Pagan Christianity: Paganism? Or Culture?
By Fred | Thursday, June 24, 2010
Does it Matter?
Going back to the introduction of the book, George Barna addresses the question, “Does it really matter how we practice our faith, as long as the activities enable people to love God and obey Him?” (p. xxviii)
With a little thought, I think the obvious answer is, “yes.” He then says,
“Does that mean we must go back to the Bible and do everything exactly as the disciples did between AD 30 and 60? No. Social and cultural shifts over the last two thousand years have made it impossible to imitate some of the lifestyle and religious efforts of the early church…Therefore, adhering to the principles of the New Testament does not mean reenacting the events of the first-century church. If so, we would have to dress like all first-century believers did, in sandals and togas!” (p. xxix)
I wanted to quote that almost completely because the concept is so important. Our goal is to understand and live out principles not events. I would further say that our goal as followers of Jesus is not to “follow the Bible,” but to “follow Jesus.” The Bible gives us the history of how this was originally done in community along with some principles of how to do it. I don’t believe those principles are exhaustive, but it’s a starting point.
Culture is the Context of the Gospel
Here is the challenge. Someone once said (and I wish I could remember who in order to credit him properly) that “culture is the context of the Gospel.” Tim Keller, in his valuable book The Reason for God, explains that the Gospel “transcends culture”—which means that the core message of the Gospel goes beyond any particular culture and applies to every culture. He also points out that the community of followers is expressed differently in every culture—historically, it was first in Jewish culture, then Greek culture, then western European culture. The tragedy is that the Gospel has, until recently, been so dominated by western culture that it becomes difficult not to see “our” expression as the only expression.
And so here the challenge begins. What does the Bible say about the expression of the Gospel and the practices of the community of believers in Jesus? Does the Bible’s prescription contrast in principle with how we express it today in our culture? This challenge has been made more difficult because of the extent to which western culture has been affected by the Gospel message as well as distortions of the Gospel message.
Before going on to a topic-by-topic with discussion, I want to finish this blog post with a quick look at the title of the book in question: Pagan Christianity. Pagan. What does it mean? Some see it as simply nature worship. It may, for others, evoke images of the worship of the devil with goat sacrifices, complete with pentagrams and the like. Viola and Barna’s overarching contention is that the church has become corrupted by “pagan” influences (informed, I think, by another presupposition, which I will deal with later). The book says, “While today we often use the word pagan to describe those who claim no religion whatsoever, to the early Christians, pagans were those polytheists who followed the gods of the Roman Empire” (p. 6).
This is not quite true. There is a semantic issue here that is misleading. At the time of the early church, a “pagan” was a “rural person” (see http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pagan). Wikipedia says the following:
“The term pagan is from the Latin paganus, an adjective originally meaning ‘rural’, ‘rustic’ or ‘of the country.’ As a noun, paganus was used to mean ‘country dweller, villager.’ The semantic development of post-classical Latin paganus in the sense ‘non-Christian, heathen’ is unclear. The dating of this sense is controversial, but the 4th century seems most plausible. An earlier example has been suggested in Tertullian De Corona Militis xi, ‘Apud hunc [sc. Christum] tam miles est paganus fidelis quam paganus est miles infidelis,’ but here the word paganus may be interpreted in the sense ‘civilian’ rather than ‘heathen.’” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagan#Pagan)
And so the original “pagans” were farmers and country-folk who were assumed to be polytheistic by default because with the missionary work of Paul, Christianity was originally spread in the cities. At worst, to use the word “pagan” this way is a prejudiced generalization that does not specifically appear to refer to “polytheistic belief” until later in church history. The argument may still stand—we could, in a more cumbersome way, call the book Inappropriately Idolatrous Christianity. Doesn’t quite have the same ring.
What Influence, Really?
But here’s my point: in the cultures of those times, almost without exception, everyone was religious in some way. Religion was intertwined with culture in a way that we don’t understand today (because of our immersion in our own culture dominated by secular humanism). Every person was religious. Every culture was religious. So a rural individual (a “pagan person”) carried with him his own culture.
And so when Viola and Barna are talking about pagan influences on the early church, are they talking about “idolatrous polytheistic influences”? Or “cultural influences”? I would suggest both. This is where that quote comes in. We’re not going to be wearing togas and sandals. And culture is the context of the Gospel. And the Gospel transcends culture. So at what point does a cultural influence become inappropriate?
And that is the lens through which we will be evaluating the specific topics of the book.
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