CHRISTIANITY IS NOT THE ONLY RELIGION WITH NOTIONS OF SIN AND REDEMPTION.

Christianity is not the only religion with notions of sin and redemption. Discussion of novel, Apuleius' Golden Ass



Christianity is not the only religion with notions of sin and redemption

Christianity was never intended for white people only. The first Christians were all Semitic in ethnicity and likely had light- to dark-brown skin. Christianity having been predominantly a white religion in past centuries has nothing to do with the message of Christianity. Rather, it is due to the failure of Christians to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the world (Matthew 28:19-20; Acts 1:8). The apostle John declared that Jesus Christ is the propitiation for the sins of the entire world all races and nationalities. Spiritually, men of all races are one due to the presence of a common sickness—sin. (Quennell, 1950)

The Apuleius was born in 125 AD, in Madafra of Africa Roman province on the border of Gaitoulias and Noumidias, near Constantine today. In other words, the place is now known as Algeria. He was handsome; an image saved on a medal, the person presents a beautiful and smiling, not without a slight irony, and seems to be particularly sensitive to the elegant appearance. He became as famous as an orator and lawyer and servant of the muses, who long lived even painted the statue. "The Golden Ass or Metamorphoses," one of the first novels of Western literature, it is estimated that it was written around 161 AD, when it was that thirty-five years.

The idea that “religion is always and necessarily a self-contradictory and idolatrous human construction” is not only a Christian notion, but well recognized (though with different words) in many religious systems. The description sounds quite familiar to me, although my theological basis for a similar conclusion is somewhat different.

Walter Pater's appreciation of The Golden Ass has not lost its value. Evidently there was much to be said about The Golden Ass that he refrained from saying; but the imaginative charm he stresses is still its greatest quality. Apuleius was an incomparable story-teller; and, while human beings love to be told stories and to wander in the mysterious borderland dividing fact and fantasy, the book will continue to gather admirers and will remain one of the five or six volumes that an intelligent Crusoe would hope to discover on his desert island. It is both highly romantic and brutally realistic, a fantasy derived from the immemorial realm of fairy tales and a satirical panorama of everyday life in a backward Roman province, the whole narrative colored by strong religious feelings.

The Golden Ass is essentially a pattern of contrasts, a picaresque novel with a poetic and philosophic background. Lucius's affair with Fotis introduces the theme of sensual satisfaction. The passage has a lyrical glow. But soon afterwards Lucius loses his human shape and is immediately plunged into the outer darkness reserved for slaves and animals, harried from pillar to post, beaten and ...