Abstract
Lewis Ayres’s Christological Hellenism: A Melancholy Proposal is the 2024 Père Marquette Lecture in Theology. Hellenism, for A., designates the spread of Greek culture both before and after the establishment of Alexander the Great’s Empire. It involved the adoption of elements from the Greek language, educational and economic practices, social organizations, religion, philosophy, and art. Christological Hellenism, distinguished by the centrality of Christ in its development, is both a cumulative product of the early church and a reality that endured through the High Middle Ages. It included several styles of engagement in particular times and places: an education within a Hellenized culture with its patterns of thought and methods of engaging texts; a chosen engagement that involved selecting options within the tradition (e.g., the idea of a tripartite soul); and the intensification of an already present relationship with Greek culture. A. explores these developments through examples from the trinitarian debates of the fourth century, Christian methods of scriptural interpretation, and the Christian understanding of liturgy. He presents a positive and even providential view of this process that over the centuries allowed themes from ancient thought to flower within Christian thought. A. concludes that “a certain Hellenism is intrinsic to and should be accepted as a providential gift for Christian thought, worship, and life” though “we speak not of a monolithic entity but of a bounded conversation” (65).
A.’s melancholy stems from his recognition that this christological Hellenism is now “caught by processes of dissipation and disruption in modernity” (68). He does not, however, propose a naïve restoration of antiquity, but rather poses a series of questions that this disruption presents: “[W]hat role do we accord the period of the early Christian Fathers, what role do we accord the great medieval syntheses, and how do we hazard a guess about the theological significance in our times?” (66). Our responses to these questions will require a collective discernment on the part of those well-versed in the history of christological Hellenism.
This lecture, on the one hand, will stimulate scholars engaged in historical theology to reflect deeply on the nature of their enterprise, though some in the academy may question the “providential” Hellenism in which Christianity flowered. On the other hand, it will also interest all those studying Christian origins and seeking inspiration for our own times of disruption and change.