Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

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heights” (Veith, 1994:30).
For all these contributions, Greek society long remained a mix of rationalism and
animism. The Greek worldview tended to diminish sin, human responsibility and
individual worth, notions variously changed through biblical influence. Greek society
was generally morally decadent, one that “institutionalized infanticide, slavery, war,
oppression, prostitution, and homosexuality” (Veith, 1994:30). Greek society, for
example, did not just tolerate homosexuality, but promoted it. As a warring society,
Greeks believed that soldiers interpersonally connected via homosexual relationships
would fight harder to defend their lovers. “Even Plato believed that women were inferior,
and that the highest love would be expressed between men” (Veith, 1994:31).
For the ancients, as with contemporary mankind, human rational thought alone could
not provide the model for morality given by the Bible, for no higher moral order could
come from mere men. The higher moral and ethical order had to come from a
transcendent source, that being Yahweh, the God of the Bible, and through His chosen
people who were to model those higher standards before the nations. The Greek gods --
fictive constructs of their animistic culture -- were little more than projections of human
vices, like non-Yahwehistic cultures before them (cf., Egyptian, Babylonian).
Judeo-Christian morals made a significant impact on the ancient world. The Greeks
began to learn, even indirectly from both Jews and Christians, that what they lacked was
transcendent, divine revelational wisdom and moral guidance (cf., Act. 17).
Homosexuality, infanticide and other pagan vices were seen in a different light and social
mores and laws eventually changed. The Judeo-Christian influence also changed the way
men considered women, gradually lifting their existence above human chattel. This
eventually produced the biblically influenced Greco-Roman culture that dominated the
Occident until the early 5 th Century AD, after which the Roman and Eastern churches
played a more direct social role.
In truth, no pre-biblical, or un-biblical, society has ever able to live above itself.
Humanity is like fish in a bowl, unable to achieve any higher ordered wisdom without
‘outside’ help. The fish only knows its limited aquarium world, and the murky fragments
it perceives beyond it. An old Chinese proverb says: “If you want to know what water is,
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa