Читать книгу Wealth Without Guilt - Roland Hill - Страница 8

Learning to think biblically should be one of the Christian’s major ambitions. This objective is not easy to attain, since we are almost constantly influenced by nonbiblical philosophies and standards. Because it is not natural for us to think biblically, we need not be alarmed if much of our thinking is molded by the non-Christian world around us. This is not to say that non-Christian influences have been all good or all bad, but only to recognize that our thinking has been affected by them. When we grasp this fact, then our eyes are opened to the task of reeducating ourselves to break away from the non-Christian philosophies that conflict with Bible truth.

Christian thought, to a great extent, has been shaped by Greek thought and philosophies. Freeman Butts, in his book Cultural History of Western Education, says, “We think the way we do in large part because the Greeks thought the way they did.”¹⁸

It is important for Christian educators to face this issue squarely for a number of reasons. First, Greek intellectualism with its consequent scientific naturalism is definitely the intellectual context within which many in Christian education work. Second, this subject is relevant because Christian education has had the tendency to compromise with the context. Third, many of our Christian teachers, while subscribing clearly to orthodox theological positions and enjoying genuine Christian experience, have been so steeped in this context that it is hard for them to break away from its premises in the classroom.¹⁹

What is true for the Christian classroom holds true also for Christian economic thinking. Christian economic thought has been so shaped by Greek thought that it is difficult at times to differentiate between the two.

Other systems of thought have had an effect on Christian thought, but none has had as much impact as Greek thought. So, for our purposes here, we shall examine Greek thought.

The Greeks are purported to have been the first people to ask, “What is life’s true reality?” To Plato, life’s true reality centered only on the Perfect One – God.²⁰ Plato, because of constant striving for moral and social perfection and because of his other-worldly views, is sometimes called a Christian before Christ, but we shall examine in the next chapter how his other-worldly thinking has wrought havoc in Christian economic thinking.

Another philosophical view that has left scars on Christian thinking is the “this-worldliness” of the Sophist. This is the polar opposite of Plato’s other-worldliness. Again following in the true spirit of the ancient Greeks, the Sophist advocated a form of thinking called reasoning: They maintained that metaphysical issues were beyond solution; therefore, scholars should concentrate on human nature and human relations. They became famous for their statement, “Man is the measure of all things.” They were concerned with the sense world and used reason as a tool to achieve success in that world.²¹

So, in Greek thought, Plato forms the thesis and the Sophist the antithesis. It would seem natural that someone would come along to bring a compromise between the two. Aristotle provided what he felt was a synthesis between the two divergent views. His metaphysic is summed up in his views on form and matter: Matter is by nature purposeless. Form is mind or spirit at work transforming matter into something that has life and purpose, it is creative, active and purposive. His form is close to Plato’s “ideas,” but not quite the same. In fact, he arrives through the famous doctrine of theorice, the undisturbed meditation on God, at God who is the unmoved mover, the Final Cause.²²

Aristotle’s synthesis has been attractive to Christian thought, because life for him was not a dead end but rather a striving toward a better end. Taking in the whole giant of Greek thought, Crane Brinton, in his book Ideas and Man reveals the Greek influence on Christian thinking:

1.This life and this world, not the world beyond death, is prominent.

2.The satisfaction of natural human desires and needs is the primary motivation for living.

3.“Nothing in excess” established the principle of discipline and control in life process, the Golden Mean of Aristotle.

4.Intelligent competition provided good motivation for one to do his best at anything worth doing.²³

Brinton is not at all enthusiastic about Greek thought, however. He points out that the Greek was earthbound, tied to sensual experience, without hope of immortality, and with no belief in a God morally interested in his fate. And although the Greek had some sense of right and wrong, he had no feelings equivalent to what is meant by a sense of sin.

These Greek philosophies have played an enormous part in shaping Christians’ attitudes toward the world. But we must not conclude that Greek philosophies were readily accepted by Christians. In fact, in the next chapter, we will discuss the struggle between Greek philosophy and Christian thought and discover how Greek philosophy fared.