[On topic - NO FLAMES!] God & Satan

[s/LaSH]

Andrew:

As for the kami, they can be thought of as part of the divine order with Amaterasu Omikami, Raiden, and some others counting as deities, and many others (such as the spirit of a sacred place) counting as spirits.

The Japanese would likely have clerics. However, the Ainu might be perceived as having shamans. The Ainu, the native people of Hokkaido and other northern Japanese isles, are a distinct culture from the majority of Japan.

I guess you'd have to get down with Japanese Shinto philosophy to fully understand their regard for nature spirits, and I don't understand much at all. But I think Shinto is highly compatible with other religions, and in fact there are Buddhist/Shinto and Christian/Shinto people out there today. (Or at least that's what I learned whilst studying the language.)

There's actually a lot of heirachy in pagan myth; even the Romans had king gods, ranging all the way down to small house gods. The Japanese simply seem to have a more even scale... ranging from Amaterasu (who my brain tells me is a sun goddess, but I can't really remember) down to spirits that sometimes come hundreds to a single home.

Not that Shinto has much to do with the Crusades, so I'll shut up now.

 

[drquestion]

Hi, wow this is a really great thread. Too bad I didn't find it earlier. I want to preface all of these remarks by saying that they are meant to apply to Medieval Catholocism c. the 12th and 13th centuries (when the Crusades were at their height), and not in any way to the doctrines of modern Christians of any stripe, Catholics included.

First of all, treating Satan as a diety is, as many have suggested, strictly speaking, not in keeping with orthodox Catholocism. Satan is a demon, a fallen angel. Among other things this means that, unlike God, he is neither omniscient, nor omnipotent, nor omnipresent. So, Satan cannot directly grant spells, nor is he automatically aware of the events that transpire in the world. He would need a network of lesser demons, and perhaps also human agents, to influence events and to keep him informed.

As far as God granting spells, many contemporary texts seem to suggest that people of extreme piety (Sts. Bernard and Francis, for example) could, in fact, pray to God for a miracle with a reasonable expectation of success. The catch is that even these extraordinary individuals did so extremely rarely, nothing on the level of a cleric getting multiple spells per day. However, since this is D&D and not Harn, after all, this could probably be fudged in order to provide for a more fantastic experience.

Another thing that you might want to note is that the average person's access to miracles came not through living holy persons, but through the shrines of dead Saints. People who were sick and injured would pray at these shrines for healing. So, you might want to include something like this in your campaign.

As far as arcane magic goes, contrary to what several people have said, there is precedent in medieval thought for the existence of magic that is not demonic. The idea of natural (as opposed to demonic) magic was adapted by Christian thinkers like Grossteste and Roger Bacon from Arabic, Muslim scholars such as Alkindi. My impression (I'm not an expert in this) is that this "natural magic" could be used to do things like control the four elements and plants and animals, and also to manipulate any kind of physical matter (which, from their point of view, was composed of varying ration of the four elements). Demonic magic, on the other hand, would be anything involving necromancy, illusion, enchantment, and probably divination. Both would rely upon words of power, with the difference being that natural magic uses words that, somehow by their very sound, cause resonances in the natural world (this is putting it pretty loosely, but you get the idea), whereas demonic magic simply calls upon various demons.

drquestion

 

[Nathanael]

Celebrim, good point. Much of the common perception of current Christians is based on the mixing of various sources and a failure to look at the texts as a whole as opposed to yanking single passages out of the bible and inferring meaning out of them. Kind of like when the baptists told me the Bible passage saying a 'man shall not pray with his head covered' meant that I needed to get a haircut.

I do admit, humbly and knowing that I am far from an authority on the wisdom of God, that the stuff I mentioned isn't necessarily the absolute truth, cobbled together as it is out of various Bible, Apocryphal and Kabbalic texts, but it does make much more sense as a big picture for me and there is much in common with those sources to support it. It's how I would run the situation in a game, at any rate.

Lucifer, by the way, is listed in various Kabbalic Texts as the Angel of Pride. That, I think is the original basis for the name. I am uncertain where the 'Son of Morning' title came from. Anybody else know?

 

[William Ronald]

Originally posted by barsoomcore:
Here's a question for all you Biblical scholars:

What are the accepted sources of Revelations (I've heard of at least two, I assume there's others)? When was Revelations incorporated into the "official" text of the New Testament?

Because I have to admit that Revelations seems... odd...

If I remember correctly, most modern biblical scholars view Revelations as mostly a parable or political treatise, reflecting the situation after the destruction of the Second Temple. Based on that interpreptation, Rome is the villain of the work. Indeed, one program I saw mentioned that if gematria (a form of numerology) was used on the number 666, it translates to Nero Caesar.

As I recall, Revelations was added to the Christian canon relatively late.

As for Satan, there are various interpreptations. In the Jewish tradition, he began as an adversary or accuser. There was a brief identification of him as a ruler over evil by some sects, but in time he became rather insignificant. (Essentially, God can have no rivals, even one such as a lord of evil. Such dualism (and the rise of Satan to some prominence) may have had much to do with Zoroastrian influences.) Also, the term Satan came to be associated with internal enemies in some texts.

The role of Satan came to take a much larger place in Christianity. Perhaps as an explanation for some of the pagan deities.