Published by Media Ecclesiastica
Athens, 2005.


Why did the Greeks become Christians? In his latest work, His Beatitude Archbishop Christodoulos discusses this question. The provocation for again posing this fundamental question is the “neopaganistic” interpretation of Hellenism that is making an appearance these days, and that calls into question the synthesis of Hellenism and Christianity which was achieved in the ecclesiastical tradition, arguing that these two cultural forms are incompatible and by nature antithetical.

His Beatitude’s point of departure is pastoral: he does not posit this historical and religious study as an end in itself. His aim is to defend the ecclesiastical synthesis against anachronistic distortion. Indeed, in accordance with his special pastoral sensitivity he addresses himself to the youth through this book also, in order that the torch of tradition might continue to be passed on to the new generations unhindered. For even though his basic topic is originally historical, and demands chiefly historical research, its significance extends to how we today will “read” Hellenism in formulating our identity.

This work synopsizes the entire development of ancient Greek religion from prehistoric times, through the communalism of the city-state to the individualism of the Hellenistic and Roman eras. Its principal virtue lies in the fact that in its pages an entire historical period can be grasped and re-lived. This is achieved through a variety of methods, such as a) gleaning the most representative passages out of sources in Greek literature; b) referring to concrete events, “details” of history which are nevertheless revelatory in unraveling its meaning, or even to anecdotal material gracefully delivered; c) selecting works of art for the color illustrations with commentary in the captions. The photographic material is successfully linked to the “snapshots” of the historical currents being brought into focus by the author, such that the reader feels like a full participant, “of a piece” with history.

Most important, in our opinion at any rate, is the point of view and way in which the author writes history. He does not gaze at antiquity from a distance, nor weigh it by modernistic measures and scales. He attempts to see history “from the inside”, through the eyes of the people of that time, to enter into their mindset, to take the pulse of their psychological state.

It is characteristic of the book that the refutation of all the basic arguments of the “neopaganistic” interpretation consists in lifting the later stereotypes that have been projected anachronistically upon antiquity and artfully consolidated. For instance, the stereotype of the battle between theologians and philosophers in the later Roman period keeps being reproduced. However, the antithesis of theology and philosophy is something that occurs a thousand years later in the history of thought. In late Roman times philosophy was chiefly “a way of life”. And the ecclesiastical ascetic life was, correspondingly, “philosophy according to Christ”. The Christians were not criticized by the pagan peoples for being un-philosophical, but rather for the acceptance of specific theoretical concepts of the universe that were of Jewish origin, such as the creation of the cosmos out of nothing. Similarly, the attack of the monks on statues was not an attack on the culture of antiquity. The statues were considered “headquarters” of demons, and the Christians attacked a particular idol which they considered a demon. Demonology, however, was something also common to the pagan peoples at that time.

The “intermediary” theological systems burgeoned, in which there were whole hierarchies of angels and demons under the Most High God. The battle of the gods was not over which is the true God and which non-existent, but rather which is the highest and which are the inferior demons. Besides, the stereotype that paganism collapsed as soon as Christianity became the official state religion is unfounded. According to the author it was a matter of phases of a long-term crisis which was linked to economic and demographical problems as well. And it was considered natural for building materials to be drawn from ruined temples for any building whatsoever. How many of us know that the concept of the “historical monument” is construed for the first time in the Byzantium of the Palaeologos with Manuel Chrysoloras, in parallel with Petrarch of the Renaissance?

Accordingly, “neopaganism” is found to be a modern construct which is being projected upon antiquity. Most probably emotionally motivated by nostalgia, the “neopaganists” propose a sort of revival of the ancient religion. But we must remember that the Hellenism of antiquity achieved greatness when it maintained a dialectical stance towards the traditional religion (e.g. Parmenides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato et. al.) and not when it became bound to it. It was the very poverty of Hellenistic religion that operated as a productive existential thirst for poetry, politics and philosophy.

After the “city” finally collapses into the individualism and cosmopolitanism of the Hellenistic era, Christianity arrives. “Why was Christianity so persecuted, and yet why did it finally predominate?” asks the author. Could it be that it was persecuted because, while the relativistic Hellenism had only ecumenism, and the ostracized Judaism only exclusivity, Christianity synthesized exclusivity (of one faith) and ecumenism? Could it be that Christianity succeeded in the Greek world, because it restored the community – that Hellenism had previously sought and had so tragically lost on the political level – to the religious plane of the relationships between God, man and his fellowman? The Assembly of the Municipality became, really, the Church of the faithful, and on a deeper level, brotherhood and corpus. Simultaneously, from Hellenistic individualism the Church welcomed the element of free choice in the “adventure” of the relationship of the human person with God, and from cosmopolitanism, it took the element of sojourning in the world as a stranger.

In the end, after retrospection on historical solutions and syntheses, what is their relevance today? By reason of its predefined aims, this book stays chiefly in the realm of Apologetics. That is why it does not refer to concrete ways in which the Fathers synthesized the Greek and Judaeo-Christian elements in their thought. What it illustrates is that the two “readings” of Hellenism today, by the ecclesiastical tradition on the one hand, and by “neopaganism” on the other, constitute a reiteration of the difference between the Cappadocians and Julian. Julian asserted that Hellenistic culture as language, art and thought is indivisibly bound up with Greek religion. Saints Gregory the Theologian and Basil the Great were the first to detach the language and culture from the religious allegiance and confession. To them we owe the present-day liberated and religiously neutral reading of the literature of antiquity. Could it be that this constitutes a forerunner of modern “tolerance”? In every case it provides the “measuring stick” for the reception of ancient Greek culture and its transfiguration into muscle and sinew of the Church.