medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear Theresa et al,
Jim wrote:
> This, of course, depends entirely on one's definition of "mystery",
I'd like to underline what Jim and Oriens have told us.
There are mysteries and there are mysteries so far as
religions of the early Christian era are concerned. In
speaking of the "mysteries" (the transliteration of the
plural of the Greek "mysterion" escapes me at the
moment) some early authors mean no more than that
there are Christian actions (sacramenti) in which God
joins man in an inexplicable manner. This is a quite
different matter from, e.g., the various flavours of
gnosticism where secret rites would allow the initiate
privileged access to a diety or dieties.
I hasten to add that this entire area seems to me to
be pretty muddy because
a. gnosticism, with its mysteries, predated
Christianity;
b. there were a wide variety of gnostic groups,
each with its own dogma and its own set of
mysteries; and
c. as some early Christian writers make clear,
some gnostics adopted portions of Christian
teaching and practice as well as vice versa.
My vade mecum (short course) in this is chapters 3
and 4 of Bengt Hägglund, HISTORY OF THEOLOGY.
Additionally, toss in the fact that other contemporary
religions had mysteries, and you have a wonderful
opportunity for some serious terminological inexactitude.
Over-zealous (at least to my fussy way of thinking)
attempts to sort all of this out neatly have led to some
rather misleading over-simplifications.
Conclusion? Having taught this subject for awhile
many years ago, I'm glad Theresa, NOT me, faces
this challenge. I had a tendency to focus on how some
individual authors used the term "mysterion", show
some of the differences and contrasts in usage, and
leave a lot of loose ends dangling ("That IS interesting;
why don't you pursue it in your term paper?").
You have just seen why I now limit my studies to the
German Reformation in the years 1527-1530.
Regards to all,
Frank
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