Very interesting read
@Sunstone.
I like your distinction between '
imitation' (rote learning, mimesis) as a vehicle for the unadulterated transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next and '
play' ('out-of-the box' imagination, creativity in thought) as a form of innovative discovery of new things.
In terms of my own religious tradition, I'd say we avail ourselves of both modes of learning.
There was a famous linguistic tussle in late antiquity over the precise definition of the Latin word
religio (from which we derive 'religion'). According to the pagan rhetorician and Stoic-influenced moralist Cicero (106 BC – 7 December 43 BC), 'religio' was derivative of '
relegere' ("
to re-read") which entailed 'rote learning', meaning that to be 'religious' was to studiously and uncritically retain the ancestral cultic traditions and customs of one's forefathers. Therefore in his dialogue,
De natura deorum, one of the main interlocutors Aurelius Cotta, affirms: "
For my part a single argument would have sufficed , namely that it has been handed down to us by our ancestors...I think that I should defend those opinions which we have received from our ancestors about the immortal gods, and the cults and rites and religious duties. I myself will indeed defend them always and always have defended them"
(Cic. Nat. D. 3.9).
The Christian theologian and early church father Lactantius (c. 250 – c. 325) strongly disagreed with that etymology. It was of course at that time, during the Great Persecutions under Diocletian, being used by the imperial regime to try and execute Christians as a mob of '
irreligious atheists'.
In the 3rd century, the
Neoplatonist philosopher
Porphyry wrote about this:
How can people not be in every way impious and atheistic who have apostatized from the customs of our ancestors through which every nation and city is sustained? ... What else are they than fighters against God?
In 258, the Roman magistrate Galerius Maximus executed a Christian Carthaginian bishop with the following decree:
You have long lived an irreligious life, and have drawn together a number of men bound by an unlawful association, and professed yourself an open enemy to the gods and the religion of Rome; and the pious, most sacred and august Emperors ... have endeavoured in vain to bring you back to conformity with their religious observances; whereas therefore you have been apprehended as principal and ringleader in these infamous crimes, you shall be made an example to those whom you have wickedly associated with you; the authority of law shall be ratified in your blood."
Now, if you follow the logic of Cicero's definition of '
religio' (to "re-read") - Galerius Maximus was quite accurate in his sentencing, appalling as it looks to us today from a liberal vantage point.
The Roman Empire was an absolutist priestly-theocracy under an Emperor enshrined in law as the
Pontifex Maximus (Supreme Pontiff, High Priest) of the Roman state religion. One of his most important functions was to make sure that his subjects - in addition to paying their taxes - offered due reverence to the ancestral gods through the ritual animal slaughters and votive offerings, watched over by the Vestal Virgins.
In the early Christian movement, you had something which horrified the Roman mind: a group of people, native-born Romans and Greeks,
abandoning the customs and rites of their ancestors - nay, even the gods themselves! - to worship the unseen, imperceptible, transcendent God of a foreign nation (the Israelites). Oh the villainy! If the sacrifices ceased being offered, as would be the case if Christianity kept spreading, the gods would withdraw their divine sanction and their civilisation would collapse.
Lactantius desperately needed to find a persuasive rebuttal to this claim of Christian '
irreligion'. His community was literally, at that point, being systematically annihilated for the first time in its history. And so, he conceived a fresh understanding of the etymology underlying the word religion, in his apologia
The Divine Institutes written to defend Christianity from its enemies. And it was pretty darn ingenious.
He argued that
religio was not derived from
relegere "
to re-read" but on the contrary from the root
ligo "
to bind".
Lactantius had just re-defined the entire meaning of religion - and his new interpretation, through Christianity, would ultimately spread around the world as a result of Victorian secular scholars. If religion was
not chiefly about 're-reading' the traditions of one's ancestors, unchanged and unquestioned, but rather to do with 'binding' oneself - of one's own freewill, intuition and reason - to that conception of Deity, way of life and understanding of truth which that person most believed to be true, after conducting an independent investigation, then the Roman state had absolutely no justification for persecuting Christians for abandoning their ancestral religious traditions, gods and sacrifices or indeed accusing them of being "
irreligious".
