The Sculptor and His Stone

This book argues, from a distinctly Eastern Orthodox perspective, for the inseparability of classical Hellenism from the Greek patristic tradition, postulating a common striving for truth in both domains and laying emphasis on the contributions of the ancients and Greek paideia to Christian learning and culture. The essays contained in the volume provide a fruitful strategy, in the spirit of the late Werner Jaeger, for looking anew at the Greek classical world and Christianity through the eyes of the Greek fathers, the direct inheritors of the ancient Greek worldview. Collectively, the author and contributors forcefully demonstrate that, conflated with the visionary insights of the Jewish prophets and of Jewish messianism, the wisdom of the ancients served to pave the way for the unfolding of the fullness of Christian teaching and its spiritually enlightening revelation.