You see Hebrew Mindset being placed on a pedestal. I see more people calling it cultic and dangerous.
People often ask me what I think of the Messianic movement. I always start my reply with the statement that I believe the Messianic movement is of God. However, these days I find myself needing to follow it up with a warning of dangerous elements within the movement. There indeed are cultic and dangerous elements there. Sometimes I point out how the charismatic movement was once mostly pure, but as it progressed, many false shepherds entered it and made quite a quagmire out of it. I suppose the same thing can be said of Christianity in general, so we really should not be surprised.
I have always appreciated studying the Hebrew mindset because it does at times bring fresh light upon various passages of Scripture. Nevertheless, on TruthTalk there has been numerous comments to the effect that anyone who expresses a Greek kind of thinking must be in error. It is the rationality of guilt by similarity, like saying, "Hitler was a Lutheran Christian so all Christians are like Hitler." While it might be true that an overemphasis upon Greek thought could lead some of us into error, exactly the same thing could be said about an overemphasis upon Hebrew thinking. This becomes especially obvious when we realize that the Hebrew mind, for the most part, rejected Yeshua HaMashiach.
I had a world history professor in my early college years who I appreciated very much. He taught the closest thing to a religion class that I had ever taken. It was world history, but he followed the Christian Church through much of it because he said that the church had the greatest impact upon Western Civilization than any other institution. To ignore the church and its influence upon Western Civilization would be foolish, in his opinion. He was the first one who taught me that Paul expressed Greek dualism in Romans 7. At first, I was abhorrent at the idea. In my mind, Greek was the AntiChrist and everything against God. However, as I considered Greek dualism and the debate among many of the Early Church Fathers, I found the conclusion that Paul embraced Greek dualism to be inescapable. I was reacting to a "label" rather than to the substance of the position. This led me to study pagan rituals and I came to realize that they perhaps had more revealed to them from the spirit of Christ than we sometimes are willing to acknowledge. The spring rituals like the maypole has elements of resurrection and rebirth in it. Their sacrifices, even human sacrifices, to appease the gods, is best understood as Romans 1 describes it, as "holding the truth in unrighteousness." Indeed, Christ is the light that lighteth every man that comes into the world.
Therefore, I don't think Greek thinking is taboo, neither is Hebrew thinking. God has reached out to all of mankind, first to the Hebrews, then to the Greeks. Each culture has its perspective that makes different aspects of God comprehensible.
Peace be with you.
David Miller.
---------- "Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man." (Colossians 4:6) http://www.InnGlory.org
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