Real Hellenist Stand Up

During much of the modern period, the development of Trinitarian theology has been seen as a “Hellenization” of the original Christian faith. Harnack for instance, “asserts that Logos Christianity, the Nicene dogma of the Trinity, and the Chalcedonian dogma of Christ are the products of ‘acute Hellenization’ that need not be continued forever.” Harnack was his work as a continuation of the Reformation recovery of the purity of biblical teaching, in order to come to an “undogmatic Christianity” that didn’t presume to make metaphysical statements about Christ’s nature or about the Trinity. Already by 200, the immediate experience of God through the Spirit that characterized early Christianity had hardened into a religion of law and form, and by 330, “Hellenism had infiltrated into every corner of the church, and the initial living faith had been transformed into a philosophy of religion” (from the Trinity Guide to the Trinity , by La Due).

Behind these affirmations and denials are some basic motifs and assumptions that are beyond debate. According to Rowan Williams, the central concern is with the freedom of God’s will. Arius insists that God is self-subsistent, and because he is immaterial he is “without any kind of plurality or composition.” If the Son is eternally with God, then there is something beside God that qualifies or limits Him, and God is unlimited. To be in relation is to be limited and qualified, and God is absolute. As Williams says, “if God is free in respect of every contingent, mutable and passible reality, the Word exists because God chooses that he should.” For Williams, Arius’s theology is very “conservative,” affirming what earlier writers would have affirmed: “God is free, the world need not exist, the Word is other than God, the Word is part of the world, so the Word is freely formed ex nihilo.” If the Father “necessarily” begets the Son, then His freedom is qualified and limited by some necessity. In addition, as Letham points out, Arians “wanted to protect God from involvement in creation, from human experiences and sufferings. Jesus’ human limitations showed that he was inferior to God.”

From this, we can see that the assumptions behind Arianism are precisely Hellenistic assumptions. To be absolute means to be entirely unrelated. And to be absolute means to be free from contaminations and involvement with the material creation. Harnack had it exactly backward. It wasn’t the orthodox who were Hellenizing the faith; the Arians were the one who were incapable of bursting out of the confines of Greek metaphysics. (See also Zizioulas on how Trinitarian theology burst the categories of Hellenistic thought.)