I recently read from a budding South African theologian of Ad Lucem Ministries that the New Testament’s concept of God is not based on Graeco-Roman philosophy. Yet this does not seem to be the case…(see attached photo), Acts 17:28 (NIV):
It is quite peculiar that the New Testament uses the term “ειμι” (to exist) for God but never in the present participle form of “ὤν” (being). What’s interesting is that New Testament’s translators continue to replace in their translations “ειμι” for “ὤν” in English, almost as if the allegedly inspired texts in and of themselves use insufficient language…
We see further examples of a dependency on Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics in Philippians 2:6, where “μορφε” (form) is translated as “nature or essence”, a completely Platonic-Aristotelian pre-Christian concept in philosophy, referring to the “material whole”.
This is why in Christianity, God who is a “ουσια” (substance) can also be immanent, because it…
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Mr Williams,
Remember God called his creation good in Genesis and Adam handed it over to the devil, so God in Jesus Christ at the Cross brought back God and his creation together. We are not Manicheans.
God Bless
Jonathan S
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Jonathan,
as salaamu alaykum,
This may not be an accurate depiction of New Testament theology, but it seems that it is at least somewhat Manichean, even before the Manichean sect appeared.
I think 1 Corinthians 1-3 specifically portrays the flesh as sinful, even to a higher degree than the synoptic Gospels. Romans 13:14 also says “make no provision for the flesh”; this is the section of the Bible that converted Augustine of Hippo. If I have some extra time, I will re-read some excerpts in John, since I can recall that he also called the flesh sinful.
Of course, original sin screwed everything up. Romans 5 talks about that.
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“…Adam handed it over to the devil, … Jesus Christ at the Cross brought back God and his creation together.”
vs
“We have to deal with the Meta-narrative otherwise known as reality.”
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“In him we live and move and have our being”.
The OT teaches the equivalent of this. There is no dependency.
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https://simplyseerah.com/2017/05/09/top-10-sexist-quotes-from-men-of-the-church/
That is from a collect of sexist quotes from various Christian men. (I was actually searching for something Augustine said, and I stumbled upon this.) I am not posting that to point out how “sexist” Aquinas was (and it seems fairly mild), but to show how that view has been influenced by pagan (Aristotelian) metaphysics. Yes, Aristotle did believe in that (although I did spend much of my reading of Aristotle on his Metaphysics and Physics, not his biology). I don’t know where in Aristotle that he explicitly says that a woman is formed through a perceived “defect”.
Aquinas seems to be saying that the generation of females is due to a defect in reproduction. If this is so, then why did God create Eve in the first place?
I remember reading this from the paper “Aristotle’s Conception of Final Causality” by Allan Gotthelf.
The citation given is “734b28-735a3”. I don’t know what work corresponds to those numbers, but it should be enough for someone who wants to track down the primary source.
Essentially, Aristotle is saying that the form (shape/physical organization) of a human being comes from the sperm while it is the female that produces the matter of the newborn. This matter only possess potential (that is has the ability to be shaped/develop into a mature human being) while it is necessary for this matter to be infused with an active principle (from the sperm) so that it could have the “nature” to move towards the final stage (telos) of becoming a mature human.
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On the matter of pagan Graeco-Roman philosophy, I think Justin Martyrs statement is very revealing, “…..we propound NOTHING DIFFERENT from WHAT YOU BELIEVE regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter.”
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