Jesus Christ is, regardless of what one believes about his divinity, undoubtedly one of the most important historical figures in human history. His legacy today is indicated by the 34,000 different denominations and sects of Christianity comprising 2.4 billion Christians—a full third of the world’s population (Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, n.p.). But in order to fully appreciate what it means to follow Jesus, one has to look at the world in which he preached, and the state of his following by the end of the first millennium. Jesus’s teachings had unique features that stood out in first-century Palestine and the Greco-Roman world, even though there were some similarities with previous philosophers.
As a Jewish rabbi, Jesus would have had been educated within a synagogue in order to learn and debate the Torah. This education is mentioned in Luke 2:41-52, where he is listening to religious teachers and asking them questions. The text states “Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers” (Luke 2:47). He continued his education in his hometown of Nazareth, where he “grew in wisdom and stature, in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52b). This sort of educational practice, along the lines of apprenticeship, was largely accepted in antiquity; before the founding of the gymnasia, for example, Plato demonstrated that Socrates educated his pupils through this same method of debate and questioning, as shown in Charmides and other works (n.p.). Nor was Jesus the only New Testament philosopher to be trained in this method, as Paul recounts his own similar religious education in Acts 22:3b: “Under Gamaliel I was thoroughly trained in the law of our fathers and was just as zealous for God as any of you are today.” While the Biblical texts do not name Jesus’s primary educator, he was well-known enough to be able to teach in the synagogue and the Temple as well, which was recorded in Mark 1:21, Matthew 4:23, Luke 4:15, and John 7:28a. Also, the gospels state uniformly that he was an itinerant rabbi who was famous enough to draw crowds and the attention of the legal and religious establishment.
In terms of the content of his teachings, the Gospels all highlight major points. The Sermon on the Mount, as recorded in Matthew 5-8, is the only complete sermon that Jesus gives; though its contents reverberate through the centuries as loudly if not louder than Plato, Aristotle, and many more well-known philosophers from antiquity: be humble, be restrained in response and action (meekness), show mercy, make peace between quarreling people (Matthew 5:3-10); live out your faith bravely and without apologies (Matthew 5:14-16); desires, attitudes, and thoughts matter just as much as action (Matthew 5:21-30, 5:33-37); do good deeds for the sake of helping others, not for the sake of being noticed (Matthew 6:1-18); work on yourself before calling out others (Matthew 7:1-6); and other famous key teachings. The rest of his teachings—parables, other sections of the Sermon on the Mount, and debates with Pharisees and other rabbis—aim to demonstrate God’s relation to man as being paternal. In Matthew 6:9, the beginning of what is commonly called The Lord’s Prayer, Jesus instructs his followers to begin praying with “Our Father, who is in heaven”. In Matthew 7:11, Jesus states, “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” In Mark 13:32, Jesus states, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”. This was a significant departure for the Jewish people, and is still a division today between Christians, who believe in the paternal nature of God, and the Jews and Muslims, who reject that nature (Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, n.p.).
This teaching on the paternal relationship between God and humanity is also foreign to the Greeks who culturally dominated the Mediterranean during Jesus’s time. While Aristotle stated belief in a monotheistic god rather than a pantheon of gods (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, n.p.), which in and of itself was an anomaly at the time, Jesus insisted on the paternal nature of God. Therefore, this can be identified as one of his unique teachings. Even Paul, who was the great driving force behind the first century Christian church, did not dwell on the subject—only touching on it briefly in Acts 17:29, while lecturing in Athens. It was out of this teaching of God’s paternal relationship with humanity, Jesus’s claim to be the Son of God (Matthew 16:17-18), and his promise of the Holy Spirit (John 14:15-17), along with his assertion of being one with God (John 8:58), that the concept of the Trinity was laid out—while this idea wasn’t formalized until centuries later, it had its roots in the Gospels.
