There is one broad fact about the
relations of Christianity and Paganism which is so simple that many will smile
at it, but which is so important that all moderns forget it. The primary fact
about Christianity and Paganism is that one came after the other.
Mr. Lowes Dickinson speaks of them as
if they were parallel ideals—even speaks as if Paganism were the newer of the
two, and the more fitted for a new age. He suggests that the Pagan idea will be
the ultimate good of man; but if that is so, we must at least ask with more
curiosity than he allows for, why it was that man actually found his ultimate
good on earth under the stars, and threw it away again…
There is only one thing in the modern
world that has been face to face with Paganism… and that is Christianity. That
fact is really the weak point in the whole of that hedonistic neo-Paganism of
which I have spoken. All that genuinely remains of the ancient hymns or the
ancient dances of Europe, all that has honestly come to us from the festivals
of Phoebus or Pan, is to be found in the festivals of the Christian Church.
If anyone really wants to hold the end
of a chain which really goes back to the heathen mysteries, he had better take
hold of a festoon of flowers at Easter or a string of sausages at Christmas.
Everything else in the modern world is
of Christian origin, even everything that seems most anti-Christian. The French
Revolution is of Christian origin. The anarchists are of Christian origin.
Physical science is of Christian origin. The attack on Christianity is of
Christian origin. There is one thing and one thing only, in existence at the
present day which can in any sense accurately be said to be of pagan origin,
and that is Christianity.
GK Chesterton, Heretics
Reflection –
GKC
goes on here (at some length, as is his wont, although I guess I’m in no
position to criticize), to delineate many of the true distinctions of Paganism
and Christianity, and the very real virtues and strengths of the first. He
counters however with the unique virtues of Christianity, which he names as
charity (“a reverent agnosticism towards the complexity of the soul”), chivalry
(the love of the weak because they are weak), and humility (knowing oneself as
weak, and in that knowledge becoming boundlessly strong).
Ultimately he credits Paganism with being
a wholly reasonable and common sense approach to life, but “we cannot go back
to an ideal of reason and sanity. For mankind has discovered that reason does
not lead to sanity.”
While
the romance of Paganism has somewhat worn off, and certainly never took off the
way Dickinson et al. thought it might, it is still around. Neo-paganism exists.
It is worth asking Chesterton’s question: why, if Paganism was all that great,
did the pagans all become Christians?
We
cannot answer that they were forced to by a dominant Church. The dominant
Church, the Church that had power to force its will on the general population,
factually did not show up until the second millennium of Christianity. We’re
talking here about events that happened in the first five to six hundred years
of Christianity, when the Church was a rag tag group scattered across the Roman
empire, one ancient upstart cult among a hundred. Constantine did not impose
Christianity on his subjects; he merely ended the persecution of the Church.
And part of his ending the persecution of the Church was because by that point
a rather large percentage of his subjects had become members of it, in an era
when it exerted no political power whatsoever.
Now
why would that be, if Paganism was such a perfect religion, so suited to the
needs of the human person? OK, so Paganism may not be your bag, anyhow
(somehow, I don’t think too many Wiccans are reading this blog…). But there can
be a sense in modernity that we just need to get back to some kind of natural
state of man—the sort of Rousseauian ‘noble savage’ idea. If only we can ‘get
ourselves back to the garden’ by way of Woodstock.
This
is a kind of nostalgia for something that is older and earlier than
Christianity, some state of innocence that was fundamentally marred by the
incursion of religion and especially the Christian religion with its rules and
dogmas. This is certainly one current among many that floats around today.
GKC
is well to point out that, in fact, we did all that, we plumbed the depths of
human life, human rationality, human enjoyment of the world—Paganism at its
heights and depths really was a marvelous thing that left few stones unturned
in the human reality. And… then they all became Christians.
And
Christianity has no great quarrel with Paganism factually. There is no,
absolutely no, record of any great ‘persecution’ of Pagans by Christians—such
was unnecessary as they all ran into the Church with enthusiasm, seemingly,
over a period of a few centuries. And the Church was happy to receive all the
good things of Paganism, the philosophy and the music and dance, the mad
merriment and the sober reflection, and make it its own.