In this way, he called upon the pagan priests and augurs to engage in a constructive dialogue with the early Christians, along the lines of:
don't just demand that we need to keep up the old religious observances and beliefs simply because they are the ones passed down unchanged from our ancestors, rather engage us intellectually to try and persuade us of the merit in your system.
As Lactantius explained in his
Divine Institutes (translated below in the Catholic Church's New Advent collection of the Church Fathers):
CHURCH FATHERS: Divine Institutes, Book V (Lactantius)
The first office of justice is to be united with God, the second with man....
And since we are speaking generally with those who worship gods, let us have your permission to do good with you; for this is our law, this our business, this our religion.
It is thought that there is a bad mind in those who endeavour to preserve their faith, but a good one in executioners. Is there, then, a bad mind in those who, against every law of humanity, against every principle of justice, are tortured, or rather, in those who inflict on the bodies of the innocent such things, as neither the most cruel robbers, nor the most enraged enemies, nor the most savage barbarians have ever practised?
Let their priests come forth into the midst, whether the inferior ones or the greatest; their flamens, augurs, and also sacrificing kings, and the priests and ministers. Let them call us together to an assembly; let them exhort us to undertake the worship of their gods; let them persuade us that there are many beings by whose deity and providence all things are governed; let them show how the origins and beginnings of their sacred rites and gods were handed down to mortals; let them explain what is their source and principle; let them set forth what reward there is in their worship, and what punishment awaits neglect; why they wish to be worshipped by men; what the piety of men contributes to them.
There is no occasion for violence and injury, for religion cannot be imposed by force; the matter must be carried on by words rather than by blows, that the will may be affected. Let them unsheath the weapon of their intellect; if their system is true, let it be asserted. We are prepared to hear, if they teach; while they are silent, we certainly pay no credit to them, as we do not yield to them even in their rage.
Let them imitate us in setting forth the system of the whole matter: for we do not entice, as they say; but we teach, we prove, we show. And thus no one is detained by us against his will, for he is unserviceable to God who is destitute of faith and devotedness; and yet no one departs from us, since the truth itself detains him. Let them teach in this manner, if they have any confidence in the truth; let them speak, let them give utterance; let them venture, I say, to discuss with us something of this nature.
For they are aware that there is nothing among men more excellent than religion, and that this ought to be defended with the whole of our power; but as they are deceived in the matter of religion itself, so also are they in the manner of its defense. For religion is to be defended, not by putting to death, but by dying; not by cruelty, but by patient endurance; not by guilt, but by good faith: for the former belong to evils, but the latter to goods; and it is necessary for that which is good to have place in religion, and not that which is evil. For if you wish to defend religion by bloodshed, and by tortures, and by guilt, it will no longer be defended, but will be polluted and profaned. For nothing is so much a matter of free-will as religion; in which, if the mind of the worshipper is disinclined to it, religion is at once taken away, and ceases to exist.
CHURCH FATHERS: Divine Institutes, Book II (Lactantius)
It is therefore right, especially in a matter on which the whole plan of life turns, that every one should place confidence in himself, and use his own judgment and individual capacity for the investigation and weighing of the truth, rather than through confidence in others to be deceived by their errors, as though he himself were without understanding.
God has given wisdom to all alike, that they might be able both to investigate things which they have not heard, and to weigh things which they have heard.
Nor, because our ancestors preceded us in time did they also outstrip us in wisdom; for if this is given equally to all, we cannot be anticipated in it by those who precede us. It is incapable of diminution, as the light and brilliancy of the sun; because, as the sun is the light of the eyes, so is wisdom the light of man’s heart.
Wherefore, since wisdom — that is, the inquiry after truth — is natural to all, they deprive themselves of wisdom, who without any judgment approve of the discoveries of their ancestors, and like sheep are led by others...
(continued...)
