The Preamble: So I've been reading a book called "Pagan Christianity" by Frank Viola and George Barna and I have to recommend it to anyone searching for a very authentic and original examination of the Christian church. Reading the book and examining the evidence provided has also rekindled my own thoughts about the pagan nature of what most people call "Christianity". (*Disclaimer: None of the information I address in this post has anything to do with what is discussed in the previously mentioned book and I do not represent the authors or their viewpoints.*) Some of the more difficult questions I've had to work through revolve around the roots of morality as a cultural bonding agent and its preoccupation with the ancient pagan fertility gods.
The Case: Let me start by saying that I did not come to any of these questions or conclusions lightly. The sensibilities put in me from my childhood were just as offended in my initial discovery of what I plan to share with all of you as yours are certain to be. What can be certain, however, is that when you start to examine the stability of your foundations and when you begin to perceive that the foundations and structure you've inherited are inherently flawed it can be a frightening experience. I want to approach this topic as sensitively and gingerly as possible without mincing words or watering down my case. I encourage you to continue to respond in the form of comments (for dialogue and discussion), emails, and phone calls because this topic is (in my opinion) too important to walk away from without engaging.
All of that being said, let me dive right into it. There are certain facts about how ancient paganism has infiltrated the modern "Christian" community that are readily obvious to even the most casual question-asker. Some of the easiest examples to digest are found in Christian sacred holidays like Christmas and Easter.
In regards to Christmas, celebrating the birth of Christ on December 25 is a holdover from the old Roman pagan holiday dedicated to Sol Invictus ("the Invincible Sun" god). There is no solid archaeological, Biblical, or empirical evidence to suggest that Jesus was born on December 25 (or even in the winter). One of the main reasons that this has never been challenged by church leaders or theologians is that there is very little evidence to suggest what time of year Jesus was born at all, so no alternative date has ever been offered. Generally for most Christians the date makes little difference because there's no harm and no foul in the current tradition. Let me be clear: I'm not anti-Christmas or trying to argue against the holiday. I'm simply trying to cast some light onto how our traditions started and allow you, the reader, to come to some sound conclusions on what it means for you. The question that should come to mind, however, is this: if Christmas is in the top two most sacred holidays for Christians, why would the Gospel writers not give us a relative timetable for his birth? (All we're given is clues as to the year it happened.) The answer is in the history. The original Christians (including the Apostles and the Apostlic church fathers) didn't celebrate Christmas. There is no teaching in the New Testament or by the Apostlic church leaders of the first 300 years of Christianity suggesting they ever celebrated Christmas. In fact, the only truly Christian holiday they celebrated was the Resurrection (what we now call "Easter"). Most of the holidays the first Christians celebrated were the Jewish religious holidays like Passover. And that, of course, brings us to Easter.
Easter, as we've come to know it, was not celebrated by the first Christians either. The early church celebrated the Resurrection every single day. They held meetings every day (very different from our "church") to discuss the Resurrection and celebrate it, pray for one another, tend to each others' needs, and then they celebrated the Resurrection by partaking in communion every day. But even their communion was different from ours. It was not a saltless wafer and grape juice (real wine if you belong to a more liturgical congregation). The entire Christian population in a given city or town gathered together at a central meeting place (usually a large house - where all daily church meetings took place) and ate a large and hearty dinner there including whole loaves of bread and barrels of wine. It was, essentially, like a wedding banquet every day! But when it comes to setting apart one day in early-mid Spring for celebration of the Resurrection... that didn't begin until after 325 AD when the Roman govenment took over as the central power of the "church". It was then that Easter, like Christmas' from Sol Invictus, was taken from the old Roman pagan holiday dedicated to the fertility god. Easter bunnies, eggs, mandatory church attendence... all of this is a holdover from the ancient fertility god. When the Roman Catholic Church was founded by the Roman government in the early fifth century the new Roman "bishops" (which were simply Roman pagan nobles given new positions of great power) decided to merge the very popular pagan holiday with the Resurrection since they both signified "new life" and, thus, Easter was born. Even the mandatory church service was a holdover from the old fertility god. Romans, under the pagan system, were strongly encouraged to visit the temples of the fertility god in order for that god to continue to give to all of Rome's empire agricultural and reproductive fertility. Since, under Christianity, the old fertility god had been replaced by one God and a very powerful symbol of life and fertility in the Resurrected Christ, the old traditions simply made way for new names and new gods.
What's important to remember about this is that the Romans lived in absolute terror of angering the fertility gods. They believed that if they did not continually satisfy the fertility gods, then those gods would cause the land to stop producing food, the rivers and lakes to dry up, and the women to stop having children. Without water, food, and new Roman boys the empire could not maintain its staus and power in the world. When the people of the Roman empire came to believe that there were not many different gods but one all-powerful God, the fear and dread of that one God became even more intense and the already-existing pagan morality became even more strict. The empire could not afford to risk angering this new God: a god - according to the Jewish scriptures - that was able to cause droughts and floods, was able to open and close the wombs of women, and was able to turn farmable lands into fields of blood. This ancient pagan devotion infiltrated the Roman "Christian" church from the very beginning and has not left since.
It is this pagan sense of morality that I intend to dive deeper into. By now you may be asking yourself, "Why does he keep saying 'pagan' and 'morality' as if they're linked?" That would be a truly excellent question to ask. One of the points I intend to show is that morality is not a creation of New Testament Christianity but, rather, pre-Christian paganism. Furthermore, this morality hasn't fundamentally changed since the first pagan society was formed and the very same pagan morality that existed in ancient Sumeria still exists today: it exists in our modern world as the foundation of western civilization, even as the backbone of the American culture and the skeleton of our modern - yet incredibly pagan - "Christianity".
