Christ demonstrate some or significant influence from aspects of Greek culture, and in its first generations the Christian community clearly possessed some members whose education was both deeply Jewish and deeply Greek – i.e., Paul. [2]

Christians, coming from a variety of cultures, embraced a universal (catholic) approach to the world. In light of the resurrection, and what Peter had learned about the need to embrace Gentiles, Christians saw Christianity was meant to recruit and embrace people from all cultures and religious backgrounds. Gentiles became actively recruited using Hellenistic ways of thought. Paul, for example, showed that this was possible in the way he quoted (and alluded to) pagan thinkers in his writings. Then, as more and more gentiles converted to the Christian faith, we see more ways in which Christians would embrace their cultural traditions and what they learned from them, such as in the way Christians took on Hellenistic notions of education:

For our purposes it is vital to see that the techniques taught by the grammatikos played a foundational role in the development of Christian exegesis. To give one example, as readers in the late second century became more interested in the literary form of the texts that would be incorporated into the New Testament, the techniques they used to read those texts were those they had been taught by the grammatikos: they knew to parse terms carefully, and to look at consistent patterns of Scripture interpretation because this was what the grammarians had inculcated in them. Such figures as Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian both read as we would expect them to read, and they decided on an intensifying of their relationship to Hellenistic literary culture, making a particular form of scholarly attention to the text the sine qua non for the expert interpreter.[3]

It is important to acknowledge and recognize Hellenistic elements always existed in the Christian tradition. Everyone was Hellenized to some extent, but the reaction to Hellenism, and how much it was embraced, is where we find Christians truly differentiating themselves from their Jewish heritage. While many Jews had no problem with Hellenism, for most, Hellenism was viewed as questionable, and its influences kept to a minimum. Christians, on the other hand, learned to see Hellenism as something positive; while, they would all agree that there were religious elements (like polytheism) which needed to be rejected, in general, Christianity saw itself as being universal (catholic) in approach and able to embrace Hellenism with its universality (catholicity). Christian apologists like St. Justin Martyr saw God had been at work throughout the world, helping people of all cultures and traditions some elements of the truth which could be used to help them become Christian (or even be seen as Christians by the way they embraced the universal Logos). This inclusivity, of course, was not a free for all; Christians saw they had to adapt (or “baptize”) what it found in the various cultures of the world, making sure what was taken in did not lead to some erroneous (or heretical) view.

This ancient universalistic spirit, this approach to the faith which allowed Christians to engage Hellenism, should be embraced by Christians today. Christians should be willing to reach out to the whole world and embrace people from all cultural traditions, and learn how those cultural traditions can engage and promote the Christian faith, each in their own unique way. That is the lesson we should learn when we study the way Christians took on Hellenism and not, as some do, go further, and think that Christianity can only followed in and through Hellenistic thought. We would be falling for the same mistake as the “Judaizers” of the first century did if we limited Christianity to its Hellenistic form, though we would also be wrong to deny the value which can be found in that formation, and the theological advances which were made by it. Nikolaos Loudovikos, therefore, explains, how we should be willing to examine, learn from and be critical of what came before us:

They almost feel guilty when a critical filtering of the written ecclesiastical tradition is required of them. They identify the holiness of the Fathers with the holiness, omniscience, and fullness of God Himself, and essentially idolize them, becoming unable to discern the “treasure in earth vessels” (2 Cor. 4.7). The fact that the Fathers are saints – and they really are saints! – does not mean that they do not complement and correct each other, that they do not have human failings or – on account of such failings – human faults and one-sidedness, as Abba Barsanouphios observed (Barsanouphios and John, Questions and Answers 604). Treating the Fathers, or Christian Hellenism, as idols, instead of engaging them in a living and crucially existential manner, leads to an equally dangerous pit for contemporary theology as was the centuries-long ignorance of them. [4]

To be sure, the greatest Hellenistic thinkers, Christian and non-Christian alike, would be shocked in the way their thoughts and ideas have been reduced so that those who embrace them are unwilling to look from and learn from others – the great Hellenistic thinkers were willing to learn from others and adapt what they learned (as many of them looked to Egypt as a source of inspiration, while others explored various religious doctrines coming from India). It is the same problem we find with the way many take neo-scholastic thinkers use St. Thomas Aquinas – they do not embrace his method, and his willingness to engage others; all they do is embrace his conclusions, which they think should be viewed as the norm which all must follow.

Tradition is always meant to be living, willing to change, to deal with the needs of the present moment. As we live, we are meant to contribute to the Christian tradition, and as we do so, it is important for us to look at and engage people and ways of thinking found in all the cultures of the world, because each can contribute something which the rest do not possess. This will help us deal with the needs of the day instead of being forced to engage the needs of the present by the prison of the past: “However, this Holy Tradition is not a dead, frozen deposit, but a continuous and full vision of God in which each human being – and also each culture, each nation – participates in its own particular way.”[5] Hellenism offered much to the Christian faith. We should not distance the Christian faith from it by saying Christianity needs to be purified from all non-Christian influences. Rather, we should take it, engage it, learn from it, but also, have a willingness to engage other cultures, other ways the faith can be expressed. The more we do that, the more our apprehension of the truth will grow, and the more the Christian faith will reveal the inclusive nature which the church is to have if it is truly to be universal (or catholic).

[1] We can see this with those who engage apologetics. Too often, Catholic apologists take on and debate Protestants along the lines of Protestant ideologies, slowly thinking in the same thought patterns as their Protestant foes.

[2] Lewis Ayres, Christological Hellenism: A Melancholy Proposal (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2024), 19-20.

[3] Lewis Ayres, Christological Hellenism: A Melancholy Proposal, 27.

[4] Nikolaos Loudovikos, Church In the Making: An Apophatic Ecclesiology of Consubstantiality. Trans. Normal Russell (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2016), 12.

[5] John Meyendorff, Vision of Unity (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987). 163.

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