I’m posting this on the THAVMA site because these are only my personal opinions, and because I haven’t posted anything in three months.

Exposure and Maturity

My first exposure to Germanic Paganism involved a crowd applauding and someone (named Jeff) shouting “That was impressive!”

I will never tell that entire story, only that it’s one of five moments in my life that I remember most fondly. But I will tell you that I destroyed it within six months because I was small-minded, immature, inexperienced, intolerant, leaned on false beliefs I’d learned from family and other around me, and lacked any relevant skill sets (my only notable skills at the time were theology and leatherwork).

That experience, however, planted seeds that took many years to bear fruit. Over time I stopped being a man-child, learned a greater degree of tolerance, started a profitable business, became a homeowner, got some control over my anger issues, and last week celebrated the 20th anniversary of my current relationship. If the Jason I am now were ever to meet the Jason I was then, I’d probably strangle him.

Before you ask the relevance of this, let’s move to the next section.

Maturity in One’s Belief System

If you’ve paid attention to my writings over the past four years, you may notice my personal beliefs were starting to drift away from the boilerplate Traditional Roman Catholicism I once professed to believe.

It started with rejecting papal infallibility, because it was not something that can pass the Vincentian Canon (it was even condemned by John XXII in 1324!). Then I realized that Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus was just a clumsy way of trying to state Extra Logon Nulla Salus, which states the case more clearly without terms like “invincible ignorance” that can cause problems for anyone who isn’t a theologian.

The following year I came to the realization that Christianity is actually a via media between Judaism and Paganism, with the concomitant realization that (Reformed) Protestantism and Modernism were best understood as pseudo-judaizing movements. I had also written a 90-page blog post explaining why my theology had shifted slightly to the left regarding women’s ordination while still remaining on the fence.

My beliefs have been evolving because, to paraphrase the beginning of that blog post, “New information demands new conclusions.”

The fact is that as one comes into new information, that is to say reliable information, they can and should adapt their belief system accordingly. This is what maturity looks like, though it’s admittedly more difficult for those who have institutional buy-in or have to keep giving lip-service for family and friends.

So Where Have I Gone Now?

The next logical step was to investigate the claim that “Paganism is the other Old Testament,” which holds weight at least in the case of Greek philosophy. One could just as easily include the Havamal among the Wisdom literature, or the Aeneid among the epics.

We even find a parallel typology. Mary becomes not only the New Eve but also the New Athena, whose victories over Ares at Ilium prophesy Mary’s victories over the Avars at Constantinope or the Ottomans at Lepanto. Mary is also the New Ruth and the New Lupa, who nurtured Romulus and Remus at the Lupercal (Romulus may himself be a type for Christ, or alternatively Romulus and Remus may be a type for Peter and Paul). Rome then becomes the type for the Church as easily as, if not more easily then Jerusalem.

And so on and so on and so on. In fact the actual teachings of Christianity have more in common with Greek philosophy, specifically Stoicism and Neoplatonism, than with Jewish Law. One could literally rip away the Hebrew-language Old Testament and lose only the Hebrew-language prophecies. Which quite frankly we don’t need beyond keeping a record of prophecies that have been fulfilled and thus reached their expiration dates.

Which brings us to the question of the Biblical Canon. I believe the Bible is inspired, but I do not believe in plenary-verbal inerrancy or even plenary-verbal inspiration. The most obvious example is the command for genocide in Numbers. But there’s also the story that Abraham got rich by pimping out his wife for sexual favors, that Jacob got his inheritance by manipulating his father and his brother. David came to power by puppet-mastering the Israelites and Philistines against each other. These were not virtuous people; almost every so-called “great man” in the Old Testament is either a manipulative or murderous bastard.

Now I accept the Old Testament as canon because it’s canon, and because Christianity tends to ignore or minimize those parts; for example nobody learns about them in Sunday school. But for the sake of argument: if one day the Old Testament were de-canonized, I wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep over it.

I would say that keeping the Septuagint Old Testament may still be advisable, because 1) it is the Bible the Early Church actually read, and 2) it gives us a shared cultural languages for the concepts and types (rather than myself talking about Dionysus or Brandon talking about Baldur as already happens in our private conversations).