It may surprise many of you to find out that morality as we know and practice is not Biblical in origin (neither Old nor New Testament... more on this in a little bit). For as long as humans have been living together in towns and cities, and as long as governments have existed, and as long as the old pagan gods have been worshipped by tribes and nations - morality has existed. The very first comprehensive morality code was created by the Sumerian/Babylonian civilization under a ruler named Hammurabi (1795-1750 BC), at least 300-500 years before the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt and the creation of the Ten Commandments. Depending on the dates of Abraham's departure from Ur (which was under the rule of what became Hammurabi's kingdom), Abraham and Hammurabi could have been contemporaries and Abraham could have taken the existing Babylonian morality code with him as he travelled to Egypt and Palestine. It is also just as likely that the Israelite culture, in keeping with the tradition of Abraham, was influenced by the existing morality code of Hammurabi when they produced (at the instruction of God, according to the texts) the Ten Commandments.
Now whether the Jewish Law was borrowed from another culture or whether it was hand-written by God himself is not really the question. It is an interesting question to get into, but that's not the point I'm trying to make. What I'm trying to point out is that what we consider "Biblical morality" actually existed in a culture that was, in no way, devoted to the God of the Bible. Hammurabi's morality code (which rivals the detailed laws in Leviticus) was developed in service to Babylonian pagan gods. And it isn't just Babylon, either. Egypt, Assyria, Neo-Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome all shared the same morality code. Surprisingly enough, four of the ten commandments are found in every single morality code in history: do not steal, do not kill, do not lie, do not commit adultery and two others were present in all pagan cultures: do not covet your neighbors possessions, and honor your parents.
All of that simply goes to show that the only thing that was unique about the standard morality code of the ancient Jews is that it was done in devotion to one God instead of many gods. But, more importantly, the ancient Jews shared the same rules, laws, customs, and taboos as their pagan neighbors when it came to issues regarding the fertility gods. Some of the most oft-repeated miracles in the Old Testament revolve around Yahveh (God) performing miracles of fertility: making barren women have children, making the crops grow, making the rain fall on drought-ridden lands... producing prosperity and ensuring the survival of the Israelite people through history. These were the very same miracles that the pagans asked of their gods and the pagans had special altars, special sacrifices, and special rituals to help get the favor of the gods just as the Jews did with Yahveh.
So, you may be asking, am I saying that the Jews were really pagans or that the Old Testament of the Bible is a copycat of the pagans? No, I'm not saying that. It should be noted that while Abraham followed the instruction of Yahveh, he still came from a pagan culture and it is never said that he rejected that culture. While the decendents of Abraham dedicated themselves to the One God, they still kept their knowledge of other gods and it was not uncommon for men in pagan cultures to devote themselves to one god over another in the group: the god of war for soldiers and warriors, the god of agriculture for farmers, the god of the sea for sailors, and the fertility god for nearly every woman on Earth whose worth was tied to the production of children. Abraham simply chose a mysterious, powerful and unknown God to dedicate his family to and that family (which would become the Jews and Arabs in later generations) knew nothing of monotheism as a religious practice until the Exodus and Moses.
But what does this have to do with our modern "Christian" morality being pagan in origin? The religious priesthood and authorities of all pagan cultures before Christianity had the same kind or moral system that we do and it was, like many other things, totally preoccupied with the fertility gods and the cultural survival that those gods represented. The Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans all had cultural and moral taboos against homosexuality, for instance. These moral taboos weren't always enforced (as we all know in history) because of the impact of hedonism but we know, in history, that many of the Roman emperors (before Christ and Christianity) outlawed homosexuality and cracked down on notorious locations of gay orgies because they were concerned over the morality of the empire and the impact it may have on the blessing of the gods (most especially the fertility gods).
Adultery and prostitution was also outlawed heavily from time-to-time for fear of angering the gods as a culture, but not because it was a betrayal of the sacred marriage bonds as we percieve it in a modern post-Christian culture. In the ancient world (and even parts of the world today) marriage was not done for love between two people. Marriage was a contract between families to hand over the ownership of women to men so that the man could use the woman to produce children. Women, in marriage, were not objects of love and beauty but objects of breeding. I apologize for offending any sensibilities when I say this, but it is from this built-in tradition of breeding that men - even today - continue to obsess over the hips and busts of women! And in this light our cultural and moral opposition to adultery does not come from a betrayal of love but a violation of property. It would be as if one cab driver took another cab driver's car to use for his own pleasure. The owner of the cab probably has little sentimental attachment to the car when you compare it to depriving the owner of his ability to use that car to provide for his family.
So, I'm sure you're asking, what's the point of all of this? What am I trying to say? Let me break it down as much as I can and get straight to the point.
America has a very strong moral backbone. It is built into nearly every institution we have and it is entirely inseparable from the culture and the society at large. Since the creation of the Roman Catholic Church in 325 AD (and nearly every single denomination that has followed since the Reformation in the 1500's) Christianity has become synonymous with morality. Christianity has adopted many things over the last 1700 years which Jesus, the Disciples, and the Apostlic church leaders never intended it to pick up and a systematic "morality", that ultimately seeks to gain the favor of God (or, more accurately, the gods), was one of those things. We've made hot-button issues out of adultery, abortion, and homosexuality because they offend our cultural morality and then call it Christian. But that morality was created, originally, by pagan societies, adapted for a single God by the Jews (with the best of intentions, I'm certain), abandoned by the New Testament and adopted again by pagans in Christian clothing after the early church fathers and the Twelve Apostles were long dead. The ethic of the New Testament is not one of morality but one of the Divine Character: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control (Galatians 5:22). Christians in the New Testament are instructed on how to live as Christ did, conforming themselves to His example - going to the "moral outcasts" and bringing them into a redemption that morality and "the law" could never give.
