Scholars of religion sometimes argue that a distinctively modern conception of religion takes religion to be a trans-cultural category, divisible into “true” and “false” versions, of which Christianity is the core type. Thus, according to the so-called modern conception of religion, every culture has its own religion. Some are true (paradigmatically Christianity), some are false. This paper argues that these ideas were present in Lactantius's (c. 250–325) conception of religio. It shows this by presenting Lactantius's development of a theory of religio. This theory was the product of Lactantius combining one Ciceronian conception of religio and a Christian origin-story about where religio comes from. Lactantius used this theory to analyse Christianity and what he took to be its competitors.

中文翻译：

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拉克坦修斯的“现代”宗教概念*

宗教学者有时认为，一种独特的现代宗教观将宗教视为一种跨文化范畴，可分为“真”和“假”两个版本，而基督教是其中的核心类型。因此，根据所谓的现代宗教观，每种文化都有自己的宗教。有些是正确的（典型的基督教），有些是错误的。本文认为，这些思想存在于拉克坦提乌斯（Lactantius，约 250-325）的宗教概念中。它通过介绍拉克坦提乌斯对宗教理论的发展来表明这一点。这一理论是拉克坦修斯结合了西塞罗的宗教概念和关于宗教起源的基督教起源故事的产物。来自。拉克坦修斯用这一理论来分析基督教及其竞争对手。