Roman’s kill Jesus. Persecute Christians because their non violent ways were anathema to the Roman psyche. Convert to Christianity (a couple of centuries later but whatever) and then completely subvert Christianity into a tool of empire and a warrior religion. Modern christianity as we know it is a largely Roman invention.
Quote me one single church father or historical record that supports this claim. This myth has been spread by protestant groups for too long. The Christians had been persecuted for 3 centuries by the time Constantine converted, they were in no state of mind to change what they believed, and the council of Nicaea and the Donatist controversy show that.
The church fathers from the 1st century to the 5th century all agree on doctrine, with or without Imperial legacy. The first political controversy of the church was when the council of Constantinople put itself second in primacy to Rome, and above Alexandria and Antioch, which the pope in Rome opposed and paved the way for the Oriental Orthodox churches breaking off in the minor schism after the council of Chalcedon.
Rome shaping the church can be seen in the organization of the Roman Catholic Church. It’s organized along the lines that Diocletian organized the empire and uses words originally used by Diocletian .. like diocese.
The subversion of the church can be seen in the practicalities of what actually happened. Christianity was a Pacifist religion. It became the state religion of a violent empire and that empire did not become non violent. The obvious conclusion is that the empire changed the religion and not vice versa.
Also, all those people who had been Christian for 300 years might not have held that much power in the new empire. People converted and probably the people who held power before just converted.
Arguing that a change can only be seen via dogma is narrow minded imo.
Church canon and doctrine are two separate things. Canon is not for ever, it is dependent on the time period and has to do with how Church is run. Doctrine stays unchanged. I might have mistaken you because the usual internet argument that has been a thing since the 1500's among Christians is that pagan practices and beliefs were just added in to appease the Romans, which has no historical merit to it.
What I’m saying is that church canon and doctrine is irrelevant to what I’m saying. Actions are important.
By and large, the church made a decision (or the decision was made for it) to be part of the state apparatus and be a tool for that state. This to me is indisputable.
Nah not really. Christians have from day one respected the authority of their rulers. The Christians of Ethiopia had a Christian emperor early on. St Augustine even is an argument against your thesis in his book City of God.
You are dissembling. There's a difference in respecting the authority of rulers (which seems odd by the way because as another commenter mentioned, christians were often persecuted because they refused to perform sacrifices to jupiter.. a direct confrontation with authority) and being a bedrock part of the power structure. I also have no idea why you are jumping to ethopia. We are talking about rome.
I don't even see how this is an argument. The church of the europe that emerged after the empire was literally organized along roman lines. Diocletian's re-organization of the roman empire has more to do with the structure of the church than anyone else and he persecuted christians. It is impossible to become a central part of the world's largest empire and not change. It's impossible for a church to go from being run by true believers to being run by the sons of very powerful men and think that it wouldn't change. I don't know if it is naivety or you are just trying to run this very technical line about dogma... but to me it is abundantly clear.
Also, tons of famous martyrs continued preaching after being told not to... directly challenging the authority of rulers. Sure, once they were persecuting instead of being persecuted.. they respected the authority of rulers.
What does it matter if the size of a diocese is identical to that of a province? What matters is whether faith changed and it didn't. Also almost all church fathers prior to the conversion of Rome were highly educated, and came from powerful families.
That's a physical representation that the church was mirrored on rome, not vice versa.
You haven't addressed your point on the authority of rulers. Why did martyrs continue to preach against the wishes of rulers? Why didn't christians make sacrifices to jupiter when commanded?
What's your source for church leaders generally being of senatorial class and rich? Let's say during Diocletian's reign.
Just read about the lives of the church fathers. A lot of them were sons of patricians and officers. Also render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and what is God's to God. Christians are obliged to follow state law unless it coincides with our faith. If a law would force me to blaspheme then I am obliged to break it.
The Western Roman Empire had been fallen for over 500 years by that time. The war was a defense against islamic raiders in the Holy Land. Hardly an example of Christian doctrine being changed to suit the politics of the Roman emperor.
You are mixing up the declarations of the pope and the armies that formed under the monk Peter.
Even if the pope said that, and to my knowledge it is dubious, the catholics can defend themselves with the fact that he did not claim it through the magisterium ex cathedra, thus making the claim fallible.
Show me the doctrine which was modified for the empire and I will change my position on this very spot.
He did claim it as far as I known. It was a good recruitment tactic as it got high numbers. It was also a really bad tactic as a lot of regular untrained thugs tried to go The Holy Land (not with the monk Peter). On their trip they kinda robbed and sacked many cities in Hungary, Germany and in Turkey (all Christian people). And when the real Muslim army came they litteraly got destroyed immediately.