It is the time for all New Testament disciples of Jesus to see the moral code we've adopted for what it is: a pagan manifestation intended to curry favor with the gods. We can see it when Jerry Fallwell blamed 9/11 on abortion. We can see it when Pat Robertson says that Katrina happened because of homosexuality. We can see it when James Dobson warns against calamity and disaster because of adultery and the failure of the family unit. These men do not represent the Jesus of the New Testament but the old gods of paganism when they claim such things. We put ourselves under the yoke of the old gods when we live in fear of violating morality for even more fear of disaster being brought to our doorstep. God is not a vindictive old man with a thunderbolt waiting to crush you under his feet if you fail to please him. That's not what Jesus tells us about God... and if Jesus is who he said he is, he ought to know!
The mission of the New Testament church is not to fight the "moral decline" of America or western civilization. Leave that to the pagans in Christian clothing. The mission of the New Testament church is to love and support the moral outcast without any agenda or ulterior motive. It is to let their love, not their tired sermonizing, do the preaching to the "lost" and broken. Is abortion heartbreaking? Yes. But the answer isn't morality - the answer is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Is adultery heartbreaking and harmful to families? Yes. But the answer isn't morality - the answer is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Does homosexuality miss the ideal of human monogamy and family creation? Possibly - but I'm not one to say and never will be. But I do know this: morality isn't the answer - the answer is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.
"I seriously command that you may not exploit your neighbor or oppress him... You may not curse the deaf or trip the blind... You may not slander or spread rumors and gossip about your neighbor and do not treat the lives of your neighbors as worthless... You may not secretly hate your neighbor... You may not seek revenge or keep a grudge against any of your people. You will love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord." - Leviticus 19:13-18
"If all you do is love those that are like you, what good is that? Even the pagans do that much. No, I am telling you this... live generously and graciously towards others in the same way that God is generous and gracious towards you." - Jesus, Matthew 5:47-48
The Question: I realize that this post, somewhat differently from other posts, works from an assumption of Christian spirituality as opposed to a more universal and generic framework that I usually work from. This was done in order to respond to a specific problem I perceive within the framework of Christianity in order to start a dialogue between Christians and non-Christians about the foreign and dangerous nature of the infiltration of pagan morality. There is no question this time... I'm just asking that we begin the dialogue.
Leave the light on.
The Unvarnished Doctrine
14 years ago
20 comments:
"Some of the more difficult questions I've had to work through revolve around the roots of morality as a cultural bonding agent and its preoccupation with the ancient pagan fertility gods."
That's been bugging you to?!?! Crazy?!?
I have a slight issue with your description of the Romans 'adopting' christianity.
It wasn't for fear of the christian god as you say; it was for fear of the christian 'Mob' For the most part the Romans were practical and didn't buy to heavily into the 'gods' as say the Greeks did. The Romans wanted money and power.
They wanted what was best for the empire (that which lined the pockets of the ruling elite) and what was best for the empire at that time was not an open revolt by a belief system that was gaining popularity. The only fear was fear of the people.
The reason for the merging of the seasonal holidays and the creation of christian named ones was to appease those that were part of this new belief system and those that were not.
Like I said the Romans were practical...they saw what was coming and they rolled with it.
I doubt they suspected the Spanish Inquisition though...as no one ever does!! ;-)
Bill - I agree that the Roman adoption of Christianity as a state religion is more akin to the courtship of a new American voting demographic (i.e. hispanic Americans or asian Americans). This is true. The Romans didn't adopt Christianity out of a fear of their God... but once that God had become known to and adopted by this new Roman Catholic mob, the existing morality of the culture tightened significantly as a response.
The adoption and conversion of pagan high holidays to new Christianized ones was also strategic but born out of the overwhelming devotion (of the peoples that made up the Roman empire) to the "new God" who was, to them, in nearly every respect was the portrayed to the people the same as the old gods. This is evidenced most specifically by the serious gap and disconnect between New Testament teachings and subsequent "church" doctrine after 325 AD.
Wow this is like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride of connecting the logical dots.
First I'd like to comment on the pagan tradition issue. Yep, sure enough, we've put Christian wrappers on pagan holidays. People have been discussing this for years. Although the literature I've read trace the traditions back to Babylon. This is old news. People have always connected these traditions to devilish strategies. Interesting, but in the end sounded like so much soap boxing. We do we need to discount the simple explanation of cultural traditions being innocently adopted by the church? The celebration of Christmas and Easter don't have to have a dark underbelly. Every culture "culturizes" their belief system. The real question is not, are your traditions pagan, but are you reaching Christ in your oikos? Perhaps those that encouraged the "pagan" traditions in the early church did so to make Christianity more accessible. A modern example would be the introduction of Rock and Roll into Christian music and worship. There are those the find this music deplorable, there are others that are drawn to God by it. So is it pagan or holy? We'll never divorce the church from cultural influence. So, as Paul said, "If Christ is being preached," who cares?
Enough about simple traditions. Now on to the quantum leap of the application of "pagan" ism to morality. For context, I'll make my comments relative the the New Testament writers. I don't believe they were tainted by Rome as was the Catholic church in later years. When you consider that Rome martyred many of them, its safe to say they had differing moral compasses.
You stated that "morality as we know an practice is not Biblical in origin." You go on to argue that the morality we practice in the church is "pagan," more specifically tied to fertility gods and that morality was and is based on fear of judgement from the fertility gods.
Since we know these gods to be false and powerless, we can assume that their fear was only a result of belief in the power of that idol. I would submit that the belief system had an origin other than the idol itself. Idols are created by men to provide an object to which they can attach their beliefs. Beliefs are not created by the idol. That said, I would suggest reading Romans Ch 1 and 2. Paul hit the moral issues head on. He does talk a lot about morality and I'm pretty sure he wasn't afraid of the fertility god. He defended his arguments by saying (ch. 2:14) that when those that don't know the law, practice the law ... show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts. My point is that morality is a law of conscience, placed their by God in the hearts of all men. Idolators, out of their ignorance attached those convictions to the "gods."
