And Rome has not changed.
Sorry Bro, not a road paved with anything but crucified Christians. Rome's strength in building an empire was to subjugate, brutally, all opposers, and they lined their Via Appias with our people. We are Israel, they are Esau.
To get the common people on their side (and their ONLY interest was in "tribute" or taxes, to incorporate them and their nations into the beast that was (is) Rome, they practiced syncretism, worship your idols, only, call them by our gods' names, so therefore Venus is Mary, Zeus is God, etc.
AMEN. Every word fact.
Read this informative link by Richard Bennett, former Roman Catholic priest, now reformed Christian, by, for and through the grace of God alone...
PAPAL ROME AND THE EUROPEAN UNION
Here's Richard Bennett's great website, BereanBeacon.org
VERY WELL PUT.
THX.
The Beast rises. No doubt.
Thanks for the links.
The interplay between the Culture and the Church is a complicated, and to me, an interesting question. I don’t find Bill’s suppositions as too far off the mark. It’s my understanding that the Greek word for “Evangel” denoted, in those days, the good news of the deity of the Emperor. The Apostles transposed that word for Christ. So the language of a particular culture can be employed to express the concepts of Christianity.
Take for example a contemporary situation. It is popular in evangelical circles to claim that Christianity is NOT a religion. When I hear this I believe I understand, and agree, that what is meant is that our standing before God is not caused by any phenomenal act on our part. The problem is that I have a different definition for religion. When I think of the term religion I have the concept of worship and as the theologian Bob Dylan once sang, “Gotta Serve Somebody”. So IMO, everybody including Christians are religious. James tells us there is a thing called “true religion”. Thus it appears to me that the definition of the term religion has changed.
Thus I believe Bill is correct that the early Christians had to use terms of the existing culture as a means to express christian truths. The problem is when the pagan concepts related to those terms are incorporated into christian doctrine. That seems to be the tricky part. How do you incorporate the terms of culture without incorporating the pagan aspects of that term? The Reformers understood this and that’s why one of the most famous slogans of the Reformation was Semper Reformata, always reforming.
And we’re not immune from this same problem today. When I observe the programs of Schuller, Warren, and Hyble and their ilk of trying to be “relevant” to the culture I ask what are they sacrificing to be “relevant”? IMO, their programs of making Christian worship entertaining is taking a pagan concept and incorporating it into christian dogma.
The Romanists (and Orthodox) have a real problem because of the fact that they have deified Tradition. Because of that fact they are unable to rid themselves of pagan influences. The Romanists will try on occasion to correct themselves, as evidenced by VatII, but because they have deified Tradition they end up being completely irrational because they need to try to synthesize contradictions and they produce reams of sophistry to try to support their irrationalism.
So the task seems to be to understand the underlying concepts behind a term. Terms by themselves are not necessarily pagan. The actions working out of the terms will determine whether or not a pagan concept is part of the term.
I agree