GREEK PHILOSOPHY'S INFLUENCE ON CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY
While Christianity, along with Judaism is a monotheistic religion and during the time of the major Greek philosophers, the worship there was of a myriad of deities- masculine and feminine, the one basic origin of Greek thought that is a basis of Christian fundamental theology is the idea of the soul. According to the earliest Christian philosophers "The body ius both the organ and the prison of the soul. The soul knows that it is a higher kind of reality than the bodyà" (Durant 609). While Plato recognizes the existence and importance of the soul, there is a very important linkage in the Christian belief in a "life after death" which Plato emphasizes as the fact that "after death, the soul passes into other organisms, higher or lower depending to the deserts it has earnedà" (Durant 517). It was the Greek philosophers who distinguished whether a sinner goes to heaven or hell, much as the Christian fundamentalists believe.
The soul, as both the Greeks and Christians believe, is a human phenomenon. "Precisely because God and the angels do not have bodies, neither do they have soulsà.Plato and Plotinus speak of a world-soul, or a soul of the universe, confirm(ing) the point that soul is the co-principle or complement of a body" (Adler 791). One can also look at Socrates' belief in the soul, when he states that "we may say that the world became a living creature endowed with soul and intelligence by the providence of God" (Adler 791). One can almost relate this to the Old Testament version of God's having created Man in his own image, excepting the fact that he endowed Man with a soul, something He himself does not have.
We see a direct line from Plato to Descartes concerning the idea of a soul as being a totally separate entity from the ordinary human being, and being unimportant as such a separate "thing" until and unless it is combined with a living person who...