Part 1- Hellenism ... A Real Matrix
So what is the real matrix if there is such a thing? First let us explore this answer by objectively evaluating the single most evident and widely used tool by its architect!
Hellenism (first coined in 1609 Ce.) is the official and unofficial promotion of supposed Greek ideas in the organization of personal life and civic accomplishment … as an extremely short definition.
[Hellenistic philosophy is a name for a variety of philosophical options which flourished in the period from the life of Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) to the late 2nd century CE … and well beyond! Even before Alexander began his conquest of the known world in 336 BCE, Greek culture had spread throughout the Mediterranean region. Indeed, Alexander was Macedonian, a nationality related to but self-consciously distinct from the Greeks. Alexander was himself a Hellenized person, not least thanks to his tutor, Aristotle. Alexander saw Hellenization as a desirable imperial policy, firstly because he believed Greek culture to be the best and, secondly to build cohesion in his rapidly expanding dominion. To this end, he established a number of conquered cities as ‘Greek’ cities. These cities were intended as centers of colonial settlement and transformation into the image of Greek cultural, civic and political order.
At Alexander's death, colonization was far from settled; economic and social divisions were immense. Although the Hellenistic culture of the empire did not capture the idealized former splendor of Greece, Hellenistic culture accentuated lowest common denominators among its many diverse citizens and subjects, in a bid to maintain uniformity, peace and facilitate day to day life. So, for instance, the educational ideals of Greek “paideia” were adopted but most Hellenized peoples spoke only koine Greek, a simplified language (and the language of the New Testament by the way) - if they spoke Greek at all. Political crisis was usual, creating an environment of insecurity for ordinary people whose parochial cultures were already under threat from the homogenizing influence of colonial rule. It was a culture that ran on patronage, on ‘who knew whom.’ Secret societies, professional clubs and mystery cults were popular means of creating communities where people shamed by their deep sense of dislocation and anonymity could receive a measure of honorable recognition.
Philosophy was one strategy for steadying oneself. When I say ‘philosophy,’ though, don't think of highly refined systematic achievements linked to a Plato, or Aristotle for example. The schools of Plato and Aristotle had lost prestige as a result of their increasingly specialized pursuits, seemingly so detached from the everyday concerns that motivated Socrates and their own founders. Many people were impatient with speculation and relied more on what their senses could tell them. People required philosophies that were portable, easily learned, and plainly engaged with the fortunes and misfortunes of everyday life. Eclecticism (relative decision making) and syncretism (the amalgamation of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought) characterize Hellenistic culture as much as Greek domination. In essence Hellenism is a philosophical framework that revolved around relative tactical stimuli and pressures as opposed to a framework premised upon a known and unchanging standard.
Religion in the Hellenistic world, like philosophy, was a field of mix-and-match. For example, by the time of the birth of Yeshua, Hellenization had already reshaped and significantly damaged Jewish culture. Small groups like the zealots violently resisted colonization while the Herodian kings, ruling as clients/puppets of the emperor, clearly preferred Greek culture over the Jewish heritage. Most Jews lived life as participants in both cultures. Thus the Hellenistic world was the world of the first Christians. To understand this world; at least a few of its philosophical options in any event - is a major step towards understanding the development of Christian thought. This is not to say that Christian thinkers were entirely determined in their thinking by Hellenistic philosophy. However, their expectations, problems and answers are profoundly shaped under the influence of Hellenistic philosophy … this can't be repudiated and the historical record pointing back to major Greek Philosophical influences within the early Christian Church is well known and understood.
(From a historical perspective one need only review the accounts of the Jewish Maccabaean Revolt to fully understand the dangers of Hellenism and how these dangers were viewed in the context of faithful Jews, G_D’s chosen people. Hellenism essentially represented a full frontal assault upon G_D’s chosen people and his eternal covenant.
Now the average person, even believers in the G_D of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob … including Christians, may simply respond to this brief summary of Hellenism with a “so what does this have to do with me?”)
To understand this potential impact let us condense Hellenism into a more defined and easy to understand framework and identify those core principles of understanding and beliefs associated with Hellenistic Philosophy and Civics.
