Everything That Blogs Must Converge Thursday, December 11, 2003

A long week of wailing and gnashing of teeth. In the middle of it, a friend struck up a conversation about religion and belief, laying out why he couldn't accept much of Catholicism. I tried my best to answer some objections, but as usual work intruded on something much more interesting. He left me with a question about paganism: Didn't the church just lift a bunch of concepts and dates from paganism? And didn't that make the church derivative and pandering--playing to the locals in their own language?

It's a good question, and not an easy one to answer. But sometimes answers just drop into your lap. This very afternoon I started reading "J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth," a study of how Tolkien's Catholicism influenced you-know-what. And right at the beginning is this lengthy paragraph:

For Tolkien, however, even pagan myths attempted to express God's greater truths. True myth has the power to revive us, to serve as an anamnesis, or way of bringing to conscious experience ancient experiences with transcendence. But, Tolkien admitted, myth could be dangerous, or "perilous," as he usually stated it, if it remained pagan. Therefore, Tolkien thought, one must sanctify it, that is, make it Christian and put it in God's service. Medieval believers had the same idea, and the story of the early-medieval saint Boniface of Crediton exemplifies one such attempt. The story (a non-factual myth, certainly!) of Boniface claims that while evangelizing the pagan Germanic tribes in north-central Europe, he encountered a tribe that worshipped a large oak tree. To demonstrate the power of Christ as the True God, Boniface cut down the tree, much to the dismay of the tribe. But rather than seeing Boniface struck down by their gods, the pagan tribe saw an evergreen instantaneously spring up on the same spot. So that Boniface could continue preaching to the astounded pagans, the story continues, his followers placed candles on the newly grown evergreen, which eventually became the first Christmas tree. The motif of "sanctifying the pagan" has been repeated throughout history by Christians in a multitude of ways, and was instrumental in contributing to the wildly successful spread of the faith.

He goes on to mention, among other things, Christmas and Easter being placed on pagan holidays, Christian philosophers looking for ancient philosopers who anticipated Christianity and its message, and builders placing churches on pagan sacred ground--"baptizing the corrupt ground" just as the philosophers "baptized" ancient ideas and stories.

I couldn't put it better. The church, in effect, wasn't stealing somebody else's ideas--it was sanctifying ideas that pointed toward the Truth but did so without a Christian vocabulary. In other words, they didn't just start calling Odin "Yahweh"; they found the Yahweh inside him and baptized him to bring it out.

There were even tougher questions on my plate, but I need to do more research before I can tackle them. G.K. Chesterton, you listening, man? Beam me some answers, baby.

@ 10:26:00 PM,

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