Rather I test the truth of a tradition by the empirical effect of its principles. This is benefit of living in modern society where religion has been relegated to the sphere of personal opinion. (Some of you may not like to read those words, but the statement is descriptively true.)

If the tradition’s operating principles 1. keep within certain moral limits and 2. objectively help individuals and societies live better life on both the spiritual and physical levels, then it passes the test of intra Logon or “true.” Otherwise the tradition’s principles may be in need of adaptation or rejection on a case-by-case basis.

The result to this approach is that if one day the Bible were proven false, the operating principles would hold up and therefore one needn’t worry about abandoning their religion; the tradition would simply continue in its intellectual life, moral life, aesthetics, et alia.

One may test this with the Three Theological and Four Cardinal Virtues, or the Nine Noble Virtues, or the Eightfold Path, or so on and so on.

At bottom, my approach to religion has become more philosophical than religious, the difference being that that philosophical approach does not attempt to claim correctness on every point of teaching. I once said that my intellectual orientation is skeptical and empirical, so the philosophical approach suits me fine.

Pago-Christianity and Christo-Paganism

I fear I have put the cart before the horse. The horse might have to do some pushing.

Let’s refer back to my 2023-vintage notion that Christianity exists as a via media between Judaism and Paganism. In other words we can say Christianity exists on a spectrum between “Pagan” and “Jewish,” with a lot of gradations in between.

(This may be better mapped as on two dimensions as a “political compass” or an “alignment chart,” but I’ve not yet conceptualized it that far.)

With these gradations in mind, it becomes possible to see individual and group belief-systems as resting at one or other point within that spectrum (or chart). I don’t believe anyone is able to occupy “dead center” though some confessional Lutheran groups might come close while skewing slightly Jewish because they use an MT-based Old Testament with the Palestinian canon of Scripture.

Traditional Catholicism and Orthodoxy would qualify as slightly paganizing, while Reformed Protestantism may qualify as heavily judaizing depending on the sect (I’ve written a blog post about this too). Modernism in all denominations would qualify as judaizing because it almost always tries to justify its claims by “First-century Judaism” and “the Jesus of history,” as though trying to pit “Jesus” against “Christianity.”

If we were to give names to this spectrum, we could consider the center ground “Christianity.” Outside that ground we could use the terms “Pago-Christianity” and “Judaeo-Christianity” for those traditions that are recognizably Christian while skewing obviously one way or another. And lastly we can use the terms “Christo-Paganism” and “Christo-Judaism” for those traditions that are actually Pagan or Jewish but with some Christian flavoring.

In this framework I would identify as a Pago-Christian, because my beliefs still end up the same as Christianity’s even though I come to it from a different reasoning. I am still comfortable with the Latin Mass and its imagery. I’m still comfortable with 85% of pre-Vatican II Catholic theology. I do not believe the saints are actually “deities.” I don’t pray to other gods and certainly don’t sacrifice to them, even if I may believe they exist as daimonia (in the technical meaning of that term). I simply see a difference in axis rather than a difference of religion.

And that axis, simply put, is that I reject the classification of Christianity as an Abrahamic religion. Christianity’s principles – and I speak here of what Christianity became during the Patristic period – have more in common with Mediterranean religions, except this one happens to have an Abrahamic origin story. There may be connection with the Elephantine Jews and definitely with Hellenistic Judaism. But in any case this Mediterraneanism was entrenched early on if John 1:1-14 is any clue.

Not a Conclusion

I fully expect this post to get some backlash, as I already saw on Facebook. Christians in general and Catholics in particular are very sensitive about the word “Pagan” because it’s been flung at them since Robert Taylor and Conyers Middleton, respectively. But that doesn’t change the fact that some things walk like a duck and quack like a duck, or that the pre-Vatican II Church openly admitted when a given practice came from elsewhere.

It’s also possible that I may misunderstand some of the material since I’m still working through it myself. This post is simply the hastily-written stream of consciousness resulting from a sermon I gave yesterday morning. And since I outed myself, I figured a fuller explanation needed to be placed somewhere.

So as we end: what is a moment you keep close to your heart, that led to changing your life for the better?