In addition, all moral codes do not emanate from the Middle East. There are many laws and social codes among jungle tribes established by people that have never heard of Hammurabi, the Ten Commandments, the Bhagavad Gita, Confuscious, or any other historical prophet/lawgiver. These cultures uphold some of the moral codes that you say are "rooted in pagan morality."
Even a child knows what is morally right and wrong within their world, largely reflected in the "Golden Rule." The things that I think are wrong are the things I don't want people to do to me. The many "abuses" (alcohol, drugs, sex) are all things that I can do to myself that have the same undesirable effect. Although the application and results may be different, these dynamics work in any culture.
I don't believe the history of moral code or conscience cannot be defined by documents and culture. Traditions, yes, but not morality.
Although I don't agree with some of your observations, you definitely get me thinking.
Walt - two for two! Be careful - you might just start a trend here.
Ok, so starting from the beginning here. There's no doubt that anyone invested in the status quo of the way the world operates would be very wary of anyone suggesting that it was all, very possibly, based on a "foundation of sand" - just ask Jesus! All kidding aside, of course, the concept I'm proposing is a very hard one to feel comfortable with, even for me. The very first reaction I had was to shut down and try to ignore it for a couple of months, but it sort of (as these things do for most people) kept nagging at me until I started to work it out.
When I read passages like Romans 1 and 2 it's hard to miss that Paul is holding up a very stern warning about losing one's attachment to the cultural ethos that supported the status quo. There's no doubt about that. What I find primarily interesting is the lack of New Testament instruction (from Christ to any of the apostlic letters) that directly refer to morality. The ancient Greek word that loosely translates to "moral" in modern English (arete) only appears four times in the New Testament - and three of those times the word is not referencing morality! Only in one passage (2 Peter 1:5) does the NASB translation convert "arete" to "moral excellence" which, to me, seems an error even then because the lexicon definition of "arete" is "a virtuous course of thought, feeling and action". Not exactly a blazing endorsement for morality as we understand it today - especially not in reference to the "hot button issues" our culture incessantly attaches to "morality".
I'm willing to concede that the ethos we (perhaps mistakenly) identify as "morality" is rooted in some universally shared construct of the human soul. It's certainly possible and maybe even probable. But when I examine cultural history of pagan societies (and, by pagan, I simply mean societies that are pre-Christian in their cosmology), I see an unmistakably superstitious and incongruous view of the divine that many "Christian moralists" share. I mentioned three individuals not to single them out or to try to undermine whatever "good" those men may have done with their lives but because they have become both a cultural lightning rod on the issues as well as prime examples of my criticism.
My only intention of bringing the pagan conversions of Christianized holidays into the mix was not to suggest that we (knee-jerk) abandon Christmas and Easter. Far from it! My only point in mentioning them was to: 1. Point out that the Christians of the early church placed very little (if any) celebratory importance on the creation of "holidays" but rather celebrated - what they called - the Glorious Appearing (the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ as a whole and inseparable narrative) every single day as a course of their devotion to Christ and, 2. The infiltration of pagan worldviews has infiltrated Christianity at every conceivable level - from the cosmically trivial to the cosmically foundational. This infiltration, like a pathological contamination, has spread unfettered throughout the body of Christendom for nearly 1700 years!
I see that you make the case, understandably and very practically, that the rejection of cultural influence in the expression of modern Christian worship is so completely void of sense that it seems to defy reason. This, too, is not anything new. It's an argument that goes back about 2000 years (and maybe more if you want to talk about the prophets' radical admonitions of cross-cultural-contamination in the Old Testament).
It is a noble and right idea to say that Christianity must be made accessible to the masses and I'm certain you're right when you suggest that this was on the minds of the Christians that allowed cultural assimilation. I'm not trying to make a judgment call about whether or not I think the "host culture" of any society is or is not congruent with being a disciple of Jesus. I won't yet overwhelm myself with the monumental task of trying to tell others how they should experience the divine in their lives.
I will only, very simply, remind anyone willing to listen that the Christians of early apostlic church flat out refused to assimilate into the host culture (Roman or otherwise) that surrounded them and were intensely ridiculed, slandered, and abused for it (as evidenced by the pagan writings of Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Emperor Trajan, and Lucius of Samosata). In a similar way that the Jewish people refused to assimilate into the host cultures that they migrated to after the Great Diaspora, the earliest Christians found it necessary to remove themselves completely from the host cultures that surrounded them and create "island communities" in which only the ethos of Christ and discipleship would be espoused and shared.
What can be inferred from history (ecclesiastical history in particular) is that the Christians, as a very human group, lost many leaders to the Roman persecutions and their proper guidance and instruction was lost over the first three centuries. When Constantine promised peace with the Christians of the fourth century in return for support - that beleaguered and beat down church enthusiastically agreed. I have nothing but sympathy for the situation that created that kind of acquiescence to Roman authority - but I do not agree with it. As Greg Boyd would put it, they unwittingly traded what was holy about their movement for something that was "good". Peace and security to worship as you are convicted to is a good thing, there are no doubts there and it is a freedom I appreciate as an American. But they allowed a fear of dying and watching their families die under the continued tyranny of Roman rule persuade them to give up on an orthodoxy that required cultural separation. After 300 years of torture, rape, imprisonment and murder simply for being "different" or "peculiar people" the fourth century church succumbed to all three temptations that Jesus - by His example in the Temptation narrative - instructed us to reject: provision, security, and power - in a very Faustian exchange for loyalty to the "kingdoms of the world".
As far as the "moral code" being un-Biblical - I simply encourage you or anyone to read Matthew 5 and tell me if that seems like Jesus teaching our modern "morality" or a counter-revolutionary new ethos that is, in essence and design, thoroughly backwards from the current and historical status quo. No - in my opinion - morality is not Christian because it existed before Christ and can only see a Jesus in the New Testament that shames the moral insiders, passionately pursues the moral outsiders, and is conspicuously opposed to the adoption of morality as a conforming system. Just look at how he spoke to the Pharisees - the quintessential moral conservatives and protectors of the status quo if ever there was one!
