{"id":6966,"date":"2012-08-01T01:10:40","date_gmt":"2012-08-01T06:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=7175"},"modified":"2012-07-25T17:59:31","modified_gmt":"2012-07-25T22:59:31","slug":"pagan-theology-34","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2012\/08\/01\/pagan-theology-34\/","title":{"rendered":"Pagan Theology"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Christians and the Pagans<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Something that tends to distinguish me from my fellow Pagans is that I do not believe that “Christo-Pagans” are possible.\u00a0 That goes against the general openness of Paganism.\u00a0 And it flies in the face of our Pagan historical and cultural norms, which tell us to accept just about as many Gods and Goddesses as we can cram into a theology and still have room.\u00a0 Thus a theological bias against Christians in general and Christo-Pagans in particular tends to irritate the Christo-Pagans and embarrass the regular Pagans (it has no effect on the observant Christians, they think we’re all crazy). \u00a0\u00a0So now you are either irritated or embarrassed, and for that I apologize.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unfortunately now I have to tell you I’m halfway wrong.\u00a0 In considering this rather complicated problem I believe there is a place for those who follow Jesus to find a place within Paganism.\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t believe that makes any sense, but it is not a theological fallacy either.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Let me explain.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The biggest misunderstanding of my criticism of Christo-Pagans is the tendency to believe that I am saying that followers of Jesus cannot or should not be Pagans.\u00a0 That is not what I claim.\u00a0 Instead I claim that they cannot be Christians, nor can they identify with Jesus as the Christ who has fulfilled the Jewish prophecies [1].\u00a0 The idea of being both “Pagan” and “Christian,” or “Jewish” or “Muslim” for that matter, just does not make any sense.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Of course compatibility is all in how you define things.\u00a0 My definition of “Christian” is the one commonly used by those (Christians) who have large organizations devoted to the subject.\u00a0 Sure, you can define Christianity as something completely different, the art of kicking a ball around a field perhaps, but then we have a disagreement about semantics and not religion.\u00a0 The thing that is typically referred to with the denotation “Christianity” cannot be Pagan, not because Pagan’s won’t have it, but because Christians won’t have us.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The argument separating Paganism and standard Christianity can be made very quickly.\u00a0 We do not have an apocalyptic eschatology, we view time as cyclical not linear, we do not believe in salvation, sin, or that the Gods and Goddesses are all perfect.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Most importantly:\u00a0 Paganism by definition does not claim exclusivity for its Gods and Goddesses [2].\u00a0 Abrahamic religions do.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I could also argue that we should be careful about blurring the lines between Christianity and Paganism. \u00a0But that is a political, not theological, argument.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The problem with Christians as Pagans is that there is a fundamental, theological, clash between the two faiths.\u00a0 In fact the clash applies to any Abrahamic religion.\u00a0 These religions all share a unique and radically important concept:\u00a0 exclusivity.\u00a0 The Hebrews first hit on the concept early in their history.\u00a0 However their exclusivity was a tribal one, unless you were born as part of the chosen people, born into the tribe of God, you were not in the faith.\u00a0 While this was somewhat unusual at the time it was mostly harmless as the Jews were a relatively small tribe that lacked power.\u00a0 And their exclusivity meant that they would have a hard time growing anyway.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But in the 1st – 3rd centuries a new idea, Christianity, emerged out of Judaism.\u00a0 It said that, while anyone could join, it was the god that was exclusive.\u00a0 All other religions were invalidated by Christianity.\u00a0 This is the Pauline interpretation of Christ\u2019s teachings, one that eventually “won” the long (400 year) struggle between the other various Christ following sects of the time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So my objection has to do with a desire not to intermingle Pauline Christianity with Paganism rather than a desire to exclude Christo-Pagans.