IV - THE DIALOGUE OF PAGANISM WITH CHRISTIANITY

Summary

Uno itinere non potest perveniri ad tam grande secretum.

SYMMACHUS

Up to now I have been dealing with attitudes and experiences which were for the most part common to pagans and Christians–at any rate to some pagans and some Christians. But I must not leave the impression that in my opinion there were no important differences between paganism and Christianity in our period. In this final chapter I shall say something about pagan views of Christianity and Christian views of paganism as they emerge in the literature of the time. It is a large and complicated subject: to treat it fully a whole course of lectures would be needed. So I shall have to limit myself to a few dominant themes; and in choosing these I shall have less regard to doctrinal disputes than to those differences of feeling which seem to constitute a psychological dividing line.

We should begin by getting two points clear. In the first place, the debate was conducted at many different intellectual and social levels. It engaged the energies of cultivated scholars like Origen and Porphyry; but it must also have been fought out, frequently and bitterly, in the council-chambers of Greek cities, in the market-places of North African villages, and in thousands of humble homes.