Download or Stream this Episode
Biblical Studies can’t seem to figure out what to do with the Greeks. One voice warns against Platonizing influences on Christian theology, and another calls for suspicion of the “Hellenization thesis.” Then, as one figures out what to do with that tension, one remembers that Platonists and Stoics and Epicureans are all Greek thinkers in some sense, yet the three could scarcely disagree with each other more. Just when we despair that this confusion will never abate, Christoph Markschies arrives with glad news: the confusion extends centuries after the New Testament and on into late antiquity! Dr. Markschies’s recent book God’s Body: Jewish, Pagan and Christian Images of God draws some of the contours of that ongoing dispute, and Christian Humanist Profiles is glad to welcome him to the show.