Tolerance and Criticism

Early Pagan Critics of Christianity

Celsus

"The Christians ignore the good offices of the Dioscori, of Herakles, Asclepios and of Dionysus, and say that these are not Gods because they were humans in the first place. Yet they profess belief in a phantom god who appeared only to members of his little club, and then, so it seems, merely as a kind of ghost."
from On the True Doctrine translated/reconstructed by Hoffman 1987 (Oxford) p. 71

Plotinus

"There are men, bound to human bodies and subject to desire, grief, anger, who think so generously of their own faculty that they declare themselves in contact with the Intelligible World, but deny that the Sun possesses a similar faculty less subject to influence, to disorder, to change; they deny that it is in any way wiser than we, the late born, hindered by so many cheats on the way towards truth.
Their own soul, the soul of the least of mankind, they declare deathless, divine; but the entire heavens and stars, within the heavens have had no communion with the Immortal Soul, though these are of far finer and purer grain than themselves -- yet they are not blind to the order, the shapely pattern, the discipline prevailing in the heavens, since they are the loudest in complaint of the disorder that troubles our earth."
from Enneads II.9.5

Porphyry

Porphyry's most important and thorough criticism of Christianity, and also his clearest and most sweeping positive statement of Pagan spirituality, was a work entitled Philosophy from Oracles. At least that is what modern scholars believe it was titled - the Christians so thoroughly suppressed this work that we do not even know for sure what it's title was.

The main idea behind Porphyry's Philosophy from Oracles could possibly be described as a universalizing treatment of Pagan religion as both (1) an intellectually coherent phenomenon in its own right, but also (2) the natural, spontaneous and original form of human religious expression. Probably the single most important feature of Pagan religion, according to what we can gather from the fragments of Porphyry's work, was its great age. In other words, Porphyry's vision of Paganism, in explicit contradistinction to Christianity, was that Paganism is, indeed, the Old Religion!

For translations and analysis of the fragments of Porphyry's writings on Pagan religion and his critique of Christianity see Thomas Taylor's Against the Christians published in 2006 by the Prometheus Trust, as well as R. Joseph Hoffmann's Porphyry's Against the Christians, and also Robert Louis Wilken's The Christians as the Romans Saw Them.

"Without having it taught us...."

"It is not by teaching but by nature that humanity possesses its knowledge of the Divine, as can be shown by the common yearning for the Divine that exists in everyone everywhere -- individuals, communities, nations. Without having it taught us, all of us have come to believe in some sort of Divinity, even though it is difficult for all to know what Divinity truly is and far from easy for those who do know to explain it to the rest."

The above is quoted from Julian's Against the Galileans (Hoffman 2004) p. 93

"An innate knowledge of the Gods is coexistent with our very essense; and this knowledge is superior to all judgment and deliberate choice, and subsists prior to reason and demonstration. It is also counited from the beginning with its proper cause, and is consubsistent with the essential tendency of the soul to The Good. If, indeed, it be requisite to speak the truth, the contact with Divinity is not knowledge. For knowledge is in a certain respect separated [from its object] by otherness. But prior to the knowledge, which as one thing knows another, is the uniform connexion with Divinity, and which is suspended from the Gods, is spontaneous and inspeparable from Them. Hence it is not proper to grant this, as if it might not be granted, nor to admit it as ambiguous (for it is always unically established in energy); nor are we worthy thus to explore it, as if we had sufficient authority to approve or reject it. For we are comprehended in it, or rather we are filled by it, and we possess that very think which we are in knowing the Gods."

The above is taken from Iamblichus' On the Mysteries (Taylor 2004) p. 23

In defence of criticism

Religious debate is not for the faint of heart, nor the thin of skin

Criticizing intolerance is not in and of itself inherently intolerant. Not to mention that really, when you think about it, there's no reason for Pagans not to be critical of the people who have spent the last 17 centuries trying to eradicate our religion.

Classical Pagans believed strongly in the intellecutal investigation of religion - this is the origin of the word "theology." In his On the True Doctrine, Celsus states "One ought first to follow reason as a guide before accepting any belief, since anyone who believes without accepting is certain to be deceived." (Hoffman 1987 p.54) In the same breath Celsus also harshly criticizes some Pagan cults that he dislikes - those of Cybele and Mithras. In an intellectual climate of tolerance - where debate and disagreement are valued rather than feared - all philosophies and religions are "fair game."

