Message from @Mr. Nessel
Discord ID: 673947188744814602
The king wanted to convert
And this resulted in a huge revolt
Arians dropped Arianism for diplomatic reason
That's certainly a part of it
It's not that ppl were just convinced. It was a mixture of persuasion and other means
Religious Realpolitik so to speak
But to explain it by purely materialist means falls short, it seems
Sure. There's no reason for say Constantine to convert to christianity in particular is an example
He had other options and christians arguably weren't in a majority at that point
And excludes the facts that even among the earliest church fathers the concept of the *Spermatakos Logos* existed. The idea that pagans held "seeds of the Word" that could bloom into fullness in the Church was baked into Christianity.
Idk about that. Sure religions share themes about morality but the pagan view of virtue and the divine is different to the one in monotheism
Gods are seen as flawed and subordinate to things like fate and in Hinduism basically everything is subordinate to Dharma
There certainly were monotheistic and monolatric analogues though
The cult of Sol Invictus, Mithraism and the way Jupiter/Zeus was elevated above other gods. Zeus was rarely a patron deity of cities but rather somethign to swear an oth on
There's an older example in Egypt with a monotheistic sun cult
Yes, the Aten
Interestingly enough, I learned that the disc and ray of light used to symbolize the Holy Spirit on Orthodox iconography is based off of the disc Atenaten used to symbolize the Aten.
Didn't know that, very interesting
Again, this reflects the fact that the early Church recognized that even unenlightened pagans could grasp glimpses of Christian Truth.
Yeah, I was surprised too, when I heard it
It's very fascinating
Regardless there's also an interesting thing about Zeus and the like because tracing back the name to the original Indo-European head deity you get Dyeus Phter which just means sky father or god father
Yeah
There's also a very interesting parallel between the Chinese *Tao* and the Greek *Logos*
And, as you mentioned yourself, there was this idea that even pagan gods were "flawed beings...governed by fate."
Fate implies an overall structure and Telos to the Cosmos. Even if not personified as God, it does point the way to Him.
Now this is not to make the Perennialist/New Age claim that somehow all religions are the same and "believe the same things" or some nonsense. A Norse pagans goal in life is very different from a Christians, or a Hindu's or even an Egyptian pagan.
The Christian belief is just that mankind cannot help but notice God and recognize Him when they sincerely seek Truth.
I don't view it as a natural result, though I'll agree there's a tendency or at least was within religions to sometimes develop into monotheism
I don't like inevitabilisms like the idea that dialectics will inevitably usher in communism or whatever
I'm certainly biased because I'm not a christian though and don't share the same view of god
Well it's certainly not inevitable
It's not like some pagan religion will suddenly give up on their beliefs and a adopt Christianity out of nowhere, and certainly the reasons you listed above are part of it.
It's not an inevitable process like Marx claimed was true for Communism or Nick Land's Hyper-racist Gigaccelerationist Techo-dystopian Anarcho-Archist Capitalist Helladise.
It's just that the seeds are there- they just need to be nurtured by the Church to bloom into truly enlightened knowledge.
I frankly want to know why pagans believe what they believe. On an intellectual level, what is so appealing?
it's like Nietzsche++
you get ammorality plus demons to give you power and no eternal punishment for doing it
That or it's vitalism like Fr. Seraphim Rose suggested
That people want something to be apart of that feels alive and that liberal secularism and staid/pozzed Protestantism doesn't provide it.
yeah
The problem is that many pagans don't reason there paganism to its logical conclusions. It's usualy a means to justify an end and not an end in itself as any religion should be.