It has been my usual custom when teaching about early
Christianity and making a reference to non-Christians as “pagans” to take a
second to explain that this term comes from the Latin word paganus, meaning
a rustic or country-dweller and that this term had come to refer to
non-Christians after the faith spread to the cities and towns of the ancient
world, and the only ones who still practiced the old pre-Christian religions
were those who lived in the unreached countryside.
Recently, however, when reading Henry Chadwick’s The Early
Church (Pelican, 1967, Penguin reprint 1990) I came across this footnote on
the word “pagan” (p. 152):
“The term ‘paganus’ to describe a non-Christian first appears
in two Latin inscriptions of the early fourth century. It remained a
colloquialism, and did not penetrate Bible or liturgy. In secular usage it had
two meanings (1) ‘rustic’, and (2) ‘civilian’ as opposed to military. Orosius …
writing in 417 thought the Christian usage explained by the fact that the
countryside was still heathen after the towns had become Christian. But this
was not the situation as early as 300. Therefore the correct explanation is
probably that the ‘pagans’ were those who had not by baptism become soldiers of
Christ and so were non-combatants in the conflict with the evil powers. In the
East the Christian word for non-Christians was ‘Hellene’.”
JTR
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