Christ on the cross is a symbol, first of all, and the etymology of the word, from the greek σύμβολον súmbolon or "put together", finds its deepest meaning. We might quibble about the meaning long religious, political, psychological and social, however, without finding the focal point of the matter. The cross is the connection between two entities: religion and humanity. The cross is the visual symbol, a warning imprinted in various shapes and colors on a wall, to remind the Catholic Christian faith. It is a warning not to forget. There are various ways to live spirituality and the search for the mystical and that is why the cross is there to remind us how we should convey the irrational.
Jesus of Nazareth was a man, a preacher jew, who lived two thousand years ago in the Roman province of Judea. Historical chronicles of the time we do not talk about him and yet his story and his life was so important to the people of Europe, that history with a capital marked the birth of his second which is the central point. Everything happened to us in the West, before or after Christ, and all this only on the basis of the Gospels: the four officers Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, plus a twenty apocryphal between hypothetical and another dozen or lost.
He died on the cross, Jesus of Nazareth , technically killed by the Romans, although the blame was given to the Jews, the Romans themselves that three hundred years later, during the reign of Constantine I (Licinio and ), in a move more political than spiritual stop the persecution against Christians and officially elect as the Messiah, the son of God, which word would lead among men during his short life. And on the basis of the Gospels, the council after council from Nicaea, presided over by Constantine I (image shown at the bottom left with the Fathers of the First Council of Nicaea that show I think, at the center, the Emperor), later, the clergy, the men voted to him, first built a religion, made up of warnings and rules of behavior derived from the word of Jesus, choosing the agony of the same symbol as the most
top of their beliefs, then a state with its king, his court, the its people, its army and its lands in Europe, in Italy, in Rome. Because the cult of Jesus, jew, he moved to Rome, electing as its capital? When Jesus said the phrase: "Upon this rock I will build my church 'Specify a location? And Peter having strolled to the Middle East always at his heels with the Romans ready to skin him, because fleeing took refuge in Rome itself (where Nero him the skin)? It was a political issue or simply a fatal attraction to the Eternal City? The Gospels and the Apostles gl'atti not specify anything about and course is not a problem they have set themselves the believers, it is certain that the Roman Catholic Church, once empowered with the Edict of Milan , not limited to direct, but he created a cult, as mentioned, a State, with the agreement of the imperial authorities, and also threw against everything around him and he could, even remotely , harms: first heresies, then the schism from the Orthodox Church, then the perennial battle against Islam ( the Christian Crusades, the holy war of Islam). is then that Jesus on the cross becomes a "crucified" or the symbol back to him, a way of believing and also a power. The man Jesus nailed to the cross, his alleged human and divine nature, his agony is the symbol of the Catholic religion and its dominance over Europe and began continuously increased after the events just mentioned.
Now centuries later, someone will call traditional religious belief derived from the unclear facts described above. Avoid sinking further the nail on the head (it was never more apt metaphor) atteniamoci line etymological far kept trying to clarify what the word tradition, since its meaning can be varied, also depending on the areas where the apply: the word comes from Latin traditiònem which in turn derives from tradere = deliver, transmit. Tradition is what we receive and transmit . But the term tradition is also seen as habit and even though the two meanings can be in relation to their fundamental difference lies in the activity of transmission and liabilities of the latter. Transmit it requires action, the implementation of something which in turn must be led by an active subject to another subject to transpose and implement the same action in the same process that can last forever, until at least not in this virtuous circle is part of a taxpayer, and the concept of assets is important because then the person shall not easy carrier but is also involved in a process of direct action on the subject carried. The custom is rather passive, is the ' acceptance and putting into practice of stylistic pre , does not include activities of any kind except that of receiving, uncritically, and symbols that need to bind those who practice the custom to those who decide substance.
You can guess how well the Christian Catholic religion, like all other religions, is a type of traditional customary , those who practice it should not think they will decide they only asked to believe, and then to receive. It only remains to be seen whether in Europe there is also a tradition that goes back to the original meaning of the word itself, the concept of what active transmission. Of course there and is much older and deeper than any modern religion, popular in Europe or not, and is the rationalism. The rationalism (from the Latin ratio, "reason") is a philosophical movement based on the idea that human reason can in principle be the source of all knowledge ( cit. wikipedia . it ). Its origin dates back since the days of Hellenic philosophers: Thales of Miletus , for example, studied the proportions between the geometrical and astronomical and began to take this rational way of thinking in the field of philosophy ( cit.: wikipedia . it ). But Pythagoras, always around the sixth ac understood through numbers that was possbile explain a multitude of things.
But it was with the School of Athens that the rationalism taken concrete form. There is a beautiful fresco by Raphael in the Vatican, it depicts a scene in great many philosophers and mathematicians: Heraclitus, Euclid, Pythagoras, etc., in the middle Plato and Aristotle.
"Plato, painted with the likeness of Leonardo da Vinci, is holding in his hand Timaeus and his work points to the sky with a finger (indicating the supercelestial area to be beyond the sky where it counts the ideas), while Aristotle's Ethics and turns holding the palm of the hand toward the ground addressing the world's land and the will of man to study the natural world and to be in contact with it. "(source wikipedia . it )
dell'iperuranio Plato tells us, the irrational, the birth of thought in a place far away by us and, perhaps, close to a god, but Aristotle speaks of rationality, science, the infinite capacity of ' human intellect.
Perhaps at that moment in history, so well reported by Raphael, was born Rationalism became the short-term "tradition" in the first sense we have given. The rationalists fact, throughout the centuries to us, handed down their theories, studied and developed their skills in hundreds of different fields, for the most part very useful to man, from mathematics to medicine, geometry, art, biology to ' mechanical engineering and electronics.
personalities who have made a vehement development to human history over the centuries since Aristotle, philosophers such as Bacon , Hobbes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Kant, scientists and artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Descartes, Newton until you reach Popper.
This is the true European tradition, and it is thanks to these champions of the mind that, along with hundreds of others who for reasons of space I can not speak out, have put their neurons for knowledge and have handed down their philosophy and their detected, even risking their lives ( Galileo Galilei tells you something?) if we in Europe today, believers or not, we go around in our beautiful toy car with air conditioning if we speak with a guy on the other side of the world walking down the street with a contraption in his hand, sitting in my office if I beat my fingers on little pieces of plastic placed on a large piece of plastic that attached to a wire that attaches who knows where, like magic, in the words I mind splashing all over the world and everyone can now read, and discover that I am speaking against the crucifix in schools this long preamble, and that everything was functional to the concept expressed so suddenly. Read
well, not against the crucifix, but against the crucifix in schools.
And if there is no clear because I'll clear: as explained above is not true that our European tradition is Catholic but rather rationalistic and there is no better place to consecration of it if not in school where all religious symbols should be banned on the walls and the giant Nobel prizes, the team photo of the scientists of CERN , writers, mathematicians, and these days, computer scientists who have changed our era. Everything else is
habit, not to be studied and then his place is not the school, but absorbed by those who feel the need, the need or simply believe it right.
The School is the place to be the triumph of reason and the irrational.
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