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hey harmonic series
I am slightly offended at this lumping together and broad generalization of all things 'pagan' (the word of course simply meaning from the country or country folk).
Your questions surrounding the use of the term pagan are perhaps best cleared up by following the link I presented in the original post. I did not re-publish the entire article here because I didn't think it was appropriate to rip of Mr Shea's work like that, nor to post an unnecessarily long item on this forum. I think I also covered that ground in my post to Gypsy Lantern, which perhaps you did not get to see before posting yours.
It is worth considering, also, that Shea and Chesterton consider the word 'pagan' to be more or less synonymous with 'human', and are not at all antithetical to the pagans.
By the way, I don't see any evidence in the article that Shea is only talking about Wiccans. As for Chesterton, I don't think Wicca was around when he was writing about this stuff.
To respond to your other points:
First, this article presupposes that their is only one specific capital G, God. But how can one argue paganism, a polytheistic practice, based on a situation that has nothing to do with it. Unless you want to define God...
Well, that’s called Christianity. I’m not sure what exactly your objection is here.
"Paganism is an attempt to reach God through the imagination." What does this mean? In Christian churches does God or Jesus walk in at every service and shake everybody's hand, give a speech, eat brunch with the followers afterward? No, he doesn't-
In actual fact, yes, He does, according to orthodox teaching. Jesus, who is God, makes himself present through the Mass - he makes the bread and wine his body and blood (the doctrine of transubstantiation).
...and thus, the people in the church and in the faith are thinking about God with their minds- which is, of course, their imagination! Okay, so, let's say this very vague statement about paganism and imagination was true- it would be exactly the same for Christianity.
You seem to be very defensive about the fact it has been suggested that the gods are imaginary. I don't have a problem with the sacred nature of the imagination, so it doesn't upset me that you have pointed out that I and other Christians use our imaginations, as we use the whole of our being, in our worship. However, we also maintain that the perfectly valid yearning for sacrament, expressed through the imagination and felt by Christians and pagans alike, only makes a connection to reality through the figure of Christ.
"The first thing to note about paganism, is the last thing that I note: it is seeking something." (Pretending this statement isn't laughingly vague) I think, if anything, paganism (here Wicca) seeks less than Christianity because it works with what is already there, what is visible, the seasons, the harvest, the amount of light which exists for each day while Christians 'seek' the abstract eternal life, passage into heaven.
You paint a very sad picture of Wicca that sounds a bit like burying one's head in the sand, satisfied as it is with the merely visible. That sounds to me like the post-Christian form of paganism critiqued by Shea and Kreeft. Your characterisation of Christianity, in the case of Roman Catholicism at least, is just incorrect and sounds closer to the Gnostic heresy. We seek the Kingdom of God, which is where God's will is done. That is Heaven but His will can also be done on earth, whence it becomes Heaven. There is nothing abstract about this, as there is nothing abstract about Christ's resurrection; Jesus was raised in body, and ascended to physically occupy heaven. By contrast, the resurrection myths abstractly map onto cycles of the seasons and so on.
Finally, you ask, "Is Christianity the end point of Paganism?" No: a polytheistic belief does not necessarily lead to Christianity. Why would it? Because as you feel, "In the end, I found the Church was the only thing that even claimed to fulfil the pagan promises that attracted me away from it in the first place". What were these "promises"? Were they outlined for you somewhere or was it your own creation of beliefs based on what you personally desired.
In answer to the 'why would it', my contention is that Christianity is true, which is as good a reason as any for a truthful search to turn it up as 'the answer'.
As for the 'promises', that is a most valid question. My own spiritual search has been for something that verified and articulated the sense of the sacred that I think most of us feel instinctively merely by dint of being human. Paganism seemed to promise that, and maybe seeing that promise there was my error. Whether or not this was the case, paganism never lived up to it.
Wear something that fits. If Christianity fits you, great. If Buddhism fits you, I think that's wonderful. But why, why would somebody content with their 'pagan' belief system change to Christianity? So, I suppose the answer is, if somebody is not fulfilled by their pagan belief system, they may adopt Christianity. Or they may not. A catchy title all the same.
That is a laudable, open minded and tolerant attitude, and one which I would have agreed with heartily before being 'struck by the lightning bolt', so to speak. However, there are a couple of objections to such an attitude:
1)Christianity doesn't necessarily 'fit' in any comfortable manner. It makes very high demands upon its followers, demanding acknowledgement that we are sinners. If it was a mere matter of finding something that fits, I think Christianity would be very unsuccessful, because it is often a challenging and uncomfortable faith, which brings me to the second objection:
2)The reason that people still become Christians despite it's uncomfortable and challenging nature is because they think it is True, and, surely, the measure of a belief system is not whether it makes us feel warm and fluffy inside, but how much truth it contains.
Many thanks to all for a most thought-provoking discussion. |
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