quote:

---

Jesus dethroned...

Jesus was not the first or only one to be the son of god, born of a virgin, crucified, ressurrected, and/or martyred for our sins.
In fact, many beings predate Jesus who had any combination of the above, and a few who had all of the above.

Here's a list of some of them:

Adad of Assyria
Adonis, Apollo, Heracles ("Hercules") and Zeus of Greece
Alcides of Thebes
Attis of Phrygia
Baal of Phoenicia
Bali of Afghanistan
Beddru of Japan
Buddha of India
Crite of Chaldea
Deva Tat of Siam
Hesus of the Druids
Horus, Osiris, and Serapis of Egypt, whose long-haired, bearded appearance was adopted for the Christ character
Indra of Tibet/India
Jao of Nepal
Krishna of India
Mikado of the Sintoos
Mithra of Persia
Odin of the Scandinavians
Prometheus of Caucasus/Greece
Quetzalcoatl of Mexico
Salivahana of Bermuda
Tammuz of Syria
Thor of the Gauls
Universal Monarch of the Sibyls
Wittoba of the Bilingonese
Xamolxis of Thrace
Zarathustra/Zoroaster of Persia
Zoar of the Bonzes
(I can go into detail about a few of them, if anyone likes)

This being true, how can Jesus be considered the one true way? Since he can't, the very basis of Christianity is, at the very least, suspect, if not completely false.
What now?

---

quote:

---

Thor of the Gauls

---

• Real Joy and True Myth
  http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/3505/LewisJoy.html
  In this article by Brown:
  
  The connection between desire and hope led Lewis to sort out the perplexing multiplicity of religions and acknowledge that the real clue to it all was that hard-boiled Atheist when he said, "Rum thing, all that about the Dying God. Seems to have really happened once" and by Barfield s encouragement of a more respectful, if not delighted, attitude to Pagan myth. "The question was no longer to find the one simply true religion among a thousand religions simply false. It was rather Where has religion reached its true maturity? Where, if anywhere, have the hints of Paganism been fulfilled?...There were only two answers possible: either Hinduism or in Christianity. Everything else was either a preparation for, or else a vulgarization of these."
  
  



• What Happened this Day in Church History, September 22, 1931 • C. S. Lewis' Sidecar Conversion
  http://www.gospelcom.net/chi/ARCHIVEF/09/daily-09-22-2001.shtml
  
  "When we set out I did not believe that Jesus is the Son of God and when we reached the zoo I did."



• the literary bloke
  J I Packer appreciates the many facets of C S Lewis
  http://www.anglicanmedia.com.au/old/cul/literarybloke.htm
  
  myth and persuasion
  Myth, for Lewis, meant a story, or a figure within a story, that ‘grabs’ us, as we say, with a sense of significance, and thus draws us to identify in some way with what they show us. Lewis loved the god-stories of Norse and Greek mythology, and the thought that did most to bring him back to Christianity was that, in Christ, a myth found worldwide, the myth of a dying and rising deity through whose ordeal good comes to others, has become space-time fact. Then he found that what he now knew as the fact of Christ, set forth in the Scriptures, was evoking in his imagination new myths of evangelical shape - stories picturing divine mercy in worlds other than ours, past, present, and future. The space trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength), the seven Narnias, and Till We Have Faces, were the result.
  
  Lewis saw these myths, and many pre-Christian pagan myths with them, as ‘good dreams’ that can have real significance in the evangelistic process. They can project visions of wholeness restored through divine action. They can make honest hearts wish that something of this sort might be true in our world, and so prepare them to discover that something of this sort is true, as a matter of fact. This crafting of myth as evangelistic persuasion is a third unique excellence in Lewis’s work.
  



• J.R.R. Tolkien: Truth and Myth
  by Joseph Pearce
  http://www.christlife.org/faith/articles/C_tolkientruthmyth.html
  
  Tolkien's encounter with the depths of Christian mysticism and his understanding of the truths of orthodox theology enabled him to unravel the philosophy of myth that inspired not only the "magic" of his books but also the conversion of his friend C.S. Lewis to Christianity.
  
