The following is taken from Manuel Schmid, God in Motion: A Critical Exploration of the Open Theism Debate (trans. Alex Englander; Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2021), 93-95 under the heading of (Open Theists') “Reactions to the Critique of the Hellenization Thesis”:
It is at this point that Gregory Boyd’s “critique of the critique”
of the idea of a Hellenistic infiltration of the Christian doctrine of God enters
the picture. His critique is particularly clear in his preparatory studies for The
Myth of the Blueprint, his long since promised work of philosophical and theological
history. This work intends to trace the development of the idea of God through
a variety of ancient philosophical schools and the reception of their teachings
in the early Church. [57]
Drawing upon a host of historical sources and current research,
Boyd tries to show that a decisive methodological assumption for explaining
ultimate reality, and thus for determining the divine nature, was already
established amongst the pre-Socratics. This assumption was strengthened in
Platonic philosophy and eventually found its way into the theology of the early
Church via Philo of Alexandria. [58] Boyd labels the assumption the “principle
of negative transcendence” which in his view is already evident in fragments
from Anaximander, and goes on to receive its first explicitly theistic
application in Xenophanes. [59] A summary version of this principle would be
that the single route to explaining the ultimate ground of the world must
proceed via the negation of the traits of the worldly existence itself. More precisely:
the single route to an appropriate conception of God proceeds through the
negation of everything that characterizes our human, temporal, mutable, and
transitory experience of the world. [60]
Now, Boyd in no way disputes either that this principle assumed a
variety of forms in antiquity or that its applications in the hands of
different philosophical schools led to different conceptions of the divine. Yet,
he accuses Gavrilyuk [The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of
Patristic Thought. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004] and other
scholars who insist upon the irreducible diversity of philosophical and theological
concepts in the Hellenistic world of not seeing “the wood for the trees” [61];
the decisive commonality and central problematic shared by at least the
majority of the philosophical projects of the time should be located in their methodological
“deep structure,” that is, in the principle of negative transcendence.
[62] For Boyd, it is the power and influence of this principle which lies
behind the typical practice of characterizing God through negations of human
and mundane properties, and thus behind the compilation of a catalog of
classical divine attributes that are thoroughly alien to biblical God-talk.
[63]
Boyd explains tendency (which Sanders observes in multiple strands
of Hellenistic thought) to describe God as immutable indivisible, impassible,
timeless, etc. in terms of a common epistemological key for determining
fitting statements about the divine. Through a series of in-depth individual
studies—first of all on the Jewish scholar Philo o Alexandria, then chiefly on
Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, as well as
on Boethius and Augustine—Boyd attempts to demonstrate that this approach
colored the Christian doctrine of God much more deeply than the early thinkers
of the church were prepared to admit. [64]
TO be sure, the early fathers would initially have used negative
concepts for describing God’s nature simply as part of a linguistic
accommodation for describing God’s nature simply as part of a linguistic accommodation
to their environment. But the governing presuppositions of these concepts began
to leave their mark ever more strongly on the fathers’ own theology. And eventually,
the process of accommodation led to an acceptance of central philosophical
axioms that stand in considerable tension with God’s self-revelation in the
text of the Bible and especially, in the person of Jesus Christ. [65]
Notes for
the Above:
[57] Originally, The Myth of the Blueprint was planned as a
two-volume work containing approximately two thousand pages. According to the
latest information, Greg Boyd has put the project on hold for the time despite
extensive preliminary work.
[58] Cf. especially Gregory A. Boyd, “Chapter I: Being and Becoming—From
Homer to Parmenides” (unpublished preparatory study for The Myth of the
Blueprint); see, in particular, 9: “[I]t is, in my opinion, close to
impossible to over-emphasize the importance of these earliest western philosophers.
The methodological and metaphysical assumptions they made to a large degree set
the agenda for the rest of the western philosophic tradition.
[59] Boyd, “Chapter I: Being and Becoming—From Homer to Parmenides,”
8ff.
[60] On the origins of this idea in Anaximander, cf. Boyd, “Chapter
I: Being and Becoming—From Homer to Parmenides,” 14; and on Xenophanes’
theistic application of the method in question, ibid., 21f.: “Xenophanes is the
first thinker to explicitly apply what we are calling the principle of
negative transcendence in a distinctly theistic fashion . . . To arrive at
a true conception of this God, therefore, Xenophanes holds that we need to
negate all aspects of humanity that are not ‘fitting’ to ascribe to deity.” On
the “principle of native transcendence” in Plato, cf. idem, “Chapter II: Being
and Becoming—Plato,” 51ff.
[61] Gregory Boyd, personal correspondence of April 29, 2014.
[62] Boyd find an exception in the ideas of Heraclitus to whose fragments
he devotes considerable attention. Cf. Boyd, “Chapter I: Being and Becoming—From
Homer to Parmenides,” 23-34.
[63] Boyd, “Chapter I: Being and Becoming—From Homer to
Parmenides,” 14: “[T]his methodological stance [i.e., the “principle of
negative transcendence”] is fundamentally opposed to the Hebraic approach to
understanding of ultimate realty (God) and, consequently, to the Hebraic conception
of ultimate reality.
[64] This becomes clear in the following (unpublished) chapters of
Gregory Boyd’s The Mth of the Blueprint: “Chapter IV: Meeting of Worlds—Philo”;
idem, “Chapter V: The Pre-Augustinian Church—The Apologists”; idem, “Chapter
VIIIa: The Apologists—God and the World”; idem, “Chapter VIIIb: The Apologists—Providence,
Free Will and Evil”; idem, “Chapter IXa: The Alexandrians—God and the World”;
idem, “Chapter IXb: The Alexandrians—Providence, Free Will and Evil”; idem, “Chapter
XIIa: Augustine—Providence, Free Will and Evil”; idem, “Chapter XIIb: Augustine
and Boethius—God and the World.”
[65] Gregory Boyd, personal correspondence with the author, April
29, 2014 (the somewhat casual mode of expression is due to the more personal
medium of communication): “The central issue is found in the deep structure of
Hellenistic thought, going back to Thales. The assumption was that to explain
X, you must postulate -X to avoid an infinite regress . . . The concepts of
immutability, impassibility, and atemporality etc. arise out of this
philosophical endeavor. The early fathers pick up these concepts initially just
to use the respectful language of the day about God. But the assumptions behind
them gradually makes inroads to their thinking to the point that, in Clement
and Origen, then Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine, and finally Boethius, you have
essentially the same Hellenistic One, but with a bunch of contradictory
Christian stuff imposed on it—and called a ‘mystery’” (emphasis in original).
