CHRISTIANITY AND THE LINK TO MITHRAISM.
The First Council of Nicaea also known as First Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church was called in 325 AD under the leadership of the Roman Emperor Constantine. At the council, Constantine organized the early church and codified the books of the Bible. There was not a single Christian Holy book at that time and various churches had different gospels or books.
Constantine himself, claimed to have converted to Christianity after he had a vision of the cross and of Jesus before the battle of Milvian Bridge (a battle he won during a Roman civil war). It is interesting to note, however, in 312, when his biographer wrote of the battle with Maxentius at the Mil- vian Bridge he omits any discussion of Constantine’s visions.
In fact, as was the custom at the time, after he won the civil war and became undisputed emperor of the Roman Empire, he built a victory arch in Rome (an arch that stands to this day). Although he later claims to have been inspired to victory by Jesus, he omits any Christian symbolism from the arch. Further, he adds various pagan gods including the God Mithra.
Mithra is a son of the Sun god, Apollo, who was born on December 25 to a virgin mother, crucified, and rose from the dead—although he predates Jesus by hundreds of years. (Not unlike the Egyptian god, Horus, who predate Jesus by a few thousand years). Interestingly, in 325, just prior to the council of Nicaea, Constantine “remembered” his visions and makes his biographer rewrite his biography. Found in many early Roman churches, under the church in catacombs, are alters to Mithra. Although belief in Christianity had swept over the slaves and soldiers of the Roman Empire, the Roman elite continued to practice pagan worship and held belief in various gods, including Mithra.
POWERFUL ANALYSIS: PAGAN EMPEROR
If the Roman Emperor Constantine was a pagan, is it problematic (for a Christian) that he was able to shape and mold the Christian Bible and Christian Church into the image he saw fit?
The Rationality of Religious Belief
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) famously said, “God is dead!” Although in truth he did not believe God had died, but rather, he had never existed in the first place. It was his view that if you are and intelligent person that is able to reason, then you understand that God is a fable, a fairy tale used by the powerful (like Roman Emperors) to control the weak.
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) had a similar take upon religious belief. In the book, The Future of an Illusion (1927), Freud applies his psychological theory to religious belief. According to Freud, most religious belief is captured by the idea that there is a God, one who cares about us, and that will provide us with a eternal happiness after this life. An archetypal protective father figure. Freud argues that the origin of such a belief, which is lacking almost any empirical evidence, is wish fulfillment. It is the result of the psychological desire for protection from a cold brutal reality. Ultimately, belief in God is simply wishful thinking on our part. As Freud says, “Ignorance is Ignorance; no right to believe anything can be derived from it . . . . Scientific work is the only road which can lead us to knowledge of reality outside of ourselves.” And in Freud’s view, the logical, scientific answer is that belief in God is not a viable, rational belief.
In an opposite vein, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) argues that belief in God and Jesus is not (or perhaps, beyond human rationality). True understanding of God is beyond our comprehension. In his view, God exist in a realm that is beyond time and space and yet Jesus became part of time part of space. Jesus, as the son of God and part of the trinity (in which the father, son, and Holy Spirit are all one) became a contradiction, a paradox. In Kierkegaard’s view, truth is subjective and relative. And although belief in God is contradictory and irrational, it is still possible.
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) expresses a similar view to that of Kierkegaard in his work, the Confessions (1880). In the Confessions, he notes that the notion that faith is irrational has long been pervasive in philosophy. The dichotomy between faith and reason dates back to antiquity and was taken for granted by medieval thinkers such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Tolstoy was searching for the meaning and purpose of life. He says that “I realized that it was impossible to search for an answer to my questions in rational knowledge; rational knowledge had led me to rec- ognize that life is meaningless. My life came to a halt and I wanted to kill myself.”
He felt that science and reason could not provide any answer to the question as to why we are here, only the how—if that. He goes on to say, “As I looked around at people, at humanity as a whole, I saw that they lived and affirmed that they knew the meaning of life. I looked at myself—I had lived as long as I knew the meaning of life. For me, as for others, faith provided the meaning of life and the possibility of living.” Tolstoy would not disagree with Nietzsche or Freud, he would simply say there is more to life than rational belief.
POWERFUL ANALYSIS: IS RATIONALITY REQUIRED?
Does belief in a higher power have to be rational or quantifiable by science? Can our irrational beliefs still be true?
The Problem of Evil
The problem of evil can be put as follows: Can an all knowing all powerful all good being allow evil to exist? If God is all powerful, all knowing and all good, then why does Evil exists in the world? There are no easy answers to these questions. Theologians have been struggling to provide answers, known as theodicies for ages. J. L. Mackie (1917–1981) argues that if we consider the notion of three Omni being with the attributes mentioned above, then he argues that an omni-benevolent being will attempt to stop all evil; that an all powerful being could stop all evil.
