Heresy 2: Syncretism

Syncretism is the technical term for mixing in bits of pagan religion into the worship of God. It was so constantly a problem in the Old Testament that we should expect it to be continuing to happen now. So the Old Testament warnings about syncretistic practices and how much God hates them are still relevant to us today.

Before we look at modern examples, let’s look at some from the Old Testament. It is probably one of the major themes, but I will only give a few references here: in your reading of the Bible you will soon see how much of a problem it was.

Judges 10.

⁶ Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD. They served the Baals and the Ashtoreths, and the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites and the gods of the Philistines. And because the Israelites forsook the LORD and no longer served him, ⁷ he became angry with them. He sold them into the hands of the Philistines and the Ammonites, ⁸ who that year shattered and crushed them. For eighteen years they oppressed all the Israelites on the east side of the Jordan in Gilead, the land of the Amorites. ⁹ The Ammonites also crossed the Jordan to fight against Judah, Benjamin and the house of Ephraim; and Israel was in great distress. ¹⁰ Then the Israelites cried out to the LORD, “We have sinned against you, forsaking our God and serving the Baals.”

 ¹¹ The LORD replied, “When the Egyptians, the Amorites, the Ammonites, the Philistines, ¹² the Sidonians, the Amalekites and the Maonites^[c] oppressed you and you cried to me for help, did I not save you from their hands?¹³ But you have forsaken me and served other gods, so I will no longer save you. ¹⁴ Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them save you when you are in trouble!”

 ¹⁵ But the Israelites said to the LORD, “We have sinned. Do with us whatever you think best, but please rescue us now.” ¹⁶ Then they got rid of the foreign gods among them and served the LORD.

The cult of the pagan gods would become so much a part village life and get so mixed up with the real worship of God that anyone opposing it risked death. When Gideon was chosen by God to rescue Israel the first task God set him was to destroy his village’s pagan idols. It nearly cost him his life.

 ²⁵ That same night the LORD said to him, “Take the second bull from your father’s herd, the one seven years old.^[b] Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole^[c] beside it. ²⁶ Then build a proper kind of^[d] altar to the LORD your God on the top of this height. Using the wood of the Asherah pole that you cut down, offer the second^[e] bull as a burnt offering.”

 ²⁷ So Gideon took ten of his servants and did as the LORD told him. But because he was afraid of his family and the townspeople, he did it at night rather than in the daytime.

 ²⁸ In the morning when the people of the town got up, there was Baal’s altar, demolished, with the Asherah pole beside it cut down and the second bull sacrificed on the newly built altar!

 ²⁹ They asked each other, “Who did this?”

   When they carefully investigated, they were told, “Gideon son of Joash did it.”

 ³⁰ The people of the town demanded of Joash, “Bring out your son. He must die, because he has broken down Baal’s altar and cut down the Asherah pole beside it.”

 ³¹ But Joash replied to the hostile crowd around him, “Are you going to plead Baal’s cause? Are you trying to save him? Whoever fights for him shall be put to death by morning! If Baal really is a god, he can defend himself when someone breaks down his altar.” ³² So that day they gave Gideon the name Jerub-Baal,^[f] saying, “Let Baal contend with him,” because he broke down Baal’s altar.

The problem continued over the centuries. Even when the people claimed they were worshipping God, they added pagan practices to their worship.

Jeremiah 6

¹⁶ “So do not pray for this people nor offer any plea or petition for them; do not plead with me, for I will not listen to you. ¹⁷ Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? ¹⁸ The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough and make cakes to offer to the Queen of Heaven. They pour out drink offerings to other gods to arouse my anger. ¹⁹ But am I the one they are provoking? declares the LORD. Are they not rather harming themselves, to their own shame?

 ²⁰ “‘Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: My anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place—on people and animals, on the trees of the field and on the crops of your land—and it will burn and not be quenched.

 ²¹ “‘This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves! ²² For when I brought your ancestors out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, ²³ but I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in obedience to all I command you, that it may go well with you. ²⁴ But they did not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts. 

Jeremiah 44

 ¹ This word came to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews living in Lower Egypt—in Migdol, Tahpanhes and Memphis—and in Upper Egypt: ² “This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: You saw the great disaster I brought on Jerusalem and on all the towns of Judah. Today they lie deserted and in ruins ³because of the evil they have done. They aroused my anger by burning incense to and worshiping other gods that neither they nor you nor your ancestors ever knew. ⁴ Again and again I sent my servants the prophets, who said, ‘Do not do this detestable thing that I hate!’ ⁵But they did not listen or pay attention; they did not turn from their wickedness or stop burning incense to other gods. ⁶Therefore, my fierce anger was poured out; it raged against the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem and made them the desolate ruins they are today.

……………..

 ¹⁵ Then all the men who knew that their wives were burning incense to other gods, along with all the women who were present—a large assembly—and all the people living in Lower and Upper Egypt, said to Jeremiah, ¹⁶ “We will not listen to the message you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD! ¹⁷ We will certainly do everything we said we would: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and will pour out drink offerings to her just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time we had plenty of food and were well off and suffered no harm. ¹⁸ But ever since we stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have had nothing and have been perishing by sword and famine.”

 ¹⁹ The women added, “When we burned incense to the Queen of Heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, did not our husbands know that we were making cakes impressed with her image and pouring out drink offerings to her?”

