by cyranorox » June 10th, 2010, 3:06 pm
Pagan influences and ideas? Not really. Christianity was intended and empowered to adopt and transform the world, not to reinvent the wheel. Christ did not propose a new receipe for bread when it became His body; we did not find out new times to have holidays or forget the shape of the year. We weren't supposed to. The worst of the Pagan ideas imho is penal substitutionary atonement, from German Pagan ideas of crime, rank and jurisprudence.
Moreover, with the exception of the example above, the adoptions and transformations were conscious, reasoned, and complete, ie, the Church fully transformed the being and identity of the thing adopted, as the bread is fully transformed. Christmas really 'is' a Christian holiday, with a pagan ancestry or substrate.
Lewis understood this. Plato could be adopted because Plato was part of the prepartio evangelici, as the Latins have it - the bread of human thought and wisdom.Lewis was by his own admission a converted Pagan, a most honorable thing to be, and among apostate Puritans, a species not endangered today. The Puritans, apostate or not, generally are unable to perceive the 'fit' of the best Pagan ideas to Christianity, as Lewis did. I myself find I am more at ease, more in harmony [though in disagreement] with Pagans than Frankish Puritans.
Apocatastasis Now!