The Risen God and the Unconquered Sun
The Pagan Roots of Christianity
In his most recent Substack entry, Mark Bisone offers his thoughts on Neopaganism and Christianity. It’s one of Mark’s best essays, and that’s saying something indeed. If you haven’t read it yet, click the box above and check it out.
The current relationship between Christianity and Neopaganism can most charitably be described as hostile. Many, perhaps most self-identified Neopagans consider Christianity to be a repressive death cult that steamrolled over the True Faiths of pre-Christian Europe. Christians, for their part, dismiss Neopaganism as demon-worship or simple-minded LARPing for delusional dumbshits.
Both sides have some facts behind their arguments. From 380 onwards Christianity spread the religion by the sword. During the Reformation both Catholics and Reformers happily burned their theological opponents at the stake. While the endless ranting about Christofascist Dominionists is tiresome and overblown, there’s no question that imperial Christianity frequently forced its beliefs on the populace in a way that imperial Paganism avoided.
After a couple decades in the Neopagan community I can state without hesitation that there are indeed a great number of simple-minded LARPers and delusional dumbshits therein. There are also quite a few who dabble in cursing, Left Hand Path practices, and other things which even non-Evangelical Christians would identify as Satanic. And above all there’s a great hostility and loathing aimed at Christianity by people who believe all gods are real — except for the most popular and successful one.
We tend to think of a Great Divide between Paganism and Christianity; even our dating system distinguishes between Before Christ and Anno Domini. But there were long centuries during which Christianity was just one of many foreign cults seeking converts throughout the Empire. And while we think of St. Constantine the Great as Rome’s first Christian Augustus, the truth is a bit more… complicated.
In 310, after Constantine’s triumph over his father-in-law and onetime ally Maximian, an anonymous court orator wrote a panegyric describing Constantine’s visit to the grand temple of Grannus Apollo before the battle began. That shrine, in today’s Vosges department of modern France, was famous for incubation ceremonies. Devotees came for healing and advice and Grannus Apollo would, if they were fortunate, visit them in dreams.
If our anonymous orator is to be believed, Constantine was fortunate. According to the panegyric, Grannus Apollo crowned Constantine with laurel and promised him a thirty-year reign of peace and prosperity. And as he looked at Apollo, Constantine beheld his own face in the likeness of the god.
Constantine famously marched against Maxentius under the sign of Christ. Under that sign he took Rome and the Empire. Constantine ended anti-Christian persecutions and returned confiscated churches to their congregations. But most of the imperial coins minted during Constantine’s reign feature Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun, while only a few feature the Chi-Rho. And when in 321 Constantine introduced the first official Christian Sabbath, he phrased it thusly:
On the venerable Day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country, however, persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits; because it often happens that another day is not so suitable for grain-sowing or for vine planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven should be lost.
On the 316 coin pictured above, Constantine blesses the holder with a sign of benediction commonly found on images and statues of Sol Invictus. There are many similar coins to be found. Many Catholic scholars have tried to explain this away by noting that Christians were still a small minority within the Roman Empire and Constantine needed the support of traditional Romans. Many Reformed scholars would recognize this as the beginnings of Papist paganism and Romish corruption. But are Constantine’s polytheistic tendencies really so surprising?
Many modern Haitians have no problem with making offerings to Ezili Freda at a Thursday fet, then praying before Our Lady of Sorrows at a Sunday Mass. Sol Invictus drew in equal parts from the Semitic Algabal and the Persian Mithras. And Grannus Apollo was a syncretized Gaulic god honored with Apollonian rites. Constantine would have had little difficulty believing that he had received a blessing and a vision from Grannus Apollo in 310 and also from Jesus Christ in 312.
The Christians believed in One God. But so did many other Greco-Roman traditions. Stoics believed there was one Logos and would have no quarrel with St. John’s claim that in the Beginning there was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and was God. Neoplatonists believed all Gods were emanations of one Divine source. A high-ranking Roman noble like Constantine would have at least a basic education in both philosophies, and that education would shape his understanding of Christianity.
We can debate whether Jesus was a prophet, a revolutionary, or the Son of God. We all know for a fact that after Christ the Christian religion was developed by humans. Like all humans, they grew up in a time and place and internalized its rules and morals. And those humans grew up in a time and place where polytheism was the default setting. While a few of its philosophies broke radically from established Greco-Roman thought, many more were deeply rooted in its precepts and preconceptions.
In 326, a year after convening the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, Constantine had his son Crispus and his wife Fausta executed. We do not know why, as Constantine also had them expunged from the official records through a damnatio memoriae. Some have speculated that Fausta was plotting with her stepson to seize the throne. Others claimed that Fausta falsely accused Crispus of rape, and was then exposed as a liar after his death.
This was typical behavior for Roman leaders. In 48 Claudius had his wife Messalina executed for adultery. In 54 Agrippina the Younger poisoned her husband (and uncle) Claudius after he proclaimed her son Nero heir to the throne. In 59 Nero had his mother killed for her repeated plots to overthrow him. In 211 Caracalla had his brother and co-emperor Geta murdered. Both Nero and Caracalla were said to be haunted by their bloody deeds. Nero hired Persian magicians to drive away his mother’s ghost: Caracalla murdered some 20,000 “friends of Geta” so that they might not remind him of his guilt. Constantine and his family turned to Christ.
