Faith - IV
7 April 2008 - 3 ניסן 5768 by Huw
Just to sum it all up: (if you don’t want to read the three essays below) faith has nothing to do with a checklist of items in which one believes as a child believes in Santa Claus. We know someone’s faith not by what they say… but by what they do. If they are not as loving as Christ: the creed is meaningless. And if they are striving to be that way (for none of us succeed) then they have 100% Christian Faith, no matter what they name themselves.
If you think that reciting the creed proofs your congregation against heresy… or against non-Christians taking the sacraments… or if you think God’s going to strike someone down for it… well…
well. . . what?
Read the three, then. LOL. I’d say it was simple superstition: a taboo-based faith that has more resemblance to the mystery religions of Greece and Rome than of the simple trust-in-God that Jesus taught.
“the mystery religions of Greece and Rome”
Well, of course, there are those scholars (such as Dom Odo Casel) who thought that some of early Christian Sacramental practice may have been based on the rites of some of these mystery religions.
I’ve always thought that Mithraism would have been fun to belong to. There’s a very interesting brief depiction of their initiation rite (bathing oneself in the blood of a bull) in the HBO series “Rome”.
Sorry, that’s not the topic of this post … :-)
Quite all right! I did a paper on Mithraism that was published in a Neopagan journal back in the late 80s and it was the topic of my… um… not sure what to compare it with.. the research project I did before I was made an Elder in the tradition I was practising. Anyway. Long time ago and far away… but one of my favourite topics!
Have you read Dr David Ulansey’s research on the topic? It’s very good and very different from other such writings.
Point of trivia: the Bull scene was for the Magna Mater… and involved a woman. Couldn’t have been Mithras :-)
“Point of trivia: the Bull scene was for the Magna Mater… and involved a woman. Couldn’t have been Mithras :-)”
I wondered about that, actually! I was skeptical that women were allowed into Mithraism. But the Magna Mater bull ceremony was pretty close to what was done in Mithraism, no?
Depends on who you ask. The Bull Slaying image seen in most Mithraic temples may be a rite as well as an icon: and some temples were located next to the local temple of the Magna Mater. But there are differing opinions about the rite itself.
Added:
And I don’t think there are any Mythraic temples that have Bull Slaying areas in them. Not sure.
Hmm, that’s an interesting link. I like the Christian statuary it offers!
Yes! They have One of My Favourites…