What if I had not married your mother? (Crown Question 9!)

The day came when our children realized that their mother and I might not have married and they might not have existed as they are. This counter-factual, a soul in a very different body, reminds us of how contingent certain things about us can be. Heredity accounts for much of how were are now, but the irreducible self remains even after death. I recall this thought as a boy and science fiction geek that I am considered many possibilities! Yet now I am my Father and Mother’s child and history cannot be changed. It is interesting to think what my soul might have done with difference, but I shan’t ever know now.

This is like a question that came from a bright student who had just read my book before a lecture:

“How would Christianity be different if Athens had never existed?”

Now it was my turn to shudder!

Christianity would be the same in essence, but different in ways so deeply rooted now in what Christianity is, “Christ” is a Greek name, that it is like imagining different biological parents: conceivable, but too many variables to guess well.

There would have been no Plato to craft the language the New Testament needed and that was the basis of the Greek translation the New Testament writers mostly used.  Since the student meant “Athens” as a stand in for all of Ancient Greece, the Presocratics would not have existed doing a kind of proto-science or developing geometry. The pursuit of science with a high regard for mathematics combined with the Christian idea of an Incarnation helped make the Scientific Revolution possible. What if they had not existed? Aristotle gave us an organized approach to knowledge and discovered logic.

We would be utterly different in form, but not in substance. Ethics would not change, because God is good. Beauty would be constant, because beauty exists externally and eternally. God would have shaped His church by His Holy Spirit and that has been with us since He moved over the waters of Creation.

Yet now we cannot know, because history happened as it did and what were variables are now settled. Thales asked questions and predicted an eclipse. Socrates asked questions and died for his love of wisdom. Plato asked all the right questions and keeps inviting us to the feast of words. Aristotle became the father of those who would know. A flexible, but precise rich language was created and spread over much of the Eastern Hemisphere by the great Alexander.

Critics of Christianity often think we marred Athens, finding the little good they see in us coming from Athens. Certain Christians, left and right, blame Athens for whatever they dislike in the Church. Perhaps, the Greeks made us body-negative, thinking of Plato, while others blame Athens for our sensuality, recalling Greek vices. In fact, there were so many influential Greeks, spread over hundreds of years, with all sorts of ideas, that a man could find a Greek to blame or praise for any concept he liked.

Nearly.

I have yet to find anyone who thought this: the Word, the divine Logos, would become fully human (not just put on a skin sack) and dwell amongst us. That was good news the Greeks did not imagine could happen.

It all happened, we must be thankful, that Jerusalem and Athens were married and made us.

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*The remarkable chair of the Honors Program had some questions for me based on my book When Athens Met Jerusalem. If I get to them all, there are twenty-two questions. Here is: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.