Date:3/06/09
HELLENIC PAIDEIA, CHRISTIAN HELLENIC PAIDEIA 1
And the task of the Greek Orthodox Community in America*
Rev.Demetrios J. Constantelos, Ph.D. The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey 2
The ancient Hellenes were the first who wrote on the significance of paideia- paideia as education and cultivation of the human person, paideia as the totality of knowledge that shapes the human character. The thought world of Western Civilization begins with the Greeks. “The rise of thinking among the Greeks was nothing less than a revolution…They discovered the human mind” as Bruno Snell, the distinguished German classical scholar, writes. Furthermore, for the ancient Greeks, paideia meant more than accumulation of knowledge, but also the process by which man discovers his real self, and a nation preserves and transmits its cultural and intellectual heritage, such as the heritage identified with Western Civilization.
“Our way of thought and governance, our political and social values can be traced from modern America and Europe to medieval Europe, form medieval Europe to ancient Rome, and from Rome to Greece. “Further back we cannot go, for the Greeks ‘began’ it,” writes Chester G. Starr, a leading American scholar and historian at the University of Michigan. Church Fathers and many Christian theologians realized that the ancient Greeks, although not Christians, were ancestors and some of them even forerunners to the teachings of Jesus the Christ. Before we proceed to an analysis of the three components of our theme, let us review briefly the purpose and means of paideia, as education, in the Greek world, classical, postclassical and byzantine.
A
The purpose of education in the history of ancient Hellenism was the training of the good citizen, the “kalos k’ agathos politis”. The means used to achieve this goal included Grammar, Rhetoric, History and Philosophy. By Grammar they meant philological and language courses, the art of good expression and calligraphy, the rules of conversing, ability to address the assembly of the citizen body, courts and teach students. The study of History was a study of antiquity, including mythology. The study of philosophy went through stages of development but the core of it was the study of logic, thinking rightly and acting wisely; to develop the skills for a dialogic approach to problems and issues that divide communities and nations; to achieve a balance in the conflict between belief and reason, a sense of what is right and wrong; to possess the principle that it is more ethical to be treated unjustly than treat anyone unjustly as Socrates taught.
While during the classical age education was the privilege of the few, in the postclassical age, after the middle of the fourth century, education became available to all classes of people. A very significant characteristic of the Greeks was that no group of them established a city, or colony, without at the same time founding also a school. The establishment of new cities with schools, organizing education served the process of Hellenization. The philosophy of Stoicism exerted a great influence in the evolution of paideia-education, which became more ecumenical. While the classical principles and methods of education continued uninterrupted, there were innovations and changes. First, there were schools in major cities of the Greek world, not only Athens. Alexandria, Antioch, Rhodos, Smyrne, Ephesos, Byzantion, Nikopolis and other smaller cities provided education in the arts and humanities, but also in the sciences, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, physics, geometry, other.
A major characteristic of education in the period was that philosophy tended to become theology and ethics. Teachers became highly respected. Respect for tradition and the inherited ethos, did not prevent the Greeks to seek new interpretations and apply new ideas, from the Age of Alexander the Great to the Age of Constantine the Great, and beyond.
Some of the innovations and new ideas of this period included the method of allegory, the art of rhetoric, theological and philosophical definitions, the harmony between faith and reason. The Greek belief that the world constitutes a unity in essence, and that behind all phenomena rules a Nous, a Logos, that the human being is the purest manifestation of a Creator, that man is “theos ek Theou”, partaker of divine nature and several more methods and principles from the Greek culture were adopted by Christianity.
Whether we turn to the ancient forefathers, or Church fathers, we discover that paideia as education, learning, language and whatever improves the human mind and cultivates the human heart was highly valued. “Education is an ornament for the prosperous and a safe refuge for the less fortunate” writes Demokritos of Abdera, the father of the atomic theory. Paideia is what contributes to character formation, what exercises and trains body and soul, what elevates the human to the heights where one becomes “like unto god to the extent that it is humanly possible”, as Plato, one of the most influential individuals in history, writes. Paideia as education is intended not only for practical and expedient goals but “to make human beings intellectually free to help them to refine their inner being – their souls,” adds Aristotle.
It was through Hellenic paideia, language and culture, that primitive tribes and other people of the Mediterranean and the Middle East worlds were Hellenized and achieved a higher degree of civilization. The ancient Hellenes became forefathers to Western Civilization. It was through paideia that all ancients and many moderns became fellow Hellenes, as Isocrates put it – “pantes oi tes hemeteras paideias metehontes.” (Hellenes are all those who have partaken of our education). Paideia became the force that led many nations to harvest freely in the fields of Hellenism, whether of the mainland or the colonies and city states abroad. >With the exception of some rebellious individuals, or communities, and despite some tension between Hellenes and non-Hellenes, neither Judaism nor Christianity rejected Hellenic paideia. In fact the mainstream of both adopted it and enriched their own beliefs and practices. “From the Greeks we [the Jews] learned to love education…From the Greeks we borrowed wholesale,” writes Abba Eban, the former Secretary of State of modern Israel and its ambassador to the United Nations. From as early as the third century before Christ, the time when the Hebrew Bible began to be translated into Greek, and throughout the Hellenistic centuries, when the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament was written, we can trace the influence of the Hellenic mind and wisdom on the Holy Scriptures of Christianity. From John’s introduction to his Gospel “in the beginning was the Logos,” to Paul’s quotations from the Greek poets that “we are God’s offspring;” that in “God we live, move and have our existence,” and “bad company ruins good morals,” to Peter’s borrowing from Stoic philosophy that “we may escape from corruption…and may become participants of the divine nature” we find an affirmation that a close relationship had begun between Hellenism and Christianity.
