![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
καλος and Christianity
Oct. 19th, 2011 09:52 am
Since being in Athens for the first time last week, I am thinking a lot of the relationship of the Greek notion of καλος (beauty and goodness - physical and especially moral) and Christianity. I suspect καλος is key to understanding the educational tradition, with its heavy Greek and Latin emphasis, that produced the Anglican and Lutheran elite from 1850 to 1950. The ethical discourse of this elite is so imbued with the classical pre-Christian tradition, that one is not always sure whether this is Christianity in a toga or chiton, or Socrates or Cicero in a preacher's gown. The embodiment of this is probably the brilliant Classics-educated Dean Inge, whose writings, with those of Gore, dominated the Anglicanism of the pre-C.S. Lewis and pre-William Temple era. On its own, this tradition quickly becomes cold and arid (an impression borne out by photos of Inge himself), and yet its absence in modern Catholicism and Orthodoxy is probably a loss.
