Semi-pagans? Some mutations of non-Christian thought in late antiquity

Ambiguities of religious practice and belief are a crucial feature of the religious transformation of the late Roman world. Recent scholarship on the limits of Christianization has focused, above all, on the tension between the lifestyles of ordinary Christians and bishops’ normative standards. This article turns attention to a different set. As Charles Guignebert suggested in a seminal article (1923), some traditionalists may have embraced Christian ideas without joining Christian churches. This article teases out Christian elements in the thinking of two traditionalist Latin intellectuals. Often identified as a lax Christian, Augustine’s correspondent Nectarius was in fact a Ciceronian pluralist who rejected traditional cults, yet he had not followed his father in embracing Christian practice. A loose parallel can be found in the Platonist commentator Calcidius (most likely active in the early fourth century). Definitely not an adherent of Christianity, Calcidius nonetheless endorsed key Christian ideas, including the Incarnation, the notion of a singular “true god,” and association between primordial floods and the invention of idolatrous cult. To add new terms (such as Guignebert’s semi-pagans) to an already problematic division among pagans, Jews, and various sorts of Christian would only complicate an imperfect model. However, as these examples illustrate, it is necessary to reckon, when analyzing the complex reality of late antique religion, not just with pervasive deviation from Christian norms but also with potential influence of Christian thought on people, otherwise traditionalist in their thinking, who did not belong to Christian churches.