It is even more a distortion when the dogma formulated by the catholic tradition is described as “in its conception and development a work of the Greek spirit on the soil of the gospel.” Indeed, in some ways it is more accurate to speak of dogma as the “dehellenization” of the theology that had preceded it and to argue that “by its dogma the church threw up a wall against an alien metaphysic.” For in the development of both the dogmas of the early church, the trinitarian and the christological, the chief place to look for hellenization is in the speculations and heresies against which the dogma of the creeds and councils was directed.

Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Volume 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600), (The University of Chicago Press, 1971), 55. (HT: Steve Meister)

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