Dehellenization of Christianity

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources. Find sources: "Dehellenization of Christianity" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (February 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. Find sources: "Dehellenization of Christianity" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2022) The examples and perspective in this article may not include all significant viewpoints. Please improve the article or discuss the issue. (December 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Dehellenization is a term used in Catholicism to refer to the idea that Christianity should be divorced from its roots in ancient Greek philosophical thought.

The idea was proposed by the Canadian philosopher Leslie Dewart in his 1966 book The Future of Belief: Theism in a World Come of Age as a measure to counteract the progressive alienation of Catholic doctrine from the modern worldview, which Dewart believed was caused by Catholic theology's baneful dependence on antiquated and essentially pre-modern philosophical modes of thought.^[1]

Dehellenization was strongly rejected in 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI in a speech called Faith, Reason, and the University: Memories and Reflections (the Regensburg lecture).^[2] The speech advocates the harmony between faith and reason, arguing that Christianity is fundamentally a Hellenized religion.