"Why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?" - Jesus, Matthew 15:3
"Custom without truth is error grown old." - Tertullian (155-222 AD)
"Christianity did not destroy paganism - it adopted it." - Will Durant (1885 - 1981)
"Beware lest any man should spoil you through the philosophies and vain deceits after the traditions of men, after the fundamental elements of the world..." Paul of Tarsus, Colossians 2:8
"Do not be conformed after the pattern [system] of this world, but become transformed by the renewal of your mind that you may show all what the will of God is..." Paul of Tarsus, Romans 12:2
Thanks JillieFL1 for stopping by! I'll take a look at it.
"I will only, very simply, remind anyone willing to listen that the Christians of early apostolic church flat out refused to assimilate into the host culture (Roman or otherwise) that surrounded them and were intensely ridiculed, slandered, and abused for it (as evidenced by the pagan writings of Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Emperor Trajan, and Lucius of Samosata). In a similar way that the Jewish people refused to assimilate into the host cultures that they migrated to after the Great Diaspora, the earliest Christians found it necessary to remove themselves completely from the host cultures that surrounded them and create "island communities" in which only the ethos of Christ and discipleship would be espoused and shared."
That is a completely erroneous statement about the history of the early apostolic church, and if true would have been the exactly the opposite of what God intended the church to be and how it should function. Now, it is true of SOME the Jews after the dispersion, but definitely not all of them. The question would should be talking about is not how to remove ourselves from the culture and create "island communities" but engage the culture right where they are at, and show them the light of Christ and the TRUTH of the Cross.
Terry - while you know I respect your "right" to infer something different from the facts, I think your method has some issues.
I read your comment very carefully and I feel like this is what you're saying: "I have an idea about how things should be, that idea is the right idea, so the evidence available to the contrary is irrelevant because I already know the truth of the matter." Maybe that's not what you were saying, but that's what I was able to read from it.
But to say that the early Christian church did not abstain from cultural assimilation is troublesome because there is so much evidence (both by Biblical, Christian, and non-Christian writings on the subject).
I re-read what I wrote last night and saw (thanks to Coryn) that some of what I meant was unclear. Let me provide some examples of what I mean by cultural assimilation.
Christians were discouraged by their pastors and teachers from joining the Roman military. This was for a two-fold reason: 1. The job required, quite often, that you had to kill others. This was strongly against the Christian ethic provided by Jesus and the apostles and that information is given to us by Biblical, Christian, and non-Christian writers. 2. By joining in the Roman army, a Christian was collaborating with a system Jesus, Peter, and Paul did not agree with - one that bases its authority on domination and violence for legitimacy. Boyd describes this as the "kingdom of the world" vs. "kingdom of God".
Christians were discouraged from being actors since there was a cross-cultural stigma surrounding the job of acting all the way up until the mid-late 1800's. Actors were seen as deceptive and untrustworthy by many people (and there was a stigma of homosexuality). This information is given to us by Christian writers of the second century (especially the letters of the Bishop of Carthage).
Christians did not worship Christ in houses of worship like the pagans did. It was this reason, alone, that caused nearly all of the pagan Romans to despise Christians. Romans didn't much care if Christians wanted to dedicate themselves to a new god (they rather liked the idea of new gods - but only if they were pre-approved by the current Roman priesthood and government), but that god had to be worshiped in public temples or shrines, not in private homes on private lands. This information is provided by Biblical (Acts), Christian, and non-Christian (especially Pliny and Tacitus) writers.
Christians did not access the Roman court system or "work" the Roman legal system. They didn't bring anyone to the courts in lawsuits, and didn't really defend themselves in criminal cases. Whenever accused of crimes against the empire they simply allowed themselves to be led to their executions: sometimes singing and dancing, sometimes quiet and somber. This, according to pagan Roman writers, was infuriating and puzzling and made many Romans think the Christians were taking drugs or just plain crazy.
They didn't seek public office, and many public officials that joined the Christian movement ended up resigning because they disagreed with that system of domination and violence the government represented and preferred the new "kingdom of God".
Christians had very lax (and almost no) hierarchical structure. In a given church there were elders and a pastor, but those elders and pastors didn't appear much like the hierarchy that we see today. They were more like "servants-in-chief" of a church than captains of the proverbial ship. There were the apostles, of course, but even with them we see a striking degree of humility. Paul wouldn't preach for money and slept on the sides of the road. Peter and John didn't have any money with them at the gate. Paul said he refused to baptize many people himself so that no one would get any ideas that he was trying to be the head of the church. They were influential and critical teachers and guides, but a far cry from the structured hierarchy of the Roman religious and governmental systems. The Christian church of the apostolic era was far more horizontal than vertical (as Paul's description of the "body of Christ" suggests).
Christians did not enjoy the luxuries and mass accumulation of wealth and property that the Roman culture found as a cornerstone. As Paul explains in Acts - Christians were *not* instructed, coerced, or discouraged against the ownership of private property, but they were "all of one accord [mindset and agreement]" that it was far better to share all of their resources in common than to continue to hoard private wealth and property as the Romans (and other people in the empire and throughout the world) did.
The early Christian church (before 325 AD) **did not** build churches for worship like the pagans built shrines and temples. As I said before, they worshiped in their homes, privately. They did congregate and socialize (with non-believers) in public, high-profile places like the Temple Complex in Jerusalem, Mars Hill in Athens and Tyrannus Hall in Ephesus, and marketplaces everywhere... but their church meetings were held in their homes. These homes were not, however, like the compounds of Waco or even, really, like the Amish communities of Pennsylvania. These houses that the Christians had were (thanks to modern archaeological evidence) many times bought in the hearts of the cities and connected together with walls blown out so that they could share the space together and use them for meeting places together. They were not removed from their environment, but they were removed from the culture that pervaded the environment. As illustrated by many accounts in the New Testament, early Christians spent quite a deal of time in public places engaging people in public... yet without becoming "contaminated" by their cultural systems and "patterns": like sheep in the midst of wolves or like mentally shrewd serpents with the pure hearts of doves.
