Paul and Hellenism.

        As part of his self-introduction to the Christians in Rome, the Apostle Paul writes that, “I am under obligation both to Greeks and barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish: so I am eager to preach the Gospel to you also who are in Rome” (Rom. 1:15). With these words, the great Apostle seems at first blush to commit a social blunder by referring to his future hosts, the Romans, as barbarians and fools. But, of course, this is not the case. Rather he simply assumes that the Romans are cultural Greeks, because they are versed in the Greek language and share in the Hellenic culture pervasive in Rome itself. His words indicate how far the meaning of the word “Hellene” has widened by the first century. There is little doubt that, as far as the social distinction between Greek and barbarian is concerned, the Apostle would classify himself not as a barbarian but as a cultural Greek, too.

        We have mentioned that he was born in Tarsus, a thriving Greek city. He received the name Pavlos which, although originally Roman, was quite likely given to him in its Greek version and most always was used as such. He was well versed in the Greek language as his letters show. By the time he had written any letters at all, his Christian evangelizing and tent-making involved him for at least fifteen years (35-50 AD) in the hustle and bustle of all the major centers of hellenistic culture except Alexandria. It is no surprise at all that Saint Paul's letters reflect numerous hellenistic elements, including language, epistolary form, dialogic manner of exposition and, on occasion, key terms. Once he anonymously quotes a proverbial statement of a Greek poet (Menander) with approval, “bad company ruins good morals” (1 Cor. 15:33). In Phil. 4:8, his eloquent exhortation about whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, gracious, and so on, could have been said by any Greek philosopher or moralist. He even uses a Stoic term such as syneidesis (Rom. 12:15; 1 Cor. 8:7; 2 Cor. 4:2) from the popular terminology of his time.

        Saint Paul's affinities with hellenistic culture already had deep roots in Judaism which had direct and welcome contacts with Hellenism since the days of Alexander the Great (356-323BC). The Jews in Alexandria, where they strived for citizenship, translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek primarily for their own use. Jewish cemetery inscriptions found throughout the empire are mostly in Greek. The later Hasmonean Kings in Palestine issued Greek coins. A gymnasium had been built in Jerusalem one hundred and fifty years before Christ. When Jesus and His disciples “reclined” to eat the Last Supper, they were in fact following a Greek custom long in use. By the era of Saint Paul hellenic culture had penetrated Palestine to such an extent that scholars no longer consider the distinction between Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism useful. Although there was a variety of reactions to Hellenism, including fierce opposition by some, the ideal among most Jews was to create a synthesis between Judaism and Hellenism as expressed by a rabbinic saying: “May the beauty of the Greeks dwell in the tents of the Jews.” Again, it is not surprising that Jews would embrace many aspects of the prevailing culture. Earlier the prophet Daniel and the three youths had adopted Babylonian names and used Babylonian wisdom (Daniel, chaps. 1-6)! Today both Jews and Greeks in the United States not only have eagerly absorbed American patterns of life and thought, but also have in part contributed to the shaping of American culture itself.

        For a minority group living in a dominant culture the question is not whether or not to acculturate but how much. The remarkable feature about the Jewish people in Graeco-Roman times, given the historical upheavals of that period, is that they vigorously maintained a distinctive identity. Although Judaism exhibited great diversity both in the Diaspora as well as in Palestine — recall the variety of religious groups such as the Sadducees, Pharisees, Scribes, and Essenes — , virtually all Jews shared a common identity centered on faith in the one God, the Law and a profound sense of peoplehood. Philo of Alexandria was deeply hellenized in thought but nevertheless was a sincerely observant Jew who chided other hellenizing Jews for not keeping the Jewish customs. The Apostle Paul who calls himself “a Hebrew of Hebrews [and] as to the law a Pharisee” (Phil. 3:5) was much less hellenized than his contemporary Philo.  Saint Paul Greek is distinctly less literary than Philo's and his cast of thought basically Hebraic. It is true that several generations ago scholars were fond of interpreting every major aspect of Saint Paul's thought, such as the christological titles Son of God and Lord, the contrast between flesh and spirit, and the sacred rites of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, in terms of hellenistic syncretism. But in the last two generations a great reversal has taken place in biblical scholarship. A consensus of scholars now views these important aspects of life and thought of Saint Paul and the early Church as intrinsic developments of the new Christian movement entirely understandable within the context of its Jewish background.

