"Christianized Helenism"

During the first five centuries of our common era, certain intellectuals sought to demonstrate a relationship between Greek philosophy and the revealed truth of the Bible. The book A History of Christianity states: "Christian Metaphysicians were to portray the Greeks in the decades before Christ as struggling manfully but blindly towards a knowledge of God, trying, as it were, to conjure up Jesus out of the thin Athenian air, to invent Christianity out of their poor pagan heads."

Plotinus (205-270 C.E. ), a precursor of such thinkers, developed a system that was based chiefly on Plato's theory of ideas. Plotinus introduced the concept of a soul separate from the body. Professor E.W. Hopkins said of Plotinus: "His theology . . .had not little influence upon the leaders of Christian opinion.

Next time: "Hellenized Christianity" And "Christian Philosophy"

Watchtower, 1999