Philo & Christianity

 

From The Socratic Journey of Faith and Reason, section 37 below:  

Western Civilization was built on the transcendentals of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. In this blog you will get unique, comprehensive, and integrated perspective on how philosophy, theology and art built Western Civilization and why it is in trouble today. 

37. Philo’s Breakthrough with Logos – from Greek Abstraction to Living Being

In this post, I will discuss how Philo of Alexandria put Hebrew flesh and bone on the Greek abstract concept of logos. This made the idea of the logos so significant that, I would argue, it was the only word John could have used in chapter 1 of his Gospel. (Please see the previous post as background for this one).

Greek as the Bridge Between Judaism and Christianity

It is no accident that the New Testament was written in Greek. Greek was the language of philosophy. It came loaded with philosophical terms and ideas that the Greeks had been developing for over 400 years. And thus the Church Fathers eventually used it to develop Christian theology.

Paradoxically, the type of Greek in which the New Testament was written was Koine Greek. Koine (κοινή) Greek was “street Greek,” the parlance of the common person.[1]

 

Philo of Alexandria’s Concept of Logos and God’s Word

 

By attempting to bridge Hebrew and Greek thinking, Philo laid the foundation for Christian theology and philosophy.[2] And his logos was the intermediary between the two. In order to bridge the Hebrew and Greek world, he introduced the Greek concept of logos conceived by Heraclitus and the Stoics into Judaism. 

 

In the previous post, I mentioned that the logos represented both the idea of God’s inscrutable essence – His divine mind – and the manifestation of God’s existence in creation. Philo saw a parallel between this purely Greek concept and the Hebrew idea of God’s Word or utterance as found in the Hebrew Scriptures. ... In the same way, for the Hebrews, God’s utterance or His Word was a part of His inscrutable essence, but when He spoke, His Word affected creation itself, even bringing it into existence (Genesis 1) or “breaking to pieces the cedars of Lebanon” (Psalm 29).3 It is easy to see parallelism between God’s Word and the Greek Logos. Both the Hebrew Word and Greek Logos represented God’s ideas as well as His actions in creation. The logos then becomes a manifestation of God’s thinking-acting. For Philo, then, the eternal Logos is one and the same with God’s Word.

 

The Logos as the First Born Son of God

 

According to Philo, the logos had an origin. But at the same time, since logos was synonymous with God’s transcendent eternal thought, then its generation was eternal. This is obviously a paradox that the logos could be, at the same time, both first born and eternal. In post 36, I mentioned how the Stoics developed the concept of “eternal generation” and applied it to creation. Philo now applies the same to the concept of logos.[4]

 

Philo stated that the Logos was the first begotten Son of the uncreated Father:

“For the Father of the universe has caused him to spring up as the eldest son, whom, in another passage, he [Moses] calls the first-born; and he who is thus born, imitating the ways of his father, has formed such and such species, looking to his archetypal patterns.”[5]

(Conf. 63) 

 

...  In addition to being creator, in the vein of Heraclitus and the Stoics, the logos is the ordering and governing principle of the universe. It is the “glue” that holds the created order together. And this includes not just inanimate objects like the solar system, but our own bodies and souls. It connects our bodies and souls as well as ourselves with the created order. 

 

We can start to see how New Testament authors like St. Paul utilized these ideas in talking about Christ:

“He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation;  for in him all things were created…all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 

– Colossians 1:15-17 

 

Since the Hebrew language was not a philosophical language, the New Testament authors and theologians would have been hard pressed to describe these concepts were it not for the Greek language with its philosophical heritage. ...

 

... Apart from holding together and governing the created order, the logos also gives us our rationality as an extension of itself and by implication, God. This is how we can be created in the image of God – the Logos bridges the gap. It transverses the great divide between transcendence and immanence. It allows God to be God by remaining transcendent, while at the same time enabling God to be immanently involved with His creating through the Logos.

 

On the Christians' New Genus as Members of the Divine Race that Transcends Earthly Ethnic Divisions

 

Despite the Apostle Paul seemingly believing that a Gentile needed to receive the ancestral seed of Abraham through David through the Jewish Jesus, even if that were so, the Indo-European need not fixate on this aspect of Pauline theology; because the greater theological emphasis in the New Testament is that of joining the race or genus of the Heavenly Beings (Jehovah and his Elohim). For in the Realm of the Heavenly Beings there truly would be no male nor female human bodies, nor Jew or Greek or Germanic ethnicities. 

