This is a follow-up to “Pagan Romans Claimed to Worship the God of Abraham“. For context, if you haven’t already done so, please read that article first!
As discussed previously, pagans in ancient Greece and Rome believed the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to actually be one of their own idols under a different name. But what does this mean, if anything, for Christians?
The first thing to note is the words of St. Paul in his epistle to the Romans. When talking about the pagans who rejected God, he said “when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, … and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things” (Romans 1.21, 23 KJV). Later in the same letter, on a more positive note, Paul tells us that “when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another” (Romans 2.14-15 KJV). The long and short of these passages is: the pagans knew that the Lord was God by their innate reasoning skills.
Paul here was talking in particular about Greek and Roman pagans. But the second thing to note is, if you are familiar with the Old Testament, you’d know that ancient Near Eastern pagans (from the Canaanites to the Persians) also claimed to worship the Lord. Here are some examples from scripture:
- The Philistines who stole the Ark of the Covenant recognized it as the ark of God (1 Sam. 4.7). Their pagan diviners (1 Sam. 6.2) told them that they should “give glory to the God of Israel” (1 Sam. 6.5 KJV) to atone for this sin.
- The pagan prophet Balam refers to the Lord as “my God” (Num. 22.18 KJV). Also, in his prophecies, he uses “the Lord” (called by the tetragrammaton in Hebrew) and “God” interchangably (Num. 23.21-22).
- King Cyrus of Persia refers to the God of Israel as “the LORD God of heaven” (2 Chron. 36.23 KJV; c.f. Ezra 1.2) as the god who gave him the kingdoms of the earth.
There is a passage from the words of St. Jeremiah the Prophet, where he points this out to the pagan Israelites:
Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.’
“For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever.
“Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’–only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the LORD.
Jeremiah the Prophet. Jeremiah 7.3-11 ESV. Underlining by me.
This sheds light on some passages of the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy, after describing the practices of the pagans, St. Moses in his law says “You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way” (Deuteronomy 12.4 ESV). The fact that the Lord specifically had to warn against worshipping him as one might do for a pagan idol, shows that worshipping him like a pagan idol was a real problem the Lord wanted to prevent.
I am not the first writer to talk about this, which leads me to the third thing. Christians living in the ancient world, where Greco-Roman pagan worship was active, noticed that their pagan neighbours claimed to worship the God of Abraham. Most notable among them is St. Augustine of Hippo, who talked about it in his Harmony of the Gospels. Here is what Augustine said:
But why do I interrogate men whose native wit has deserted them in answering the question as to who this God is? Some say that He is Saturn. I fancy the reason of that is found in the sanctification of the Sabbath; for those men assign that day to Saturn. But their own Varro, than whom they can point to no man of greater learning among them, thought that the God of the Jews was Jupiter, and he judged that it mattered not what name was employed, provided the same subject was understood under it; in which, I believe, we see how he was subdued by His supremacy. For, inasmuch as the Romans are not accustomed to worship any more exalted object than Jupiter, of which fact their Capitol is the open and sufficient attestation, and deem him to be the king of all gods; when he observed that the Jews worshipped the supreme God, he could not think of any object under that title other than Jupiter himself. But whether men call the God of the Hebrews Saturn, or declare Him to be Jupiter, let them tell us when Saturn dared to prohibit the worship of a second deity. He did not venture to interdict the worship even of this very Jupiter, who is said to have expelled him from his kingdom,—the son thus expelling the father. And if Jupiter, as the more powerful deity and the conqueror, has been accepted by his worshippers, then they ought not to worship Saturn, the conquered and expelled. But neither, on the other hand, did Jove put his worship under the ban. Nay, that deity whom he had power to overcome, he nevertheless suffered to continue a god.
Augustine of Hippo. Harmony of the Gospels 1.22(.30) (NPNF1 6:89). Underlining by me.
In this passage, Augustine cites Varro, a 1st century BC-era Roman scholar. Unfortunately we do not know what book of Varro’s is being cited here; probably one of the books we no longer have access to.
Augustine here is arguing against the pagans, and says that the Lord God is not Jupiter, Saturn, or any other pagan idol. How he backs up this argument is by pointing out that neither Jupiter nor Saturn prohibited the worship of any gods beside him, whereas the Lord did (Exodus 20.3).
Later in the same book, Augustine continues his argument:
But even these new interpreters of Saturn must be required to tell us what they think of the God of the Hebrews. For to them also it seemed right to worship all the gods, as is done by the heathen nations, because their pride made them ashamed to humble themselves under Christ for the remission of their sins. What opinion, therefore, do they entertain regarding the God of Israel? For if they do not worship Him then they do not worship all gods; and if they do worship Him, they do not worship Him in the way that He has ordained for His own worship, because they worship others also whose worship He has interdicted.
Augustine of Hippo. Harmony of the Gospels 1.24(.37) (NPNF1 6:92). Underlining by me.
In other words, the pagans believed that they should worship “all the gods”, but in order to worship the Lord (who is a god), they must do so in the way he ordained, which means they cannot worship the other gods. Therefore it is impossible to worship “all the gods” as the ancient pagans did.
Maybe an ancient pagan – or even a modern neo-pagan – could respond. They could either say 1) that they do not need to worship all the gods, or 2) that the Lord is not a god. The former point would be to refuse to worhsip a deity, which a pagan would consider impiety. The latter point is something I’ve seen some neo-pagans argue, but as my previous article shows, it is completely out of line with what actual ancient pagans thought.
What does this all mean for Christians?
Well, this serves as a reminder of an often overlooked part of scripture’s history; that the false teachers that the Prophets and Apostles spoke against claimed to be the Lord’s agents. They were wolves in sheeps clothing. There’s a saying attributed to the author J.R.R. Tolkien that goes like this: “Evil cannot create anything new, they can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made.” (the Stackexchange user OrangeDog (14 Feb. 2022) traced this back to the website TV Tropes paraphrasing Tolkien). The devil doesn’t need you to follow his law, only to ignore God’s law.
It also reminds us – on a more positive note – that God’s works are everywhere. The ancient historian Socrates Scholasticus gave this advice to Christians when it came to pagan books: “reject the evil, but retain all that is good and true: for good wherever it is found, is a property of truth.” (Hist. Eccl. 3.16 / NPNF2 2:87-88) Non-believers do indeed have some knowledge of God’s goodness. When someone comes to God for the first time, they get clarity in knowledge of the one who was always with them.
Nikaea 325 