Criticism is one thing - persecution another

To "critique", after all, means to analyze closely. A "literary critic" is not someone who is intolerant of literature - but rather someone who, at least in theory, analyzes literary works closely. But even when one "criticizes" a religion in the more usual sense this only means to state one's disagreement with that religion - nothing more. Is one not allowed to disagree with Christianity? And if one disagrees, is one not allowed to state the basis for this disagreement?

The problem is that the rise of Christianity ushered in a new, dark era of religious intolerance. To the Christians intolerance and criticism seem synonymous simply because they themselves are completely intolerant of everything they disagree with. Outside of Christendom, however, religious tolerance has been able to co-exist with robust debate of philosophical and religious ideas. In fact, genuine intellectual and religious freedom is synonymous with the freedom to voice disagreements of every possible kind.

The historical facts speak for themselves

There is no historical evidence to support the idea that Jesus sought to found a new religion. This is both a fundamental criticism of Christianity and a simple historical fact. Christianity as a religion separate from Judaism came about only after the death of Jesus. Jesus was just one of a great many Jewish reformers at the time - and not a particularly original one at that. But Christians should be free to view their religion as they see fit, although they have no right to insist that everryone else must accept a "Christian" version of Christianity.

More importantly, from the historical perspective, the truth about the rise and spread of Christianity needs to be told. Christians began forcibly imposing their religion on the entire population of the Roman empire as soon as they had the power to do so. But after their conquest of Rome, which included all of Northern Africa and much of the Middle East, Christendom entered a long period of decline during which it became mostly confined to Europe. During this period the only way for Christianity to "spread" was by military conquest of various northern and eastern parts of Europe that had never been incorporated into Rome.

The fortunes of Christendom changed dramatically with the "discovery" of the Americas by Christopher Columbus. The wanton pillaging of the "New World" by White Christian Europeans resulted in a previously inconceivable influx of wealth into Spain, Portugal, France, England, the Netherlands, etc. These nations used this wealth to extend their colonial Empires until nearly the entire surface of the planet had been carved up among them (see for example this map of the world circa 1898). Christian "missionaries" served a key role in both the conquest and the administration of Christendom's colonial possessions. Even slavery was justified as a way to "convert" Africans to Christianity!

There can be no Pagan scholarship without a thoroughgoing critique of Christianity and it's evil offspring: Secularism and Colonialism

Historically there was never a bright line separating spiritual, religious, philosophical and metaphysical investigations from other areas of scholarship in the classical world. To the contrary, Pagan virtue and piety were considered essential both to the education of the young, and to the intellectual pursuits of adults. One need only look at Plutarch to see how inseparable Pagan spirituality was from Pagan intellectual culture as a whole.

The academic institutions of the modern world are descended directly from Medieval institutions that were tightly controlled by the Catholic Church. As a direct result of this, modern intellectual culture blindly accepts a false dichotomy between Christianity and Secularism. This dichotomy offers only a spiritual and intellectual blind alley to Pagan scholars - or to anyone in search of Truth.

Any Pagan scholarship of today that is worthy of that name must begin with a clean break with both Christendom and Secularism. Instead, we are all to likely to find Pagan scholars who are fearful to even clearly identify themselves publicly as Pagans - much less to voice a robust analysis of the 1700 year campaign by Christianity against all other religions. Some of today's so-called Pagan scholars satisfy themselves with "debunking" what little has been done previously to set the record straight. Or else they attempt to "reconstruct" supposedly ethnically based spiritual traditions of non-literate groups (thus reinforcing the false association of Paganism with nationalism and even racism) while completely ignoring the vast amount of textual information available in which ancient Pagans described their religious beliefs, practices and experiences at length in their own words.

Many modern Pagan scholars seem to be obsessed with attacking the work of pioneering scholars like Margaret Murray, Jane Harrison, Robert Graves, Marija Gimbutas, Frances Yates and Mircea Eliade. Some of them have also been busily revising history to downplay the atrocities committed by Inquisitors and witch-hunters and other persecutors of Pagans and heretics down through the centuries. Are these scholars only interested in making sure that they appear harmless and tame to non-Pagans, so that they will be accepted? But even that is only part of the problem. The other part is that most of these scholars lack any real understanding the society that they live in. They passively accept the social, political and economic status quo - without ever suspecting that the "new world order" of the 21st century is, in fact, simply an obvious continuation of European Christendom's conquest of the world. Perhaps they partly realize the radical implications of that reality, and therefore choose to look the other way.