On Sacrifice

I came across a comment by Celsus, a Pagan critic of Christianity who wrote c. 200 CE, about the need for sacrifice, and I thought it was very well put. Speaking of the Christian refusal to make sacrifice, he says, “They should offer the appropriate sacrifices and say the proper prayers until such time as they are free of their earthly entanglements, and ingratiate themselves to the beings who control all spheres of human activity. It is at best ungrateful to use someone’s flat and pay them not rent (as Christians do the earth).”

A statement like this gets to the root of what religion was for the Pagans of the Roman Empire, that is, proper due reverence of the Gods. It is not about doctrine and dogma or about holy writings. It is about giving the Gods their just due, just as we give our parents their just due, and this seems eminently sensible to me, far and away superior to the complications of “religion” as defined by Christianity, which requires us to believe certain things, and places these beliefs above the cultic acts which show this devotion.

I think we need to get back to a simpler religion ourselves, and we need to push aside this need for doctrine, this devotion to sacred writings, which only get in the way of a proper appreciation for who we are and where we are in the greater scheme of things. Why kill each other over “you say Jesus and God are coequal!” or “you say Jesus is inferior to God, you heretic!” and so forth. What silly things to fight about. You never saw our Pagan and Heathen ancestors fighting over Óðinn’s nature, or Þórr’s or that of Isis or Iuppiter Optimus Maximus.

This is why, as I have said before, Pagans see that cultic acts are more a part of what is religion than doctrine and belief. We Pagans don’t have a list of things we have to believe beyond the existence of the Gods themselves, and our religions are centered around paying devotion to the Gods and Goddesses we believe in. Some people, still emotionally or intellectually tied to Christianity, want to make Paganism more than this, and make it more like Christianity. It’s difficult to let go, after all, a lifetime of indoctrination, but do it we must. The Pagans understood that this devotion was owed to the Gods, and they understood it would make their own lives better, and they knew that whether one believed certain things did not change either of those first two facts.

I think that fact marks what is an essential difference between “revealed” religions like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, which depend upon the words of prophets who speak for a God. Paganism never depended upon prophets to outline God’s “master plan” or his “will” with regards to what specifics we are to believe. There is a great freedom to be had in that, and I am sure it is one of the reasons Pagans didn’t kill each other over doctrine. As scholar Jan Assmann has pointed out, Paganism “translated” between cultures, while exclusivistic religions shut each other out; they do not translate at all. And all having an equal claim to the absolute Truth can lead only to strife.

Polytheism is so logical, so natural, and the Pagan approach to it equally sublime. Why complicate matters of religion? The old expression, KISS, for “keep it simple, stupid” ought to apply equally to religion. Let us show our devotion to our Gods, to the landlords of this earth that is our home. It is their due.

Source:

Celsus, On the True Doctrine trans. by R. Joseph Hoffmann (Oxford University Press, 1987), 122.