Core Convictions
That the world (cosmos) as a whole requires an explanation;
That there is an ultimate reality that would enable such an explanation;
That sensations/emotions certainly are unreliable;
That reason is the key to understanding what human beings are and our purpose;
That reason helps determine the good life and good society;
That reason enables understanding which enables knowledge which enables influence which enables control.
Habits of mind
Rational argumentation/debate;
Testing proposed explanations of the cosmos against observational evidence for adequacy and completeness;
To exercise skepticism when confronted with arguments not supported by empirical data;
To look to philosophical heroes of the past and build upon their framework i
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So what about Western culture? … American culture? … Christian culture?
To answer the basic questions we need to take a brief look at what Hellenism, as a principle framework of understanding human knowledge and comprehension, has spawned upon us people, the adherents and practitioners of Western culture. Practitioners who are in many ways not even aware of these somewhat invisible but very tangible effects!
[The Age of Enlightenment was a cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe and America, whose purpose was to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted science and intellectual interchange and opposed superstition, intolerance and in many cases abuses in church and state constructs.
The Age of Enlightenment is often thought of as part of a larger period which includes the “Age of Reason”. The term more specifically refers to a historical intellectual movement, "The Enlightenment." This movement advocated rationality as a means to establish an authoritative system of ethics, aesthetics, and knowledge. The intellectual leaders of this movement regarded themselves as courageous and elite and defined their purpose as leading the world toward progress and out of a long period of doubtful tradition, full of irrationality, superstition, and tyranny (which they believed began during a historical period they called the "Dark Ages").
This movement also provided a framework for the American and French Revolutions, the Latin American independence movement, and the Polish Constitution of May 3, and also led to the rise of capitalism and the birth of socialism. It is identified with the high baroque and classical eras in music, and the early neo-classical period in the arts.
Originating about 1650 to 1700, it was sparked by philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), John Locke (1632–1704), Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), physicist Isaac Newton (1643–1727), and historian Voltaire (1694–1778). The wide distribution of the printing press, invented in Europe in 1440, made possible the rapid dispersion of knowledge and ideas which precipitated the Enlightenment. Ruling princes often endorsed and fostered figures and even attempted to apply their ideas of government in what was known as “Enlightened Despotism”.
In France, Enlightenment was based in the salons and culminated in the great Encyclopédie (1751–72) edited by Denis Diderot (1713–1784) with contributions by hundreds of leading philosophers (intellectuals) such as Voltaire (1694–1778), Rousseau (1712–1778) and Montesquieu (1689–1755). Some 25,000 copies of the 35 volume set were sold, half of them outside France. The new intellectual forces spread to urban centers across Europe, notably England, Scotland, the German states, the Netherlands, Russia, Italy, Austria, and Spain, and then jumped the Atlantic into the European colonies, where it influenced Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, among many others, and played a major role in the American Revolution. The political ideals of the Enlightenment as indicated influenced the American Declaration of Independence, the United States Bill of Rights, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, and the Polish–Lithuanian Constitution of May 3, 1791.
To sum up the movement: In his famous 1784 essay "What Is Enlightenment?" Immanuel Kant defined it as follows: “Enlightenment is man leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! [Dare to know!] Have the courage to use your own intelligence is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.”
The Enlightenment flourished until about 1800, after which the emphasis on reason gave way to Romanticism's emphasis on emotion and a Counter-Enlightenment movement gained force.] ii
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[Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement in the arts, its set of cultural tendencies and associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In particular the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by the horror of World War I, were among the factors that shaped Modernism. Related terms are modern, modernist, contemporary, and postmodern.
In art Modernism explicitly rejects the ideology of realism, and makes use of the works of the past, through the application of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody in new forms. Modernism also challenges the lingering certainty of Enlightenment thinking, as well as the idea of a compassionate, all-powerful Creator.
