Behind | Value of Unity in Greek Culture

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When Paul spoke to the Ephesians on the importance of unity for the church body, he wasn’t introducing a brand new idea. He was drawing on revealed tradition from the Old Testament and applying it in a new way to the new Christian community. The value of unity for human community and organizations was something already prized in ancient Greece. We can look to non-Christian Greek thinkers, writing around the same time and place as Paul, to find an emphasis on unity similar to what we find in Ephesians.

In a discourse to the city of Tarsus, the Greek orator Dio Chrysostom, whose lifetime overlapped with Paul’s, lectured on the importance of civic harmony and unity:

For not among you alone, I dare say, but also among all other peoples, such a consummation requires a great deal of attentive care—or, shall I say, prayer? For only by getting rid of the vices that excite and disturb men, the vices of envy, greed, contentiousness, the striving in each case to promote one’s own welfare at the expense of both one’s native land and the common weal—only so, I repeat, is it possible ever to breathe the breath of harmony in full strength and vigor and to unite upon a common policy . . .

(Those in discord) must necessarily be in a constant state of instability, and liable for paltry reasons to clash and be thrown into confusion, just as happens at sea when contrary winds prevail.

– Dio Chrysostom

Quoted from: Orations, “(Vol. III) Dio Chrysostom Discourses,” LacusCurtius, Dionysius’ Roman Antiquities, Book I, Chapters 72–90, accessed May 26, 2018, p. 34. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Dio_Chrysostom/Discourses/34*.html

In his Life of Apollonius, the sophist Philostratus also refers to images of a ship at sea in Apollonius’ speech to the people of Smyrna in a local harbor. He referenced a ship in the water nearby in the context of civic unity:

Now look at that ship’s crew, how some of them being rowers have embarked in the tug-boats, while others are winding up and making fast the anchors, and others again are spreading the sails to the wind, and others are keeping an outlook at bow and stern.

Now if a single member of this community abandoned any one of his particular tasks or went about his naval duties in an inexperienced manner, they would have a bad voyage and would themselves impersonate the storm; but if they vie with one another and are rivals only with the object of one showing himself as good a man as the other, then their ship will make the best of all havens, and all their voyage be one of fair weather and fair sailing, and the precaution they exercise about themselves will prove to be as valuable as if Poseidon our Lord of safety were watching over them.

While Paul and the church share this value with the ancient world, there is an important distinction to be made. As we’ll see throughout the New Testament, this ideal is only possible for those who are part of the Body of Christ. Productive relationships may be found outside this community, but true unity is only possible through the indwelling presence of the Advocate of unity, as well as of peace and love—the Holy Spirit.

Philostratus quoted from: Life of Apollonius, 4.8-9, “BOOK IV,” accessed May 26, 2018, http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/aot/laot/laot18.htm.