These are just a few of the ways that the Christians abstained from cultural assimilation in the early centuries. There are many, many, more. But their behavior was encouraged by the teachings of Jesus, Peter, Paul, John, and James all over (what would later become the New Testament). But, perhaps, one of the most important admonitions is attributed to the book of Revelation and (debatable) the apostle John.
In chapter 17 John explains that he had a vision of a luxuriously dressed woman, riding on the back of the seven-headed-ten-horned beast (earlier described in chapter 13). In this vision the woman was "drinking the blood of the saints and getting drunk doing it" as well as "fornicating with the kings of the earth". Without getting into too much eschatological detail: when a woman shows up in apocryphal texts it is intended to be the body of God's beloved. In the Old Testament this woman was Israel (Song of Songs and Genesis) and in the New Testament this woman is the "new Israel", the church.
We see later in chapter 17 that the beast is a government (and by comparing it to chapter 13, the government covers all of the known world), is powerful, and is rich (signified by the red and purple, very expensive colorings in the ancient world... colors early Christians were forbidden to wear because it would signal allegiance to Rome [see Hyppolitus] and it was a waste of money to buy luxurious dyes).
What the writer of Revelation was trying to convey was that he envisioned a day when the church of Jesus would become a whore, selling herself to the dominant (Roman) government and culture in exchange for a luxurious, prestigious and comfortable existence. By "fornicating with the kings of the earth", she would - in effect - be spilling, drinking, and getting drunk from "the blood of the saints [Christians that placed loyalty to Jesus and discipleship as uncompromisable]".
Again - I'm not making any instruction on what that means for Christians today, how they should worship God, or how they should understand these writings and teachings. All I am saying is that there is information, easily obtained thanks to modern technology and scholarship, that helps us understand two things: 1. How the early church interacted with the world, and 2. How the modern manifestations of Christianity are completely overrun with pagan principles, a pagan understanding of the divine, pagan social conformity, and pagan cultural morality.
Jeremy -
Do you think that Jesus is the ONLY path to God?
Jeremy
I don't want to sandbag the blog so I'll keep my comments brief.
1. In my opinion, the church's rejection of current culture was their commitment to deal with the carnal nature many of those cultural practices encouraged. I don't believe their reasons were philosophical.
2. Your comment to Terry about "the modern manifestations of Christianity are completely overrun with "paganism" might be pressing your point at the risk of alienating your readers. Two thoughts. One, you're implying that nothing if the modern church is uniquely the result of the teaching of Christ himself. I'm not arguing that these isn't significant pagan influence. But if the church were as pagan as you say every church would have ichabod emblazoned over the doorway and the presence of God's spirit would never abide, and I know from experience that that is not the case. Two, it would appear that your comments are limited by your personal observation. Church's in China look very different from church's in America.
Lastly a couple of alternate theological views. The woman in Rev. is considered by some to the apostate church, not THE church, that is the "called out ones" that are truly following Christ. You said, "What the writer of Revelation was trying to convey was that he envisioned a day when the church of Jesus would become a whore." I have to object the Church of Jesus will never become a whore." While many will be deceived and become adulterous, God will preserve a remnant that do not.
I think an edifying continuation of this topic would be thoughts on what is or what can be right about the Christ's ekklesia and what we can do to promote the cause of Christ to fulfill the great commission. I'm certain that would please the One who is the focal point of our discussion.
Walt - Your points are well said, well taken, and (to me) correct. Let me respond to all of them in kind:
1. The early church didn't quite have the luxury of hindsight when it came to their "reasoning" or "rationalizing" for the motivation of (limited or robust) cultural rejection. It probably had little to do with any kind of deep philosophical contemplation and more to do with, to a degree, an ingrained ethic that was inherent to the teachings they received about carnal rejection.
2. My vocabulary and zealousness to prove a point did overshadow and overstep the main point I should have been trying to make. C.S. Lewis warned his students and readers against overstatements ("don't say 'infinite' if all you mean is 'very'") and I, very much, failed to heed that wise council in some of the points I wanted to make - a critical mistake I hope to correct (in sub-points):
A. I said to Terry that "many" Christians converts in the Roman government left their positions because they conflicted with the ethic they adopted as disciples of Jesus. I, personally, believe the case was "many", but a more provable and objective thing to have said was "at least some". There may not have been "many", but there were enough to get the attention of the Roman writers and historians that cursed the Christians because of it. So allow me to make that correction.
B. The point about the church's adulterous affair with the kings of the world is also well taken. What I said and what I meant to say became two different things. What I said was suggestive of the entire church which, for the reasons you stated so well, cannot be true and I agree that it is the "apostate church" that Revelation 17 talks about.
C. Bill's point that he felt I was saying the Romans adopted Christianity for fear of the Christian God is well taken also. As I mentioned in my response to him, it was the **people** (Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, Scythians, etc.) - after their introduction to the Christian tradition that reacted fearfully to the Christian God - while many of the government appointed authorities continued on as usual.
D. By saying the church is "completely overrun" I was overstating (at the cost of the truth) the reality of our current situation. It may be significantly contaminated or significantly influenced, but it is not completely overrun.
E. I have no problem imagining how my writings on the topic of the church look to be vented frustrations to at least some of the people that are reading them. There are some people that are naturally optimistic and others that are naturally pessimistic. I have a tendency (much to my own disdain) to be more of the latter. Optimists see excellence and look for ways to increase it. I, personally, see problems and think about solutions. That approach does have a tendency to off-end people that have a lot invested in the subject I'm critiquing. That is a fault I have to own and continue, as I have albeit unsuccessfully, to try to fix.
