I hope you all are enjoying Christmas, now in its ninth day, bringing us to the Feast of Basil and Gregory Nazienzus. No vasilopita for me this year (as yet). I spent the latter part of Advent and Christmas in a nearly vegetative state and enjoyed returning to work this morning, despite a variety of technical difficulties and the fact that half of my luggage entered the Twilight Zone at some point yesterday and has yet to emerge.
Over Christmas, the blogs were fairly quiet, but Derek the Aenglican and Anastasia (and others) were discussing two issues of great interest.
Anglican Identity
Derek in a recent post opined that he didn't want to hear anything about Anglican Identity from those without grounding in the Divine Office and corporate worship. Someone I know recently said that many of the troubles we're having with Anglican Identity come from those from other Christian traditions coming in and bringing their baggage or poor catechesis with them, focusing on some aspects of Anglicanism while discarding others and thus upsetting the balance of the tradition. Upon reflection, I realized that this wasn't a matter of welcoming "the wrong sort," as some wags might have it. Instead, I think the gradual defrosting of Anglicans (especially in this country) only has exposed the decayed hulk of the devotional and corporate practice that is central to our tradition. One of my college chaplains, for instance, never had anything to do with the Office, because he said it wasn't a part of his personal devotional practice. Now I understand why he might want to encourage lay-driven Morning and Evening Prayer, especially for the seminarians in his charge, but he probably should not have pooh-poohed its importance. And, of course, the conversional aspects of the Office cannot be doubted. Indeed, the evidence always lies before us. What made Derek an Aenglican? Or why does Lutherpunk have denominational identity issues? Blame Cranmer.
Jesus And Indigenous Mediterreanean Religions
Like Anastasia, I am quite used to people being comfortable with a Jewish Jesus. Indeed, I think much of the popularity of this idea comes from the great affinity mainline Christians have for Reform and Conservative Jews, who often share much of the political outlook of the mainlines. And I can't deny that there's been some theological cross-pollination. Most sermons I hear live these days quote Rabbi Abraham Heschel for the same reason. I actually think that to some extent, Heschel's reassertion of the prophetic tradition within Judaism as a persistent social critique has had beneficial influence on Christianity. And, of course, affinity between Christians and Jews also has been a corrective for a long history of conflict, oppression, and dangerous rhetoric. So lest I launch into a grand critique of a thinker not unlike Heschel by the name of John Chrysostom and his Adversus Iudaeos , I really should address Anastasia's point about the relations between early Christianity and Indigneous Mediterranean Religions.
Anastasia says that she never speaks of Greco-Roman religion, which reflects an important reality of ancient religion. As St. Athanasius points out, each city and people of the ancient world had their own gods and own particular rites and these gods and peoples were constantly at war with another until the coming of Christianity. Of course, Athanasius' point is a little too expansive. First of all, many "separate nations" had similar gods to their neighbors on account of common ethnic origin. Mars was worshipped at Rome and Mamers was worshipped further south. Zeus and Jupiter connected the Greeks and Romans. Of course, the same god may be worshipped differently. Something tells me that a Hindu and a Siberian tribesman show different forms of reverence for the fire god Agni.
Second of all, metropolitanization and central government led to syncretism. In HBO's series Rome , Augustus' mother Atia is depicted as a worshipper of the Egyptian deity Isis and keeps a large statue of the goddess in her house. Yet she also retains the household gods of the Julian and Octavian gentes . This is a realistic portrayal of religious practice by a woman of her class. And indeed, the gradual erosion of traditional Roman religion and the embrace of foreign cults eventually became the most influential meme to explain the decline of Roman power, for do not both Tacitus and Gibbon describe Christianity as a dangerous foreign cult? And does not Augustine spend much of his time refuting this idea? However, as early as Claudius and probably earlier, it was realized that future Roman power depended on the investment of as many as possible in Roman institutions. In political terms, this meant the admission of more provincial aristocrats to the Senate and the principal magistracies and the extension of citizenship to all free persons by the early 3rd century. However, it had a fascinating impact in religious terms. Characters in Rome constantly are swearing by the "Black Stone," a focus of the cult of Cybele (or the Magna Mater). What's interesting about the Black Stone is that its presence in Rome was not private contamination of the mos maiorum of the Roman people but a matter of public policy. During the Second Punic War, the Black Stone was brought to Rome from Phrygia after consultation of the Sibylline Books.
