Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Blending of Christian and Pagan

What are the advantages and disadvantages of blending Christianity and Pagan in art and doctrine?
The Christian faith has a strong history of blending pagan and Christian elements in their art and sometimes doctrine. Those influences between the culture and their religious beliefs were advantages and disadvantages to Christian art in many ways. Pagan and Christian faith is almost similar to each other, but the difference between these two are that Christianity believes there is one god, Jesus, who was the savior of all of our souls, and we should believe in him through our faith. On the other hand, the pagans believe that everything has a soul. Pagans and Christians both have deep beliefs and religious practices through their faith and both religions practice prayer. Christianity copies a lot of aspects from pagans. For example, the Christian faith took architecture ideas, such as arches and columns, and in a way the Christian faith began to make their churches look like the temples the pagans once had. So, what is the advantage and disadvantage here? I think the advantage is that the similar things like architecture can attract pagan people because it is similar and easy to adopt. The disadvantage is that because it is so similar, it is difficult for people to distinguish between the two. I think that makes people confused and make people think “Why Christianity?” or “Why pagan? Those are the same”.
To conclude this, we can say that Christianity was greatly influenced by pagans and that influence causes advantage and disadvantage to its arts.

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