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Once you break free of the Pauline concept of Christianity you can begin to see how Jesus and his teachings could be included as an element in Paganism.\u00a0 An exclusive view towards Christo-Pagans is both narrow and divisive. A real Pagan (whatever that is) would ask “how do we include followers of Christ as Pagans?”\u00a0 Instead of seeking to exclude, perhaps we should seek to include.\u00a0 In other words, perhaps a Pagan theology could help define some elements of the Christian faith that are compatible with Paganism. \u00a0And I’m not talking about Santa and Christmas trees and candles at Imbolc, I mean real inclusion.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the most basic level we have to confront the issue of magic and witchcraft.\u00a0 Both modern high magic and witchcraft have been clearly influenced by Christianity.\u00a0 In fact I believe one would have been very hard pressed to find anything but a Christian witch or magician in Europe between the years 500 and 1800.\u00a0 Magical practices have clearly been claimed as part of the Pagan community, whether they are derived from Christian or other sources.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We must include the Christian Witch, and Magician, because their practices are so fundamental to ours.\u00a0 That sort of inclusion goes almost without saying.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Moving beyond magic we come to Judaism, of which Christianity is a part and a derivative faith.\u00a0 The Jewish religion grew out of the religion of the Hebrew tribe, which is believed to have been Pagan long before it went with just one god.\u00a0 Remember, the admonition not to have any other Gods before me is a plural one, accepting the idea that there are Gods other than Jehovah, just that Jehovah is the most important one.\u00a0 Eventually this got ground down to the idea of a unitary God, but in the early days of Judaism there was the possibility of multiple deities.\u00a0 In fact the idea of Sophia, the female Goddess of the Hebrews provides a great pivot point for many Christo-Pagans to begin to explore the polytheistic aspects of both Christianity and Judaism.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Next comes the question of exactly who was Jesus of Nazareth?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bart Ehrman in his book the Lost Christianities:\u00a0 The Battle for Scripture<\/em>, says that Jesus could have been many different things:\u00a0 rabbi, Jewish holy man with extraordinary powers, social radial and promoter of counter-cultural lifestyles, a Jewish magician capable of manipulating the forces of nature, a feminist, or a prophet warning of a coming kingdom (apocalypse) where evil would be overthrown? \u00a0\u00a0Jesus as magician, feminist, or counter-cultural rebel fits right in with modern concepts of Paganism.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is also the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven in the Canonical Gospels.\u00a0 For Pagans the idea of a transcendental place beyond this world is incompatible with the immanence of magic and deity.\u00a0 Pauline Christianity developed the claim of a transcendental Kingdom of Heaven that we occupied after death or the apocalypse.\u00a0 However much depends on which Jesus you listen to.\u00a0 The radical Jesus preached the Kingdom of God was within you, and many of those at the time he preached expected the kingdom to arrive within a few years.\u00a0 It was later that the idea got changed to a transcendent kingdom removed from this earth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

While modern Christians place an emphasis on Jesus as apocalyptic prophet and savior, we could easily change that emphasis to magician, feminist, trickster, and social radical to bring him more in line with Pagan concepts of deity.\u00a0 \u00a0We could see the kingdom of heaven as a place here on earth, that we create within us and around us, instead of a long-held promise that depends on redemption.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Instead of thinking about Pagans who follow Jesus as a thin wedge of Christianity into Paganism, we could turn this around and think of them as expanding the idea of what Jesus was and how he fits in with a radically different theology than Pauline Christianity.\u00a0 When you say “Christo-Pagan” there are a lot of facile impressions and ideas that come up, such as the vision of blending Pat Robertson with Starhawk.\u00a0 While that theology just won’t work, what may work is the idea of Jesus as the trickster prophet who had a vision that was both magical as well as radically inclusive.