The influence of the Greek mysteries in corrupting Christian baptism is more plainly seen than that of any other specific department of the pagan cult. These mysteries were the remnant of the oldest religion known to the Greeks. They embodied the worship of the gods of the productive forces in nature, and of the gods of death. The most important centre of this cult was at Eleusis, where the worship was celebrated in the largest temple in Greece. The chief elements in the cult were initiation, sacrifice, and scenic representations of the great facts in the processes of nature and in human life. The main conception in the initiation was that the candidate must be purified before he could approach God. The initiated, being thus purified, were inducted to a divine life and to the hope of a resurrection. The ceremonial began with the proclamation: “Let no one enter whose hands are not clean, and whose tongue is not prudent.”[106]
Confession was followed by a kind of baptism.[107] The candidates for initiation bathed in the pure waters of the sea. The manner of bathing and the number of immersions varied with the degree of guilt which they had confessed. They came from the bath new men. It was a κάθαρσις, a λουτρὸν, a “laver of regeneration.” Certain forms of abstinence were imposed; they had to fast; and when they ate they had to abstain from certain kinds of food.[108]
After this purification came a σωτήρια, “a great public sacrifice of salvation”; also personal sacrifices. After an interval of two days still more sacrifices, shows, and “processions” followed. The initiated carried lighted torches and sang “loud peans in honor of the God.”[109] Then came the scenic representations at night. The initiated stood outside the temple in deep darkness. Suddenly the door opened, and in a blaze of light the drama of Demeter and Kore appeared—in which the loss of the daughter, the wanderings of the mother, and the birth of the child, were enacted. This symbolized the earth in its great experiences, as well as the corresponding experiences in human life. All this was enacted in silence. Each man saw and meditated for himself. It was believed that this gave purity to the initiated, changed their relations to the gods, and made them “partakers of a life to come.”[110] Mithraicism had a similar form of initiation, a prominent feature of which was a sacred meal, upon a “holy table,” of which the initiated took part after they were purified. The societies which practised these mysteries existed on a large scale during the earliest centuries of our era, and had a marked influence upon the earliest Christian communities, and upon the subsequent church. Hatch thus describes these effects:
“It was inevitable when a new group of associations came to exist side by side with a large existing body of associations, from which it was continually detaching members, introducing them into its own midst, with the practices of their original societies impressed upon their minds, that this new group should tend to assimilate, with the assimilation of their members, some of the elements of these existing groups.
“This is what we find to have been in fact the case. It is possible that they made the Christian associations more secret than before. Up to a certain time there is no evidence that Christianity had any secrets. It was preached openly to the world. It guarded worship by imposing a moral bar to admission. But its rites were simple and its teaching was public. After a certain time all is changed; mysteries have arisen in the once open and easily accessible faith, and there are doctrines which must not be declared in the hearing of the uninitiated.”[111]
The effect of these pagan mysteries upon Christian baptism, and upon the Lord’s Supper also, will be more clearly seen when we remember how simple a ceremony New Testament baptism was. It followed immediately upon confession of faith in Christ. There was no preparatory ceremony, no ritual, only the simple formula. There was no confusion or controversy concerning the “mode,” for submersion alone was known within Christian circles.
When the current of history emerges at and after the middle of the second century, marked changes appear which are so identical with gnosticism and the Greek mysteries that there can be no question as to their source.[112] Among these changes were the following:
The name is changed, and the new terms used come directly from the familiar mysteries. Justin calls it ψωτισμός, φωτιζεσθαι, “enlightenment.”[113] Those who had passed the tests were “sealed,” φραγις—a term from the mysteries.[114] It was also called μυστήριον,[115] “Mysteries” and many other terms, all of which sprung from the “mysteries of Greek paganism, rather than from the New Testament.”
The time of baptism of adults was changed to meet the pagan conception of it as a purifying and saving act. A long preparation was demanded, and, to meet the pagan idea that it removed sins, it was often deferred until near the close of life in order to make the most of both worlds.[116] The initiated in the Greek mysteries were given a password: σύμβολον or σύνθημα. “So the catechumens had a formula which was only entrusted to them in the last days of their catechumenate, the baptismal formula itself, and the Lord’s Prayer.”[117] A special rite accompanied the giving of this formula. Otherwise both the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed were kept as “mysteries”; the technical name for creed remains to this day as σύμβολον “symbol.”[118]