Embodiment, Heresy, and the Hellenization of Christianity: The Descent of the Soul in Plato and Origen

Abstract

The Hellenization of Christianity is a long-standing and notoriously contentious historiographical construct in early Christian studies. While it has been deployed in surprisingly fluid ways, most scholars associate the thesis with Adolf von Harnack, for whom it acquired a decidedly critical valence. The “Hellenic spirit”—a concept Harnack usually left undefined—constituted a threat to the undogmatic gospel of Jesus. Whenever this adversarial Hellenic spirit triumphed, as it inevitably did, it corroded an authentic living Christianity into an institutionalized, dogmatic religion. For many others, both before and after Harnack, the Hellenization of Christianity has signaled a similar narrative of decline. The teachings and way of life that marked an authentic Christianity often stood in a disjunctive relationship with Greco-Roman culture, especially its philosophies. The influence of the latter precipitated a debasement of Christianity, the ossification of its teachings, or more seriously, the infiltration of heresy.