Let me transfer a few paragraphs from the Stoic philosopher Epiktetos’s writings, which indicate the affinity between Greek thought and Christian faith. On the higher level of his teachings, Epiktetos expressed Greek moral philosophy in terms of theology. Human life begins and ends in God. Moral conduct is an exalted religion. He writes:
“We also are His offspring. Every one of us may call himself a son of God. Just as our bodies are linked to the material universe, subject while we live to the same forces, resolved when we die into the same elements, so by virtue of reason our souls are linked to and continuous with Him, being in reality parts and offshoots of Him. There is no movement of which He is not conscious, because we and He are part of one birth and growth, to Him ‘all hearts are open, all desires known, as we walk or talk or eat, He Himself is within us, so that we are His shrines, living temples and incarnations of Him. By virtue of this communion with Him we are in the first rank of created things: we and He together form the greatest, foremost and most comprehensive of all organizations. If we once realize this kinship, no mean or unworthy thought of ourselves can enter our souls. The sense of it forms a rule and standard for our lives. If God be faithful, we also must be faithful: if God be beneficent, we also must be beneficent. If God be high-minded, we also must be high-minded, doing and saying whatever we do and say in imitation of and union with Him.”
The use of the Greek language, its philosophical and theological terminology was used by the early Christian theologians to define their faith. It is well known that the influence of one language upon another is one of the great indications of the influence of one paideia upon another. History confirms that the most important index to cultural and educational dominance is language. It has been written that only about 70 Hebrew words are found in Greek, but numerous Greek terms are in Hebrew, and many more in Latin, as well as the theological language of early Christianity. From its very beginning, because of Greek as a common language, Christianity gained converts among Jews and Greeks alike, as the book of Acts of the Apostles and other sources confirm.
B
For nearly one century, the early Christians considered only the Scriptures for their education with no concern for secular knowledge But Christian intellectuals educated in the Greek classics, such as the Apologists Justin, Theophilos, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen adopted Hellenic learning as part of their own Christian beliefs and cultural practices. Clement and Origen of Alexandria were the first to construct a system that framed a bridge between knowledge [gnosis] and faith [pistis] The adoption of Greek learning served not only to achieve a harmony between the two, but also their missionary objectives. The fourth century was a turning point in the relations between Hellenic and Christian paideia. Eusebios of Caesarea, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory the Theologian, Cynesios of Cyrene, and later Maximos the Confessor, Tarasios and Photios patriarchs of Constantinople, Eustathios of Thessalonike, Theophylaktos of Ochrida, Joannis of Euchaita, the monk Kalothetos of the fourteenth century – to limit myself to only a few well known fathers – all were excellently educated in the Holy Scriptures and in Hellenic paideia. Let me use only one example. Writing to a dignitary, St. Photios, the great Patriarch of Constantinople of the ninth century, advised: “Paideia, [education, Christian and Hellenic] contributes to a life of virtue and without regrets for the young, and it becomes the greatest support to those of old age. Educate your children in wisdom and virtue so that as youth they may live a beautiful life, and that in time of old age they may not need the support of others.” Classical Greek learning never left its native land.
Throughout the Byzantine millennium and beyond, the education of the Fathers and the clergy in general rested on the study of the Holy Scriptures, the writings of the Fathers, the life of the Saints, but also Hellenic learning – the study of ancient Greek philosophy, poetry, literature, history. It does not surprise us that many of church Fathers writings, including hagiologies, are enriched with biblical but also passages from the ancient Hellenes. The standards were formed by leading Church Fathers, who were well educated in Greek paideia, literature, philosophy, history. It is well known that Christianity came into the world which was prepared for it by Alexander the Great and his successors. Greek education became widely diffused over the Greek world and the possession of all classes of people, although it came under Roman rule.
Within a century and a half, Greek philosophy in particular, which had been popularized, and Christianity came into close contact, ideas, methods, definitions derived from Greek flowed into Christianity to such a degree that it could appeal not only to the thinking but also to ordinary people. The superficial antagonisms between certain Greek ideas and some Christian teachings were replaced by the belief that there was a special and real kinship between the two. “We teach the same as the Hellenes” proclaimed the Christian Justin the Martyr. “The teachings of Plato are not alien to those of Christ, though not in all respects similar” he adds.”God spoke to the Hebrews through their prophets and to the Greeks though their philosophers,”writes Clement of Alexandria.
From the middle of the second century to the fourth, the dialogue between the two continued. It was in the fourth century that a balance was achieved between Greek philosophy and ethics, and Christian theology and ethics. In both cases Greek thought played a decisive role in the evolution of both Christian theology and ethics. In theology, whatever pertains to Theos-God [Theology], the person of Christos-Christ [Christology], and the Holy Spirit, its nature and procession [Pneumatology], Greek thought exerted a very important influence. Long before the formulation of Christian doctrine on God, the Greeks, whether through Platonism or Stoicism, taught of God as “of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things;” that God “is not far off but very near and that He is in us and we are in Him.” God, as Nous, or Logos, is the Creator, but He is also working within the creation. The Nicaean creed and the decisions of the Ecumenical Synods indicate the influence of Greek philosophy on Christian theology.
Two illustrations from two of the most influential and frequently quoted Church Fathers will suffice to reveal the change in the attitude of Christians toward Greek literature and thought. Saint Basil, bishop of Caesarea, in an essay addressed to students how to profit from the study of the Greek Classics writes that, students can study not only the prominent Greek philosophers and writers but also the Homeric epics, including mythology. Among other relevant teachings, Basil adds that “all of Homer’s poetry speaks of and leads to virtue.” The teachings and examples of Solon, Euripides, Pericles, Socrates, Euclid, Alexander, and other prominent Hellenes lead to the same goal, like that of the Holy Scriptures.