The idea that Easter came from a Pagan fertility rite is a conspiracy theory based on the name of the feast in certain Western European countries like England during the Anglo-Saxon period, which were at the time backwaters which had been out of contact with the rest of Christendom, and whose churches barely survived, during the Dark Ages that followed the collapse of the government in Rome.*
However, the majority of Christian countries refer to Easter as Pascha, meaning Passover in Greek, or some variant on it, for example, the Dutch call it Passen. This is because Pascha is the Christian continuation of Passover, as is indicated by our Lord modifying the Passover seder into a sacrifice of Himself. For that matter, the Eastern Orthodox and some Oriental Orthodox strongly prefer to call it Pascha when speaking in English, as this also helps denote the fact that it is celebrated according to the Paschalion adopted at the Council of Nicaea, which, according to the Julian Calendar, is the first Sunday after the Vernal Equinox, approximating the 14th of Nissan in 33 AD, and this was necessary because in the second century the Rabbis, the sole surviving mainstream Jewish authorities** had changed the Jewish calendar; later the Karaite Jews, which emerged around the 6th or 7th century as an anti-Rabinnical, Sola Scriptura protest movement, attempted to recreate the old calendar based on observations of the barley crop in the Holy Land, but it is unclear if their calendar was a success.
Christmas likewise was not dated to compete with Sol Invictus or the Saturnalia, although this was a happy accident. Rather, historically, the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25th and the Feast of The Epiphany on January 6th, commemorating the Baptism of our Lord, were more important, and our Lord’s nativity was celebrated at the same time as his baptism, and in fact still is in the Armenian Apostolic Churches (one of the four surviving Oriental Orthodox ethno/linguistic groups, along with the Syriacs, Copts and Abyssinians; there was also an Oriental Orthodox church among the Numidians, located in the Sudan, but this was destroyed by Islamic persecution. When you add nine months to the Annunciation, you get December 25th. Oh, as a fun fact, while in many Christian churches the Ecclesiastical year begins around September 1st, or the first Sunday of Advent, in the past it commonly began on March the 25th in parts of Western Europe, and just as the Byzantine civil calendar began on September 1st, in those countries, it began on March 25th.
That Christmas drew Romans living in Rome away from a specifically Roman festival is a happy accident, because contrary to popular belief, Rome was actually somewhat isolated in the Early Church by its use of Latin rather than Greek; it was extremely conservative for most of the first few centuries of its existence, especially between the third century and the Council of Chalcedon, which marked the first time the Bishop of Rome played a major role in an ecumenical council, and Roman representation at the Ecumenical councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Ephesus was dramatically less, with Greek bishops dominating all seven of the historic Ecumemical Councils, numerically speaking, and Rome usually sending legates as opposed to bishops.
We find another such happy accident with the Feast of the Presentation of our Lord, on February 2nd, known in the West as Candlemas. This coincided with the Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia, but could not have been any more different, for in Lupercalia, wealthy Roman young men would run naked through the streets, whereas Candlemas has always been a solemn, beautiful and reverent affair.
Your remark on Hell is also, forgive me, without merit, because one could use the same logic to argue that Heaven is of Pagan origins, since after all, the Chinese Folk Religion, Nordic Paganism with Valhalla, Egyptian paganism with the Afterlife, and many others feature it. Buddhism features multiple Heavens and Hells.
The similarity of other religions to the ancient Hebrew religion, Second Temple Judaism, and Christianity makes sense when we consider that the devil works by distorting the truth, and also makes sense in light of the doctrine of General Revelation, that being that God imparts an idea of Himself and the truth to all humans. This is a concept you should actively embrace.
Really, the only viable arguments in favor of Universalism come from those you seem to believe are Pagan, such as Origen, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and the Asyrian Church of the East in the late first millennium, for example, St. Isaac the Syrian and the Bishop of Basra, which has celebrated Christmas and Pascha as long as any other church.
I have to confess, I am a bit disappointed with this argument, because it does not advance your views on Universalism, and also, if you recall, I historically have made a point of telling you I respect your personal piety and decency. I myself, like Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, memory eternal, hope all may be saved, while admitting the possibility that some might not, because the one thing God cannot force us to do is to love Him, and indeed the voluntary nature of love is a major argument against monergism in both the Calvinist and Universalist forms. However, if monergism is correct, then I would hope for the latter. The Orthodox liturgies begin with the Litany of Peace, which contains a petition for the Salvation of All.
@ViaCrucis ,
@prodromos,, and
@chevyontheriver have further debunked the idea that major elements of Christianity are pagan so many times, coming from Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic perspectives, and consequently I would wish that this kind of argument would cease to be made, especially when it is directly counterproductive to the laudable nature of your other posts on this forum. For example, if you immersed yourself in the early history of Apokatastasis, for example, by studying St. Gregory of Nyssa, you would find an ally among some Eastern Orthodox, such as the eminent Dr. David Bentley Hart. And you would also discover a radically different interpretation of Hell among many Orthodox who do believe in it.
*In Rome, but not Constantinople, where things would remain normal for many centuries, in the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, which ultimately fell to the Turks as a result of Venice using the pretense of a crusade to conquer it in 1204; it regained its independence but was permanently damaged, and the Byzantines refused the offer of Western Europe to defend them against the Turks if they gave up Eastern Orthodoxy and accepted Papal Supremacy, at the Council of Florence (where the majority of Orthodox bishops voted for integration into the Roman church, but one bishop, St. Mark of Ephesus, warned the people of the deal that was being contemplated, and knowing that Turkocratia would be a likely consequence, the people rejected the decisions of the Council, which is a key aspect of Orthodox faith, that is that a council becomes ecumenical only if it is accepted by the entire Orthodox Christian society, including the individual churches and their hierarchs, clerics, monastics and laity alike, so the arbitrary decisions that have come to characterize Roman Catholicism beginning in the eleventh century with the adoption of Papal Supremacy as a doctrine, are impossible in the Orthodox Church.
**Outside of Ethiopia, which was obscure) descended from the Pharisees, owing to Hellenic Jews, Sadducees and Essenes disappearing, due to mass conversions of the Jews to Christianity (the Antiochian Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Assyrian, Chaldean and Indian Orthodox, also known as St. Thomas Christians, as St. Thomas was martyred by a furious Hindu pagan raja in 53 AD in the city of Kerala, which between the reign of Alexander the Great until the establishment of the State of Israel in the 20th century was home to the Kochin Jews, the most famous recent member of which was Vidal Sassoon, a scion of the prominent Sassoon family. Many Kochin Jews converted to Christianity and some are endogamous.
Forgive me, but I am just not seeing the connection, and begging your pardon, it feels to some extent like you might as well have asked me what I think of Rastafarianism or the Moonies.
