I am someone who was raised in one denomination-Southern Baptist and as an adult joined the Episcopal Church.
I consider both protestant churches. In fact the major difference that led me to my present church is their belief that they don't hold exclusively, the keys to "the Kingdom".
"Let low-country intruder approach a cove
And eyes as gray as icicle fangs measure stranger
For size, honesty, and intent." John Foster West
Arianism wasn't a heresy until Nicaea outlawed it; there was at that point no such thing as Christian orthodoxy, and hence no way to diverge from it.
In other words, Nicaea was an atempt to form, not reform the church.
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')
s1m0n wrote:I can't find much scriptural support for either the trinity or the divinity of Christ. If I go shopping among the various early christian beliefs, Arianism falls closer to what I believe.
I see it as a period of transition. So many things had to be changed and adopted for Paul to make the religion attractive to the Gentiles. First the rules were modified by Paul, with approval by the James gang (the original disciples) regarding circumcision and diet. Then, the holy day observances were relaxed by Paul...partly because it became illegal in the entire Roman empire to 1) study the Torah; 2)practice circumcision; 3) observe the Jewish Sabbath...and partly because Mithraism already had a trinity and another day of worship.
Mithraists were Trinitarian, kept Sunday as their day of worship, and their chief festivals were what we know of as Christmas and Easter. Long before the advent of Jesus, Mithra was said to have been born of a virgin mother in a cave, at the time of Christmas, and died on a cross at Easter. Baptism was practised, and the sign of the cross was made on the foreheads of all newly-baptised converts. Mithra was considered to be the saviour of the world, conferring on his followers an eternal life in Heaven, and, similar to the story of Jesus, he died to save all others, provided that they were his followers.
For three centuries both religions ran parallel, Mithraism first becoming known to the Romans in 70 BC, Christianity following a century later, and it wasn’t until AD 377 that Christianity became sufficiently strong to
suppress its former rival, although Mithraism was to remain a formidable opponent for some time after that, only slowly being forsaken by the people. It was only the absorption of many Mithraist ideas into Christianity which finally saw its downfall.
The big turning point was brought about by the Congress of Nicaea in AD 325. Constantine, a great supporter of the Christian religion, although not converting to it until the time of his decease, gathered together 2,000 leading figures in the world of theology, the idea being to bring about the advent of Christianity as the official state religion of Rome. It was out of this assembly that Jesus was formally declared to be the Son of God
Christianity or Mithraism: It is surprising that Christianity was to become the international religion, when one considers that the already well-established religion of Mithraism was a natural challenger for that title. Up until the time of the Emperor Constantine, it was the latter religion which was more popular within the framework of the Roman Empire, and Christianity was regarded as being only one sect amongst numerous other sects. It was only when Constantine decreed that Christianity was to be the state religion, that Mithraism, together with a host of other religions and sects, was put into the melting pot, and ideas of that religion, most suited for the Christian purpose, were absorbed into the new state-approved religion. -Stanford Edu Religion and lots more Mithra/Christian connections
It should be noted that the above quote is written in a jargon clearly intended to make Mithraism sound like a proto-Christianity. For balance let's also cite an article making the same claims of the Heraclean Mysteries. Actually, weren't Xena and Gabrielle crucified too? (sorry... just kidding about Xena and Gabrielle)
Walden wrote:It should be noted that the above quote is written in a jargon clearly intended to make Mithraism sound like a proto-Christianity. For balance let's also cite an article making the same claims of the Heraclean Mysteries. Actually, weren't Xena and Gabrielle crucified too? (sorry... just kidding about Xena and Gabrielle)
More-or-less calling Christianity a fraudulent faith that just happened to steal all of Mithraism's ideas and tenets has been a rather popular thing to do in recent years, but in reality I don't think the situation is all that clear. Mithraism has been extinct for almost 1800 years and for one thing, it's more difficult to categorically know some of the things proponents of Mithraism/Christianity connection claim to know. Furthermore, many faiths have similarities and they often get more and more noticable as you go back in history, but the differences are often much more apparent when one studies the faiths more academically. Even where we do find apparent similarities between two faiths, it does not necessarily mean they are or ever were the same thing.
The http://www.religioustolerance.org website used to have a really informative (and non-biased, as far as I could tell) look into the supposed connections to Christianity and Mithraism, but now I can't find it. I don't know if the page is still there or not.
It's very hard to find any idea in Christianity which is original; I suspect the same is true of just about any religion you could name.
While one view on that would be that each new religion took elements of the old religions that came before--and I think that is pretty much how it happened--there is another facet: I think these similarities also exist because religions are human institutions, and humans respond to pretty much the same archetypical ideals and imagery, and always have.
Religion speaks to us on a very deep level, the level of both our most moving dreams and also our darkest nightmares. We are all human, and we all respond in similar ways.
Nature was cruel to us in some ways. Her mandate of surivival is not relaxed in us, yet we have the intelligence to know that sometimes survival isn't possible. I think that uneasy conflict is the true source of religion.
peeplj wrote:Nature was cruel to us in some ways. Her mandate of surivival is not relaxed in us, yet we have the intelligence to know that sometimes survival isn't possible. I think that uneasy conflict is the true source of religion.
It's often said that humans are the only creatures who are aware of their own eventual deaths, but I wonder if that is really true. When you study a heard of elephants (some of the most intelligent creatures ever to have lived) and see and hear them mourning their dead relatives, you have to wonder if they don't know that they, too, will eventually die. If they know this much, can elephants have faith? The same thing goes for other animals such as chimps, bonobos, and dolphins or even pigs and dogs to some extent.
Parrots are another creature which seems highly intelligent. The Carolina parakeet (which we have discussed in previous threads) may have moved closer to its species' ultimate doom by this mourning of the dead. We read in Audubon, "the Parakeets are destroyed in great numbers, for whilst busily engaged in plucking off the fruits or tearing the grain from the stacks, the husbandman approaches them with perfect ease, and commits great slaughter among them. All the survivors rise, shriek, fly round about for a few minutes, and again alight on the very place of most imminent danger. The gun is kept at work; eight or ten, or even twenty, are killed at every discharge. The living birds, as if conscious of the death of their companions, sweep over their bodies, screaming as loud as ever, but still return to the stack to be shot at, until so few remain alive, that the farmer does not consider it worth his while to spend more of his ammunition."
Peggy wrote:It's also extremely old. The edition on the internet is from 1911. The new one will be "slanted," as well, but won't sound quite as archaic.
Even the newer one is from the 1960's, and based on the time period won't be nearly as "slanted" as you think.
Someday, everything is gonna be diff'rent
When I paint my masterpiece.
I have been told by friends who have gone through seminary that this, the discovery of the Bible that isn't, is the biggest stumbling blosk, and the greatest source of drop-outs, in the whole course. After reading the Nag Hamaddi and the Book of Q, it really gets disconcerting as to whether Jesus ever said or did anything attributed to him. Isn't it time these silly superstitions were laid to rest and get on with things?
djm
I'd rather be atop the foothills than beneath them.
djm wrote:After reading the Nag Hamaddi and the Book of Q, it really gets disconcerting as to whether Jesus ever said or did anything attributed to him.
Not that the Book of Q has ever been found. There have been "reconstructions," based on conjecture, but it's as yet just a working theory.