\u00a0 While Jesus was clearly a Jew, there is also nothing incompatible about a polytheistic Judaism being included in the broad range of Pagan religious paths.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That said, I still don’t think that I’ll be calling on any Christian or Jewish deities anytime soon.\u00a0 Christians have spilled too much of our blood, cut too many groves, and turned too many temples into churches.\u00a0 Christians seek to convert everyone to their way, which results in their being aggressive about disrupting and destroying other religions in the name of salvation.\u00a0 While our Christo-Pagans do not fall into this category, it makes it hard to fully embrace the concept.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The idea of a new, Pagan, interpretation of Jesus and Judaism is both interesting and something that is compatible with Paganism.\u00a0 But for me Paganism is a true religion.\u00a0 The Gods and Goddess are real and have been shoved aside by modern culture and Christianity before that.\u00a0 We need to restore them, their worship, and their presence in our lives.\u00a0 Any Christian influences corrupt that work with ideas and theologies that remove it from the magical, physical, world where our Gods and Goddesses exist. \u00a0In the future I’ll be careful to listen to the Christo-Pagans and the case they make for inclusivity, but I still may not embrace it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]\u00a0 Paganism is quite accepting of many of the parameters of early Judaism.\u00a0 Monotheism has a very long history in Pagan religions, so the idea of one, overriding, God is in no way foreign (e.g. Mithras, Ra of Akhenaten).\u00a0 The Gnostic idea of secret knowledge is pretty much the foundation of modern magic, and Gnostic concepts run through much of modern high magic (and Paganism, I avoid a discussion of Gnosticism because that is a book in itself).\u00a0 Jesus as a dying and reborn God can also be seen as simply another version of a common Pagan concept of cycles of deity.<\/p>\n

[2]\u00a0 Though you might be able to argue that by claiming inclusivity that we subjugate all Gods and Goddesses to Paganism.\u00a0 Sort of like my Catholic friends who say my Gods and Goddesses are just an imperfect manifestation of theirs, we too can claim that Jehovah, Christ, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are all simply other Gods within our broad and inclusive Pantheon.\u00a0 This then becomes essentially a linguistic\/semantic problem.\u00a0 It comes down to how we define what we are talking about, and how we use our ability to name things to structure and make sense out of the world.\u00a0 If everything is everything else and the names we use do not distinguish one thing from another, then it becomes very difficult to have a sensible discussion.\u00a0 Thus, Pagans are what we are, and Abrahamic religions are monotheistic exclusivists.\u00a0 There is a difference because there is a difference.\u00a0 (And I know Houston Smith’s arguments about all religions are merely branches of one root, at some level that is probably true, but here I’m working well up the trunk and not at the root).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Christians and the Pagans   Something that tends to distinguish me from my fellow Pagans is that I do not believe that “Christo-Pagans” are possible.\u00a0 That goes against the general openness of Paganism.\u00a0 And it flies in the face of our Pagan historical and cultural norms, which tell us to accept just about as many Gods and Goddesses as we can cram into a theology and still have room.\u00a0 Thus a theological bias against Christians in general and Christo-Pagans in particular tends to irritate the Christo-Pagans and embarrass the regular Pagans (it has no effect on the observant Christians, they think we’re all crazy). \u00a0\u00a0So now you are either irritated or embarrassed, and for that I apologize.   Unfortunately now I have to tell you I’m halfway wrong.\u00a0 In considering this rather complicated problem I believe there is a place for those who follow Jesus to find a place within Paganism.\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t believe that makes any sense, but it is not a theological fallacy either.   Let me explain.   The biggest misunderstanding of my criticism of Christo-Pagans is the tendency to believe that I am saying that followers of Jesus cannot or should not be Pagans.\u00a0 That is not what I claim.\u00a0 Instead I claim that they cannot be Christians, nor can they identify with Jesus as the Christ who has fulfilled the Jewish prophecies [1].\u00a0 The idea of being both “Pagan” and “Christian,” or “Jewish” or “Muslim” for that matter, just does not make any sense.   Of course compatibility is all in how you define things.