As the Apostle Paul says in Galatians 3.28 (followed by commentary by BibleHub below): 

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Context:

…27 For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise.…

Cross References:

Colossians 3:11:

Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free, but Christ is all and is in all.

1 Corinthians 12:13:

For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all given one Spirit to drink.

Romans 10:12:

For there is no difference between Jew and Greek: The same Lord is Lord of all, and gives richly to all who call on Him,

Ephesians 2:14-16:

For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has torn down the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing in His flesh the law of commandments and decrees. He did this to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace and reconciling both of them to God in one body through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility.

Acts 10:34-35:

Then Peter began to speak: “I now truly understand that God does not show favoritism, but welcomes those from every nation who fear Him and do what is right.

Romans 3:22-23:

And this righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

John 17:21:

that all of them may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I am in You. May they also be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.

1 Peter 2:9-10:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.  Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

James 2:5:

Listen, my beloved brothers: Has not God chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom He promised those who love Him?

Matthew 23:8:

But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers.

Philemon 1:16:

no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a beloved brother. He is especially beloved to me, but even more so to you, both in person and in the Lord.

1 John 3:1-2:

Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.  Beloved, we are now children of God, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when Christ appears, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is.

Isaiah 49:6:

He says: “It is not enough for You to be My Servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the protected ones of Israel. I will also make You a light for the nations, to bring My salvation to the ends of the earth.”

Joel 2:28-29:

And afterward, I will pour out My Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on My menservants and maidservants, I will pour out My Spirit in those days.

I interpret these verses as basically pointing to the larger theological agenda of Paul and the New Testament authors seeking to elevate and divinize all humans through the supernatural genus of Christ as a divine being; with the end goal being not a focus on one particular race or ethnicity, but instead the growth of one new race or genus called the holy ones: who become the genus or race of the Divine Beings, the genus of God and the lesser gods (to use the language of Michael Heiser).  

This is explained in greater detail in the book The Light of Tabor: Toward a Monistic Christology, wherein author David Bentley Hart writes in chapter one, Nature and Genus (at Location 118, 297-315, 321-382), the following:

[For in him we live and move and are, as indeed some of the poets among you have said: “For we too are his race.” So, being God’s race, we ought not to suppose the divine to be like gold or silver or stone, a graven product of human craft and conception.] —Acts 17:28–29 

 

... I want only to try to understand as best I can what it must actually mean to say that Jesus of Nazareth was in every sense a true human being and also wholly identical to the eternal Son of God, the Logos in and through whom all things subsist. ...

 

... As a rule, in those extremely infrequent instances in which the word φύσις appears in the New Testament, it tends to be used with what was originally its most ordinary meaning: origin, derivation, line of descent, family, pedigree, race. Whether its appearance in what is probably the latest of the books in the canon, in 2 Peter (1:4), constitutes an exception— assuming that the phrase θείας κοινωνοὶ φύσεως does not simply mean something like “members of the divine family”—is a conversation for another time. But, as a rule, the word certainly does not bear the weight in scripture of anything so imposing as a large metaphysical category. When Paul speaks in Romans of that which is παρὰ φύσιν, “outside nature,” he is doing so in much the way in which Aristotle used such language in the Politics, as referring to something outside its proper place in the cosmic or social order8—in Paul’s case, meaning either outside natural processes of procreation (1:26) or outside a natural line of descent or heredity (11:24).9 In that acceptation, φύσις differs little in its connotation from γένος. This brings me to those verses from Acts from which I set out, which recount the story of Paul favorably quoting someone, probably either Cleanthes or Aratus, to the effect that we are all, simply insofar as we are human, “God’s race”—or “offspring” or “family” or “genus” or what have you—and then immediately radicalizing the claim by speaking of us as, quite literally, God’s “congeners”: γένος οὖν ὑπάρχοντες τοῦ θεοῦ (nota bene the definite article in that phrase). Or, as Ephesians says, it is from the Father that “every kindred within the heavens and upon the earth receives its name”: . . . τὸν πατέρα, ἐξ οὗ πᾶσα πατριὰ ἐν οὐρανοῖς καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς ὀνομάζεται (3:14–15): which is to say, all spiritual beings, whether below or above the moon, whether on the earth or among the planetary spheres and fixed stars, share in a single divine and natural genealogy—a single genus or kind. ... 

