1. Greek Idea of Sin:
The ancient Hebrew religion made much of sin, and of the remedy for sin which God, in loving mercy to His people, had provided; in Greece the thought of sin found no such place in the religious life, though of course it was not absent altogether. If sin is defined as that which causes divine displeasure and wrath, it appears in Greek thought in three forms: (1) as the transgression of moral law, (2) as neglect of the gods and consequent presumption, and (3) as pollution. The cause of sin is traced to human folly, either some passion like envy or anger or desire for gain, or to undue self-reliance which develops into presumption; and once a man has started in the wrong direction, his sin so affects judgment and will that he is all but inevitably led on into further sin. According to the simple Greek theodicy, the transgression of moral law brings its penalty, nor can any sacrifice induce the gods to intervene on behalf of the transgressor. All that expiation can accomplish is to set right the spirit of the transgressor so that he will not be led into further sin. Neglect of the gods--the second type of sin--brings its penalty in the results of divine wrath, but in this case, prompt repentance and submission to the gods may appease the wrath and therefore change its results. Pollution, the third cause of divine displeasure, often cannot be called sin; the failure to remove pollution, however, especially before one approaches the gods, is a just cause of divine anger. In general the Greek thought of sin centers about the idea of undue self-reliance and presumption, (hubris), which is the opposite of the characteristic Greek virtue, (sophrosune), namely that temperate mode of life in which everything is viewed in right proportion. Inasmuch as the Greek gods are righteous rulers, the nature of sin lies in its opposition to divine justice, not in unholiness or in the rejection of divine love.
2. Religious Ideals:
The demands of the religious life in Greece were relatively simple. To avoid acts of impiety such as are mentioned above, to perform the ordinary acts of worship regularly and punctiliously, were all that was required, though the religious man might find many opportunities for worship beyond what was expected of everyone. Little is said of the spirit of worship which underlay the outward acts. Nor does the command, "Be ye therefore holy, even as I am holy," find an echo in Greece. At the same time the fact that the gods so definitely represented human ideals of life, must have meant that in a way men aimed to make their lives conform to divine ideals. The essential feature of the religious life was the true recognition of human dependence on the gods, a dependence which showed itself in obedience to the divine rule, in trustful confidence that the gods would bless their worshippers, in resignation when misfortune came, and particularly in the belief in the loving care and protection of the divine rulers. In Greece, the religious man looked to the gods not so much for salvation from evil, as for positive blessings.
VI. The Influence of Greek Religion on Christianity.
1. Greek Philosophy and Christian Theology:
This is not the place to speak of the decadence of Greek religion, of its ameliorating influence on the Alexandrian world, or of the control it exercised over the Roman state. Its most permanent effect is found rather in Christianity. And here its shaping influence is first noted in Christian theology beginning with Paul and the Apostle John. For although Greek religion was more free from dogma or anything that could be called theology than are most religions, it furnished the religious content to the greatest philosophical systems we know; and all through the centuries the leaders of Christian thought have been trained in the religious philosophy of Plato and of Aristotle. Our Christian conceptions of the nature of God and the soul, of the relation of God to the physical universe, and of God's government of the world, have been worked out along the lines laid down by these Greek thinkers. And while the debt is primarily to Greek philosophy, it should never be forgotten that Greek philosophy formulated these conceptions out of the material which Greek religion furnished; indeed one may believe that it was the religious conceptions formulated by centuries of thoughtful worshippers which found final expression in the Greek philosophic systems.
2. Greek Influence on Christian Liturgy:
Again, the organization of the early Christian church and its form of government was quite as much Greek as it was Hebrew in origin. Here the influence of Greek religion as such was less marked; still it must be remembered that every form of Greek organization had its religious side, be it family, or school, or state; and further, that some phases of religion in Greece were quite thoroughly organized in a manner that was adapted without much difficulty to the conditions of the new religion. Moreover the thought of the Greek priest as not a sacred man, but a man appointed by the community to a sacred office, was naturally adopted by the nascent Christian communities. Even in the organization of worship, in the prayers and hymns and liturgy which gradually developed from the simplest beginnings, it is not difficult to trace the influence of what the Greek converts to Christianity had been brought up to regard as worship of the gods.
3. Greek Influence on the Sacraments:
The most striking case of the effect of the old religion on the new is found in the method of celebrating the Christian sacraments. In the 2nd century AD, the baptismal bath took place after a brief period of instruction, and at the common meal the bread and wine were blessed in commemoration of the Master. Three centuries passed and this simplicity had given way to splendid ceremony. Baptism ordinarily was performed only on the "mystic night," the night before Easter. Almost magic rites with fasting had exorcised evil from the candidate; ungirded, with loose hair and bare feet, he went down into the water, and later was anointed with oil to signify the gift of the Holy Spirit; then the candidates, dressed in white, wearing crowns, and carrying torches, proceeded to their first communion in which a mixture of honey and milk might take the place of wine. The whole ceremony had been assimilated to what Greek religion knew as an initiation, in which the baptized underwent some essential change of nature. They were said to have "put on the dress of immortality."
The Lord's Supper was carefully limited to those who had been through this initiation, and even among these, at length, degrees of privilege arose. The ceremony came to be known as a mystery, the table as an altar, the officiating priest as a "hierarch," and the result as a blessed "vision" of sacred things by which the resurrection life was imparted. In its formal character and the interpretation of its meaning, as well as in the terms used to describe it, the effect of the Greek mysteries may be seen.
Yet during these three centuries Christianity had been waging a life-and-death struggle with the old religion. It is indeed impossible to believe that converts to Christianity should intentionally copy the forms of a worship which they had often at much cost to themselves rejected as false. The process must have been slow and quite unconscious. As the language of heathen philosophy was used in forming a Christian theology, so the conceptions and practices which had developed in Greek religion found their way into the developing Christian ritual. Much of this ritual which had no essential place in Christianity was later rejected; some still remains, the contribution of the religious life of Greece to the forms of worship in our world religion.
LITERATURE.
O. Gruppe, "Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte" in I. von Muller's Handbuch, 1897-1906; Preller-Robert, Griechische Mythologie, I, 1894; W. H. Roscher, Ausfuhrliches Lexikon der griechischen und romishen Mythologie, 1884-; L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, 1896-1910; L. Campbell, Religion in Greek Literature, 1898; J. Adam, The Religious Teachers of Greece, 1908; P. Stengel, "Die griechischen Kultusaltertumer," in I. von Muller's Handbuch, 2nd edition, 1898; B.I. Wheeler, Dionysus and Immortality, 1899; E. Hatch, Greek Ideas and Usages, Their Influence upon the Christian Church, 1890; G. Anrich, Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum, 1894; E. E. G., The Makers of Hellas: A Critical Inquiry into the Philosophy and Religion of Ancient Greece, 1903; E. Caird, Evolution of Theology in Greek Philosophers, 1904; E.A. Gardner, Religion and Art in Ancient Greece, 1910; A. Fairbanks, Handbook of Greek Religion, 1910.
Arthur Fairbanks