Christianity and paganism share a great deal in common, particularly from a metaphysical perspective, and the profound influence of pagan philosophy on Christian theology and mysticism is well documented. Nevertheless, this essay will attempt to identify a few basic differences between pagan and Christian religion and religious practice. We will begin with a brief overview the pagan, using Plotinus as our exemplar, and then we will offer an account of how Christ fundamentally differed from the pagans.
For pagan religion, ‘the Truth’ is something to be glimpsed, something to be ascended to and apprehended in the soul. By ‘eliminating everything’ and reducing the temporal self to naught, a visionary pagan may catch a glimpse of the divine Ground—and this glimpse is its highest hope and goal. But mystical experience can prove hopelessly fleeting, as Plotinus repeatedly discovered, and thus he was mystified by and lamented his inability to remain in that blessed state—for “there comes the moment of descent from intellection to reasoning, and after that sojourn in the divine, and I ask myself how it happens that I can now be descending, and how did the soul ever enter into my body” (IV, 8, 1). Via the painful but necessary path of self-negation, he slowly ascends to his goal, until at last he reaches the heights of divine union and blessedness—but alas, only to helplessly fall away again, back into the temporal and material realm. Self-willfulness, that which is at the root of the soul’s descent*, is at last renounced in its ascendant return to divinity—alas, only to resurface yet again and drag the soul back down into the mires time and matter, in a manner reminiscent of the tale of Sisyphus, or perhaps the wheel of birth and death. In any case, he may glimpse the goal, yet for all his wisdom and intellect he cannot remain there.
According to Plotinus, all action, even virtuous action, is symptomatic of a soul’s descent into time, as well as an unfortunate necessity therein, such that action and contemplation are fundamentally at odds, and thus irreconcilable for a soul embodied in time. Either soul is engaged and wrapped up in temporal affairs, or it is contemplating the Good and the Beautiful in eternity—but it cannot be and do both simultaneously. Self-will is renounced in the religious pagan for the sake of eternity, but without the anticipation or possibility of it being taken up and put to use in the world by a will higher than its own, for in paganism there is no such will in the world. For paganism, the will of the Father is ontologically detached from and indifferent to the temporal process of the world, and thus utterly removed from the whole play of time, form, matter, and the hearts, wills, and actions of men. Thus pagan religion is essentially “without God in the world” (Ephesians-2:12), in whose soul the temporal and the eternal are irreconcilably set apart.
With Christ, however, the story is different. Pagan masters struggle to renounce and purify themselves in preparation for fleeting religious experiences, which for them constitute the highest goal for an embodied soul. But in Christ, incredibly we find no such struggle for purity and vision, “who, being very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant” (Philippians-2: 6-7). For Christ, by the grace of God, the purity of renunciation is always and effortlessly present in him, as his naturally elevated state. Moreover, Christ’s renunciation does not remove him from the temporal order, as it does in the case of the pagan master, but instead he became a servant. This recognition prompted Saint Augustine to grasp what for him was a key difference between the pagan masters and Christ, between “those who see what the goal is but not how to get there and those who see the way which leads to the home of bliss, not merely as an end to be perceived but as a realm to live in” (VII, 26). For Christ, the truth is something not only to be grasped, but also lived, as a life lived in love and faithful obedience to the will of the Father, which is and is done in the world through the Son by means of the Holy Spirit, according to Scripture. For Christ, even in his infinite renunciation, continued to live and serve in the world, without separating himself from the Father for even a moment, as though he had no separate will of his own apart from the Father. Whereas pagan masters deny themselves as well as the world for a glimpse of God, Christ denies himself for God and in God, so to become His servant, thereby affirming the world as it is in the will of God—“Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew-6:10). Whereas pagan masters forsake the temporal for the sake of the eternal, Christ affirms and embodies his Father’s will here on earth, just as it is in heaven, and thus “makes the two one” (Ephesians-2, 14). The Word, Saint Augustine says, “came through the movement of some created thing, serving your eternal will but itself temporal” (XI, 8 ). Dionysius the Areopagite expresses it another way: “in an ineffable manner, the simple Being of Jesus assumed a compound state, and the Eternal hath taken a temporal existence” (Divine Names-1, 4). Thus even in acting and willing in the temporal, the soul of Christ never turns away from his contemplation of the eternal will of the Father, but rather embodies it in time through perfect, single-hearted submission and obedience to the leadings of the Holy Spirit. In so doing, Christ embodied what for paganism is inconceivable, and therefore all but impossible.
