Essay On Paganism And Christism

The pagan and Christ 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 a...

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...t 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.