Just as the thought of fire does not warm the body, so faith without love does not actualize the light of spiritual knowledge in the soul. (Maximos the Confessor)

The Greek tradition - or at least the big three of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle - gives primacy to intellectual contemplation. Light without heat.

But Aristotle also comments that, "happiness is activity in accord with virtue." The activity most purely virtuous is contemplation, but the activity can extend into politics. In his Eudemian Ethics Aristotle even remarks, almost in passing, that the ideal life is "the contemplation and service of God."

I am concerned that Greek philosophy in many ways contaminates the teaching of Jesus. But as long as we recall the primacy of love-in-action, heat and light, philosophy has much to offer.