Against Hellenism in Theology

One of the things that people find most irritating about Robert Jenson, from what I have seen, is his opposition to Hellenism. There was a purported time when Robert Jenson and John Webster were on a panel together, and when Jenson began his usual spiel about the dangers of Hellenism in theology, Webster was seen with his face sinking into his hands. Webster’s reaction seems to be shared by increasingly more theologians today. I have a couple things to say regarding this long-standing debate over whether Hellenism and Christian theology are compatible, which are not Jenson’s thoughts per se, but necessary factors to consider here.

The first thing is that I often see an automatic line being drawn between anti-Hellenism and the “Hellenization thesis” of Adolf von Harnack. Harnack thought that the early church had “Hellenized” the gospel by overlaying the timeless reserve of gospel truth with Hellenistic cultural husk, which later became the foundation of the “catholic” tradition in theology. Harnack is wrong, in my opinion. His theory relies on historicist presuppositions about God’s relationship with time that I flatly deny. But what is also wrong is to consider each and every criticism of Hellenism as the “Hellenization thesis.” Church history is filled with examples of theologians who opposed Hellenistic concepts in theology, and to claim otherwise is historically irresponsible. The church has never had a monolithic approach to Hellenism.

Second, the problem with so much “Hellenistic theology” is that it supposes that the gospel cannot be translated into the language and thought forms of the contemporary person. Hellenistic categories must be used, or else one winds up on the slippery slope that leads to historicism. Such claims grant to Hellenistic culture a greater status than should be given to any particular human culture. But what is more illogical is the idea that the gospel first underwent a process of translation, in which the idioms of the Scriptures were translated into Hellenistic categories, but that all subsequent translation of the gospel into other idioms is now prohibited. Not only is this claim arbitrary, but it also entails a substantial change in the nature of the gospel in the early church, from something that could be translated into other idioms and linguistic structures to something that could not.

Challenging the opposition to Hellenism is valid, but from what I have seen, there are a great deal of criticisms of anti-Hellenism that rely solely on prejudice against modern concepts. Fair enough, modernity is not the answer either. But to claim that the gospel must be spoken of using Hellenistic categories, in my opinion, mistakes the very nature of the gospel and what the early church was doing when it described the nature of God. At any rate, opposition to Hellenism is not grounds for dismissing a particular theology, so long as this theology can be demonstrated to be consistent with the gospel.