Solon,
thank you for your thread. Very interesting as I attempted to explore into the historic roots of Christianity recently (not for a religious motive but for my interest in history and attempting to gain insight into our own cultural heritage)
"Do you think the sordid and disgusting tribal myths scribbled in the "bible" point to a wise and loving "Creator"???"
Well, this idea isn't entirely new and has permeated mankind since the second century or earlier. Probably people realized that very early when Christianity spread, as the Gnostic Christians plainly REJECTED the old covenant altogether as foreign to their cultural heritage. I read that Marcion's scripts about the "foreign", the "unkown" god is an example of these tendencies (of a trait in Christianity rejecting the use of religion as a means of exercising power).
en.wikipedia.org
To most Gnostics, salvation comes from a different power, not from the "Creator". Hence Gnostic "Dualism".
en.wikipedia.org
And by the way, the last Gnostic organization of greater magnitude in Europe, the Cathars in Southern France and Northern Italy were BRUTALLY murdered by cruisaders - more than 100.000 were literally slaughtered - by an alliance between the catholic pope and the French King in the 13th century.
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
The cathars, as gnostics, believed in salvation coming from the "foreign, unknown God". They didn't take oaths. Sins were exonerated not by the sacrament of oral confession but instead by baptizing adults regularly in the form of "Consolamentum"
mysticmissal.org
Interstingly, back then, as a "heretic" you had it easier in the Islamic world, were you could still keep your belief intact under "dhimmi status" (as long as you paid a special tax). Fortunately we had the age of Englightement and the Rennaisance and the burgeois revolutions, otherwise we still would be subjects, not people equal before the law.
just some thoughts
CROSSY
BTW: To describe my own background, as an Apostate of the Roman Catholic church, I'm certainly not a Mysticist or a New-Age cult follower. However, in the tradition of Deism I still believe in a higher order but find it hard to describe or verbalize. Pantistic Skeptizism always had appealed to me. |