Helena, who purportedly discovered Fausta’s perfidy and had her suffocated in an overheated bath, went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. There the dowager queen discovered through visions, intuition and local legends several holy sites. Beneath a temple to Venus built by Hadrian she found three crosses. The one which healed a sick woman was deemed the “True Cross.” Above the old temple Constantine built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: a nail found at the site was incorporated into his battle helmet so that he might prove invulnerable to attack. And after AD 325/6 we no longer see images of Sol Invictus on Constantine’s coins.
The repentant sinner has always been a popular Christian trope. Christianity holds all guilty of hamartia, a term that Aristotelean scholars translate as the Tragic Flaw. All too often our efforts to do good lead only to greater evils. Our greatest virtues can become our most terrible weaknesses. Christianity recognizes this fact, as would most Greco-Roman traditionalists. It also promises a redemption in Christ. This too would be familiar with those initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Mithras-Cult, or any other Mystery Religion which promised benefits in this world and the next.
In 286 Diocletian moved the Western Roman Empire’s center from Rome to the more centrally located and easily defensible Mediolanum (Milan). In 330 Constantine moved the Empire’s headquarters to his newly built city of Constantinople. Sidelined for decades, Rome was now a second city in the Empire that bore its name. This was another blow for the Greco-Roman traditional religions, as polytheism was a religion of place. Rome wasn’t just an imperial center, it was the beating heart of a long religious tradition that incorporated Greek, Etruscan, and many other faiths.
As it grew Constantinople took on much of the spiritual weight that Rome once held. The pagan temples that predated Constantine’s reign were torn down or transformed into Christian churches. Constantinople became not only the New Rome but the new Jerusalem in a new Christian Roman Empire. Centuries after it became Istanbul not Constantinople, Orthodoxy still looks to Byzantium as a spiritual center.
While the Eastern Roman Empire kept going, the Western Roman Empire rapidly sank into a Dark Age. We generally date the fall of the West to 476 when Odoacer deposed Romulus and claimed the city. But by the time that death certificate was signed the Western Roman Empire had been on life support for decades.
Besieged by Vandals, Visigoths, Huns, and restless subject tribes, the West had long been losing territory and influence. Western emperors could no longer afford to pay the limitanei, frontier guardsmen who could stave off and warn of invasions. While Constantinople prospered thanks to its position near the eastern trade routes, Western and Central Europe became a diminished backwater. And as conditions went from bad to worse, the Roman Church became Europe’s spiritual center.
There’s more Greco-Roman philosophy and spirituality to be found in the Church Fathers than amongst most Neopagans. American Neopaganism is more deeply rooted in Aleister Crowley than in Hermes Trimegistus. Its vision of “nature worship” owes more to the 18th Century Ossianic revival and neo-Druidism than to pre-Christian European practices, with a heavy dose of fantasy fiction and role-playing games tossed in for good measure.
While there are a few “Christopagans” who identify Jesus as a god among gods, most Neopagans are openly hostile to Abrahamic religions. This rejection cuts them off from the roots of our oldest faiths and from the very idea of tradition. And most American Neopagans come from Protestant backgrounds which focus on a direct personal relationship with the Divine and look askance at religious authority. Because they have no Bible to settle things, this results in an environment where everybody’s beliefs are valid, even the mutually contradictory and blatantly stupid ones.
Some Polytheists have moved past this free-wheeling approach by concentrating solely on “the Lore.” This sola scriptura approach eliminates the temptation to worship Marvel Thor or Harryhausen Zeus. But the Holy Scriptures they claim were never written for that purpose. Snorri Sturluson was a devout Christian and Ovid had no more faith in the deities of The Metamorphoses than Stephen Sondheim had in the deities of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
For most of history we put the Divine at the apex of civilization. The Enlightenment and the French Revolution put Mankind at the top of the pyramid. In the wake of Existentialism and Postmodernism, we privilege the Individual. And so many, perhaps most, Neopagans have decided that the Gods are simply thought-constructs in their head that they can use toward self-actualization and personal power. While they bristle at being called LARPers, this watered-down Jungian psychology is quite accurately described as live-action role-playing.
It’s not surprising that many Neopagans were early and enthusiastic adapters of Intersectionality, LGBTQ+ rights, and every other trendy Internet political cause. These secular faiths provided something that has long been lacking in Neopaganism, a willingness to distinguish between Good and Evil. In place of bland “An it harm none” platitudes, they gave their followers permission to hate and even encouraged violence against their foes.
For disempowered people casting magic spells to improve their lives, these movements were as addictive as crack. But slogans are no more useful than magic spells when it comes to making actual changes in the world or in yourself. And as these political movements go the way of Love-Ins and Pet Rocks, many who hitched their wagon to the Current Thing will go swirling down the bowl with it.
There are certainly dedicated Polytheists who work tirelessly to revive interest in the Old Gods and the Old Traditions. But Neopagans have by and large rejected them as big old control freaks who believe deities demand obedience and sacrifice. These Polytheists might, Gods willing, revive the Pagan Traditions. But those revivals will share very little with what passes for “Paganism” today.
"There’s more Greco-Roman philosophy and spirituality to be found in the Church Fathers than amongst most Neopagans."
Thank you for this. And for the essay! :)
I am a radical skeptic on the veracity of history but respect the pursuit. Very informative.