The problem with John Mark Reynolds' new book, When Athens Met Jerusalem: An Introduction to Classical and Christian Thought
, is that neither the title nor the subtitle is fulfilled in the book. The book is about Athens with hardly a thing about Jerusalem; it's about Classical thought with very little about Christian thought. Of course, he might contest that Platonism prepares for Christianity, and I would counter that, well, yes, it did -- especially in the 2d and 3d and 4th Centuries. But this isn't a book about how Greek Platonic thinking influenced profoundly the formation of Christian orthodoxy. It comes off as trying to sell us the value of Greek thought by bringing up the Bible, but then the author focuses all of his attention on what he really likes: Plato and Aristotle.
So let's tell the truth: the book is an introduction to Greek thinking -- with gentle and comprehensive and informed studies of Socrates, especially Plato, and Aristotle. Perhaps the book could be called Sitting on the Areopagus Listening to Greek Philosophers. The precursors to Plato and Aristotle are adequately covered, too. Reynolds' style is to use as many short, clipped sentences as he can. The style annoyed me at times. But something I really enjoyed was his clever humor that brought the ancients alive.
Reynolds is a professor at the Torrey Honor Institute at Biola and is himself right in the middle of the turn to Eastern Orthodoxy among Biola students. I don't know all that much about this program, so maybe I speak out of turn, but I hope they have a biblical scholar and a theologian in the Torrey Honor Institute.
Again, I was led to suspect something else -- a book that would show how Greek thought prepared for NT thinking, and all we get are some brief and superficial comments on the Areopagus speech of Paul in Acts 17 and an even briefer sketch of the ideas at work in John 1. So, for me, this is a fine introduction -- for young college students -- to the Greek philosophical tradition but there needs to be now two more follow up studies: one on how the Greek philosophical tradition shapes the NT and a second on how the same tradition shaped earliest orthodoxy.
The Jewishness of the Bible seems to have escaped notice in this book.
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Mixing Greek philosophy with Jewish wisdom is like mixing oil with water and it takes a whole lot of shaking and emulsifiers to get a presentable package. Jewish wisdom concentrated on an organic, dust-to-dust outlook on life while Greek philosophy, at least since Plato's interpretation of Socrates, emphasized a dualistic approach to nature and life. "Greek thinking" is fine when it concentrates on logical thought processes but not so fine when it falls back on a "spirit" vs "nature" dualism. A concern: is this a package deal?
Mike . . . your concerns are a reason I wrote the book. I meet them a great deal. A good thing of the last fifty years or so has been an increase in knowledge amongst college educated folks of the importance of Jewish thought . . . a bad thing has been to just create the category "Greek thought" and talk about "dualism" and "logic" without really understanding (even in a simple way) what is happening.
I have met college professors (though fortunately not at Biola) who thought (for example) that Plato (not the neo-Platonists) could be dismissed as someone who just hated "the body!"
Hopefully this book will dispel simplistic approaches to Plato like that one (not attributing it to you).
I enjoy reading at scriptoriumdaily.com. When I read the review of the book here http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2009/05/25/lets-get-classical-reynolds-new-book-on-greek-thought/ I gathered that it was primarily about Plato vis-a-vis early Christianity. I cannot speak as a scholar, only a student, but I am in favor of getting more believers to think more about the backgrounds of Christianity. My impression was that this book is written to be accessible and to help inform of Greek backgrounds to Christian thought. If the same number of people who devour Dan Brown's works would consider books such as these, it seems to me the public would be more well-informed. But perhaps I misunderstand...
John (#7): I apologize. My comment was directed at an interpretation of your book and not the book itself. That's wrong and something I've denounced myself since listening to criticisms of "The Last Temptation of Christ" by people who never saw it.
Hum...thanks for this pointer, ScottM. What might Nash's The Gospel and the Greeks have to contribute here?
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