Christian Atheism
Blog
Instead of being asleep at 22:00 on 1 February 2017, kitt created this:
I recently started reading Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. I'm not intending to power through this book as I do with other books, I'm lingering on this one. As such, I'm also reading the introduction, by Gregory Hays, who wrote the modern translation that I'm reading (and, wow, the difference a good translator makes!).
Comments
Interesting comment. Of
Interesting comment. Of course, the alternative - to *not* insist that there is actually one god, is logically inconsistent (if the various gods in some way contradict one another in terms of claims of existence, supremacy, etc. - which they pretty much all do). If you want to assert that religion is fine so long as it isn't exclusive in its truth claims, you are gutting the religion of its center and purpose, which is to describe truth.
And the endangerment meant is not some sort of 21st century tolerance or relative truth. It was the assumption that refusing to worship Rome's patron deities (including the emperor himself, as of the end of the first century) would anger said patron gods or undermine the divine favor of the empire. This is a charge that continued for another roughly 200 years despite Christianity's ascendency first as a permitted religion and then the official state religion of Rome. It reflects the same kind of exclusivist view as the Christians were being accused of, because it asserted that the Roman gods had to be worshiped.
Add new comment