No Irrelevant Jesus by Gerhard Lohfink

Author:Gerhard Lohfink
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Published: 2014-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

1. The Eleusis Model

In 395 CE the cultic shrine at Eleusis near Athens was destroyed by christianized Goths under King Alaric, who thus put an end to a history that stretched over more than a thousand years. Countless people had come to this place to be inducted into the mysteries of Eleusis—not only Athenians, but increasingly men and women from all Greece, in the late phase Romans as well, and even Roman emperors. The cultic shrine at Eleusis promised those who allowed themselves to be initiated into the mysteries that they would have well-being in their earthly lives and an eternal, happy life after death.

The celebrations of the mysteries at Eleusis could serve as a model for the personal, individual quest to achieve salvation. They are, in themselves, nearly the opposite of creation of religious community. The individual alone receives salvation. It is true that people traveled in a common procession along the “holy road” from Athens to Eleusis to receive the principal levels of dedication, and the night of induction, with its mysterious and secret rituals over which a severe requirement of silence was invoked, was likewise celebrated in common. But then the “mystics,” that is, the “initiates,” returned to their daily lives without any new ties or restrictions. Eleusis knew nothing of the building up of congregations or churches. The initiates did not even gather in cultic associations, as was often the case with later mystery cults.

The Eleusinian Mysteries are extraordinarily instructive for us, for they reveal the human need for a “personal religion.” At the same time they signify the deep longing to go beyond the limits of banal daily existence and enter into mystery. We see today how Christianity is diminishing in Europe; the numbers of the baptized, and even more of practicing Christians, are rapidly declining. At the same time we find that religion is not disappearing; instead, there is an increase in esoteric and wellness-oriented forms of religion.

In these forms of ersatz Christianity everything is directed toward the individual; she or he alone strives for the supposed “salvation,” altogether for herself or himself. There may be others nearby who are following a similar path, but everything focuses on what happens for and within the one self. This is a form of religion in which feeling and personal experience play a crucial role. The individual tries to surrender to the moment, seeking the religious event, something like a primal religious experience—and yet the individual shrinks from any kind of commitment.

One need only read the programs of the esoteric sessions that happen every year in Munich. There are lectures and practical exercises in astrology and hypnosis, spiritual healing and tea-tree oil, lunar oracles and the Mayan calendar, clairvoyance and reincarnation, aromatherapy and healing with crystals and precious stones. For example, the “advanced life-counselor” Jutta Coblenz regularly speaks about “Angels and Other Beings of Light: How Can I Contact Them?” If one looks at the advertising flyers that appear in the mailbox every time an esoteric fair

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