        Saint Paul's openness to the Graeco-Roman world and its culture, an amazing phenomenon for a former zealous Pharisee, was theologically grounded and derived from his understanding of his vision of the risen Christ. In Gal. 1:11-17, where he appeals to this momentous event as his front-line defense of the divine origin and authority of the Gospel, he describes his conversion as a “call” from God using the language of Jeremiah and Isaiah. God had set him apart “from his mother's womb” and “called” him to evangelize His Son among the Gentiles (Gal. 1:15-16). The Apostle contends for “the Gospel which [he] preach[es] among the Gentiles,” the Gospel to the uncircumcised “entrusted” to him by God (Gal. 2:1,7).  In this special “commission” from God lies his “necessity” to evangelize and his “obligation” to “Greeks and barbarians” (1 Cor. 9:16-17; Rom. 1:14). Elsewhere he names himself “the Apostle to the Gentiles” (Rom. 11:13). Saint Paul thus understood himself as fulfilling a special role in God's design pertaining to the Gentiles entirely consistent with the Old Testament.

        In a book entitled The Early Christians: Their World Mission and Self-Discovery (1986), Ben Meyer convincingly develops the thesis that, of all the religious groups in first-century Judaism, including the Jewish Christians, only the Christian Hellenists and Saint Paul were able to conceive of and carry out a seemingly impossible world mission against all odds, and that for theological reasons. The Christian Hebraists understood themselves as the vanguard of a restored Israel and resisted the outreach to Gentiles. But the Christian Hellenists and Saint Paul understood themselves as the first fruits of a new humanity in Christ in which “there is neither Jew nor Greek,.. neither slave nor free, ... neither male nor female; for... all are one in Christ” (Gal. 3:28). The key difference was that the Hellenists and Saint Paul interpreted the death and resurrection of Christ as His enthronement as universal Lord (Kyrios). The experience and theology of the universal lordship of Christ, and the resulting universal soteriology, were thus the driving force behind the world mission. As the Epistle to the Ephesians puts it: Christ “has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that He might create in Himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body” (Eph. 2:14-16).

        But what was the content of Saint Paul's openness to the world? Surely he did not come to hellenistic society with empty hands. Yet by what insights and criteria did he strive to give shape to the life of the congregations he founded? Christ did not give him a blueprint but the grace of the Holy Spirit. It was by his daily union with Christ, and the power of the Spirit, that St. Paul preached, taught, ministered, organized, and theologized. The Church Fathers correctly say that it was Christ who acted in Saint Paul for the Apostle himself had said that he possessed the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16). Nor was he unaware that certain boundaries were not to be crossed. A former Pharisee inclined to see even eating with Gentiles as defiling, the Apostle would indeed be highly conscious of the road he traveled in pagan society. He nowhere reflects on the matter of continuity and discontinuity between faith and culture in a systematic way. He deals with ad hoc issues and develops distinctive positions, using all appropriate elements, whether Jewish or Greek, according to his new discernment in Christ. Examples abound. The Roman Christians must shun drunkenness and debauchery (Rom. 13:13), but they may eat of whatever food according to their own judgment in good faith (Rom. 14). The Corinthian widows would do better to stay unmarried but if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry (1 Cor. 7:9). The slave Onesimus is returned to his master, but Philemon must now treat him no longer simply as a slave but as beloved brother in Christ (Philemon 12 and 16).

        An extended example of the dynamic interplay between Saint Paul's theological discernment, spiritual sensitivity and pastoral flexibility is the Apostle's long discussion on idol meats in 1 Corinthians, chapters 8-10. Are Christians allowed to eat the meat of animals previously offered to pagan deities? The Apostle answers yes, agreeing with the “strong” or theologically knowledgeable of Corinth because, although there are many mythical gods and lords, yet for Christians there is one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ. Idol gods are nothing, he says. Nevertheless, the Apostle pastorally sides with the “weak” Corinthians whose conscience is offended by such practice (1 Cor. 8). Saint Paul's spiritual insight is that “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (8:1). His pastoral principle is that a Christian should sacrifice her or his rights if the upbuilding of another is at stake. He presents himself as an example by sacrificing his apostolic rights to material support and also by becoming all things to all for their salvation (chap. 9).

        However, eating idol meats is one thing (1O:23) which is permissible. Participating in ceremonies and banquets at pagan temples is quite another which is not. The Jews have their sacrifices and the pagans have theirs as well. But the Christians have their own distinctive identity in the Lord's Supper, participating in the one bread and becoming the one body of Christ (10:14-22). While the Christians are permitted table fellowship with pagan friends in pagan homes, they are not to eat meat about which a scandalous question is raised (10:27-29). The Apostle's last words on the subject eloquently indicate both an open-ended discernment and a clear awareness of the Church as a distinctive community. “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the Church of God” (10:31-32).

