The disciples said to Jesus, "We know that you are going to leave us. Who will be our leader?" Jesus said to them, "No matter where you are you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being."(12 Thomas)

For a number of years James was the leader of those who followed Jesus in Jerusalem. It was this James who sat in authority when Paul began his ministry to the Greek-speaking Gentiles.

James, like Jesus and all the apostles, was a Jew who understood Jesus as pointing toward a reform and renewal of the faith received from Abraham and Moses.

James was clearly cautious regarding the potential influence of Greek thought. It was a realistic, even prescient, concern.

The Gospel of John is suffused with Greek philosophical influence. In the late second and early third centuries many of those who moved Christianity into the intellectual mainstream of the Roman Empire did so by adapting and sometimes adopting Greek, especially Platonic, frameworks.

When I perceive a bias against the created world and a preference for an ideal world, or a disdain for the present, or separation of body and spirit I join James in being cautious. We were created for both heaven and earth, future and present, spirit and body.