 ²⁰ Then Jeremiah said to all the people, both men and women, who were answering him, ²¹ “Did not the LORD remember and call to mind the incense burned in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem by you and your ancestors, your kings and your officials and the people of the land? ²² When the LORD could no longer endure your wicked actions and the detestable things you did, your land became a curse and a desolate waste without inhabitants, as it is today. ²³ Because you have burned incense and have sinned against the LORD and have not obeyed him or followed his law or his decrees or his stipulations, this disaster has come upon you, as you now see.”

The destruction of Jerusalem we know for a historical fact. From the Bible we know that it came as a judgment from God after generations of disobedience by the people and in particular worshiping other gods, including the “queen of heaven”. This act of God in history, among others, gives absolute certainty to the truth of his words through Jeremiah and other prophets that he really hates his people worshiping false gods. Yet they still do it to this day.

I visited Ephesus during a tour of Turkey. As we sat in the ruins of the ancient amphitheater, our guide read out the passage in Acts 19 where there is a riot in Ephesus and a crowd gathered in the ampitheatre and for two hours shouted “great is Artemis of the Ephesians”. The guide had previously been at pains to tell us that the Ephesian Artemis was quite different to the Greek one. The goddess they worshiped had a totally different (and rather repulsive) statue representation. He pointed out that the place had been the site of “mother-goddess” worship from almost prehistoric times, and the goddess had been successively “re-badged”: from an earth-mother-goddess of which 6,000 year old figurines had been found to the cult of Cybele to this distinctively Anatolian Artemis. Our guide notes, written by an Anglican theologian from Melbourne also mentioned this and made the further connection that with the ascendance of Christianity the temple of Artemis was destroyed but that it was then in Ephesus that the cult of Mary worship began.

It seemed that whatever spiritual forces had been worshiped there over the millennia had again re-badged: this time as “the virgin Mary” and got itself added to Christian worship; just as Baal and Asherah worship had been added to the worship of God in ancient Israel.

As we traveled we found that it had invaded Christianity in many countries. We saw so many churches that had large statues in them, richly adorned, of a female figure wearing a crown. Supposedly they were statues of “the virgin Mary”. We noticed that they were often titled the “queen of heaven”. That title itself takes one back to Israel in Jeremiah’s day where the people were worshiping a “queen of heaven” as well as God – and it made God so angry he destroyed them! We appear not to have learned the lesson.

In our hotel in Civitavecchia there was a booklet about a local jeweler. He was apparently famous for making richly adorned crowns for “queen of heaven” statues. Some of his crowns had even been blessed, the booklet said, by the Pope. I was terribly saddened to read this as it indicated that pagan idolatry was condoned and even given false legitimacy by people who should know much better.

Nothing could be less honoring to the memory of Jesus’ earthly mother than these pagan goddess idols. Nothing could be less like following her own good example than the whole “Mary” cult.

The real Mary was a woman who loved God. Look at her response to the angel Gabriel. Told that she was to bear the long awaited Messiah, even though she was not having sex with her fiancée, she says simply “may it be as you have said”. That is faith! Not just belief that God could do the “impossible” but also trusting that God would save her from the consequences. She would have been acutely aware of Joseph’s (and the community’s) likely reaction to hearing she was pregnant when he knew he had not had sex with her.

Then we read of that beautiful moment when Mary and Elizabeth are together. God’s plan to save all humankind is about to break in on the world, and here are the two key women the only ones who know – Mary who is to bear the Messiah and Elizabeth who is to bear John Baptist who will prepare the way for him – and these two women are filled with excitement and supporting each other. They are seen here as truly great women of God.

From there to the grief stricken mother at the foot of the cross and on to the Mary we are told in Acts was one of the worshiping community before the day of Pentecost. The real Mary was a woman of great faith in God. A woman who was there praying with the early believers soon after Jesus was raised from the dead. A woman who, as a devout Jew, would have thought it utterly wicked to worship or pray to anyone or anything other than the one true God.

To the real Mary this cult of “the blessed virgin Mary” would be utterly abhorrent. The real Mary would revile these “queen of heaven” statues as the pagan idols they really are.

One point I should perhaps add before I leave this subject. The Roman Empire, as you know, became officially Christian under Emperor Constantine who gained power in 306AD. Under him the seat of government moved from Rome to Constantinople (modern Istanbul). The empire was mostly Greek speaking in these eastern parts, but clung to Latin in the west. The Greek speaking part started using the term “theotokos” literally “god-bearer” for Mary. That was half right – she was the human being through which Jesus who is both God and Human was born. But she had only to do with the human side of the equation. Jesus was God before the world was created and came into his creation through the power of the Holy Spirit in his conception. As the Bible says (Romans 1) ² the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures ³ regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life^[a] was a descendant of David, ⁴ and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power^[b] by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. 

As to his humanity, Mary was Jesus mother because she was human, but not in respect to his divine nature.

As Jesus himself said in John 10 “³⁶ what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’? .

In John 8 Jesus stresses his pre-existence “ Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” 

And remember the wonderful beginning of John’s Gospel where he says about Jesus: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

Jesus was “God-the-Son” before Mary was born, before Abraham was born, before the universe was created, even before time existed.

So even using the term theotokos “god-bearer” was really shaky ground. When the term moved to the Latin speaking west it lost something in the translation and became even more inaccurate: “mother of god”. This is wholly false! God, Father Son and Holy Spirit is eternal and has no mother! Mary was a human being: a devout and faithful human being, but just a human being; a very important human being in God’s plans, but just a human being; a human being who was very dear to Jesus, but just a human being.

So, do not be deceived into this idolatry no matter how cleverly it proponents try to camouflage it or “explain” it to you.