The Triumph of Christiantiy over Paganism?

[TheAtheist]

I’m sure everyone here has heard that phrase at least once or twice. Usually it is hailed as a success of your Church right? The narrative of the story is very triumphal - banishment of superstitious beleifs, the freeing of mankind from falsity (Hmm…just had a bit of Deja Vu… )

So i’m about to ask a complicated question, i’m afraid this time i might step on some toes, but hopefully not to many.

Should we consider this historical event of which i’m referring to as a triumph?

No i’m not here to steal your thunder, but a few thoughts pop into my mind.

1.) The “Pagans” for all intents and purposes are back. Witchcraft, Chaos Magick, Wicca, etc. Heck i know folks who worship Woden. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81satr%C3%BA

Some even claim to be “Atheists Pagans” - something that you can probably guess confuses the heck out of me. Rock crystal waving and invoking Persephone or the Mother Goddess doesn’t really seem to bear out a connection to rational thought.

2.) Were they all that bad?

Don’t get me wrong, i know a lot of Ancient history buffs who can address the litany of really odd and bizzarre practices like sacrificing people to trees or genital mutiliation in the name of Magna Mater (something that the above group of neo-pagans conveniently screen out when speaking fo their traditions).

However, i look at the Cult of Mithras or Isis and that kind of gives me pause. For all intents and purposes, they were offering pretty much the same that you folks were, without violating any common ethical sense.

Someone is about to say that you are offering truth and they were not. Granted, i’m not here to debate that point on their behalf.

What i wanted to ask is whether or not the response, such as the destruction of the Great Temple of Serapis in Egypt (think of it as the Egyptian Vatican) at the hands of not soldiers, but by rather motivated christians was well…appropriate.

I know i know, “Triumph over Paganism” but well… if you think it was the appropriate response, if the end of Paganism is indeed celebrated by your Church, - then can that mentality also be extended to the other major world religions of our day?

[Touchy touchy subject i know, but i ask it in good faith.]

 

[FightingFat]

In the words of Darth Vader-- “Your lack of belief disturbs me…”

I suppose I can see how it “might” seem to the uninitiated, the unexperienced, someone with little understanding of Christianity, how Christianity could seem to be ‘just another religion’ and ‘what was so bad about paganism anyway?’ But the reality is so incredibly powerful it will blow your socks off!

You see, Christianity is not merely one religion among many, it’s not even the highest or best-- it is religion in a qualitatively different sense from any other religion; it is the absolute religion.

Why? Well, perhaps the best way to attempt to understand is to look at the way in which the early Church Fathers, those who were closest to the front line of Christian thought vs. pagan understood its unique character? They ground the unique dignity of Christianity on three considerations: -

1. Other religions are the result of human effort to find God, Christian teaching is not human invention, but rather comes from God Himself. It is revealed and taught by God.
2. The absolute claim of Christianity is based not only on the fact that it presents God’s teachings- but in Christ, God Himself has become personally present to us and He Himself teaches us without any intermediary.
3. Christianity is the absolute religion because all men are ordained to find their fulfillment in Christ. Every human being has been created in the image of God–according to many Fathers, in the image of the Logos who Himself is the perfect image of the Father. Sin could distort, but not eliminate this ontological resemblance and ordination of the Logos. Thus when the Logos became man, He became a center of universal attraction. In the words of Gregory of Nazianzus, He “…became leaven for the dough of all humanity”. Christianity is then universally valid, since the leaven of the Word is destined to raise the dough of all humankind.

In spite of this emphasis the Fathers put on the universal & absolute claims of Christianity: the Fathers see in other religions and religious philosophies more value than either neo-orthodox or fundamentalist Protestantism, or than modern Catholic theology did until the dawn of Vatican II.

The Fathers recognise the properly religious values in some non-Christian philosophies because they know the universal revealing activity of the Logos especially in Platonic philosophy.

One of my favourite examples of this is Exodus 3:14. Imagine what must have happened in 300 BC when the Alexandrians translated this into Greek!!! Bam! Plato gets ARRESTED! How can he have known that stuff??? Amazingly powerful!