In terms of Jesus and his relationship with other philosophies of antiquity, there is actually less overlap than what is typically assumed. For instance, Jesus states that one is not to focus on worldly pleasures and attainments, but on holy living (Matthew 6:19-24), whereas Epicurus in his Principle Doctrines states that one’s focus ought to be solely in the pursuit of temporal pleasures (n.p.). While Aristotle (n.p.) also admonished rash anger in Nicomachean Ethics as unjust and advised reserving anger for appropriate times, only Jesus advised a quick settlement of the dispute which caused the anger (Matthew 5:23-26), while Aristotle recommended letting one’s anger run its course (n.p.). Aristotle praises pride (n.p.), whereas Christ praises modesty (Matthew 5:3, Luke 17:10). Additionally, unlike Aristotle and Epicurus, Jesus does not discuss pleasure or pain so much as contrasting self-aggrandizement as motivation vs. being motivated by a desire for holy living. In terms of contrast with Socrates, Jesus contends that grace must be allowed to supersede justice when doing so would cause a rebirth of moral living in the guilty (Luke 7:36-50), whereas Socrates, as relayed by Plato in Crito, insists that part of living within a society explicitly is an agreement to live according to its laws, and therefore in agreement to suffer the consequences of breaking those laws (n.p.). While much has been made of the influence of Greek philosophy on Christian thought, it is interesting to note that much of this influence was not transmitted until well after Jesus’s death and purported resurrection and ascension. Paul is perhaps the first Christian author to utilize Platonic logic in his letters, but the earliest of these letters dates to between twenty and thirty years after Christ’s death.
The influence of Greek philosophy on Christ’s Church, however, is much more obvious 1000 years on. Augustine of Hippo, who is one of the greatest influences on Western Christianity other than Jesus and the Apostles, wrote his City of God in Platonic style (“Works of St. Augustine of Hippo”, n.p.). By the end of the first millennium, the use of Platonic logic could be found in most notable Christian documents. Origen, writing in 250 CE, also utilizes some Platonic logic in De Principiis (n.p.). One of Origen’s contemporaries, Plotinus, was even more influential on later Christian thought; the spirit of his writing can be seen in doctrinal developments such as the hypostatic union, which is essentially a reflection of Plotinus’s last words, a synthesis of the descended Soul with the celestial God whose self-expression is the universe in which we live (Moore, n.p.). Paul’s letters reflect Stoic thinking as well, with numerous expressions towards the Stoic idea of universal humanity, such as in Galatians 3:28, where Paul famously writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you all are one in Christ Jesus.” This belief in universal humanity eventually manifested itself in everything from movements like Pax Dei, which required warriors to look at non-combatants as sacred to God and therefore not to be killed, to assertions of papal supremacy over Christian Europe as the head of the body of believers (Korak 16).
Interestingly enough, given the emphasis placed on living like Christ, the Greek philosophers had more influence on the Church than Christ did by 1000 CE. By this time, Jesus’s notions of forgoing justice if it would cause a positive transformation in the offender’s life had gone by the wayside in the interests of justice. Pride, one of Aristotle’s main virtues, and the quest for glory had endured where Jesus’s emphasis on modesty was only given lip service, as evidenced by the multiple Crusades that were brewing in Europe and would keep boiling over for hundreds of years. The belief of Christian rulers that aggrandizing their own power and authority was analogous with seeking the kingdom of God brought Europe into countless wars. The great landowning baron, fighting ostensibly for God’s church but with an eye on enriching himself on pillage, is doing little more than pursuing magnificence, as defined by Aristotle (n.p), and Epicurus’s pursuit of pleasure (n.p.). In fact, this pursuit of pleasure that drives Epicurian thought was dominant in the Middle Ages, whereas Christ’s pursuit of heaven was usually dismissed out-of-hand. The Church had effectively left Christ to pursue Plato (Korak 10).
Jesus was a unique teacher with many ideas that flew in the face of contemporaries. He differed significantly from Aristotle, Plato, and other philosophers. However, those same philosophers were the ones whose ideas continued to inform the Church of scientific and political developments. While Christ himself may not have been affected by those authors, his Church did; that said, he still has much more thematically to apply.
Works Cited
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Epicurus. “Principle Doctrines”. Internet Classics Archives, Massachusetts Institute for
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Holy Bible, New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. 1997, Print.
Korak, Carol. “The Influence of Philosophy on Early Christianity”. Academia.edu,
Academia.Edu. 26 Jan 2012. Web. 14 Feb 2016.
Moore, Edward. “Plotinus.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy. 1 Jan 2016. Web. 14 Feb 2016.
Origen. “De Principiis”. New Advent. New Advent. 1 Jan 2016. Web. 14 Feb 2016.
Plato. “Charmides”. Internet Classics Archives, Massachusetts Institute for Technology, 1 Jan
2016. Web. 14 Feb 2016.
Plato. “Crito”. Internet Classics Archives, Massachusetts Institute for Technology, 1 Jan
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“Works of St. Augustine of Hippo”. New Advent. New Advent. 1 Jan 2016. Web. 14 Feb 2016.
