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A comment in this question states:

I think what we would now call the "cultural appropriation" of Greek philosophy by Christian theology is a very deep and not-very-well explored question in the history of ideas.

Given that most social movements borrow from earlier cultures, is there anything unique to Christian theology that can be said to have been borrowed directly from Greek philosophy?

Note: I am interested in theological and philosophical principals and ideas, not things like Christmas being celebrated around the same time as the pagan winter solstice, etc.

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    Christian Medieval atheology is based 90% on Aristotelian Metaphysics. The very same idea of "Theo-logy": a rational study of God, is due to the deep influence of Greek Philosophy (and science). Commented yesterday
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    See Medieval Philosophy. The idea to prove God existence was not a "necessity" of religious belief, but was due to a science-like approach. Commented yesterday
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    I have trouble with your question on at least two levels. First, it seems to me that if Christianity borrowed (or perhaps appropriated) some idea from Greek philosophy, that would rule out the possibility of that idea being unique to Christian theology. Second, to talk of Christian theology appropriating anything from Greek philosophy suggests to me that you think of Christian theology as something that existed before the appropriation. But I'm not aware of any Christian theology before Christians started developing their theology. But both "theology" and "philosophy" are slippery terms. Commented yesterday
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    I note that when John tells his 1st century proto-Christian audience that "In the beginning was the λόγος", he doesn't have to stop and explain what he means and why it should hit hard. Commented yesterday
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    @villageidiot, I put "appropriated" in quotations marks because that's the term the original quote used. I don't necessarily like it because it implies stolen, or inappropriate use of something in the context of "cultural appropriation". I added "borrowed", but I don't necessarily like it either because of the implication that it will be given back. I think the question is clear enough without chasing terminology. A good answer will clear up any possible confusion... Thanks for the feedback though. Commented yesterday

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"Appropriated" has a broad enough definition to make it work in the broad sense, but in the narrower common-use sense of taking something alien and making it one's own, suggesting that a population like that of 1st century Christianity appropriated anything culturally Hellenic is mostly false and obscures the reality.

Early Christianity was a product of continuous mutual cultural exchange and simultaneous co-evolution within a largely Hellenistic cultural sphere which spoke Greek as their common language (in addition to other local languages like Syriac or Aramaic). Its population included cultural and ethnic Greeks and lived in a region already dominated by Greek culture. It emerged in the context of multiple non-Christian 1st and 2nd century philosophical and religious movements in the world trade and cultural nexus that was the eastern Mediterranean. It was in continuous conversation, exchange, debate, and integration with, and schism into, those non-Christian or semi-Christian elements.

In parts of Western Europe, later Christianity re-integrated locally extinct or dormant philosophical textual traditions, but since those had been present and prevalent at its formation among the people and ideas from which it was initially constituted, even calling that "appropriation" is odd.

Something more worth calling "appropriation" is the treatment of specific authors. Early medieval Christianity, especially in the West, worked out the theology of how to interact with non-Christian intellectual authorities by categorizing them as a sort of quasi-pre-Christians, communicating valuable truths that Christianity could place in proper context. The theory was that persons of good will could imperfectly grasp partial truths, making it not so different from modern ways of looking at knowledge, but framed in the context of a belief in the absolute truth of divine revelation.

In brief: Christianity can be said to have "appropriated" Greek philosophy to the extent that jazz could be said to have "appropriated" ragtime: literally true for some meanings of the word, but misleading, since it was an overlapping population, in the same cultural context, developing the same ideas, and sometimes the same actual human beings doing it.

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  • The commonly-made point is that Christianity significantly changed over the millennia, based on e.g. Greek and Enlightenment thinkers, such that modern Christianity is wildly different from how Christianity began. This challenges the idea that the Bible is the unchanging, perfect word of a deity. Maybe one needs to stretch the definition of "appropriate" to make it fit with that, but it doesn't seem entirely accurate to call the original claim false or misleading when you're making and supporting roughly the same point as what they likely meant. Seems a bit too close to arguing semantics. Commented 22 hours ago
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    @NotThatGuy so gangsta rap appropriated ragtime, but jazz didn't? Commented 22 hours ago
  • I think you missed my point, which was to clarify the commonly-made argument separate from the semantics of "appropriate" (whereas you're leaning back into using "appropriate"). Also, I don't know the history of gangsta rap and jazz, and I've never heard of ragtime before, so I can't comment on how they relate. Commented 12 hours ago
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Christian Medieval theology is in great part based on Aristotelian philosophy

The very same idea of "Theo-logy": a rational study of God, is due to the deep influence of Greek Philosophy.

