Christian History Home > Issue 60 > Rooted in the Tradition
Rooted in the Tradition
Celtic Christianity is not as theologically unique as many have supposed.
Gilbert Márkus | posted 10/01/1998 12:00AM
Newly emerging churches nearly always recycle old, pre-Christian ideas to serve their new faith, stitching together the pagan past and the Christian present.
In the Mediterranean world, Christian philosophers reshaped neo-Platonism. In early Christian Gaul, thousands of pagan well-spring shrines were converted into Christian sites, while Pope Gregory the Great told the English church not to destroy pagan shrines but to reuse them, "changing them from the worship of devils to the service of the true God."
We see the same process in the early "Celtic" church—Christians who spoke the ancient Celtic languages: Gaelic, Welsh, and Pictish. These first Celtic Christians wove their new-found faith in Christ into their ancient languages and cultures. Columba, for example, reportedly blessed a Pictish well where a malign spirit lived and turned it into a Christian place of healing.
What was the nature of the Celtic Christianity that emerged from this enculturating process? Today many moderns long ...
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