While hardly an expert in this, I offer the following summary – at least until someone does better. As much as western culture still influences us, there have been dramatic shifts in how we think since then. Greek philosophy started because Athens was running into people who valued different things. What is true? What is good? What about all those other people who worship strange gods? Yesterday’s hero of Athens could be exiled or even killed like Socrates.

  1. The Platonic tradition explained this by saying that this world of change and decay is not ultimate reality. Instead what is really “real” is not the chaotic world we see with our eyes, but rather a world beyond that with perfect “forms”. Some of this is borrowed from the Pythagoreans. We all learned the Pythagorean Theorem in school. What triangle does it describe? All of them. And any triangle we see is an image of this ideal triangle. And so, if we quickly draw one and the lines aren’t quite straight, that means that the one we drew is less real than the triangle we see with our mind’s eye. For more information, read Plato’s allegory of the Cave… So where do these “forms” exist? From what I understand, Plato wasn’t quite specific on this, but later Platonists said that they exist in the Mind of the One (God). They are what organize the matter of this world, and give it meaning.

  2. And so the “divine” is changeless. So while the concept of “logos” as the organizing principle that God uses to organize is a quite useful term to describe Jesus, it caused difficulties with saying that the ultimate changeless God is somehow in a specific historical, tangible, observable person of Jesus. But this isn’t really just something about a “divine” nature, since the “form” for all natures exists in the mind of God, and so is eternal. So even “human nature” is something eternal – because it is a part of God. So change and decay are not really “natural” but are because of a lack of nature. Death is not "natural" in this world view, but is rather a denial of even our ultimate nature. So, yeah - the philosophical presuppositions are influencing his thinking...