On another note, I don’t know if I feel particularly triumphant. As for pagan resurgence, well, for me that demonstrates that everyone is still searching for God. Secular society spoon feeds us atheism and we lap it up, because, it tells us, belief in God is hocus-pocus. Much better to worship Athena, or Zeus, or Satan, or money, or your car, or Obama, or Paris Hilton, or your horoscope, or whatever.

The fact is, so many people are ignorant of the Gospel these days. It’s quite amazing! It is said that these days, people want proof and question everything, they say that in the old days they just accepted. I think the opposite could, in fact, be true. These days we are spoon fed information through the tv and the internet, and we accept it as fact. We live in an age of disinformation and we need to tune out the noise sometimes and listen to the truth.

 

[KingAlfred]

I’m sure everyone here has heard that phrase at least once or twice. Usually it is hailed as a success of your Church right? The narrative of the story is very triumphal - banishment of superstitious beleifs, the freeing of mankind from falsity (Hmm…just had a bit of Deja Vu… )

So i’m about to ask a complicated question, i’m afraid this time i might step on some toes, but hopefully not to many.

Should we consider this historical event of which i’m referring to as a triumph?

No i’m not here to steal your thunder, but a few thoughts pop into my mind.

1.) The “Pagans” for all intents and purposes are back. Witchcraft, Chaos Magick, Wicca, etc. Heck i know folks who worship Woden. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81satr%C3%BA

Some even claim to be “Atheists Pagans” - something that you can probably guess confuses the heck out of me. Rock crystal waving and invoking Persephone or the Mother Goddess doesn’t really seem to bear out a connection to rational thought.

2.) Were they all that bad?

Don’t get me wrong, i know a lot of Ancient history buffs who can address the litany of really odd and bizzarre practices like sacrificing people to trees or genital mutiliation in the name of Magna Mater (something that the above group of neo-pagans conveniently screen out when speaking fo their traditions).

However, i look at the Cult of Mithras or Isis and that kind of gives me pause. For all intents and purposes, they were offering pretty much the same that you folks were, without violating any common ethical sense.

Someone is about to say that you are offering truth and they were not. Granted, i’m not here to debate that point on their behalf.

What i wanted to ask is whether or not the response, such as the destruction of the Great Temple of Serapis in Egypt (think of it as the Egyptian Vatican) at the hands of not soldiers, but by rather motivated christians was well…appropriate.

I know i know, “Triumph over Paganism” but well… if you think it was the appropriate response, if the end of Paganism is indeed celebrated by your Church, - then can that mentality also be extended to the other major world religions of our day?

[Touchy touchy subject i know, but i ask it in good faith.]

America’s secular, democratic culture has become virulently Socialist, atheist and anti-Western. Yes…it’s neo-barbarism, to be sure. We must fight it, legally of course, with total commitment and smart strategies.

 

[crowonsnow]

Monotheism is an efficient form or superstition. All the bogeymen of our ancestral past can be psychologically dealt with in one simplified thought. And even though Christianity is not truly monotheistic, it claims to be monotheistic.

One is free to beseech the creator deity, the human deity, or the spirit deity, and all the while believe they are the same deity. Indeed, I know many Christians who maintain that all gods of all religions are the same deity, their deity naturally. And State monotheism isn’t new to Christianity or Judaism. It was around before Tut.

All religions are a product of their environment. The popularity of the Christian religion owes to the fact that it is a simplification of polytheism and the fact that it occurred in a place beneficial to its growth, namely where there existed the resources to maintain it. Jared Diamond deals with this nicely in Guns Germs and Steel.

In the final analysis, religion is religion is religion. Superstition will no doubt be around for a very long time, but all religious incarnations thereof are destined to come and go. The names change but religion is the same.

Christianity came along after the rise of civilization, after the rise of science, after the invention of writing and philosophy. It hasn’t given us anything new, not even a dying rising savior god. It has simply piggybacked along, as an important outlet for superstition and an explanation for phenomenon whenever needed, same as all the religions and deities that preceded it.

 

[crowonsnow]

I should add that the followers of Christianity refer to the followers of other religions as theists. If in fact Christianity was monotheistic these rival believers would be atheists, not theists. This demonstrates rather convincingly that the structure of Christianity is a variant on the henotheistic theme, something that predates Christianity by millennia.

Properly, Christian monotheism is really trihenotheism. Three simplified deities are venerated as one, while other religions and their gods are respected as being theistic, only with other chosen venerated deities.

