David Pawson teaches about the impact of Greek thinking on Christian beliefs. How we need to re-discover the Hebrew roots of the Bible and Church, and practical examples of how Greek influence in our education and culture gives rise to un-Biblical thinking and behaviour.

A free to download PDF booklet called ‘De-Greecing The Church’ that accompanies this video can be downloaded from www.explainingbiblicaltruth.global

“I recoil in horror at what Greek thinking has done to the Christian Church over centuries. Immense damage has been done to the Christian faith right up to today. I want to show you that you and I have been victims of it”.

David Pawson argues that the Bible is rooted in “the Jewish world”, which “was almost the opposite in every respect of ancient Greece”. He sees the elevation of the spiritual above the physical by the influential Greek philosophers as having influenced the church negatively.
Tracing the interaction between the Greek world and the Hebrew world, David highlights the dangers of Greek “dualism”, which divides “sacred and secular, temporal and eternal, physical and spiritual”. The unbiblical body and soul distinction, with the body considered to be of little value, and the soul of real value, “has led to Christians talking about saving souls when we are really called to save whole people”. And whereas the Greeks viewed death as a friend that frees the soul from the body, in the Bible it is the enemy that “has been conquered by Christ”.

David addresses the imposition of Greek culture upon Hebrew culture and the subtle “Greek influence” upon the Jews who studied in the school at Alexandria — a “melting pot” of Jewish and Greek thinking that produced the translation of the scriptures into Greek but also led to the promotion of the allegorical method of Bible study. He sees this influence of the prevailing culture and philosophy — such as the attempt to force Jesus into a “Greek framework” — being addressed in the letters to the churches in Revelation.

David reveals how Greek thought has distorted biblical teaching. Rejecting so-called “Replacement theology”, he laments the dismissal of the idea of a physical and literal Millennium in Christian teaching since Augustine, and the adoption of a more spiritual (Greek) view of the Bible than the physical (Hebrew) view. Stressing Christ’s humanity, David states that “we are going to have a new body” when we are glorified, and in preparation for the physical new earth Christians should regard their work as their main contribution to the Kingdom of God, without scaling it with “spiritual” or “sacred” work at the top and “secular” below.

The Greek view also led to difficulty in believing “in a God who would get entangled in this physical world”. Contrary to the doctrine of predestination, which removes human cooperation and views God as being outside the “human sphere”, emotionless and static, the “Hebrew God listens to prayers” and can “change his mind” in response to them.
David asks how we can “avoid being caught up in this Greek thinking which is riddling the church through and through?” The answer: the protection “comes from soaking ourselves in the Bible”, a “Hebrew book”— particularly the Old Testament, which is too often overlooked by evangelical Christians.

Free resources and a library of Davids teachings are available from www.davidpawson.org

©️David Pawson Ministry CIO 2020