What set Christ apart is the uncanny way in which he lived and loved, with particular emphasis on love, which according to Scripture is “the fulfillment of the Law” (Romans-13:10), as well as “the sum of the commandments” (Timothy-1:5). And perhaps his greatest gift to mankind is expressed by means of his example and practice of how one ought to live, as a life lived in and out of divine love—for his life was the purity of this love embodied in time—and his explanation of this love was in his embodiment of this love, and his being was his explanation. Prior to Christ, the world had perhaps only a faint notion of the agape kind of love that Christ came to embody as the Word in the flesh, as the singular reconciliation of the temporal and the eternal, of self-will and the will of God. The Word became flesh through Christ by means of the Holy Spirit; and the Father, whose will is expressed in and through his love, “made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ” (Ephesians-1: 9)—Christ the Son, who is the loving will of the Father in the flesh, and the fulfillment of the eternal Law in time. For pagan masters, action precludes contemplation and vise versa, and His will did not enter into or apply to time. But in Christ they are brought together into perfect union in the fulfillment of the Law; all virtues, likewise, are brought together in him in the fulfillment the Law, which “binds them all together in perfect unity” (Colossians-3, 14)—and “the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians-2: 20). Christ lived this absurd and impossible command, and explained the meaning of this command by means of his example, living this example unto his death on the Cross—and what a marvel it is for a person to have lived such a profoundly difficult command; for this command presupposes a great deal, far more than we can deal with here. It shall suffice to say that to live according to such a law and command, as Christ did unto his death on the cross, is surely an impossible feat for a mere mortal human being. It surely could not be done without the strength of an indomitable faith, but the strength and courage of such a faith can only be had by means of divine grace.
Divine grace, a rather vague notion in pagan religion, is a cornerstone and necessity of Christian faith, “for it is by grace you have been saved through faith—and this is not from yourselves, but the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians-2:8-9). Thus it has been said that to need God is a human being’s highest perfection, of which Christ was a living example and archetype. Christ is uniquely distinguished by his depth of humility before God, “who resists the proud and gives grace to the humble” (James-4:6), and by his deference to God in all things—“of my own self I can do nothing” (John-5:30), and “the words I say to you are not my own. Rather it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work” (John, 14-9). By his own account, Christ could do nothing, but by means of an unshakable faith given him by the Father through the Holy Spirit, he lovingly submitted himself wholeheartedly to the Law, to a pure and single-hearted participation in the will and love of the Father—right unto his tortuous death on the cross, on which he loved and forgave those who ‘know not what they do’ (Luke-23:34). The love of man could not bear the love of God, so we nailed him to a cross. But to say it again, this was no human faith and love that spoke from the cross that day. “The more anything participates in the One infinitely-bountiful God, the more is it brought near to Him and made diviner than the rest” (Divine Names: V,3). To participate in God is to participate in His law and love, and Christ’s participation in His law and love was made absolute and complete in his God-given faith, such that his will and the will of the Father were one, both here and hereafter.
But mere mortals may not be so intimately acquainted with the Father and his will as Christ was, so Christian faith teaches that through Christ we ourselves may be given the grace of God necessary to fulfill the Law, and thereby become Sons of God ourselves, such that the Pauline maxim ‘Not I, but Christ in me’ may become a living experience, just as ‘Not I, but the Father in me’ was a living experience in Christ. Man must reduce himself to nothing, according to Christian faith, so that the light of the Son may shine through and bestow His graces upon the soul. In other words, through Christ we may come to participate in the love and will of the Father. Pagans do not acknowledge or apprehend the presence of divine Law and Will in the world in the way Christ did, nor of its fulfillment in world through the Logos—whether out of blindness or clarity of wisdom and vision we do not venture to say, but wish only to highlight the distinction. For pagans like Plotinus, the blessed Vision is but a transient experience, for the gap between time and eternity could not be bridged. But Christ was that bridge, simultaneously participating in time and eternity, and Christianity in particular is distinguished by its faith in the Word’s coming into being and existence in time—through Christ eternity was born in time; eternity came through Christ and left its eternal mark on time. This is perhaps among the more fundamental differences between paganism and Christianity.
Works Cited
NIV Study Bible, Compact Indexed: Zondervan: 9780310428527: Amazon.com: Books. N.p., n.d.
Areopagite, Dionysius The. “The Mystical Theology and The Divine Names Paperback.” The Mystical Theology and The Divine Names: Dionysius the Areopagite, C. E. Rolt: 9780486434599: N.p., n.d.
Plotinus, Stephen Mackenna, and John M. Dillon. The Enneads. London, England: Penguin, 1991. Print.
Saint Augustine. Confessions (Oxford World’s Classics): Saint Augustine, Henry Chadwick: 9780199537822: Amazon.com: Books. N.p., n.d.