The weird idea to prove God's existence was not a "necessity" of religious belief, but was due to a sort of "scientific" approach to God.

See Medieval Philosophy for an overview and history.

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    "Christian Medieval theology is based 90% on Aristotelian Metaphysics." How did you derive this percentage? Commented yesterday
  • P.S. I just added "and what did it borrow" to the title question, because while technically 90% answers the "extent" portion of the question, the question begs to know what... Commented yesterday
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    @MichaelHall engineering estimate :-) Commented yesterday
  • Ha! Ok, estimates are allowed, but some additional detail would be appreciated as I noted in my comment that overlapped with yours just now. Commented yesterday
  • 'Theology': from Greek theologia "an account of the gods," from theologos "one discoursing on the gods." From theos "god" + -logos "treating of". Plato used theology to mean 'discourse on the Gods' (380 BC). It included myths & civil matters for Greeks, not only rational study Commented yesterday
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Early christianity - before christianity became a state religion and came to dominate the world view of people living around the Mediterranean Sea - shows various, conflicting ways to translate, explain or justify Christian ideas into Greek philosophical terms.

The most important issue was how to express the relation of Jesus to God. The general answer was something like: Jesus was somehow both human and divine. But how? What did this mean? Jesus is the Son, the Christ - okay, and what does that mean? To grapple with this (and explain it to non-Jewish heathens) the early church fathers had no other way than to use the terminology of Greek philosophy (and doing so, also create new meanings). So, in the Nicene Creed (325 AD) the relation of Jesus to God, the Father, is as expressed as "homo-ousios", "consubstantiality" ("three 'persons', one substance"). One conflicting view, that didn't make it, was Arius' view that Jesus, the Son, was a created creature, lacking the eternal divinity of the Father. The word 'persons' in this context is itself a kind of compromise between the Latin "persona" (originally meaning "mask" or "actor") and Greek "hypostasis" (which had originally the same meaning as "ousia": "what underlies something", "its essential being").

In some sense the Nicene Creed, which is what almost all Christian groups accept as their defining creed, is like a monster of Frankenstein: an amalgam of originally Jewish religious terms (like "Christ", God as creator, as judge) partially expressed and codified in Roman/Greek philosophical terms. (But actually, this translation effort is already happening also in the letters of Paul. For instance in his use of the term for "conscience", "syneidesis", which originated in Stoic philosophy; Paul gives it his own theological twist, of course.)

What is interesting in early christianity is the rich variety of conflicting "philosophical" views (like Arianism, Nestorianism, but there were lots of others - all duly anathemized; some, like Nestorianism, surviving for quite some time outside the orbit of the Roman empire). As a heathen I have to wonder: Can we draw any conclusion from the fact that practically every possible combination of views was adopted by this or that church father? (See wikipedia's schematic overview of christological views.)

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    (Arius's view "didn't make it" rather successfully for about 1700 years and counting.) Commented yesterday
  • You know the Council of Nicea was decades after Constantine become Emperor? Roman culture like Constantine's previous adherence to Sol Invictus, for which he decreed the Christian sabbath be on Sunday, is surely more influential in this era than Greek. Commented yesterday
  • According to etymonline.com/word/person "person" used to refer to a person of the trinity is from the 13th century (after the meaning had drifted to "human being"). This suggests that there wouldn't be any 4th century context at all. Commented yesterday
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    @CriglCragl - I'm always a bit sloppy with dates. Constantine's son was a fervent Arian, so the "state religion" thing didn't mean that everyone suddenly was an Christian (or that orthodoxy was clearly defined). Commented yesterday
  • @gs - The etymology info is plain wrong/at least misleading. Tertullianus (3d century) speaks of " unius autem substantiae" and uses the word "persona" to refer to the three "persons" of the trinity (in: Adversus Praxean). Commented yesterday

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