 

... For Paul, however, and really for the whole of the New Testament, our essence does not necessarily differ in any significant way from that of astral intelligences or angels or heavenly spirits of whatever kind; rather, our bodies—bodies of flesh and blood, bodies of sin (Romans 6:6), bodies of death (Romans 7:24–25)—are what separate us from that which is above, and it is our bodies that must be redeemed in order for us to be saved (Romans 3:23). ... Paul is quite clear on the matter in 1 Corinthians 15: “flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; neither does perishability inherit imperishability,” σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα βασιλείαν θεοῦ κληρονομῆσαι οὐ δύναται οὐδὲ ἡ φθορὰ τὴν ἀφθαρσίαν κληρονομεῖ; and it is precisely by his having set aside the composite, inherently perishable, “animated” carnal body—the σῶμα ψυχικόν—and assumed instead a spiritual body—a σῶμα πνευματικόν—like that of angels that Christ has been transformed into “life-giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45), conquered the celestial powers, and taken his seat beside the Father above (Romans 8:34); and thus too, as spirit, he can also join us to himself, return again to raise us up out of the realm of death, and make a way for us through the heavens to the Father (Romans 8:39; Philippians 3:20–21).[10] ... 

 

... What seems more or less absolutely clear to me is that, for Paul, ψυχή was chiefly the life principle proper to the realm of generation and decay, which cannot depart the aerial and terrestrial sphere, while πνεῦμα is a kind of life bound neither to death nor to the sublunary realm, and so able to move at liberty among all the cosmic realms, below and above. So too, in Christ, we are destined to be set free from our σώματα ἐπίγεια, “earthbound bodies,” and receive σώματα ἐπουράνια, “bodies stationed upon the heavens,” in their stead; for, whereas the former are limited by φθορά (decay), ἀτιμία (dishonor), and ἀσθένεια (weakness), the latter enjoy true ἀφθαρσία (incorruptibility), δόξα (glory), and δυνάμις (power) (1 Corinthians 15:42–43). So: ὁ πρῶτος ἄνθρωπος ἐκ γῆς χοϊκός, ὁ δεύτερος ἄνθρωπος ἐξ οὐρανοῦ. οἷος ὁ χοϊκός, τοιοῦτοι καὶ οἱ χοϊκοί, καὶ οἷος ὁ ἐπουράνιος, τοιοῦτοι καὶ οἱ ἐπουράνιοι• καὶ καθὼς ἐφορέσαμεν τὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ χοϊκοῦ, φορέσομεν καὶ τὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ ἐπουρανίου, “The first man out of the earth, earthly; the second man out of heaven. As the earthly man, so also those who are earthly; and, as the heavenly, so also those who are heavenly; and, just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man” (1 Corinthians 15:47–49). This is for Paul nothing less than the transformation of the psychical composite into the spiritual “simple”—the metamorphosis of the mortal fleshly body that belongs to soul into the immortal fleshless body that belongs to spirit: ἡμεῖς ἀλλαγησόμεθα. Δεῖ γὰρ τὸ φθαρτὸν τοῦτο ἐνδύσασθαι ἀφθαρσίαν καὶ τὸ θνητὸν τοῦτο ἐνδύσασθαι ἀθανασίαν, “We shall be changed. For this perishable thing must clothe itself in imperishability, and this mortal thing must clothe itself in immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:52–54).[11] 

In this sense, much of the hope of the earliest Christians appears to fall wholly in line with many of the highest spiritual longings of Graeco-Roman late antiquity, Jewish and Pagan alike: divinization through the assumption of a glorious and immortal form, ascent through the aetherial heavens, assimilation to the state of angels or daemons or gods or stars, entry into the highest sanctuary in or above the heavens. ... The body of flesh, Paul tells us, is but a terrestrial tent, in which we groan with fervent longing to be clothed instead in our celestial dwelling, so that we should not be found exposed and naked and so that what is mortal within us might be swallowed up in life (2 Corinthians 5:1– 9). To be raised is to have the body of abjection conformed to the body of Christ’s glory (Philippians 3:21). ...

 

In other words, the New Testament is basically saying that one's gender or ethnicity ultimately doesn't matter after death, when those who are baptized into Christ and receive his divine nature (pneuma) join the genus/race of God and the lesser gods (again to use Michael Heiser's language).  

