"In reality, Christian theology is the antithesis of Platonic theology." (Niketas Siniossoglou on essentialism, anti-essentialistm, Hellenism and Christianity)

This post concerns a 2011 paper by Byzantine scholar Niketas Siniossoglou: Plato Christianus: The Colonization of Plato and Identity Formation in Late Antiquity. Of course you should read the paper for yourself and draw your own conclusions (it is available freely via academia.edu here). For my part I found the following eight essential themes in the paper especially noteworthy:

1. Philosophy in general and Platonic philosophy in particular are incompatible with Christianity.

2. Philosophy and Christianity are more than mere social constructs, for each has it's own essential nature, and it is these essential natures that are mutually incompatible with one another. Therefore the incompatibility itself is also something essential (that is, not merely an adventitious social construction).

3. Hellenism, as a religious designation, is synonymous with the Pagan Platonic philosophy.

4. In late antiquity, when Hellenism and Christianity first came into contact with each other, Hellenes (that is, Pagan intellectuals) and Christian intellectuals unproblematically recognized this mutual incompatibility.

5. While still recognizing this intrinsic mutual incompatibility, early Christian apologists tried to turn Plato against himself by claiming that bits and pieces of his philosophy were redeemable becuase they anticipated their "gospel", and that this was all part of their god's master plan for "preparing the way" for the Incarnation.

6. The resulting Christianized version of Plato ("Plato Christianus") has been recognized by many, at least until recent times, for the intellectual fraud that it is.

7. More recently, however, western intellectual culture has fallen under the spell of anti-essenitialism (or "postmodernism", or "cultural history", or whatever else one wishes to call it), which requires modern historians to absolutely deny that Hellenism and Christianity possess distinct essences. Because they are lacking in any distinct essence, are are merely social constructions, there is no sense in which Hellenism and Christianity could be said to be essentially incompatible with one another.

8. Although he diplomatically refrains from driving home this point, it is quite clearly implied by Siniossoglou that modern historians who obfuscate the essential incompatibility of Platonism and Christianism are simply acting as crypto-apologists, to the extent that they are aware of the agenda they are serving, or as naive dupes, to the extent that they are unaware of the agenda they are serving.