Was there "Heresy" in Paganism?

Photo by Alexander Wark Feeney from Unsplash

It is often assumed that ancient religion was not concerned with doctrines but only with rituals. To which I say, sort of, but no!

The ancient world did not have something called ‘religion’ as we ordinarily imagine it. If by ‘religion,’ one means a body of beliefs about the supernatural with various ethical corollaries that can be compartmentalized from a secular culture, then obviously, ‘no,’ there was no such thing as ‘religion.’ There is not even an ancient word that translates into ‘religion.’ The Latin word religio meant ‘scruple’ in the sense of one’s duties to the gods, not a sort of comprehensive worldview about gods, humans, revelation and salvation, and the like. In Greek, the main terms we find for religious activity, found also in the NT, are ‘piety’ or ‘godliness’ (eusebeia); ‘worship’ (thrēskeia); and the ‘service’ associated with it (latreia). This language pertains to the practices of the temple cultus and ritual, not to a well-defined set of beliefs and worldview or something called theology.

However, there was ideation, belief in the gods, and the rituals that affected them. As I’ve argued before, there was faith and theology even in “pagan” religion.

In the ancient world, there were wrong or bad types of religo. Remember, Socrates was put to death on the charge of corrupting the youth of Athens with strange religious ideas. In Book 10 of Plato’s Laws, he sees three main types of religious error – which we could call heresy: atheism (there are no gods), indifferentism (that the gods are indifferent to human behaviour and needs), and opportunism (that divine judgment can be evaded by offering sacrifices). Otherwise, other religious errors involve neglecting rites (impietas), adopting a foreign religion or strange practices (superstitio), or offending the Roman gods and state in some way (maiestas).

Given that beliefs about gods and their relationship to humans was a big part of philosophy, you can see issues of “heresy” in philosophy in at least two ways.

First, in a philosophical school, there was always the question of which of the students was continuing the legacy of the great teacher. So whether it is Plato or Pythagoras, which of his students is following the teacher and which student is departing from them. You could argue that philosophical schools had their own language about right and wrong beliefs when it came to preserving the legacy of their teacher. The philosophical schools faced issues of continuity, inheritance, and unity between a teacher and his later students.

Second, students could be somewhat promiscuous when it comes to following a philosophy and a teacher. They might stick with one philosophy for a time and then abandon it later for another one. If you abandon Plato for Diogenes, then you have effective apostacized from the Platonic school and joined a deviant group of philosophers. So while ancient philosophy did not operate with terms identical as “heresy and orthodoxy” the rivalry within philosophical schools and the competition between philosophical schools could lend itself to a model where you could have people edging into positions that are considered false beliefs and defecting to opposing points of view.

What I hope this shows is that the idea of bad religion, wrong religion, and incorrect beliefs in relation to the gods is not something entirely unique to Christianity and Judaism. In the case of ancient philosophy, there is an emphasis on beliefs, and departing from beliefs could be seen as a type of heresy and abandoning certain beliefs for others could be seen as a type of apostasy.

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