Here's a good quote about the influence of Greek philosophy on Christianity. Sometimes the thought comes to me that Greek and Roman religion has survived inside of Christianity and some of the most doctrinaire Christians you will find are those who defend that Greek philosophical religion. Here's the quote:
IT is impossible for any one, whether he be a student of history or no, to fail to notice a difference of both form and content between the Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed. The Sermon on the Mount is the promulgation of a new law of conduct; it assumes beliefs rather than formulates them; the theological conceptions which underlie it belong to the ethical rather than the speculative side of theology; metaphysics are wholly absent. The Nicene Creed is a statement partly of historical facts and partly of dogmatic inferences ; the meta physical terms which it contains would probably have been unintelligible to the first disciples; ethics have no place in it. The one belongs to a world of Syrian peasants, the other to a world of Greek philosophers.
This quote is from, The influence of Greek ideas and usages upon the Christian Church,by Edwin Hatch. One interesting note about the Nicene Creed, though now it is used as sort of a basic statement of Christian belief, at the time it was created it was intended more as the establishment of the orthodox, i.e. true or correct, Christian position against certain heretical teachings. So for example it begins with:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.
God is referred to as maker to counter the heresy of Marcion and perhaps other gnostic Christians who asserted that the God who created the world was not the same God as the Father of Jesus Christ. Marcion, heavily influenced by Greek philosophy, believed that matter was evil and that therefore any "god" who had created the material world must be evil and could therefore not be the same "god" that Jesus called The Father.
Similarly, the next phrase of the Nicene Creed:
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father the only-begotten; that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made both in heaven and on earth;
This emphasis on what Jesus is was meant to counter the heresy of Arius, who argued that Jesus and the father were not the same, that Jesus was not quite one with father. Arius liked to argue something like before the son was begotten he was not.
I'm not really that interested in the underlying controversy but what is interesting to me is that this statement, written to distinguish orthodox Christian doctrine from heresy, has come to be taken as a sort of statement of the fundamentals or basics of Christianity. As a result other more central Christian doctrines are relegated to much more minor roles or completely ignored. As one English pastor noted, the nicene creed jumps from the incarnation:
who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man
immediately to Jesus' death and resurrection:
he suffered, and the third day he rose again,
As far as the Nicene creed is concerned Jesus could have been born one day and crucified the next. What's left out is everything that Jesus taught and did. Maybe it's just me but if God really was manifest in the flesh and he went around teaching I can't think of anything more important than what he taught, certainly not philosophical attempts to explain his essence.
Even when you feel as though there isn’t a lot you can do to change unhappiness or problems, you can always do a little—and a little at a time eventually makes a big difference.