Lost Mystery?

Not my usual, but the following is an excerpt of an article from the Christian Research Journal by Ronald Nash.

What were the mystery religions?

Other than Judaism and Christianity, the mystery religions were the most influential religions in the early centuries after Christ. The reason these cults were called "mystery religions" is that they involved secret ceremonies known only to those initiated into the cult. The major benefit of these practices was thought to be some kind of salvation.

The mystery religions were not, of course, the only manifestations of the religious spirit in the eastern Roman Empire. One could also find public cults not requiring an initiation ceremony into secret beliefs and practices. The Greek Olympian religion and its Roman counterpart are examples of this type of religion.

Each Mediterranean region produced its own mystery religion. Out of Greece came the cults of Demeter and Dionysus, as well as the Eleusinian and Orphic mystery religions, which developed later.

Mystery Religion - Basic Traits

One must avoid any suggestion that there was one common mystery religion. While a tendency toward eclecti­cism or synthesis developed after A.D. 300, each of the mystery cults was a separate and distinct religion during the century that saw the birth of the Christian church. Moreover, each mystery cult assumed different forms in different cultural settings and underwent significant changes, especially after A.D. 100. Nevertheless, the mystery religions exhibited five common traits.

(1) Central to each mystery was its use of an annual vegetation cycle in which life is renewed each spring and dies each fall. Followers of the mystery cults found deep symbolic significance in the natural processes of growth, death, decay, and rebirth.

(2) As noted above, each cult made important use of secret ceremonies or mysteries, often in connection with an initiation rite. Each mystery religion also passed on a "secret" to the initiate that included information about the life of the cult's god or goddess and how humans might achieve unity with that deity. This "knowledge" was always a secret or esoteric knowledge, unattainable by any outside the circle of the cult.

(3) Each mystery also centered around a myth in which the deity either returned to life after death or else triumphed over his enemies. Implicit in the myth was the theme of redemption from everything earthly and temporal. The secret meaning of the cult and its accompanying myth was expressed in a "sacramental drama" that appealed largely to the feelings and emotions of the initiates. This religious ecstasy was supposed to lead them to think they were experiencing the beginning of a new life.

(4) The mysteries had little or no use for doctrine and correct belief. They were primarily concerned with the emotional life of their followers. The cults used many different means to affect the emotions and imaginations of initiates and hence bring about "union with the god": processions, fasting, a play, acts of purification, blazing lights, and esoteric liturgies. This lack of any emphasis on correct belief marked an important difference between the mysteries and Christianity.

The Christian faith was exclusivistic in the sense that it recognized only one legitimate path to God and salvation, Jesus Christ. The mysteries were inclusivistic in the sense that nothing prevented a believer in one cult from following other mysteries.

(5) The immediate goal of the initiates was a mystical experience that led them to feel they had achieved union with their god. Beyond this quest for mystical union were two more ultimate goals: some kind of redemption or salvation, and immortality.

Mystery Religion - Evolution

Before A.D. 100, the mystery religions were still largely confined to specific localities and were still a relatively novel phenomenon. After A.D. 100, they gradually began to attain a widespread popular influence throughout the Roman Empire. But they also underwent significant changes that often resulted from the various cults absorbing elements from each other. As devotees of the mysteries became increasingly eclectic in their beliefs and practices, new and odd combinations of the older mysteries began to emerge.

And as the cults continued to tone down the more objectionable features of their older practices, they began to attract greater numbers of followers.

The full article (in PDF form), "Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?" lies here.

So has all this toning down, while certainly making some things less objectionable, concurrently washed away that most precious veneer (or substance) of mystery that made the lifestyle, the acts, the works [of true believers] so very appealing in the first place?

Where once, religion (including religious art and music) was the envy (or bane, occasionally) of the scientist as well as the common man; today, the scientist and the clever marketer have become the envy of those who profess and seek to substantiate their moral and/or religious (or spiritualized, if you will) vision.

In the process, somehow or somehere, the appeal to spiritual mystery and majesty, it seems, has been trivialized or abandoned.

At best, perhaps we might hope that such has merely been suspended or supplanted (temporarily?) by the great, worldwide flood of information and the multitude of modern scientific marvels feeding current voracious appetites for greater happiness, personal fulfillment and blind expediency.

With history a constant flux and, at least, seemingly, a neverending inconclusion, can an appealing (mysterious!) science/religion (and vice versa) synthesis or synergy ever fully emerge?

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Afterthought/Sidebar:

Dr. Frank Kaufmann cites research by Duke University religion and sociology Professor Mark Chaves on the decline in public faith in religious leaders.

Can confidence in the virtue of any one (living, breathing, that is) leader actually translate or transmute into some kind of general or widespread confidence (or public faith) in virtue itself?

And, ergo, can any faith, whether public or private, currently (or ever) truly be described as full, complete or even absolute?

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"It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion."

~Albert Einstein

"Where mystery begins religion ends.”
 ~Edmund Burke