Therefore, if such a being exists, then evil should not. In Mackie’s view, the fact that the world is filled with pain, suffering, and evil, three omni God does not exist. This argument is known as the logical problem of evil. It is to be distinguished from the evidential problem of evil, which basically says that there is so much evil in the world (and so little good, that clearly God does not exist). Mackie and many philosophers after him maintain that we don’t need to employ induction or abduc- tion to resolve the issue of God’s existence; we can simply use deductive logic.
POWERFUL IDEAS: J. L. MACKIE’S LOGICAL PROBLEM OF EVIL
J. L. Mackie’s deductive argument can be constructed as follows:
1) If a being is omnibenevolent, he will try to stop all evil.
2) If a being is all powerful, he can do anything (including stopping all evil).
3) If a being is all knowing, then he knows everything (including every instance of evil).
4) So if such a being existed, he would not permit any evil; for such an omnibenevolent being will try to remove all evil from the world and an omnipotent being can do anything.
5) Since evil exists, three omni God does not.
Mackie’s conclusion is that if God does exist, he must lack one of the three qualities. Either God is not all-knowing, so He cannot stop all evil, He is not all-pow- erful, so He cannot stop all evil, or He is not omni-benevolent, in which case He is indifferent to evil.
Theologians respond in different ways. Often, they claim that evil is necessary or that it is the result of human free will. Mackie argues that it should not be neces- sary, and that humans could still have free will even if God prevented us from com- mitting evils. Does humanity needs evil to know good? But why should this be the case? Must we know and experience evil in order to know good? How many rapes or murders do we need before we all know evil? This line of thinking is a limitation
upon God’s power. God could (if he were all powerful) allow us to know good and evil without having to experience it. He does not need Sally to die in order to save Jim because he can save both.
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?”
—God, Book of Job, Chapter 38, verse 4
POWERFUL IDEAS: WHERE WERE YOU WHEN I LAID THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE EARTH?
The book of Job, which is found in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testa- ment, is an interesting piece of literature (historical or otherwise). To summarize the story succinctly: Satan visits God in Heaven and the two make a wager on Job’s fidelity and loyalty to the Lord. Satan says Job is a good servant because God has “built a hedge around his house” and has rewarded him. To this the Lord says test his faith. The Lord tells Satan, he can do anything to Job, or his family, but he may not kill him. Satan does just that. He destroys all his land and livestock, kills all his children and inflicts great pain upon Job. In the end, Job asks God why? . . . to which God says, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” And then God goes on to list the various things he has done, which are beyond Job’s power and how he has the audacity to question his creator. In the end, Job gets double of everything and all is well.
POWERFUL ANALYSIS: IS IT MORAL TO BET ON A PERSON’S LIFE?
If a powerful person (in a position similar to God) made a similar bet, on a man’s life and the lives of his children, would we consider him moral?
Theodicy
St. Augustine (354–430) argues that evil is not really, real—it is a privation. A priva- tion is a lack of something. For example, it is not evil or bad that a person is blind, they simply lack sight. He goes on to say that “All evil is either sin or punishment for ssin.” Which would be plausible if evil only befell the wicked, but it does also happen to children for whom the sins they have committed could never equal the pain and suffering they endure.
St. Irenaeus (130–202 AD) has a more interesting explanation of evil. It serves a purpose (one God could have resolved in other ways). On his view, evil provides the necessary problems through which we take part in what he calls “soul-making.” Evil, ultimately, is a means to an end. If it did not exist, there would be no means of spiritual development. He maintains that creation is a two-step process. God first made man in his image, as it is stated in genesis and is now making us into his likeness.
According to this view, God’s purpose in creation was not to make a perfectly comfortable dwelling place for fully formed human beings, but to put rational creatures with the potential for growth in an imperfect environment where they could, through their freely chosen responses to difficulties they encounter, attain maturity. In other words, we need to struggle in order to grow spiritually—if we are never tested, we can neither fail nor succeed.
What the world would be like with three omni god around would be nearly unfathomable.
Earthquakes could be stopped before they started. Hurricanes would mean- der harmlessly over the open ocean. Bullets could stop in midair; infants falling out a high rises would land softly on the ground as those they had wings. God could interact with this reality and bring peace and happiness to all. And yet, it does not seem that such a world does exist. Our existence is not one where we interact with such a powerful deity—or rather where such a powerful deity has any interest in helping us. The three omni God appears not to exist because of the vast amount of evil in the world. God seems to lack omnipotence, omniscient, or omni-benevolence—otherwise, God could stamp out all evil. In the end, this topic is a matter of faith, and faith does not need a rational justification. In order to have faith, all you need to do is believe.
“God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the thigs that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”
—Reinhold Niebuhr
POWERFUL ANALYSIS: IS EVIL A PROBLEM?
Does the problem of evil casts doubt on the existence of a three omni God?
