“Nor when to life’s last beam they bid farewellMay sufferers cease from pain, nor quite be freedFrom all their fleshly plagues; but by fixed law,The strange, inveterate taint works deeply in.For this, the chastisement of evils pastIs suffered here, and full requital paid.Some hang on high, outstretched to viewless winds;For some their sin’s contagion must be purgedIn vast ablution of deep-rolling seas,Or burned away in fire. Each man receivesHis ghostly portion in the world of dark.”
“Nor when to life’s last beam they bid farewellMay sufferers cease from pain, nor quite be freedFrom all their fleshly plagues; but by fixed law,The strange, inveterate taint works deeply in.For this, the chastisement of evils pastIs suffered here, and full requital paid.Some hang on high, outstretched to viewless winds;For some their sin’s contagion must be purgedIn vast ablution of deep-rolling seas,Or burned away in fire. Each man receivesHis ghostly portion in the world of dark.”
“Nor when to life’s last beam they bid farewellMay sufferers cease from pain, nor quite be freedFrom all their fleshly plagues; but by fixed law,The strange, inveterate taint works deeply in.For this, the chastisement of evils pastIs suffered here, and full requital paid.Some hang on high, outstretched to viewless winds;For some their sin’s contagion must be purgedIn vast ablution of deep-rolling seas,Or burned away in fire. Each man receivesHis ghostly portion in the world of dark.”
Thus the sojourn of the soul in the world below for the thousand years which must elapse before it could be born again, was a period of cleansing from ancient sin. This idea of purification we have alreadyseen to be as old as the Orphics; it was made an important element by Plato; and indeed all who held to the doctrine of rebirths regarded the periods between earthly existences as times of moral punishment and cleansing. There were certain analogies in Mithraism. Orthodox Christianity could not adopt the doctrine of metempsychosis, although some Gnostics found this possible, by rejecting the resurrection of the body. But beyond question the Greek doctrine of post-mortem purgation from sin, combining with ideas inherited from the Old Testament, has been influential in the development of a Christian belief in purification, especially by fire, in an intermediate state between death and paradise. The doctrine of purgatory, in somewhat different forms, has been held by both the Eastern and the Western Churches. Although this doctrine did not become a definite part of the theologyof the Western Church until the time of Gregory the Great (590-604), nevertheless traces of it can be found in the earlier Church writers. Origen held that even the perfect must pass through fire after death;[39]St. Augustine was less confident, but he thought it not past belief that imperfect souls might be saved by cleansing flames.[40]The Western Church, from St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth to Bellarmino in the sixteenth century held the doctrine that the cleansing fire was as material as that of any Stoic; but today that view has in large part been abandoned.[41]
These two illustrations must suffice to suggest the ways in which Christian thought was influenced by its pagan environment.
Finally we will consider an example of parallelism between pagan and Christian ideas. It is evident that the Greeks, who made such large use of successiverebirths, following periods of punishment and purification below, thought of these repeated lives and deaths as forming a moral series, so that moral progress, or degeneracy, at one stage was inseparably connected with both the preceding and the following stages. To them life here and life in the other world were indissolubly bound together. This was also as true of Stoicism with its limited reward for uprightness, as it was of Platonism. The Greek mysteries, which did not concern themselves with metempsychosis, by the fifth century before our era likewise made future happiness depend in part at least on righteousness in this life; the oriental mysteries too made this existence the condition of the next. In short, we may say that wherever men believed in any kind of a future existence, they almost universally held to the common belief that future happiness was to be the reward of a virtuous life onearth. But this is one of the fundamental principles of Christianity. Paganism, therefore, was in accord on this point with its enemy, and thereby favored the propagation of the new religion; moreover, the superior ethical demands of Christianity and its humanitarian principles no doubt found a ready response, especially in enlightened circles.
So we have returned to that which seems to me most important in the relations of paganism and of early Christianity. In many ways paganism provided an environment favorable for the spread of the religion which Jesus founded. The two were at many points irreconcilable, and the former has not always benefited the latter by its influence; but it is a grave historical error not to recognize the areas in which the thought of the two ran parallel. Is the nobler faith the poorer because its paths were made broad by the pagan in his search after Immortality?
1.Eduard Norden,Aeneis,Buch VI, Leipzig, 1903, is most useful for its commentary, especially on religious and philosophic matters.
2.W. Warde Fowler,The Religious Experience of the Roman People, Macmillan Co., 1911, pp. 419 ff.
So Dante’s journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise secured his conversion and salvation, bringing him finally to freedom and to knowledge.Paradiso, XXXI, 85-87 and XXXIII entire.
3.Metempsychosis was the subject of the Ingersoll lecture by Professor George Foot Moore in 1914. Therefore that theme is not discussed here.
4.Cf. Friedländer,Roman Life and Manners, Routledge, London, 1910, iii, chap. II.
