The creeds of the mystery religions were never worked out to the same extent that the Christian creeds were. Nevertheless, the doctrines of the mysteries may be called a theology. One of the central subjects in mystery writings was cosmogony—the theory of the origin or creation of the world. In the Hermetic treatises, in the Chaldean Oracles, and in the little known writings of Mithraism, the cosmogony was modelled after Plato’s Timaeus, and it always dealt with the creation of the soul and with the soul’s subsequent fate.

The theological doctrine of the soul and the myth about its celestial home, its fall, and its redemption were inseparable. The sequence is beautifully told in the “Hymn of the Soul,” preserved in the Acts of Thomas, an apocryphal account of the journeys and death of the apostle. The hero of the hymn, who represents the soul of man, is born in the Eastern (the yonder) Kingdom; immediately after his birth, he is sent by his parents on a pilgrimage into the world with instructions to take a pearl from the mouth of a dragon in the sea. Instead of wearing his heavenly garment, he dresses in earthly clothes, eats earthly food, and forgets his task. Then his parents send a letter to rouse him. As soon as he has read the letter, he awakes and remembers his task, takes the pearl, and begins the homeward journey. On the way, his brother (the Redeemer) comes to accompany him and leads him back home to his father’s palace in the east. This myth is a figurative representation of the theological doctrine of the soul’s fall and its return to heaven.

Many of the questions that were the subject of later Christian theological discussions were already eagerly debated in the mystery religions. In a Hermetic treatise, for example, the existence of God was proved from the evident order of the world. This argument, which had first been formulated by Zoroaster, a 7th-century Iranian prophet, was expressed in the form of questions: Who could have created the heavens and the stars, the sun and the moon, except God? Who could have made wind, water, fire, and earth (the elements), the seasons of the year, the crops, the animals, and man, except God?

Passionate debates were held about the question of whether man was subject to blind fate. The Stoics (proponents of a Greek and Roman school of philosophy holding that men should be free from passion and calmly accept all occurrences as unavoidable) had adopted the doctrine that all events are determined by the stars. Thus, for many Greeks and Romans astrology became the only sensible method of studying man’s life and fortune. But for others the idea that man could achieve nothing by his own will was frightening, and they wanted to be liberated from this fear; the mystery religions promised to liberate them. The theology of the mystery religions admitted that the stars ruled the world and especially that the planets had evil influences. But the highest god of the religion (for example, Serapis in the Isis Mysteries) stood far above the stars and was their master. A man who decided to become a servant of this god stepped out of the circle of determination and entered into the sphere of liberty. The god could suspend determination, because he ruled over the stars; he could unravel the threads of the Moirai (the three spinners of fate); he could save his servant from illness and prolong his life, even against the will of fate. In the Isis Mysteries there was a theology of grace foreshadowing Christian doctrine.

In many of the mystery cults, there was a marked tendency toward henotheism—the worship of one god without denying the existence of other gods. Thus, Isis was the essence of all pagan goddesses; Serapis was the name uniting the gods Zeus, Pluto, Dionysus, Asclepius, Helios, and even the Jewish god YHWH (Yahweh). In the religion of Sol, an elaborate syncretistic theology was developed to show that all known gods of all nations were nothing but provisional names for the sun god.