        How could the early Church spread in the Graeco-Roman world with such openness and flexibility, and yet develop its own distinctive identity? For a long time many New Testament scholars, especially on the Protestant side, have reveled in the great variety of patterns of life and thought in the New Testament. They have gleaned “many gospels.” They have talked about the utter disunity of early Christianity. One cannot help but sense a hidden agenda somewhere. In more recent times, however, a corrective to this tendency is taking hold especially in the area of the study of early Christianity and its social environment. For example, the comprehensive study by Wayne Meeks, The First Urban Christians (1983), builds up a detailed case for the powerful unitive forces in the Pauline congregations both on a local and universal level. Meeks shows that, along with the undeniable diversity, Pauline Christianity is marked by a broad but distinct convergence through developing patterns of language of belonging and separation, a sense of spiritual and moral purity, the rituals of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, and patterns of belief, practice and governance. When the Epistle to the Ephesians states that there is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all” (Eph. 4:56), it is not speaking idly but expressing a powerful drive of the early Church to develop and maintain its unique character and witness in the Graeco-Roman world, just as Judaism had done long before. It is this same drive that eventually led to the clear consciousness among Christians that they constituted, along with Jews and Gentiles, to triton genos, the third race.

        Ben Meyer in his book, The Early Christians (1986), takes to task a number of scholars such as Walter Bauer, Hermann Gunkel, Walter Bauer, Rudolf Bultmann, and others, who have treated ancient Christianity of the first and second century as an excessively variagated and syncretistic phenomenon. Meyer cautions that the diversity should not conceal the drive toward identity and unity. Nor should “orthodoxy” be defined as something static and fixed in order then to be superficially dismissed, for “orthodoxy” itself is dynamic and developing. Meyer finds that behind all the talk about conflicting diversity and syncretism by modern scholars lies “a massive cultural phenomenon: the recoil of the West from its religious heritage, or at least from the classical form of its religious heritage” or, to put it more simply, a hidden resistance to truth-claims and dogmatic teaching (Meyer, p. 196).

        As for this writer, whenever I have encountered the writings of “thorough-going diversity scholars” over the years, I have genuinely wondered whether or not we were reading the same Apostle Paul, the same Clement of Rome, the same Ignatios, the same Polycarp, the same Justin Martyr and the same Eirenaios — the leaders of the ancient Church who express the Church's deep integrative movement toward doctrinal, sacramental and administrative unity. To my understanding, one of the most astonishing aspects of the interaction of faith and culture in Saint Paul and the early Church is that, as the young Christian movement was leaving behind the distinctive signs of Jewish identity mentioned above, it did not move into the hellenistic world in a syncretistic manner borrowing and mixing elements indiscriminately. On the contrary, it had a powerful sense of its own uniqueness, an invincible conviction of possessing the truth, a dynamic ability to develop its own patterns of faith, worship, teaching, and organization — the building blocks of what in time emerged as the institutional signs of a highly visible apostolic and catholic Church putting its own seal on culture! To be sure, there was great diversity and even divisions and heresies in ancient Christianity as a historical phenomenon. Some groups seeking to preserve forms of Jewish Christianity and other groups, the wild variety of Gnostic sects hopelessly syncretistic, are evident until the mid-second century and beyond. But the primitive Church of Jerusalem, the Gentile Church of Saint Paul who did his utmost to maintain the unity of the whole Church, the Church of Clement of Rome, and later the Churches of other leading Christian figures such as Saints Ignatios, Polycarp, Justin Martyr and Eirenaios, form a golden cord of amazing historical continuity, catholic identity and theological coherence which shines all the more against the background of Graeco-Roman unbridled religious syncretism.

        The dynamic interplay of faith and culture in Saint Paul and the early Church carries significant and challenging insights for Orthodox Christians today as we face the dramatic interaction of diverse faiths and secular pluralistic cultures on a global scale. Perhaps the greatest challenge for us is Saint Paul's conviction about world mission grounded in the universal lordship of Christ. Dare we, like Saint Paul, claim the modern world in Christ's name, rather than maintain a basically defensive and protective posture over against contemporary society? What kind of discernment and measures of flexibility are truly appropriate to the catholicity of the Orthodox faith so that it may be lived and expressed incarnationally through new cultural forms? The Church of Saint Paul was like a jeep with four-wheel drive, efficient and able to travel the cultural topography of the time with power and amazing success. The Orthodox Church today presents more the image of a stretch limousine, self-conscious about its image and using a lot of energy to maintain itself rather than carry out its mission. The future holds opportunities and risks. The closer we are to Christ, the more clearly we can discern our way under the law of Christ (ennomoi Christou, 1 Cor. 9:21). The deeper our union with Him, the stronger our conscious identity as His Body, the more securely we can be “all things to all... for the sake of the Gospel” (1 Cor. 9:19,22-23).