Demosthenes asked:

I can't fathom the claims that Christianity and the Ancient Greek Thinking somehow converged? or
that somehow Jewish beliefs of obedience were bridged through Christian love to freedom?

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From it's very early development Christianity quickly moved from being a local religious sect (based in
1st Century Palestine) to moving into the world surrounding. This world was not just the physical
world, but also the world of ideas and concepts. Part of this world was the world of Hellenic
philosophy.

When Christianity encountered Hellenic philosophy it quickly found that it had a 'ready made'
philosophical language with which to frame its religious ideas, or faith belief. Notions of 'the One' from
the Neoplatonists, the 'Logos' were easily merged with the profound religious ideas for the Christian
God, Jesus, the Trinity. Thus in the opening of the Gospel of John, Jesus becomes the incarnation of
the pre-existent Logos of Stoic/Platonic philosophy. The Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
become the Three Hypostases, and one Ousia.

The language and idea of Ancient Greek Thought, particularly as it was used by the Hellenic
educated early thinkers of the Church e.g. Origen of Alexandria, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine of
Hippo etc., quickly became the language of Christian theology.

There was a merging of ideas and experiences, and an existent form of language was used to give
shape and 'flesh' to a primitive religion experience i.e. Jesus becomes more than a 1st century
itinerant preacher who did good things, to the enfleshment of the the Second Hypostasis of the Trinity
and is himself understood by the Council of Chalcedon in the 5th century to be TWO PHUSIS and
ONE PROPOSPON.

The interaction between the language of philosophy and the world/experience of faith is something
that has been been constant throughout Christianity. There was certainly a merging and inter/intra
action between Hellenic philosophy and Christianity. This heavily influenced the ideas and concepts
of both these experiences and changed them dramatically. In the same way at the practical level,
Christianity's engagement with Roman structuralism, and law dramatically reshaped it into something
more than a local religious sect. The work of the Medieval Christian Scholastics is testament to the
impact of Ancient Greek Philosophy on Christian thought. The arrival of Aristotle through the work of
the Islamic philosophers, especially, Averroes and Avicenna, again gave Christianity a new, vibrant
language fro giving expressing to what essentially cannot be articulated -the experience of faith.

Fr Seamus Mulholland OFM