In general, the term modernism encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social, and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to "Make it new!" was paradigmatic of the movement's approach towards the obsolete. Another paradigmatic exhortation was articulated by philosopher and composer Theodor Adorno, who, in the 1940s, challenged conventional surface coherence and appearance of harmony typical of the rationality of Enlightenment thinking. A salient characteristic of modernism is self-consciousness. This self-consciousness often led to experiments with form and work that draws attention to the processes and materials used (and to the further tendency of abstraction).
The modernist movement, at the beginning of the 20th century, marked the first time that the term avant-garde, with which the movement was labeled until the word "modernism" prevailed, was used for the arts (rather than in its original military and political context).] iii
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[Postmodernism describes a range of conceptual frameworks and ideologies that are defined in opposition to those commonly associated with ideologies of modernity and modernist notions of knowledge and science, such as, materialism, realism, positivism, formalism, structuralism and reductionism. Postmodernist approaches are critical of the possibility of objective knowledge of the real world, and consider the ways in which social dynamics, such as power and hierarchy, affect human conceptualizations of the world to have important effects on the way knowledge is constructed and used. In contrast to the modernist paradigm, postmodernist thought often emphasize idealism, constructivism, relativism, pluralism and skepticism in its approaches to knowledge and understanding.
It is not a philosophical movement in itself, but rather incorporates a number of philosophical and critical methods that can be considered post-modern … the most familiar include feminism and post-structuralism. Put another way, postmodernism is not a method of doing philosophy, but rather a way of approaching traditional ideas and practices in non-traditional ways that deviate from pre-established super-structural modes. This has caused difficulties in defining what postmodernism actually means or should mean and therefore remains a complex and controversial concept, which continues to be debated. The idea of the postmodern gained momentum through to the 1950s before dominating literature, art and the intellectual scene of the 1960s. Postmodernism's origins are generally accepted as having been conceived in art around the end of the nineteenth century as a reaction to the stultifying legacy of modern art and continued to expand into other disciplines during the early twentieth century as a reaction against modernism in general.] iv
OK readers … the author is with you if you are thinking that we just plain think too much! If the Western cultural approach to understanding knowledge sounds like a lot of hot air … well let us move on and you can be the judge!
The point?
So … back to the original issue: “how does Hellenism and its offspring affect the Western Culture knowledge paradigm?”
Hellenism in essence has directly shaped the modern world we live in today. A world of: rationalism, secularism, humanism, skepticism, materialism and more recently globalism … in this author's opinion … “The New World Order”. Hellenism and its various offspring for what it is worth has in effect cemented the age of individualism, toleration, syncretism, confusion and uncertainty despite any assertions that Hellenism achieves the exact opposite!
[In the Greek world, all of us are essentially alone. The Greek ideal is individual autonomy. Man is the measure of all things, including his own worth. In the Greek world, the more I show myself capable of independence, the more I am valued and emulated. Our cultural heroes are the supermen, the ones who don't need anyone else to accomplish great feats. We worship the self-made man. The man who readily challenges the way things have been done … or the inventor so to speak!
Our culture is saturated with the Greek idea of hidden, secret knowledge. In ancient Greece, popular Gnostic and mystic religions proclaimed various secret understandings about life. To join these sects and become illuminated meant taking a death vow! If you revealed the secret to an outsider, you could be killed.
Of course we don't take such extreme measures today, but we still hold on to the Greek mysticism that endorses the “secrets” of life. A casual walk through the popular bookstore says it all. Secrets of success! Secrets to great sex! Secrets the government doesn't want you to know! Secret ways to get what you want! Secrets to losing weight! Secrets of life! … On and on it goes. Don't you ever wonder, “If all of these things are secrets, how did we ever manage to survive this long?” Our Greek culture loves the idea of secrets because secrets feed the ego with power and control. If I know something you don't, I can take advantage of situations you can't. Therefore, I am better than you. Knowledge is power!] v
And sadly enough … when we were and are immersed within this framework we are not given the luxury of being informed that we are being inducted into a specific thought pattern. Intellectuals/Educators present “knowledge” and ways of becoming “knowledgeable” to us without telling us that the mode is optional … that the mode is opinionated … that there are different perspectives which have been panned as being irrational, superstitious, antiquated and quite frankly not supported by the correct empirical framework. In essence we are not provided insights into knowledge based frameworks which the “intelligencia” does not agree with. Hmmm … let that sink in for a moment.