  Myths, Lewis told Tolkien, were "lies and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver."
  
  "No," Tolkien replied. "They are not lies." Far from being lies they were the best way — sometimes the only way — of conveying truths that would otherwise remain inexpressible. We have come from God, Tolkien argued, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily toward the true harbor, whereas materialistic "progress" leads only to the abyss and the power of evil.
  
  "In expounding this belief in the inherent truth of mythology," wrote Tolkien's biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, "Tolkien had laid bare the center of his philosophy as a writer, the creed that is at the heart of The Silmarillion." It is also the creed at the heart of all his other work. His short novel, Tree and Leaf, is essentially an allegory on the concept of true myth, and his poem, "Mythopoeia," is an exposition in verse of the same concept.
  
  Building on this philosophy of myth, Tolkien explained to Lewis that the story of Christ was the true myth at the very heart of history and at the very root of reality. Whereas the pagan myths were manifestations of God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using the images of their "mythopoeia" to reveal fragments of His eternal truth, the true myth of Christ was a manifestation of God expressing Himself through Himself, with Himself, and in Himself. God, in the Incarnation, had revealed Himself as the ultimate poet who was creating reality, the true poem or true myth, in His own image. Thus, in a divinely inspired paradox, myth was revealed as the ultimate realism.
  
  Such a revelation changed Lewis' whole conception of Christianity, precipitating his conversion.
  
  Lewis was one of the select group of friends, known collectively as the Inklings, who read the manuscript of Tolkien's timeless classic, The Lord of the Rings, as it was being written. This work, which has been voted the greatest book of the 20th century in a succession of polls, was described by its author as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision."
  
  Space does not permit a full exposition of the depths of Christian orthodoxy in The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, or Tolkien's other work. Those wishing to discover more are referred to my books, Tolkien: Man and Myth and Tolkien: A Celebration, in which the relationship between Tolkien's faith and the myth he created are examined at greater length.
  
  In brief, however, the power of Tolkien lies in the way that he succeeds, through myth, in making the unseen hand of providence felt by the reader. In his mythical creations, or sub-creations as he would call them, he shows how the unseen hand of God is felt far more forcefully in myth than it is ever felt in fiction. Paradoxically, fiction works with facts, albeit invented facts, whereas myth works with truth, albeit truth dressed in fancy disguises. Furthermore, since facts are physical and truth is metaphysical, myth, being metaphysical, is spiritual.
  
  The writer and poet Charles A. Coulombe concluded his essay, "The Lord of the Rings: A Catholic View," with the following incisive assessment of Tolkien's importance. It was a fitting conclusion to his essay on the subject. It is also a fitting conclusion to mine:
  
  "It has been said that the dominant note of the traditional Catholic liturgy was intense longing. This is also true of her art, her literature, her whole life. It is a longing for things that cannot be in this world: unearthly truth, unearthly purity, unearthly justice, unearthly beauty. By all these earmarks, Lord of the Rings is indeed a Catholic work, as its author believed: But it is more. It is this age's great Catholic epic, fit to stand beside the Grail legends, Le Morte d'Arthur and The Canterbury Tales. It is at once a great comfort to the individual Catholic, and a tribute to the enduring power and greatness of the Catholic tradition, that JRRT created this work. In an age which has seen an almost total rejection of the faith on the part of the Civilization she created . . . Lord of the Rings assures us, both by its existence and its message, that the darkness cannot triumph forever."
  
  
  

quote:

---

(I can go into detail about a few of them, if anyone likes)

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by stauroo

quote:

---

(I can go into detail about a few of them, if anyone likes)

---

Yes, please do. I only ask that you bring real, documented facts to the table, not just speculations and information taken out of context, like what appears in this article comprising the same list:

---