As the Bible Hub cross referenced scriptures (quoted above) make clear, the God of the Bible is ultimately the God of all humanity, by only beginning with a "chosen people" (Israel), but ultimately seeking to bring into the "light" all nations/ethnicities. And remember, before Abraham was "chosen" to be the seed of a new people, before that all of humanity was One Race breathed in by God and equally imagers of God (to use another phrase from Michael Heiser). Abraham was simply selected to be the means of the Divine Path in the first phase and strategy of the biblical God; and so what the New Testament is saying basically is that Israel has been replaced with Gentiles as a new holy people, as the focal point of the Divine Path through the in-spiration of the divine Logos.

 

Constantine's Conversion to Christianity Led to its Growth and Power

 

The following is an excerpt from a world history article here: 

In 324 CE, Constantine defeated Licinius and became the sole emperor. In that position, he essentially expanded the ideas of Aurelian, in that he could now enforce "One God, One Emperor, One Church".

The First Council of Nicaea

After mediating the Donatist Schism, his next major challenge came in 325 CE. A presbyter in Alexandria, Arius, had been teaching that at some point, God had created Christ. Riots had broken out in several cities, and Constantine brought the bishops together at the city of Nicaea to resolve the issue. The Council of Nicaea resulted in the Christian doctrine known as the Trinity, which articulated the relationship between God and Christ. The Council voted to claim that Christ was of the identical essence of God, present at creation, and manifest (incarnated) on earth in Jesus of Nazareth. Until Christ returned, the now Christian emperor stands in for Christ, and so carries the identical power of God on earth as he rules. It was after this council that Christian emperors began to be portrayed with halos over their heads, and the trappings of divine worship.

 

The concept of a creed (from the Latin credo, "I believe") was a Christian innovation. With multiple native cults, there was no central authority that dictated what all should believe. The Nicene Creed formalized one system of belief that was promoted through the power of the emperor. As such, any dissent was not only heresy but also treason.

 

The Council of Nicaea also set the date for the empire-wide celebration of Easter. Some communities had insisted on following the gospel tradition of observance during the Jewish Passover. Constantine allegedly wrote:

... it appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast we should follow the practice of the Jews, who have impiously defiled their hands with enormous sin, and are, therefore, deservedly afflicted with blindness of soul ... Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Savior a different way. (Eusebius, Life of Constantine, III, chapter XVII, quoted in Schaff)

Constantine elected the practice which churches in Rome followed: the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. The later law codes under Theodosius I (r. 379-395 CE) and Justinian I (r. 527-565 CE) claimed that Constantine also created legislation against the Jews: Jews could not seek converts, were forbidden to own Christian slaves, and could not circumcise their slaves. Christians who converted to Judaism were to receive the death penalty. On the other hand, Jewish clergy were offered the same tax exemptions as Christians.

Constantine is often credited with determining the date for Christmas, too, although no edict has survived. Christians in Rome celebrated the event during the festival of Saturnalia in December 25. December was also the birthday of Sol Invictus and Mithras and may have been utilized in attempts to unify these festivals. From an ancient calendar, we know that in the year 336 CE, at least in Rome, the celebration was established on 25 December.

 

Christianity as the Spirit of Indo-European Conquering by Appropriating Hebrew Scripture

  

"Life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of what is alien and weaker; suppression, hardness, imposition of one’s own forms, incorporation and at least, at its mildest, exploitation.… If it is a living and not a dying body…it will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant—not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power. But there is no point on which the ordinary consciousness of Europeans resists instruction as on this: everywhere people are now raving, even under scientific disguises, about coming conditions of society in which “the exploitative aspect” will be removed—which sounds to me as if they promised to invent a way of life that would dispense with all organic functions. “Exploitation” does not belong to a corrupt or imperfect and primitive society: it belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will of life."

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Some people of Indo-European descent want to move away from Christianity because they consider it to be not part of their ethnic history and want to go back to the Indo-European gods. The way I see it, my Indo-European ancestors chose to make Christianity their civilizing religion. For example, the Scandinavian kings choosing to utilize Christianity for better ease of trade and consolidation of power through its monotheistic structure. 

I also see Christianity as a religion that basically conqured Zealot-style Judaism of the first century with the New Testament as basically Roman propaganda to explain why the Israelite Zealots who tried to conquer Rome lost in 70 AD, and their own Israelite god chose to instead make Gentiles his focal point. The hellenized Greek speaking New Testament author exploited or utilized Judaism and it's monotheism, in order to merge the best of Hellenic culture with Philo-style forms of Judaism. So I see Christianity as a collaboration between Indo-European peoples and Hellenized Jewish people. 