How many of us Westerners understand that we are children of Hellenism? How many of us are really familiar with the term? How many of us simply live blindly to the framework of what has been handed down to us? How many of us simply go about our business operating under a guise that the meaning of life is about ME? How many of us operate under the premise that life is what I make of it … that I am self-determinate … that the answers to the great questions of life are to be figured out through philosophical musing, scientific revelation and social relativism?
Are you thinking? … Let us be honest … at least with ourselves!
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When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
The next section, the famous preamble, includes the ideas and ideals that were principles of the Declaration. It is also an assertion of what is known as the "right of revolution": that is, people have certain rights, and when a government violates these rights, the people have the right to "alter or abolish" that government.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Commentary:
Now it is intuitively obvious that few persons operating under a traditional Greek mindset would view these founding principles in a negative light … agreed? How could they given the fact that Jefferson himself was admittedly an Epicurean basking in the revival of this philosophical movement which had been adapted to European and New World Christianity thanks in large part to the French atomist Pierre Gassendi … yes dear readers Jefferson was a Hellenist as were the other leading men of stature who drove the formation of the great nation. If you find inspiration within Jefferson's discourses and the ideals and feats of the Free Masons then assuredly you are influenced by Hellenism!
Now for the big question: are these “American” principles based upon and reflective of a Biblical or godly world view? And it is a fair question to ask is it not?
Dear reader … let us not spiral down a lengthy discourse and instead just cut to the chase! It should be intuitively obvious that we are looking at a “will of the people model!” This is a thoroughly Greek “republic by popular demand model” which champions personal liberty as well as individual and societal determination. Determination, please note, that is premised upon relative ideas and principles that are seen fit to meet the needs and desires of the popular constituency within given time frames. It undoubtedly is all about "we the people"!
Unfortunately … just like all other Greek based imperial entities throughout history we see a consistent degradation away from the societal framework which was originally established! Why? … Because the basic fabric of the republic itself by design is relative and pliable to reflect the desires of the people … who presumably are capable of understanding right from wrong … good from evil … and so on.
Now if for the case of argument one wishes to contend with this perspective, I would ask that one just simply view the shift in our society, our laws and our way of life just over the course of two to three generations let alone two hundred plus years.
Yes indeed … The United States has for a long time been referred to as the great melting pot … but under the notion of societal tolerance and popular social evolution we've seen cultural behaviors, promoted by even the slightest of special interest groups, result in big changes to our culture. Sadly it would seem that the pot itself is melting! Let this sink in for a moment!
From a Biblical perspective the societal framework as designed by G_D is not democracy based but rather theocracy based where there is no separation of church and state … where there are no lines of demarcation between G_D’s ways and man's ways … where G_D’s ways are the determining principles of right versus wrong and good versus evil … where special interest groups that contend with G_D’s laws are simply put out! In G_D’s society the will of the people is not paramount but rather the will of G_D is paramount. Is this a declaration that can or even be debated dear reader?
This by no means is a condemnation of the great United States of America! But by all means let us not operate under the delusion that it is “One Nation under G_D”! The United States is certainly not one nation operating under the will of the G_D of Israel!
The point of this brief but poignant discourse is to simply depict how the bastion of Western power and culture … The United States Of America … is objectively a child of the Hellenistic Greco-Roman philosophical framework! And like all Hellenistic based republics the move towards liberalism is inevitable because in all ways the populace wants unrestrained liberty and freedom to pursue their own happiness … even if that pursuit is little more than personal gratification, accumulation of wealth and power or simply to foster broad sweeping tolerance under the guise of harmony! Basically people want to sin and not to be rebuked for it. Let us face the cold hard fact … America and Western Culture at large is fundamentally part of this world's system of order and societal framework!
Let us for a moment presume that “believers” will not contend with this brief summary … but also presume that they would contend that this “secular America” is not reflective of the separated “church America” or the broader Western Societal Church culture! Well … let us see if Hellenism has in fact been kept out of our religious institutions … let us see!
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