Clivedurdle

Other threads on other fora here have been discussing heaven and hell.

I assume it is agreed heaven and hell are eternal and opposites.

We are also given unclear routes to salvation - do x, believe y and z will happen.

Has anyone asked if this might be from a game, like chess or dungeons and dragons, that has been forgotten over the centuries?

wordy

You are teasing us aren't you ?

Constantine killed a lot of opponents so it is a deadly political game if game is proper word to use.

gstafleu

Are they? How many religions have a hell? The Greeks had a general underworld, I don't remember a specific hell. Or heaven, given that the gods resided on Olympos. In Norse mythology the heroes go to Valhalla (Odin's hall), the rest go to Niflheim. Niflheim seems to be a cold and dreary place, but I don't think that Valhalla=Heaven, Niflheim=Hell holds. The good vs evil aspect seems to be missing.

I'll throw in a suggestion for consideration: good vs evil in the absolutist sense of the Abrahamic religions can only arise in monotheisms. Polytheisms are to pluralistic to allow such a binary distinction.

Gerard Stafleu

Clivedurdle

I thought (little clue in the thread title) that I was specifically discussing xianity!

Once this opposite thinking had got under way and evolved in the monotheistic religions (is xianity monotheistic?) what kept it going or started it? Might games have had a very big influence? Chess or its predecessors for example?

Clivedurdle

An example, during the nineteenth century, football was formalised and a set of rules - (a creed? )- agreed by the football association.

Are the doctrines of xianity the rules of this theological and philosophical game? What explanations are given for xianity going doctrinal?

Chili

Good point and that is why I hold that it is impossible for Catholics to go to hell as Catholic. Catholics are not saved by definition but are sinners and have the confessionals to prove that they are sinners -- or they would have replaced their confessionals with hatching boxes as Luther suggested they should. It can therefore be said that Catholics are cold until they are born of God and will then leave the Church to work out their own salvation now as lukewarm son-of-man without a home ("son of man has no place to lie his head"). Accordingly, inside the Church we pray for them as [cold] Catholic because the Church knows that they must work out their salvation on their own from the entropy that is theirs via the Sacraments that do have a redeeming power of their own (sic). We call this Purgatory which may be a Catholic concept but does not exist inside the church or they would have hatching boxes there.

We call this the "Church Suffering" and they will be there until they "complete the race" after which they live as a Freeman with a mind of their own or else they just return to the Church now called "Triumphant."

The secret in completing the race is to be born of God and so be born of water and spirit instead of the flesh and spirit which is denounced in John 1:13 (take note Solo). To be born of flesh and spirit is to be born of canal desire and therefore the flesh. These will be those who still go to church with their eyes wide open but their minds half shut and that is when dyslexia begins.

The upshot here is that hell became popular with the Reformation when religious activity began after believers were born from below (flesh and spirit) and therefore fail to work out their own salvation in 42 months, but instead, they are happy to die in the comfort to know that better days are theirs after they die.

Goathead

i believe this is the "if we were better Catholics wed be protestant" school of thought.

Chili

Right on, protestants are the self proclaimed Christian while Catholics become Jesuits by nature (Nazarites in Judaism) in purgatory (there called Galilee) until they return to Rome (there called Is-ra-el) and we call "Rome sweet home" to say that etenal life belongs to the mythology.

mountainman

The new history could not suppress the old. Adam and Eve and what follows had in some way to be presented in a world populated by Deucalion, Cadmus, Romulus and Alexander the Great. This created all sorts of new problems. First, the pagans had to be introduced to the Jewish version of history. Secondly, the Christian historians were expected to silence the objection that Christianity was new, and therefore not respectable. Thirdly, the pagan facts of life had to get into the Jewish-Christian scheme of redemption. It soon became imperative for the Christians to produce a chronology which would satisfy both the needs of elementary teaching and the purposes of higher historical interpretation.

The Christian chronographers had to summarize the history which the converts were now supposed to consider their own; they had also to show the antiquity of the Jewish-Christian doctrine, and they had to present a model of providential history. The result was that, unlike pagan chronology, Christian chronology was also a philosophy of history.

-- A.M.; Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century A.D.

Plan9

So the best theory is that christiany originated when the greeks were playing Dungeons & Dragons?

Plato: Hey Socrates your messiah failed the saving throw against crucifixion!
Socrates: Damn thats the third messiah character I had crucified! Im tired of playing messiahs, Im going to make a dwarf character now.
Aristophanes: You cant be the dwarf im the dwarf! Screw you guys im going home!
Socrates: Go home you damn pederast!
Xenophon: Whats a pederast?
Alcibiades: mmmmmmmmmm
Xenophon: Mom says thats sin.
Plato: Were all pederasts, its the national sport, other than playing Dungeons & Dragons, but somebody has to play the messiah, because we have to finish the jewish messiah campaingn.
Socrates: Can I play a dwarf messiah?
Plato: Ok youre a dwarf messiah.
Socrates: cool can I have a magic sword or a crown of thorns?
Plato: You can only get that when your messiah goes up in levels.
Aristophanes: Im going to write a dirty comedy about you Socrates njahnjahnjahnjah!

The latest scientific theory of the origins of christianity endorsed by Doherty.