It still doesn't make sense. Jesus Christ died so humanity's sins could be forgiven and establish new covenent between God and men. The idea of predestination and those who are elected by God, even before creation, for salvation (and only those) complemently makes Christ suffering on the cross and sacrifice pointless. Entire new testament might as well be thrown out of the window in that case.

Calvin's personal, flawed interpretation. In most cases when scripture says about people being chosen for salvation it is referred to children of God as a whole all of men are chosen for salvation (hence the Christ sacrifice). But being chosen for salvation doesn't mean you will achieve it since God gave men free will. Not only that but predestination goes against the scripture's teachings that God loves his own (flawed) creation.

Interesting Thread on paganism vs. trinitarian conception of God.

https://twitter.com/owenbroadcast/status/1222726505186369538

Nonsense. If anything was novel about christianity it was monotheism, which is why it spread alongside other monotheistic cults like the cult of Sol invictus, mithraism etc.

The main reason christianity spread this much is because the Roman empire and jewish diaspora existed in the first place

Rome making it easy to travel from one corner of the empire to another for preaching, the diaspora being the initial audience for it

Besides what variety of christianity was the one most willingly adopted by pagans? Arianism

Gee I guess the trinity caused Arianism to catch on

Trinitary was present in old faiths of Europe before Christianity.

@Mr. Nessel The variety of Christianity that was willingly adopted by pagans was Catholicism. Arianism was really only a fact for about 300 years. You still had many other pagan people who had not converted to Christianity in the year 700.

I will say that Arianism was a big deal for those years in the Western Half of the Empire.

Catholicism was later adopted for political reasons yes, but that's catholicism replacing arianism not trinitarianism convincing pagans to abandon their ways

There were more pagan people than just the Goths and Vandals. The Norse, Poles, Irish, and others weren't Arian.

https://youtu.be/4LWPcEo2gV0

@Techpriest of house Roundeye ok now I understand. Thanks for explaining.

But when I think about it, can't classical philosophy be considered part of/off shoot of paganism's "theology"?

Christians worship a volcano demon is one of my favorite pagan insults

ok thats fucking metal

@Korin Dickman Plato and Aristotle rejected the Hellenistic gods afaik. I believe Plato came to the conclusion there must be one supreme being

And Socrates was killed for questioning to much

Epicureus was a proto atheist

so no I don't really see it being an offshoot since they saw the rational problems with pantheism. You have to provide more evidence than that

and listen

i have to question your motivation for being between Christianity and pagainism

to you what is the appeal of paganism?

i sincerely doubt its a rational or intellectual appeal, as techpriest said, im not aware of any serious defenders of paganism that can stand up to scholasticism, or materialist thinkers.

and @Mister_Geocon was telling me not even the people who practiced it in roman times really thought the gods were real, just archetypes of masculinity or femininity or courage and honor

the reason you must be attracted to "paganism" is because you like the aesthetic, you like the history and culture of it

thats fine, but really it shouldint be a reason to be "torn between paganism and Christianity" i dont know how you can be a pagan in the modern day. most neo pagans today are basically atheists but worship their race and return to paganism as a proxy to their race. even varg, the turbo sped of paganism,afaik, admitted that he didint believe in thor or any of the other gods

and the rest of the pagans are like wiccans and other gay shit which is just built on progressivism and opposition to evil mean patriarchal Christianity

and thats really the thing about modern day paganism is that its built upon opposition to Christianity

i dont see why there is a reason to follow a religion or spirituality unless you literally believe it is true

i dont want to hear about archetypes or whatever

the truth is the god of christianity is real, Jesus died and ressurected, and someday there will be judgement.

if you really like pagan stories and aesthetics and learning about European culture that's perfectly fine

but christianity needs to be first

There was a wealth of pagan thinker who wrote about their views. it's just that neoplatonism etc. got burried under christianities eventual ascendancy. It's not that there are no sources, just that it died off as a living tradition within christian countries, whereas hinduism for example kept it
People have put a lot of work into reconstructing paganism using whatever sources are available, however now with the knowledge of common roots in an original Indoeuropean faith.
Varg isn't even a relevant figure. It makes more sense to look at the work of Survive the Jive than that mentally ill person
Either way there are good reasons to reject the idea of a prime mover therefore god and whatnot, nevermind that Yahweh is polytheistic in origin. Not as a volcano demon but as a storm god with another god called Asherah as a wife. He also got conflated with a separate god EL by his jewish adherents. For a while Yahweh basically was worshipped in a monolatric fashion, traces of which can still be found in the bible (Worship no other gods besides me rather than there is no god but god in the ten commandments for example)

Good pagans end up becoming Christian. The vast majority converted because they were shown how whatever was good in their own faith existed in a fuller state within Christianity. Just look at St. Boniface, the conversion of the Rus, Serbs, etc.

This is also the point of the Three Magi

They converted mostly out of political reasons

Just looking at Hungary for example