{"id":417,"date":"2008-03-03T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2008-03-03T19:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/?p=417"},"modified":"2008-02-29T15:18:14","modified_gmt":"2008-02-29T22:18:14","slug":"roman-worship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/?p=417","title":{"rendered":"Roman worship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed. note: Written by hand February 9, 2008 at our home at 491 S. Reed Ave. and posted later.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

History is full of treasures and surprises.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 In Will Durant’s Caesar and Christ<\/em> I was privileged to read about the Roman religious sacrificial system.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 It turns out that animals sacrificed to Rome’s gods were thought to become the gods themselves.<\/p>\n

Thus it was that the sacrifice was thought to be not just a sacrifice of an animal, but a sacrifice of the god himself.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 I see in this the seed or foreshadow of the concept of Christ’s substitutionary atonement.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 After the sacrifice was complete, the animal’s internal organs were given to sacred flames and the flesh served to the priests and worshipers.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 Thus it was hoped that the god’s strength and glory would pass to the people.<\/p>\n

There are several ways to interpret the relationship between this practice and Jesus’ Godly sacrifice.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 One is that Christianity merely borrowed the concept from older religion.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 That may be.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 But I prefer to see in this practice a foreshadow of humanity’s spiritual center of gravity: Christ’s sacrificial death and glorious resurrection.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 The Romans were no fools, and this drama, this death-of-god, is hardwired into humans past and present.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a truth we know with a source we don’t.<\/p>\n

Jesus may have had this god-sacrifice in mind when he said in John 6:53, “Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 He was indicating that the glory and strength of God can pass into our lives only because of his sacrificial death and atonement.<\/p>\n

The ancients would have understood, and now I do, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ed. note: Written by hand February 9, 2008 at our home at 491 S. Reed Ave. and posted later.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 History is full of treasures and surprises.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 In Will Durant’s Caesar and Christ I was privileged to read about the Roman religious sacrificial system.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 It turns out that animals sacrificed to Rome’s gods were thought to … Continue reading Roman worship<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,2,9],"tags":[111,112,110,114,113],"class_list":["post-417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","category-religion","category-thoughts","tag-atonement","tag-christ","tag-history","tag-paganism","tag-roman"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdZlL-6J","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}