Gobha-Uisge ri Plubraich: Herman Dooyeweerd: Critique of Logos Theory 6. Hellenistic antipathy towards the Christian philosophy of accommodation.

6. Hellenistic antipathy towards the Christian philosophy of accommodation.

(Extract from Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy, Vol II)

One must never forget that the logos theory of Greek philosophical theology was basically rooted in the rational principle of form, and that its highest standard for cosmic order was a rational standard. It is well known that Hellenistic philosophy, in taking its stand against the Christian religion, was repelled by this religion precisely because it dethroned the rational form principle. It could not tolerate Christianity’s teaching that the cosmos has to be viewed from the perspective of an infinitely more profound principle, a principle that assigns even to thought a proper, limited place within the created order.

Greek philosophy intuitively perceived the depth of this radical antithesis between itself and the Christian religion. It did not grasp this new Christian principle, but rather regarded it, in contrast to its own rational principle of form, as a barbaric reversion to the darkness of the matter principle. The apostle Paul gave a trenchant description of its attitude when he wrote that the gospel is a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Greeks (1 Corinthians 1:23).

It was not without reason that Christian thinkers attempted to accommodate the Greek theories of the logos and the ideas and the Greek view of human nature to the divine Word-revelation. Their primary goal was to win the Greeks over to the Truth of the Christian religion and to counter the accusation that this religion was irrational. Their effort was flawed, however. When Greek philosophy was pressed into the service of Christian doctrine, the way to a deep understanding of the central significance of the Christian religion for philosophical thought was cut off. Plotinus rightly pointed out to the “Christian” Gnostics that they had taken all their real philosophical goods from Greek philosophy, but that they had put this philosophy in barbaric disarray by combining it in a bizarre way with their presumed higher knowledge. They imagined that in doing this they stood far above Plato and the other giants of Greek thought, when in reality they stood far below them in philosophical depth.

This accusation, to be sure, could not be maintained against Christian thinkers such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Nevertheless, authentic Hellenistic philosophy realized intuitively that these great church fathers, for all their erudition and knowledge of Greek thought, were trying to use this thought for a goal to which it could not lend itself. The Hellenists perceived that the church fathers had no right to speak of a “philosophia christiana” so long as they did nothing more than adapt alien philosophical notions to Christian dogma. The judgment of Porphyry, a pupil of Plotinus, concerning Origen is revealing in this regard. Porphyry wrote the following about Origen:

(Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiae VI,19): “But Origen, having been educated as a Greek in Greek literature, went over to the barbarian recklessness. And carrying over the learning, which he had obtained, he hawked it about, in his life conducting himself as a Christian and contrary to the laws, but in his opinions of material things and of the Deity being like a Greek, and mingling Grecian teachings with foreign fables. For he was continually studying Plato . . . .”) (History of the Church V.19.7-8. Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 1, pp. 265-266).

It was because of a false dilemma that the church fathers accepted the philosophical content of the Greek theory of the logos. As Augustine reasoned, following Gregory of Nyssa, if God, through the Logos, did not create the world in accordance with rational ideas, we then would have to conclude that He performed His work of creation in an “irrational” manner (Retractationes I, 3, 2. Written close to his death this work contains Augustine's mature view; cf. vol. 60 in Fathers of the Church, CUA Press, 1999). Augustine already knew from Plotinus’ theology, however, that the contrast between rational and irrational cannot be applied to the Origin of all things, since God’s nature is above reason.

Plotinus did not carry this thought through in his logos theory, simply because for him the logos was not the divine unity itself, but only a product of the first divine radiation. Augustine, by contrast, professed the Scriptural doctrine that the three Persons of the Godhead share the same nature. How, then, could he have accepted a theory of logos and ideas that even Plotinus did not venture to apply to his divine One?

In Augustine’s thought, the theory of the logos patently came into conflict with the Christian Scriptural ground-motive of creation, fall, and redemption. He maintained the absolute sovereignty of God’s creative will, and the logos theory simply was not designed with this Scriptural doctrine of creation in view. To the contrary, it fit hand in glove with the rational form principle of the Platonic realistic theory of ideas. […] In contrast to this Greek view, the Scriptural doctrine of creation underscores the truth that thought is not the origin of the divine creation order, but is rather subject and subordinate to that order. Nowhere in Scripture do we find the predicate “divine” attached to logical, as opposed to pre-logical, matters. God’s order for the creation is only disclosed to human thinking when man begins to bow in faith before God’s majesty, submitting his thought to God’s law instead of trying to logicize that law in accordance with Greek logos theory.