This collaboration began with the Apostle Paul basically appropriating the Hebrew Bible to his own ends, in that even though he himself was a hebrew of hebrews, he utilized the Old Testament texts by changing  the meaning of passages as a midrashic artist, in order to graft Indo-European peoples into Israel. This beginning stage of reworking the meaning of Old Testament scriptures to fit an Indo-European paradigm, was continued on with the later Indo-European Christian Church Fathers who combined Greek Philosophy with the New Testament.

Considering Nietzsche's legitimate criticisms of the apostle Paul, I began to realize that the Apostle Paul is not the end all be all of Christianity. Paul simply got the ball rolling so to speak, but his version of Christianity (voluntary martydom, literal spirit-possession, healing handkerchiefs, etc.) is no longer believed in or practiced by most Christians.

Paul himself represents a form of Nietzschean will to power in that his big ego led him to believe that he was called to graft the Gentiles into Israel before the end of days. So basically you have Paul exercising creative will to power in order to get one over on his opponents (the "super apostles") as he utilized the authority of the Old Testament to cleverly graft Gentiles into Israel. In the end the Pauline Gentile churches won out over and against the more Torah-observant Jesus-based sects. 

You have to remember that what was powerful and authoritative in the Greek speaking world of the first century was ancient religions, whether it was Egypt or the ancient texts of the Old Testament. So what Christianity was is a synchronistic religion that appropriated the ancient authority of the ancient texts of the Old Testament with the Indo-European religious concepts and Greek Philosophy and culture in order to make Gentiles center stage.

You see further Will To Power with the forged writings of Paul (writers pretending to be Paul) where instead of saying things like Paul said like it is better to be celibate and radically egalitarian, the forgers appropriated "Paul's name" in order to promote Roman hierarchy and marriage (see Ephesians 5:25). The more martyr-centric strands of Pauline Christianity are replaced with the likely Gentile author of Luke-Acts: as I argue in this blog post, Luke defends soldiers having swords for self-defense so it's not only about pacifism. Then of course Constantine and the later germanization of Christianity generated the warrior knight, chivalry, and the just war. So that I see Christianity as a development toward a wholly Indo-European religion, especially in its American-Christian form. 

So from the perspective of the cultural evolution of Christianity, you can see that it's evolving away from being a strictly ethinically Jewish sect and toward a hellenized Indo-European religion. From this perspective, Christ becomes an avatar for the marriage between the best of hellenized Judaism and later germanization. To the point that I don't think you can call Christianity strictly a Jewish offshoot sect but is a hybrid, a collaboration between Roman elites and Hellenic thinkers and Jewish writers (who themselves were heavily influenced by Hellenic culture and the Greek language). 

Jesus, Paul & the Hellenists

 

Excerpts from Early Christian Theology and the Origin of the New Testament Canon by Jens Schröter (Translated by Wayne Coppins):

Location 4409:

 

Jewish Christians or Godfearers are often the first converts, whereas in his letters Paul mostly has in view communities made up primarily of Gentile Christians. Finally, on several occasions the presentation points beyond the time of Paul into the situation of the church that stands before the eyes of Luke himself. [104] 

If we evaluate these findings, then it can be said that the presentation of Luke moves within the framework of what was expected from an ancient historian. He possesses knowledge about the areas concerning which he reports; sometimes chronological inaccuracies slip in; [105] and entirely in the sense of Lucian he has shaped his presentation and in this way drawn a picture of the development of Christianity in the first decades. Christianity appears as a movement that goes back to the activity of Jesus, was spread by the apostles and the “Hellenists,”and is based in its concrete form on the mission of Paul, as a movement that stands in continuity with the history of Israel to which the Jews—at least at present—no longer belong.

Location 4402:

 

... what begins with Jesus—the proclamation of the rule of God, which is no longer bound exclusively to Israel but to which the Gentiles now also have access—finds its continuation through the apostles, the Hellenists, and Paul. It leads to a new form of the people of God that is no longer obligated to the law but to the apostolic decree; it leads as well to a separation of the church from Judaism, which refuses this opening up of the people of God.

Recommended Articles and Websites

 

• Asatru of Iceland (Official Statement)

• About the Nordic Asa (Asatron) Community of Sweden for Asatrists. Including their page on the religion of Asatru

• Community of Forn Sed Sweden

• Viking Groups (including historical renactments)

• Archaeological finds