Without sounding cliche (because I really hate cliches), no one wants a doctor that only gives a good report and downplays the bad news that could be potentially harmful in the long run. Let me be clear: I'm no doctor for the church! If anything I'm a freshman in a pre-med degree! At best, an apprentice. There are some good reports to give the Christian church after a thorough examination. But it would be unhelpful in the long term to be so concerned with edification that critical examination and reproof was set by the wayside or downplayed. The church has some serious, fundamental, foundational problems that it has to address - and its credibility to the "unchurched" world is pretty high on the list.
I don't mean to sound like I'm coaching from the bleachers or criticizing from the bench. There are people that are out there trying to help fix those problems in a very active and involved way. At times I have been deep in the middle of that effort. At times, such as this, I've had to take a break and get my bearings together, regain perspective, and get fresh ideas.
The last thing I want someone to suggest about me is that I am being hypocritical in terms of the "Christian experience". There is not a single thing I've talked about in any of my blog posts that I don't personally live by and - to the extent possible - "do" in my own life. To the extent **not** possible, I don't make criticisms.
F. Insofar as any implication was taken that there is nothing uniquely "Christian" about the modern church, I renounce. Christianity - even the parts of it that conform so heavily to ideology - is still the most unique ideology I have studied. Whether in its pure and authentic form or as a culturally ideological framework, it is a paradigm that has no direct comparison. The "idea" Christianity offers is unique among all others. To suggest otherwise is to diminish both the idea of Christianity and the idea it is being compared to.
Hopefully these clarifications were helpful to anyone with question marks over their heads. If not - please continue to comment, challenge me (it's helpful to me, I assure you), and continue the dialogue.
To "Anonymous" - you asked a very black and white question: "Do you believe that Jesus is the ONLY path to God."
To me, there is no easy answer here. As someone told me earlier tonight: "That kind of a question is a lit fuse on a stick of dynamite. No matter how you answer it, it doesn't work out very well."
So please let me be difficult and I hope you'll indulge me. C.S. Lewis once said (on the topic of Jesus' divinity):
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic ‑ on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg ‑ or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
Lewis is making one, very critical, assumption: that the Biblical accounts of Jesus claiming to be the Son of God were reliable ones. That **has** to be said. If you don't have any reason to believe that the New Testament writings (as we've come to inherit them) are reliable, then Lewis' syllogism is pointless. If the New Testament is reliable then Lewis has brilliantly painted the agnostic or the atheist that admires Jesus into an inescapable corner.
So the question - as it all comes down to - is whether or not the New Testament (the synoptic Gospel narratives in particular) is actually reliable. This subject has been the topic of debate ever since there were factions strong enough to challenge church doctrine and get away with it (at least since Islam's rise in the mid-seventh century).
To a Christian that has already made up his/her mind about the reliability of the New Testament (regardless of the evidence for or against) actually asking the question is potentially blasphemous and/or sacrilegious. This kind of a dogmatic, knee-jerk response is ultimately unhelpful to someone that has a genuine investment in digging to the bottom of every "mystery" or "controversy".
To me - the question is not only entertain-able, but critical! We should make no assumptions or preconceptions if we're going to find the very center of truth. We have to be prepared to lose our sensibilities in order to see the fullness of reality. As I've said so many times before: if Jesus is, in fact, the reality I'm talking about - then losing those preconceptions and sensibilities only allows us to see the fullness of Jesus. And I, for the life of me, can't imagine how that could be a bad thing for a Christian!
If Jesus is not the ultimate, objective, universal, factually substantiated reality that Christians take him to be - then (pardon me for asking)... you're better off knowing that sooner rather than later, aren't you? I digress!
Back to the question at hand: do I think the New Testament is reliable? Thanks to modern anthropological studies, archaeology, historical inquiry, and other literary and - yes - scientific corroborations, I believe (but cannot prove) that the New Testament is generally reliable. So do I think Jesus claimed to be the Son of God? Well - I don't think the Jews and Romans wanted to kill him because he was Mr. Rogers. The accounts and narratives in the New Testament (so well explained and discussed by Dr. Greg Boyd and Paul Rhodes Eddy in two books: "Lord or Legend" and "The Jesus Legend") of Jesus' claims have nearly every text-book characteristic of historical reliability a historian could ask for. It meets far more criteria for historical reliability than so many other works from the ancient world that go, relatively, unquestioned by the academic elite.
But your question does not ask about Jesus' divinity. It should be obvious to anyone reading my blog that my worldview is heavily informed by the teachings of Jesus. You asked if Jesus was the "ONLY path to God". It is here that I start to draw some distinctions.
1. I am making an assumption when I say that it seems to be you're referring to Jesus' claim in John 14:6 when he said: "I am the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to the Father but by me." I am going to make a statement that some people will be uncomfortable with - so take it as best you can.
There are, to me, two ways to read this verse. One is intrinsically exclusive - depicting Jesus as replacing the exclusivity of the law for exclusivity of his teachings and divinity. The other is a more inclusive rendering of Jesus' (which would be, to me, more in keeping with his overall message, ministry, and character) that replaces the exclusivity of "heaven for the morally upright and pure" with the inclusiveness of the Kingdom of God, made accessible by his (previously mentioned) "Glorious Appearing".
Your question frames the discussion in the context of the traditionally exclusive framework. I'm not invested in that framework and don't particularly buy into it. A long held motto of mine in regards to Jesus and the overarching (and inherently problematic) conversation about "salvation" is that: God didn't go through all the trouble of Jesus just to make things more exclusive and heaven harder to touch. Call me a heretic if you want to - but the "ethos" of the New Testament seems to scream out that God will stop at nothing to get his "people" home... even if that includes dying for them.
