Did this happen?

[Chesterton]

I heard this story once: In the first or second century, there was something similar to the Roman Pantheon in Greece (I'm not confusing it with the Greek Parthenon). It was a place somewhere in Greece where there were rows of statues depicting many of the major Greek gods. Some Greeks, after hearing the gospel, and being impressed with Christ but misunderstanding his true deity, offered to allow some Christians to erect a statue of Christ to honor Him alongside all the other gods. The Christians refused the offer, because they rightly understood Christ to be the one true God. I know I've read of this somewhere, but I don't know where, and I don't know if it is legend or a historical event. Has anyone heard this story, or know anything about it?

 

[bbbbbbb]

I would probably ascribe it to legend. The Greek were quite particular about erecting individual temples. For example, in Athens there is not only the Parthenon, which was dedicated to the patron goddess of Athens, Athena, but there were also subsidiary temples. However, in Rome the building known as the Pantheon survives to this day with its individual altars and niches fo the statues of individual gods (not the major ones of Roman mythology, but only the minor ones which did not merit their own temple). No such building survives in an of the Greek city-states nor is known to have been erected.

 

[revanneosl]

It sounds like a legandary expansion (perhaps from some visionary, like Emmerich" of Paul's experience in the Areopagus, as described in the books of Acts, chapter 17

 

[E.C.]

The only vaguely similar thing that comes to mind relates to the life of St. John Chrysostom. The empress at the time wanted a statue of herself erected in front of a cathedral in Constantinople. St. John said no, she got mad, the people backed him and he ended up being sent to exile on the coast of the Black Sea. However he did not survive the trip as old age kicked in.


Although given that what you're (the OP) describing happened in Greece, would not surprise me if it were true as statues used by Christians was only a big thing in Rome. Everyone else preferred Iconography.

 

[Gareth]

It's interesting to note just how people reacted to the Good News in the first century. In Acts 14:8-18 we see just how superstitious some people were.

 

[Chesterton]

On the offhand chance someone else is interested, I found my answer. I had a vague memory of it being an actual event I’d read of in an encyclopedia or something. But I was re-reading Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man and that’s where this is described. However, he’s speaking figuratively:

“Theosophists build a pantheon; but it is only a pantheon for pantheists. They call a Parliament of Religions as a reunion of all the peoples; but it is only a reunion of all the prigs. Yet exactly such a pantheon had been set up two thousand years before by the shores of the Mediterranean; and Christians were invited to set up the image of Jesus side by side with the image of Jupiter, of Mithras, of Osiris, of Atys, or of Ammon. It was the refusal of the Christians that was the turning-point of history. If the Christians had accepted, they and the whole world would have certainly, in a grotesque but exact metaphor, gone to pot. They would all have been boiled down to one lukewarm liquid in that great pot of cosmopolitan corruption in which all the other myths and mysteries were already melting.”

 

[revanneosl]

Ah ha! The Theosophists! My great-auntie Eleanor was one. A great "threat" to religion in Chesterton's day. Alas, aside from a few die-hards, they are no more.

 

[Chesterton]

Wow, an actual Theosophist, huh? Don't know that I've ever even heard of one...unless you count Debbie Harry.

 

[revanneosl]

No really? Blondie's a Theosophist? Helena Blavatsky be praised!

 

[Chesterton]

LOL, Just kidding (I guess) – but there’s that line in their song “(I’m Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dear” where she says “We can entertain each one with our theosophy”. I figured pop culture references to Theosophy are probably rare, so I wanted to throw out something obscure to see if anyone would catch it .

 

[dragonfruit29]

I studied Greek and Roman history through my art history undergrad studies, and with the exception of the Pantheon, Greeks and Romans are pretty particular about keeping their temples devoted to one, and only one, of their deities. I'm guessing that story is legend- a rather interesting legend, though. I wonder where it came from.