In later days, the general policy of the Empire was that one could worship whatever deities you wanted as long as you did not cause civil disorder by disparaging the local cults of your city and worshipped the emperor. Christians usually failed on both counts, though they did pray for the Emperor. Often locals preferred that you worshipped the local gods, too. The Decian persecution, for instance, seems to have been a concerted effort to unify the Empire through religious fervor, much like a National Day of Prayer proclamation.
But note the irony. The genius of the emperor and his safety were formalized by Decius' legislation as the common deity of the Empire. And so Athanasius' point rings like a note in the cathedral of Picardy. Christ wasn't quite the first object of worship that unified mankind. The emperor was. At least ideally.
Anastasia points out that Augustus, too, might have sought to be a figure of universal veneration, especially since he called himself, "son of a god." Although Augustan propaganda played very differently in the provinces than at Rome, I would like to point out that Augustus played a very odd game with his religious status. First, he knew his strongest political protection was derived from the ordinary people of the city of Rome. His status as Augustus and tribune of the people both implied that he was sacrosanct but in touch with the interests of the little man and traditional religion. His enemies weren't religious men, but they had seen the outrage of the people at Caesar's assasination. Augustus sought to add what religious aura he could to his demogoguery. Second, Augustus posed himself as "pius." In Latin, he called himself 'filius Divi', which doesn't quite mean son of God. It means son of Divus. Up to that time, all deified humans worshipped at Rome were called by some other name. So Aeneas was worshipped as Indiges, which Livy claims is short for Juppiter Indiges (Indigenous Jupiter). Romulus was worshipped as Quirinus, probably because the original residents of the little villages out of which Rome developed likely called themselves the Quirites. Julus Caesar, when deified in 44 BC, became Divus Julius, the deified Julian. This may sound like a nitpicky point, but divus and deus are different. Augustus was not saying that he was son of an important god or the vague philosophic god popular in the smart set of the Greek world (to theos), which would have too pharaonic for the Roman mind, but that he was the heir of the great Julius Caesar, the avenger of his death, and the continuer of his general program.
In the Greek East, of which Judaea was a religiously exotic backwater and with which most of the early players would have been familiar, Augustus was far more receptive to divine honors. In Greek, I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't end up being huios theoi or whatever. Such affectations were expected of great rulers. And since Augustus and his successors were legally Pharaoh in all but title, a little pharaonic pretension would be prudent.
But it occurs to me that I confuse the issue. What disturbs Christians about indigenous Mediterranean religion is that Christianity appears to have borrowed from it, possibly suggesting that incidents traditionally held to be historical are syncretic emendations. This dynamic is especially present in the debates about the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection, which certainly have pagan antecedents. But if all things were equal, I could note thay many things Jesus did had Jewish antecedents or that an abundance of authors told stories about men reaching the Moon by means of rocket propulsion before the event actually happened. Roman Catholicism has an especial discomfort with indigenous Mediterranean religion because its careful assimilation of pagan practice has led to rhetoric that it is a pagan religion. You get one guess about what church is built on the ruins of the Temple of Cybele. Or you could note that the Pantheon is dedicated to all the martyrs. Or why is the Pope the Supreme Pontiff? Or why do the Neapolitans honor San Gennaro as they do? Or the Irish Brigid?
Of course, I don't have much discomfort at all with these connections. Our myths have expressed our deepest desires throughout the ages, whether you adhere to some school of psychology or believe that all false religion comes from evil spirits. The power of the Triune God is that these myths have come to life in Jesus Christ.
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