\u00a0 My definition of “Christian” is the one commonly used by those (Christians) who have large organizations devoted to the subject.\u00a0 Sure, you can define Christianity as something completely different, the art of kicking a ball around a field perhaps, but then we have a disagreement about semantics and not religion.\u00a0 The thing that is typically referred to with the denotation “Christianity” cannot be Pagan, not because Pagan’s won’t have it, but because Christians won’t have us.   The argument separating Paganism and standard Christianity can be made very quickly.\u00a0 We do not have an apocalyptic eschatology, we view time as cyclical not linear, we do not believe in salvation, sin, or that the Gods and Goddesses are all perfect.   Most importantly:\u00a0 Paganism by definition does not claim exclusivity for its Gods and Goddesses [2].\u00a0 Abrahamic religions do.   I could also argue that we should be careful about blurring the lines between Christianity and Paganism. \u00a0But that is a political, not theological, argument.   The problem with Christians as Pagans is that there is a fundamental, theological, clash between the two faiths.\u00a0 In fact the clash applies to any Abrahamic religion.\u00a0 These religions all share a unique and radically important concept:\u00a0 exclusivity.\u00a0 The Hebrews first hit on the concept early in their history.\u00a0 However their exclusivity was a tribal one, unless you were born as part of the chosen people, born into the tribe of God, you were not in the faith.\u00a0 While this was somewhat unusual at the time it was mostly harmless as the Jews were a relatively small tribe that lacked power.\u00a0 And their exclusivity meant that they would have a hard time growing anyway.   But in the 1st – 3rd centuries a new idea, Christianity, emerged out of Judaism.\u00a0 It said that, while anyone could join, it was the god that was exclusive.\u00a0 All other religions were invalidated by Christianity.\u00a0 This is the Pauline interpretation of Christ\u2019s teachings, one that eventually “won” the long (400 year) struggle between the other various Christ following sects of the time.   So my objection has to do with a desire not to intermingle Pauline Christianity with Paganism rather than a desire to exclude Christo-Pagans.   Once you break free of the Pauline concept of Christianity you can begin to see how Jesus and his teachings could be included as an element in Paganism.\u00a0 An exclusive view towards Christo-Pagans is both narrow and divisive. A real Pagan (whatever that is) would ask “how do we include followers of Christ as Pagans?”\u00a0 Instead of seeking to exclude, perhaps we should seek to include.\u00a0 In other words, perhaps a Pagan theology could help define some elements of the Christian faith that are compatible with Paganism. \u00a0And I’m not talking about Santa and Christmas trees and candles at Imbolc, I mean real inclusion.   At the most basic level we have to confront the issue of magic and witchcraft.\u00a0 Both modern high magic and witchcraft have been clearly influenced by Christianity.\u00a0 In fact I believe one would have been very hard pressed to find anything but a Christian witch or magician in Europe between the years 500 and 1800.\u00a0 Magical practices have clearly been claimed as part of the Pagan community, whether they are derived from Christian or other sources.   We must include the Christian Witch, and Magician, because their practices are so fundamental to ours.\u00a0 That sort of inclusion goes almost without saying.   Moving beyond magic we come to Judaism, of which Christianity is a part and a derivative faith.\u00a0 The Jewish religion grew out of the religion of the Hebrew tribe, which is believed to have been Pagan long before it went with just one god.\u00a0 Remember, the admonition not to have any other Gods before me is a plural one, accepting the idea that there are Gods other than Jehovah, just that Jehovah is the most important one.\u00a0 Eventually this got ground down to the idea of a unitary God, but in the early days of Judaism there was the possibility of multiple deities.\u00a0 In fact the idea of Sophia, the female Goddess of the Hebrews provides a great pivot point for many Christo-Pagans to begin to explore the polytheistic aspects of both Christianity and Judaism.   Next comes the question of exactly who was Jesus of Nazareth?   Bart Ehrman in his book the Lost Christianities:\u00a0 The Battle for Scripture, says that Jesus could have been many different things:\u00a0 rabbi, Jewish holy man with extraordinary powers, social radial and promoter of counter-cultural lifestyles, a Jewish magician capable of manipulating the forces of nature, a feminist, or a prophet warning of a coming kingdom (apocalypse) where evil would be overthrown? \u00a0\u00a0Jesus as magician, feminist, or counter-cultural rebel fits right in with modern concepts of Paganism.   