Christianity and Paganism

 There are two sorts of Christians. Those who completely reject paganism and those who retain some admiration and even love for it. There are those for whom pagans are either primitives or demon worshippers, and then there are those who see Christ as the fulfilment of the best of pagan vision and who adopt Christianity as the seal and consummation of paganism.  I am of the second sort.

Obviously, many pagan beliefs and practices were primitive and many were derived from demon worship, but not all by any means. Paganism was how God or, more usually, his lieutenants, the gods, spoke to humanity in times past. While there is no doubt that paganism has been superseded by the advent of Christ, this is more in the nature of a religious upgrade than an outright replacement meaning that the virtues of paganism were real virtues not vices all along. Insofar as pagans believed in one supreme principle and an order to creation, in that they acknowledged higher worlds and even had means to interact with those worlds, they followed a true and good religion. It may have been limited but it was not entirely false in the context of its time and place.

Christians sometimes put all pagans in the same bracket but that is a mistake. There is nature worship paganism and then there is that of the philosophers. Certainly, there is cross over between the two but they are very different. Leaving the philosophers aside, who anyway are often accepted as proto-Christians and who even influenced Christian theology, there is still some spiritual goodness to be gained from paganism as long as we baptise it. One of the reasons the stories of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien are so loved is that they did precisely this. Lewis overtly, Tolkien more discreetly, but both of them reintroduced pagan elements to a basically Christian world and in so doing brought something back to a Christianity that had not just lost touch with the supernatural but also reduced creation to a dead thing. Paganism regards creation as holy. This is often confused with pantheism, and can descend into that, but really it is the understanding that God has not departed from this world to a far off place we may or may not access when we are dead. He is ever-present, either directly or through his agents. Every tree, every stream, every mountain contains divine life, and paganism knows this while Christianity has largely forgotten it.

Various elements go to make up pagan religion, some bad but some good and the best of them show an understanding of the spiritual world, respect for the Creator and knowledge of his ways. The Celtic saints were Christians, but many of them retained aspects of their pagan beliefs while submitting these to Christian rule. Their pagan derived love of creation is the reason we find them so appealing today.

Having made these points, I should add a proviso. Paganism is of the past and cannot be revived other than in an artificial form. We are modern people with a modern consciousness and sensibility. Our world is not the pagan world and we have come too far ever to make it so. We can be inspired by the past but we cannot go back to it, and the attempt to do so will only result in pretence and a disconnect between head and heart. In these end times all manner of past beliefs rise up to the surface but they do so in a form largely drained of spiritual vitality. That is true of paganism and, in fact, it is becoming true of official Christianity too which is why the contemporary disciple usually has to make his own way in the spiritual world. While making that way he is at liberty to be inspired by the pagan love for and knowledge of the energies of creation so long as he understands these to be subordinate to the Creator who sent his Son to the world to reveal his true face and form.