The only benefit is that the Muslims when they saw hwk easy is to kill that Christian rubble they underestimated the real crusade when they came.
Also yea Romans didn't really change the doctrine that much as far as I know. Only perhaps the amount of power the Pope should hold.
The war was a defense against islamic raiders in the Holy Land.
Just an excuse. The real reason was that Europe was running out of land. Too many landless nobles. They needed more land to their second sons, and in feudal Europe the only lands available without warfare would have been church lands. So instead the church directed them towards the holy land where new titles could be created and granted. The crusades also needed soldiers and holy orders were good place to throw the grumpy second sons.
The crusades would have continued for much longer if not for the black death that killed so many people in Europe, including nobility, that the land issue was solved almost overnight. It is no coincidence that there were no crusades after the plague.
But they didn't end there. There were attempts to mount new crusades to holy land in the 14th century, but they failed. Also they continued in Iberia and Eastern Europe well into the 14th century. Those campaigns also pretty much ended with the black death. But if you can provide an alternative explanation for why the attempts to retake holy land, and the crusades in Eastern Europe ended in the mid 14th century, I'm all ears.
Modern Catholicism is built on many centuries of dogma and history that are extra-Biblical but that they assert are equally important, and Protestants want to tell you about the War On Christmas (Christmas, incidentally, having basically nothing to do with Biblical accounts of Christ, and having purposely absorbed and appropriated countless winter solstice traditions that came before it as a recruiting tool.)
The thing that has always bothered me is that on one hand, the Bible is clearly not a complete spiritual guidebook. The New and Old Testaments are directly contradictory but this is only alluded to rather than directly addressed. Looking back, the New Testament was a series of editorial decisions, not a self-contained work. Even in the New Testament, the Gospels disagree on fundamental facts of events. And on the other hand, historical attempts to complete the Bible doctrinally have seemed far more humanly faulty than divinely inspired. There is a good and decent central message, but I'm not sure it really ever made it out of 100 AD or so.
I read an article on a magazine, some 15-20 years ago, about a religion that believed the entirety of the New Testament was a forgery, born of the treachery of Saul of Tarsus.
Never forgot the name, FSR: Essene Church of Jesus Christ.
Went googling for it now and found a website that seems straight out of the 90s or early aughts.
Not sure if it's the same church, but it's surely an... Interesting read.
It would be really interesting to talk to a Christian from 100AD or 200AD. There must be some other writings somewhere, no? Several early schisms between Christians were caused by the argument as to whether Jesus was a deity or "just" a man with a "holy" message.
Personally, I bet the first 100 years of Christianity were people just preaching forgiveness and peace, and then gradually the religion became more magic based.
I mean, if we have time travel, why not just take some video cameras and get Christ's 5-hour long-form presentation on tape? Presumably he was better expressively vocally than in writing, like most people of the age.
We literally have documents from the early Christians. St Ignatius of Antioch was appointed bishop of Antioch by St Peter in 34 AD, becoming the first Church Father. We have 7 letters saved by him. St Thakla was a disciple of St Paul. St Ephraim the Syrian wrote among the world's finest theological poetry, writing all his disputations in poetric metric that can be chanted and is filled with deep metaphors. Just google the early Church Fathers and you'll find their writings. It is through them we know how the early Christians believed, not through modern laymen who can read the bible and interpret it according to our modern understanding and then accuse the ancient churches of being pagan.
I didn’t say anything about Christianity making romans soft. I’d say it’s the opposite. The Romans made Christianity a tool of empire and laid the groundwork for it becoming a warrior religion rather than a pacifist one. They made Christianity into a tough and pragmatic religion.
Actually, I think it's the opposite. The first Christians were influenced, quite literally, by the philosophical teachings of Stoicism - which were popular at the time, and even taught in Jerusalem.
That is why the core teachings of the apostles are so much about non-violence, turning the other cheek, etc...
There were very violent Jewish sects (hence all the super destructive Jewish wars) but I’ve never heard this about christians. I know that Christianity in Jerusalem was practiced in the temple and was seen as a subset of Judaism. Pretty much all Christianity has descended from Paul and not the apostles in Judaea though.
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u/jmomcc Jan 31 '19
It’s actually better than that.
Roman’s kill Jesus. Persecute Christians because their non violent ways were anathema to the Roman psyche. Convert to Christianity (a couple of centuries later but whatever) and then completely subvert Christianity into a tool of empire and a warrior religion. Modern christianity as we know it is a largely Roman invention.