There is also the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven in the Canonical Gospels.\u00a0 For Pagans the idea of a transcendental place beyond this world is incompatible with the immanence of magic and deity.\u00a0 Pauline Christianity developed the claim of a transcendental Kingdom of Heaven that we occupied after death or the apocalypse.\u00a0 However much depends on which Jesus you listen to.\u00a0 The radical Jesus preached the Kingdom of God was within you, and many of those at the time he preached expected the kingdom to arrive within a few years.\u00a0 It was later that the idea got changed to a transcendent kingdom removed from this earth.   While modern Christians place an emphasis on Jesus as apocalyptic prophet and savior, we could easily change that emphasis to magician, feminist, trickster, and social radical to bring him more in line with Pagan concepts of deity.\u00a0 \u00a0We could see the kingdom of heaven as a place here on earth, that we create within us and around us, instead of a long-held promise that depends on redemption.   Instead of thinking about Pagans who follow Jesus as a thin wedge of Christianity into Paganism, we could turn this around and think of them as expanding the idea of what Jesus was and how he fits in with a radically different theology than Pauline Christianity.\u00a0 When you say “Christo-Pagan” there are a lot of facile impressions and ideas that come up, such as the vision of blending Pat Robertson with Starhawk.\u00a0 While that theology just won’t work, what may work is the idea of Jesus as the trickster prophet who had a vision that was both magical as well as radically inclusive.\u00a0 While Jesus was clearly a Jew, there is also nothing incompatible about a polytheistic Judaism being included in the broad range of Pagan religious paths.   That said, I still don’t think that I’ll be calling on any Christian or Jewish deities anytime soon.\u00a0 Christians have spilled too much of our blood, cut too many groves, and turned too many temples into churches.\u00a0 Christians seek to convert everyone to their way, which results in their being aggressive about disrupting and destroying other religions in the name of salvation.\u00a0 While our Christo-Pagans do not fall into this category, it makes it hard to fully embrace the concept.   The idea of a new, Pagan, interpretation of Jesus and Judaism is both interesting and something that is compatible with Paganism.\u00a0 But for me Paganism is a true religion.\u00a0 The Gods and Goddess are real and have been shoved aside by modern culture and Christianity before that.\u00a0 We need to restore them, their worship, and their presence in our lives.\u00a0 Any Christian influences corrupt that work with ideas and theologies that remove it from the magical, physical, world where our Gods and Goddesses exist. \u00a0In the future I’ll be careful to listen to the Christo-Pagans and the case they make for inclusivity, but I still may not embrace it.   [1]\u00a0 Paganism is quite accepting of many of the parameters of early Judaism.\u00a0 Monotheism has a very long history in Pagan religions, so the idea of one, overriding, God is in no way foreign (e.g. Mithras, Ra of Akhenaten).\u00a0 The Gnostic idea of secret knowledge is pretty much the foundation of modern magic, and Gnostic concepts run through much of modern high magic (and Paganism, I avoid a discussion of Gnosticism because that is a book in itself).\u00a0 Jesus as a dying and reborn God can also be seen as simply another version of a common Pagan concept of cycles of deity. [2]\u00a0 Though you might be able to argue that by claiming inclusivity that we subjugate all Gods and Goddesses to Paganism.\u00a0 Sort of like my Catholic friends who say my Gods and Goddesses are just an imperfect manifestation of theirs, we too can claim that Jehovah, Christ, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are all simply other Gods within our broad and inclusive Pantheon.\u00a0 This then becomes essentially a linguistic\/semantic problem.\u00a0 It comes down to how we define what we are talking about, and how we use our ability to name things to structure and make sense out of the world.\u00a0 If everything is everything else and the names we use do not distinguish one thing from another, then it becomes very difficult to have a sensible discussion.\u00a0 Thus, Pagans are what we are, and Abrahamic religions are monotheistic exclusivists.\u00a0 There is a difference because there is a difference.\u00a0 (And I know Houston Smith’s arguments about all religions are merely branches of one root, at some level that is probably true, but here I’m working well up the trunk and not at the root).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}