Let me be clear: I'm not an expert (yet) in ancient Greek or Aramaic. But when I read a passage like John 14:6, I see Jesus with open hands saying: "See? The path is available. The truth is available. The life is available. God is now accessible because of Immanuel (God being among us)." Those three things were 'available', of course, because HE was/is available from the time of his birth.
So when you say "ONLY", what I feel like you're implying (or even expressing) is that there is one strict dogmatic view, with only one acceptable confession, that will get you into heaven when you die. But I caution you against that kind of framing - because the New Testament doesn't read like that when you take into the account of Jesus' **character** as an overarching context for his teaching.
That may be my assumption, but I think - unless someone can help me see otherwise - that it is sufficiently substantiated by textual evidence.
Again, this was much longer than a "yes" or "no" answer, but I can't imagine having to give an account for myself without a range of nuance!
"Let me be clear: I'm not an expert (yet) in ancient Greek or Aramaic. But when I read a passage like John 14:6, I see Jesus with open hands saying: "See? The path is available. The truth is available. The life is available. God is now accessible because of Immanuel (God being among us)." Those three things were 'available', of course, because HE was/is available from the time of his birth."
You are twisting the scriptures to fit the theology that YOU want to have. If Jesus meant this verse as more of a welcome than a restriction, then he would have said "anyone can come to the father by me" but he said "NO ONE gets to the Father, but my Me".
You can call this a traditional, pagan, ideology, ism. . .but men long before us, who dedicated every second of every day of their lives to studying the scriptures take this verse as more of a restriction. These are incredibly intelligent men who fought the good fight until the end.
The Bible has impacted and transformed lives for centuries, so I read it and pray that the Holy Spirit would give me eyes to see them. Christ is the ONLY way to God.
Don't shoot the messenger, JESUS said it!
To "Anonymous" - It's obvious that you're very zealous in this regard. You are, by all means, at your own liberty to see the New Testament in whatever context and light you want to. If the more traditional framework suits you best, good on you... I really mean that.
In regards to the passage of John 14:6 directly - I told you that I saw two distinct lights in which one could view the verse: exclusive and inclusive. I have no personal predilections towards the classical view of theology. As I've said in the previous post - the context of the conversation Jesus is having with Thomas in John 14, as well as the entire "theme" of John's gospel, in conjunction with the overarching theme of all of the Gospels to see what Jesus was saying as inclusive. If that makes me someone that is "twisting scripture to fit" my own theology, then I suppose I'll have to live with that. But I'm not alone in this conviction.
Dallas Willard once said in an online transcript on his website (http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=14) on the topic of Romans 2:6-10:
"What Paul is clearly saying is that if anyone is worthy of being saved, they will be saved. At that point many Christians get very anxious, saying that absolutely no one is worthy of being saved. The implication of that is that a person can be almost totally good, but miss the message about Jesus, and be sent to hell. What kind of a God would do that? I am not going to stand in the way of anyone whom God wants to save. I am not going to say 'he can't save them.' I am happy for God to save anyone he wants in any way he can. It is possible for someone who does not know Jesus to be saved. But anyone who is going to be saved is going to be saved by Jesus: 'There is no other name given under heaven by which men can be saved.'"
You can take that with whatever grain of salt you're comfortable with, but I find that claim very credible in reference to the entirety of the New Testament theme.
Anonymous, whether Jesus said anyone or NO ONE, doesn't really matter, because, of all those who come to him, no one will get to God but through Him. This verse doesn't narrow the field of the people who will be "saved," but seriously narrows the selection of whom will do the saving.
Terry - I truly couldn't have said it better myself. And, unlike me, you were able to drive the point home in less than three pages! :o)
So I meant to post this a while ago, but it's taken me a couple of weeks to get the nerve. :)
I see your logic in the argument you are making concerning the influence of ancient paganism on our modern Christian traditions. Much of this is documented and most Christians are aware of the pagan Christmas and Easter customs we still practice today. Oddly enough, we still cherish them as if Jesus himself commanded we put a Christmas tree in our living room and sing Away in a Manger to candle light while sipping hot chocolate.
But I have to say the leap from Christmas and Easter to the fertility gods is less about documented fact and more about a historians perspective. Anyone who has watched Simcha Jacobovici (the Naked Archeologist on the History International Channel) as much as I have knows that when historians go digging for evidence to support a theory they find tons of little clues - in the ground, in interviews, or in ancient documents. These little clues are put together in many ways until the most logical collection of observations can be extracted. This is the way its done. Its the way history is written.
In this post you are thinking less like a scientist looking for proof and more like a historian looking for the most logical conclusion. Not that I blame you - it does make sense. :)
Whoever is wisest among you please give me your opinion of "Open Letter to the Noah/Lot Gang" and "Dangerous Radicals of the Religious Right." You will be able to find them on engines like Google, Search, Clusty etc. Thanks in advance. Douglas
To "Anonymous" (Douglas?):
I tried to find the articles that you mentioned but it proved more difficult than you suggested it would be. As a help to me would you mind putting the web address of the site you would like me/us to comment on so I could make certain we're talking about the same page?
What I **was** able to find was very disturbing. The "Noah/Lot letter" I found shared the same page as a poster of incredible anti-Semitic writings as well as "hate speech" (though I'm cautious about using that moniker) towards homosexuals, Muslims, and African-Americans.
I **sincerely hope** that you do not represent the kind of dialogue I found on this page (http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/letters/120103letters.htm). If, however, you do I would ask that you refrain from bringing that kind of divisive rhetoric to my blog. I will answer any questions you have, respond to any comments and will - to the best of my ability - refrain from **ANY** kind of comment moderation, but I cannot be party to any sort of hate-mongering.
I would like to respond to your questions but I am uncertain what they are. Are you asking about my/our thoughts on the so-called "gay agenda" in America and the so-called "Christian-ness" of America? I would be willing to make comments on that but I would like to address specific questions from you.
To Coryn - hey babe. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me. I will keep your criticisms in mind from now on.
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