 

[ALotLessThumb]

I think your questions lack cohesiveness. I am unsure how group behavior can determine the value of “how” an idea related to that group is expressed.

Since it is Thanksgiving (here in the US,) the basic idea of Thanksgiving can be used as an example. As a society, we Americans celebrate our coming to the new world. With that, we essentially celebrate our 19th century goal of Manifest Destiny. It was a “triumph” of surviving and thriving coast to coast, the “nation of immigrants” establishing a “new” and “better” society. However, when you step outside that societial system, it can also be viewed as the beginning of the destruction of functioning native cultures. If you follow the news, there are quite a movement of Native Americans who mourn this new establishment.

How something is expressed within a system and without a system can certainly differ, and that is because the values placed on certain behaviors/events can only be deemed from within particular systems. The “meta-analysis” of the history of two or more groups cannot necessarily be viewed relationally by the same standards expressed from the inside of one group or the other because they both consist of distinct beliefs that color perceptions leading to certain rationalizations.

You are asking people here, vastly in one particular system, whether the value they place on a historic event is appropriate as seen in the the overall relational history of several groups. Another example would be my relation to my brother. I am very proud of my brother and I think he is the greatest; but that pride can never be adequately expressed or rationalized to the outside world viewing our relationship.

So of course it is viewed (in general, we are dealing with generalities afterall,) as a triumph for Christians, when Christianity claims to be universal in scope.

That being said, all the behaviors of how groups react can be seen in this “passing of Paganism.” Some people destroyed/physically harmed (or adovacated it) those of others beliefs. Some people called for more peaceful means. Some tried to synthesize various groups, etc etc…These reactions can be seen in the way all groups through all periods of time. As extremely unfortunate as the loss of information is; it was an example of mundane human behavior.

 

[cthulhubryan]

While some things (such as the burning of the Library at Alexandria) might be things to regret, one must understand a few basic facts.

1. It is the nature of man to search for God.
2. Lacking the knowledge of Truth, man will try it on his own (thus the existence of the Pagan religions of Greek, Rome, the Norse, the Egyptians, Sumerians, Akkadians, Japanese, etc.)
3. Some of these pagan cosmologies will hit upon parts of the Truth, but never the whole Truth.
4. Those who have found even a part of the Truth will be quick to defend it and/or destroy those without the Truth, or at least without the same piece of Truth done in the same manner.

So, while these Pagan religions had pieces of the Truth, they did not have the whole Truth. Early Christians did destroy many things. I personally, having a degree in Anthropology, regret the destruction of so much history. However, if those relics were something that represented a major challenge to bringing Truth to those former adherents then the destruction is justified as the salvation of souls greatly outweighs the salvation of stuff.

 

[ALotLessThumb]

May I suggest the book, The Mystery Religions by a Dr.Angus and published by Dover Publications Inc.? Dr. Angus is a (self professed) “Sometime Professor of New Testament and Historical Theology” at Saint Andrew’s College, Sydney Australia. Though I disagree with some of his points, he does broach this topic. More importantly, he effectively tries to argue that Christianity was beneficial to the ancient Western because it was exactly the type of religion they were searching for at the time, and all the other faiths/philosophies were missing a key element: a viable history.

You may argue about the actual existence of Jesus; but of all the rival faiths at the time (and even now ; ) there is a very good chance that there was at the very least a real person named Jesus of Nazareth who walked this Earth and preached a message. He quotes Marcus Aurelius on the importance of this: “Humanity seeks the ideal, but it seeks it in a person, and not in an abstraction. A man, the incarnation of the ideal, whose biography might serve as a frame for all the aspirations of the time, is what the religious mind sought.”

So subsequently, you had evangelists and apologists who could (and still do) argue, ‘aha! not only is our system idealistic, we follow a manGod who actually walked this Earth, and we have these historical documents to prove it.’

That [provisional] assurance and need assuaged certainly can be viewed as a triumph in comparison to ol’faiths X, Y, and Z.

 

[Genesis315]

Polytheism and idolatry–that is, people serving the creature rather than the Creator–almost ceased to exist where Christianity was spread. The fact that paganism is back may be evidence that the devil has been unchained again for a time as prophesied.