Hellenistic Ways of Deliverance and the Making of the Christian Synthesis

An intelligent fundamentalist is entitled to see a radical break between the pagan world and Christianity: prior to Christ, the world was mired in deepest superstition, but God made an abrupt intrusion in history with the Incarnation and ended the world of paganism. Curiously, even those of us who reject the fundamentalists' theology have tended to accept their theological thesis of a radical discontinuity between paganism and Christianity. We are not intellectually entitled to do so. If Christianity was not the result of divine intervention in human affairs, then it was the social product of the society in which it evovlved. If the ideas and beliefs of the Christians were not revealed by God, then we must find their source in the Greco-Roman world in which they developed. Christianity was created by a pagan society. Christianity must be viewed as the final form taken by paganism, the form in which classical pagan culture was passed down to barbarian Europe and thence to the modern world. This is the theme of Randall's book. When put directly, the point is obvious. Randall fleshes it out with detailed information and examples. Randall's classic was published decades ago. Why does his thesis still sound so startling? Fundamentalists are entitled to disagree. But, many professional "anti-Christians" also have a vested interest in drawing an unwarrantedly sharp distinction between Christians and pagans. Their picture is simply a naive inversion of the fundamentalist's picture. Instead of benighted pagans vs. enlightened Christians, anti-Christian polemicists would paint a picture of noble, enlightened pagan culture swallowed up by a dark sea of Christian bigotry and anti-intellectualism. It didn't happen that way. There was nobility, courage, intellectual curiosity, and humanity among both pagans and Christians. There was also bigotry, brutality, superstition, and stupidity among both pagans and Christians. These were not two separate cultures, peoples, or civilizations. Paganism and Christianity are two variations on one civilizational theme.Culturally speaking, we are all pagans, we are all Christians. When we see Christianity, as Randall urges us to, as the final culmination of paganism, we see Western civilization from a more integral and complete perspective. We also have a chance to transcend some of the bigotry exhibited through the centuries by both sides of what is, and always has been, one culture and one civilization.