5.On the pre-Hellenic periods, see Schuchhardt,Schliemann’s Excavations, New York, 1891, passim; Lagrange,La Crète Ancienne, Paris, 1908, chap. II; Baikie,The Sea-Kings of Crete, London, 1910, chap. XI.
6.Cf. Fairbanks,Greek Religion, New York, 1910, pp. 168-188; Stengel,Griechische Kultusaltertümer, 2d ed., Munich, 1898, § 80; Wissowa,Religion und Kultus der Römer, 2d ed., Munich, 1912, § 36; W. Warde Fowler,Religious Experience of the Roman People, London, 1911, passim; and especially Lecture XVII, “Mysticism—Ideasof the Future Life;” C. Pascal,Le Credenze d’Oltretomba, 2 vols., 1912.
7.B. I. Wheeler,Dionysos and Immortality, Ingersoll Lecture for 1898-99. The classic work on Orphism is Rohde,Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen, 3d ed., Tübingen, 1903, vol. ii.
8.Frg.154 Abel.
9.Apparently Orphism was already established at Croton in southern Italy when Pythagoras arrived there about 530B.C.; but the matter is very uncertain. It is clear that Orphism and Pythagoreanism soon coalesced, even if they were originally distinct.
10.Rep., vi, 508 f. It should be said that the identity of Plato’s supreme idea with God is denied by some Platonists; but cf.Phil.22C;Tim.28A-29E, 57A, 92C.
11.The doctrine of ideas is developed in thePhaedo,Phaedrus,Meno,Symposium, and especially in theRepublic. In theSophistand theParmenides, Plato criticizes his own views acutely.
12.Metaphys., i, 9; vi, 8; xii, 10; xiii, 3.
13.Phaedrus, 245 (cf.Laws, x, 894Bff., xii, 966E);Phaedo, 72 ff., 86, 105;Meno, 81 ff.
14.Diss., i, 14, 6; ii, 8, 11.
15.Cf. E. V. Arnold,Roman Stoicism, University Press, Cambridge (Eng.), 1911, chap. XI.
16.Rohde,Psyche, ii^3, 379 ff.
17.CIL., ii, 1434; cf. 1877, 2262.
18.CIL., v, 1939.
19.CIL., vi, 14672 =Ins. Graec., xiv, 1746.
20.Call.,Epig., 13, 3 ff.
21.CIL., iii, 5825; vi, 9280, 10848; x, 6706; etc.
22.Aen., vi, 723-751. Translation by Theodore C. Williams, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1908.
23.On these mysteries, see Rohde,Psyche, i^3, pp. 278 ff.; Farnell,Cults of the Greek States, iii, 126-213; A. Mommsen,Feste der Stadt Athen, pp. 204-277, 405-421.
24.480 f.
25.Frg.137.
26.Frg.753.
27.454 ff.
28.Eph. Arch., iii (1883), p. 81, 8.
29.On these and other oriental gods, see F. Cumont,The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, Chicago, 1911; also G. Showerman,The Great Mother of the Gods, 1901; Hepding,Attis, 1903; W. Budge,Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, 2 vols., 1911; G. A. Reisner,The Egyptian Conception of Immortality, Ingersoll Lecture for 1911; F. Cumont,Textes et Monuments relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra, 2 vols., 1894-1900; Id.,Les Mystères de Mithra, 2 ed., 1902; English translation, 1910.
30.Apuleius,Metamorphoses, xi, 23.
31.Enn., iv, 7.
32.Cf. Plato,Rep., 364Bff.;Demosth., xviii, 259; Apul.,Met., viii, 24 ff.
33.R. H. Charles,A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life in Israel, in Judaism, andin Christianity, London, 1899, is a convenient book, but one which must be used with caution.
34.A. Harnack,Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, i, 4th ed., 1909; English translation from the third German edition, 1901; G. B. Stevens,The Theology of the New Testament, 1903; H. Holtzmann,Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Theologie, 2 vols., 2d ed., 1911.
35.Rep., ii, 363 D.
36.Apol., 41.
37.It should be said that even in the earliest period Christian baptism had certain magical notions attached to it; not, however, the belief that it secured immortality.
38.Cf. Hatch,The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages on the Christian Church,X,B; Anrich,Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum, 1894, pp. 168 ff., especially 179 ff.
39.Hom. in Num., xxv;in Ps.xxxvi, 3.
40.C. D., xx, 25; xxi, 13 (where Virgil’s verses given above are quoted), 26;de octo Dulcitii Quaest.,Qu.i, 13;Enchiridion, lxix.
41.St. Thomas,Opera(Venice, 1759), xii, p. 575,Distinctioxxi,Quaes.1,Sol.3; xiii, p. 347 ff.,Distinctioxliv,Quaes.3,Art.4,Quaestiunc.3; Bellarmino,de Purgatorio, II, x-xii.