Western civilization dare not rest on its laurels, warns Professor Molnar, because its laurels are laced with philosophical and religious errors that threaten to topple it. The “pagan temptation”—the ancient pantheism, monism, and mysticism largely displaced by the Christianization of the West—now threatens to “repaganize” the Western world. And, ironically, if Christianity cannot alter its own “desacralizing” dynamics it will unintentionally assist this repaganization by default.
Molnar’s thesis is that “the pagan world view persists behind the Christian world view and that favorable circumstances . . . allow it to manifest itself with renewed vigor.” Although he doesn’t cite him, Molnar agrees with C.S. Lewis that “pantheism is . . . the permanent natural bent of the human mind. . . . It is the attitude into which the human mind automatically falls when left to itself.”
Throughout the book, Molnar spotlights the metaphysical chasm between paganism and Christianity, leaving no room for syncretistic fancies about “perennial philosophies” (Aldous Huxley) or “primordial traditions” (Huston Smith) that somehow unite all religious expression. Molnar demonstrates just the opposite and often adds apologetic punch to the exposition: “Human beings are not part of the substance of God, nor do they contain divine ‘sparks’ in their souls. Only by distinguishing between humanity and divinity can we give full credit and respect to reason and its exploration of God and nature; to history, which is human action always lovingly watched by God; and to faith, which is not a reabsorption into the divine but a state of trust in the good will of the Father.”
The “pagan revival” commenced when Christian thinkers provided favorable circumstances for paganism by advocating an arid rationalism devoid of what Molnar calls “mythical imagination.” Molnar’s exposition of this development in the Middle Ages is an insightful reflection on the challenge of faithfully and reasonably integrating faith and reason. Although he rejects the pagan world view, Molnar understands it as catering to the human need for imaginative symbols, rites, and ceremonies—that mysterious sense of the sacred not exhausted by ratiocination. Inasmuch as Christian thinkers (consciously or unconsciously) sheered Christianity from the sacred, they fostered a hunger for meaning easily tempted by the exotic allure of paganism.
For Molnar, the antidote to the “pagan temptation” is the resacralization of Christianity through “mediating zones through which religious people reach for the transcendent.” Here Molnar’s sacramentalism comes to the fore, and he expends no little effort developing a sacramental theology. By “mediating zones” Molnar has in mind the liturgy, rites, symbols, and mysteries of the Roman magisterium which, he believes, help illuminate the transcendent in ways not available through reason or written revelation alone. He slights Protestantism for supposedly abolishing these sacramental zones in its zeal to crush all idols of mere human imagination. Protestantism, he thinks, tends to reduce God to a cold and distant abstraction and to divorce His creation from the divine.
Molnar believes that Christian spiritual life suffered when the Reformers understood the sacraments as “external signs of grace received by faith” instead of symbols which involve the congregation in reliving the Christian mythos. “This is the difference: the sign is a remembrance in the presence of the past event. The symbol incorporates that but goes beyond it: it is the renewal of a past event in the present in which past and present are unified and made continuous.”
It is just here that Protestants appreciative of Molnar’s historical and cultural analysis must part company with him. Although he never uses the term, Molnar assumes a transubstantial view of the Lord’s Supper wherein Christ is thought to be repeatedly slain and offered for the sins of the world. With the Reformers, modern Protestants see this to be in disagreement with the finality of Christ’s sacrificial death they find in Scripture. For them, the sacraments, as important as they are, do not have salvific value, but rather function as a means of sanctifying grace for those—and only for those—who respond in Christian faith. Molnar finds this view “impersonal, reified, and alienating” for the church. He thinks that rejecting transubstantiation consigns worshipers to the mere phenomena of the signs which are interpreted subjectively and so divorced from the actual objective reality (or being) of the sacrificial event itself. But the Protestant could reply that the sign helps worshipers subjectively commemorate a unique, objective, and unrepeatable historical event of supreme importance. Worshipers are instructed to respond properly in light of the reality being commemorated. Just how this is “impersonal, reified, and alienating” seems unclear.
Molnar’s critic could further respond that his own view comes close to viewing the Lord’s Supper as a magical rite in which an elixir is dispensed which is automatically efficacious to all involved, irrespective of the subjective state of the recipient. It could also be added that Molnar’s notion of reliving the sacred event, rather than commemorating it, borders on the cyclical view of history embraced by the very paganism he rejects. (Molnar himself quotes Augustine’s refutation of the cyclical view: “God forbid that we should swallow such nonsense. Christ died, once for all, for our sins.”)
Questions should also be raised regarding Molnar’s understanding of “myth.” He does affirm that the “mythic” need not be factually false. He rightly sees the Christian drama of redemption as “mythic” since it answers a deep primordial need and addresses and answers—through revelation—the universal concern of creation, fall, and redemption. To borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis, the Christian story is “myth become fact,” or, as G.K. Chesterton put it, Christianity is “an answer to a riddle.”
Yet Molnar believes that the Bible contains some factually false mythical material: “All things considered, the great difference between pagan myths and the Gospels is that most of the latter’s stories are historically factual, and mythical elements touch only the inessentials.” This reminds me of what Peter Berger calls “cognitive bartering” in which orthodoxy barters with modernity for the supernatural elements it may retain: “We’ll give up the virgin birth, if we can keep the resurrection.” Although this is not Molnar’s aim, to admit any mythical accretions is to begin to undermine all historical authenticity. We cannot edit holy writ according to the whims of modern speculation and hope to escape unscathed (a point Molnar himself makes in reference to the truncated theology of Hans Kung). Moreover, there was insufficient time between the historical events and their commemoration in the Gospels for mythical accretions to develop.
Very importantly, The Pagan Temptation is a valuable resource for putting various forms of neopaganism and new occultism (which often go under the name of the New Age movement) into better perspective. Neopaganism is not a trifling fad but a perennial temptation with cultural force to transform the West. What is at stake is nothing less than Western civilization as we know it. Although some will find aspects of his sacramentalism unconvincing, Molnar calls us to discern just how modern Christianity itself may be contributing to the pagan allure by neglecting a proper understanding of the imaginative or mythic aspects of orthodoxy.
If it is true, as Molnar believes, that “in the minds of vast segments of the West, the Christian God has died . . . his death is simultaneous with the assumed ascent of humanity to divine status,” we then face a challenge of the highest order.
[The Pagan Temptation, by Thomas Molnar; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans]
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