4. The Greco-Roman World. Christianity, which is
the salvation-religion par excellence, stemmed from
Judaism; but its soteriology was profoundly influenced
by ideas current in the Greco-Roman world, in which
it spread during the formative centuries of its growth.
Consequently, these ideas, which are intrinsically sig-
nificant, are also of basic importance for the study of
Christian soteriology.
The Olympian religion of classical Greece, of which
the earliest literary evidence is found in the Homeric
poems, afforded no hope of a happy afterlife. A com-
mon fate awaited all. Their shades descended, at death,
into the gloom and misery of Hades, and from this fate
there could be no salvation (Odyssey Xl.204-22). This
view of man's ultimate destiny formed the pattern,
with certain variations, of the official religion of
Greece; it finds expression in its literature and philoso-
phy (except that of Plato), and its influence can be
traced in the sad dignity of the farewell scenes sculp-
tured on many tombs. The Olympian gods were served
to maintain the prosperity of the state, and failure to
serve them aright or observe the taboos of their cults
constituted sin, which involved dire punishment. Thus,
the Iliad begins by describing how the god Apollo
afflicted the Greek army, which was besieging Troy,
with a deadly plague because the Greek leader
Agamemnon had insulted his priest. Oedipus provides
the classic instance, in Greek literature, of the pitiless
exactment of divine punishment for unintentional sin.
The unfortunate hero commits parricide and incest
unwittingly, and thus through his pollution brings dis-
aster to Thebes, his native city, and an awful doom
upon himself. It is accordingly significant that, in
Greek thought, hubris was distinguished as the capital
sin; for it meant that the gods were relentless in striking
down a man who, confident in his own achievement
or good fortune, tended to forget his human status.
The Olympian religion was essentially the religion
of the polis, the city-state; it did not cater to personal
needs. For those who sought the comforting assurance
of a happy afterlife, instead of Hades' grim prospect,
there were the mystery-religions of Eleusis and
Orphism. The designation “mystery-religion” connotes
a cult into which a person had to be specially initiated,
in order to participate in its secret rites and be in-
structed in its esoteric doctrine. To the initiate of the
Eleusinian Mysteries, the rationale of which was pro-
vided by the myth of the goddess Demeter's search
for her lost daughter Persephone, a blessed afterlife
was promised. This salvation from the common lot of
mankind after death depended primarily upon the
magical efficacy of the initiatory rites performed at
Eleusis, though certain minimal ethical qualifications
were required for initiation. Unfortunately, owing
doubtless to the fact that the initiates (mystae) kept
their vows of silence, we are inadequately informed
about both the doctrine and ritual of the Eleusinian
Mysteries. The same cause probably accounts also for
our lack of detailed knowledge about Orphism. This
cult, which traditionally derived from Orpheus and was
essentially connected with the myth of Dionysos-
Zagreus, was concerned with the emancipation of the
soul from its fatal involvement with physical matter.
It taught that each soul (psychē) was of celestial origin
and immortal; but, due to some primordial fault or
error, it was doomed to a process of reincarnation in
bodies of various kinds, human, animal, and vegetable.
Unlike the Eleusinian Mysteries, Orphism had no
specific cult-center; it was organized in small local
communities. Initiation involved purificatory rites and
the imparting of secret knowledge; a discipline of life
was required, including vegetarianism. From texts
inscribed on gold leaves (laminae), found in tombs
thought to be those of Orphic initiates, it would appear
that advice was given to enable the deceased to estab-
lish their heavenly origin and so escape from the “sor-
rowful, weary wheel” of unceasing reincarnation.
In process of time, other mystery-religions became
established in the world of Greco-Roman culture. Chief
among them were the cults of Isis and Osiris from
Egypt, Attis and Adonis from Asia Minor, and Mithra
from Iran. The popularity of these cults attests to the
widespread need then felt for the assurance of a blessed
afterlife, which was not met by the official religions
of Greece and Rome. The cults of Attis and Adonis
derived from primitive rituals connected with the
“dying-rising” god of vegetation, whose myth com-
memorated the annual death and resurrection of vege-
tation. Certain aspects of the myth were incorporated
also into the mortuary cult of Osiris. Such cults were
based on ancient man's hope that a similar cycle of
death and resurrection might, with divine help, be
reproduced in himself. In the Mithraic mysteries, ele-
ments of solar and vegetation mythologies can be
discerned; but the role of Mithra seems to have been
that of saving his initiates from the dominion of
Ahriman, the principle of death and evil, who was
identified with the destructive process of Time under
the guise of Zurvān dareghō-chvadhāta (“Time of the
Long Dominion,” i.e., Finite Time).
Together with these specifically religious cults,
which offered salvation of varying kinds to their initi-
ates, there existed in the Greco-Roman world mystical
philosophies that claimed to possess esoteric (gnōsis)
knowledge about the human situation which would
gain eternal beatitude for those who possessed it. These
faiths may be conveniently grouped as Gnosticism,
Hermeticism, and Neo-Platonism. The first two were
concerned to account for the misery of human life in
a way similar to that of Orphism, except that they
embodied belief in the baleful dominion of the stars
over mankind. The duality of human nature, namely,
of an ethereal soul's incarceration in a physical body,
was explained as due to the primordial fall or descent
of an archetypal Anthropos (“Man”), from his abode
with the Father of Light, through the celestial spheres,
into the lower material world, where he cohabited with
Phusis (“Nature”). From this union mankind was born,
thus partaking of the nature of each of its parents, and
subject to the planetary powers that ruled the world.
Salvation, consequently, consisted in the freeing of the
ethereal soul of man from its involvement in corruptible
matter, so that it might ascend to its true home with
the Father of Light. The various Gnostic sects and the
Hermeticists offered to achieve such salvation for their
devotees through specially revealed knowledge (gnōsis)
of various kinds, and disciplines and mystic techniques.
Neo-Platonism, on the other hand, sought spiritual
salvation through an electic philosophy and mystical
experience, including particularly ecstasy, a psychic
state of being outside of, or transcending, one's body.
It is important to note that in these mystery-religions
and mystical philosophies, although certain moral
offences such as murder constituted a bar to initiation,
little concern was shown about moral qualifications or
sin. Instead, emphasis was laid upon the virtue of
initiation as the means to salvation; it was the un-
initiated who were damned to a miserable post-mortem
existence. The distinction is succinctly drawn in some
lines of Sophocles: “How thrice-blessed are they of
mortals who, having beheld these [Eleusinian]
mysteries, depart to the house of Death. For to such
alone is life bestowed there: to the others fall all ills”
(frag. 753, Turchi, p. 152).
