Hellenism intrinsic to Christianity?

We Reformed Christians are well known for desiring to purge unbiblical elements from the ways we articulate and live out the faith. This is part of the principle of semper reformanda taught at the Reformation. We are alert to any foreign influences in, e.g., the church fathers and the mediaeval theologians. While we love Augustine, we are painfully aware that he retained a number of neoplatonic elements in his thought, including the time/eternity dualism and the notion of evil as the privation of good. And of course Thomas Aquinas made free use of Aristotle and the stoics in articulating his philosophy. Perhaps a little too much use, from our vantage point.

However, not all Christians are inclined to engage in the sort of "de-hellenizing" exercises Reformed Christians undertake. John Mark Reynolds is one of these, as indicated in his essay, "Athens and Jerusalem: Reflections on Hellenism and the Gospel," posted on the Orthodoxy Today website. Here is Reynolds, arguing that the marriage between Athens and Jerusalem is essential to maintaining the integrity of Christianity itself:

It is hard to see how the "marriage" of Christian doctrine and Hellenistic concepts made by the Fathers could be undone without destroying the Faith. The Fathers produced the central formulations of Christian doctrine. They did so using Hellenistic ideas. [Frederick] Copleston and others have pointed out this providential marriage between Greek language and Christian dogma. To other thinkers like [Nancey] Murphy, such a connection is anything but providential. They have suggested rethinking the trinity and other classic Christian doctrines. The Fathers and the Creeds reflect, they say, too much Hellenism to be useful in modern times. Since the infection groups rarely believe the Creeds are the product of inspiration or strongly authoritative, they feel free to reject them.

Reformed Christians need to rise to the challenge raised by Reynolds and others, particularly those in the historic Catholic and Orthodox traditions. I may write further about this in future, but at this point it seems wise to point out the crucial difference between communicating the gospel in the language of the not-yet-believing hearers and accepting their religious presuppositions to the point of articulating a synthetic christian/pagan version of the faith.