part one
Early Non-Christian Influences
There were two primary contextual influences that helped to shape the early Christian church. The first obvious influence was Judaism.15 Jesus was a Jew as were his closest disciples. The primary scriptures and liturgies from which the early Christians drew were adopted from the Jewish religious tradition. Indeed, authors of Christian spirituality acknowledge that it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand the early church apart from this influence.
The second major influence of this early era that helped to shape Christian spiritual formation was the larger Greco-Roman culture of which both Christians and Jews were a part of.16 The Roman Empire was a vast and powerful presence in this part of the world. As we shall see with Philo of Alexandria, the Empire had a system of Hellenization wherein its citizens were educated into Roman culture. Not only was the Empire prolific in the spread of its laws and religious practices, but also its philosophies as well, for which Platonism and its variations were central.17 In addition, more and more converts to Christianity were “Gentiles,” or non-Jews. This meant that the early church not only needed to address these new converts and speak to them in symbols, philosophies, and practices that they could understand but also that the beliefs and practices of Christianity would increasingly be formulated by them. For instance, Origen formulated his stages of the spiritual life in neoplatonic terms.18 The influence of Greco-Roman culture on early Christian spiritual formation can therefore not be overlooked.
Given these wider influences, it will therefore be helpful to better understand how personal transformation was understood by parts of these alternative traditions. While there are a few forms of personal transformation that we might look at, such as moral formation in Roman culture,19 we have chosen two to focus on. For better insights into a Jewish view of personal spiritual formation, we turn to Philo of Alexandria and two of his short works: “Every Good Man Is Free” and “On the Contemplative Life or Supplicants.” While, as we shall see, Philo might not be considered by some to be classically Jewish in a traditional sense because he was a Hellenized Jew, his works did go on to influence many early Christian thinkers such as Clement and Origen of Alexandria.20
A second text that we will be turning to is The Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians by Iamblichus. This piece is very characteristic of some of the neoplatonic views of this era, many of which influenced early Christianity, particularly early monasticism as we shall see in the next part of this book. Not only, then, will Iamblichus’ work provide us with insights into these worldviews, but it will also represent a very different systematic approach to personal transformation. It is therefore to these two sets of writings that we will now turn to in order to help us better understand the cultural contexts in which early Christian personal spiritual formation developed within.
15. Burridge, “Jesus and the Origins of Christianity,” 12; Sheldrake, Brief History of Spirituality, 13; Woods, Christian Spirituality, 4.
16. McGuckin, “The Early Church Fathers (1st to 6th Centuries),” 44–45; Sheldrake, Brief History of Spirituality, 27; Woods, Christian Spirituality, 48.
17. Chidester, Christianity, 5; Sheldrake, Brief History of Spirituality, 27, 31.
18. Sheldrake, Brief History of Spirituality, 35.
19. For instance, see Malherbe, Moral Exhortation; Fitzgerald, Passions and Moral Progress in Greco-Roman Thought.
20. Jones et al., The Study of Spirituality, 95.