If No Constantine, No Christianity for Past 2,000 Years?

[Kaylee]

I just finished reading God Against the Gods: The History of the War between Monotheism and Polytheism by Jonathan Kirsch.

Kirsch theorizes that if the Roman emperor Constantine had not favored Christianity, allowed the church to own property, and strongly urged the Christian Church to resolve several disputes (e.g., Arianism and Donatism) -- Christianity may well have remained a tiny sect that faded away like many other religious sects.

I put this in the History Forum instead of Religion because I'd like to discuss this from an evidenced based point of view and perhaps even entertain some conjectures based upon what is known about psychology and sociology. No arguments based upon because “God said so” please. If despite this, the mods in their wisdom decide to move this to the Religion Forum -- I won’t protest. (I’ll be slightly unhappy though. )

Before I read this book I had assumed that the move to Christianity was grass-roots based; that it appealed to the mostly unempowered masses looking for a way of life that was less cruel. But after reading this book I found out that Roman culture was more complex than I had thought and while several of the rulers were extremely cruel, many of the schools of philosophy and pagan beliefs were not. And Kirsch does a good job showing how cruelly the early Christians treated each other and makes a good case that monotheism was the start of religious intolerance and that the roots of the Spanish Inquisition and 9/11 can be traced back to the actions of Constantine and the early leaders of the Christian Church. (This is the main point of his book, but not the one I‘d like to discuss in this thread.)

While I usually don’t believe that major turning points in history have only one or even two causes, I find Kirsch’s points persuasive. It may very well be that if Constantine had not favored the Christian Church, most of the world may have never practiced monotheism during the last two millennium.

What do you think?

 

[aggle-rithm]

I just finished reading God Against the Gods: The History of the War between Monotheism and Polytheism by Jonathan Kirsch.

Kirsch theorizes that if the Roman emperor Constantine had not favored Christianity, allowed the church to own property, and strongly urged the Christian Church to resolve several disputes (e.g., Arianism and Donatism) -- Christianity may well have remained a tiny sect that faded away like many other religious sects.

I put this in the History Forum instead of Religion because I'd like to discuss this from an evidenced based point of view and perhaps even entertain some conjectures based upon what is known about psychology and sociology. No arguments based upon because “God said so” please. If despite this, the mods in their wisdom decide to move this to the Religion Forum -- I won’t protest. (I’ll be slightly unhappy though. )

Before I read this book I had assumed that the move to Christianity was grass-roots based; that it appealed to the mostly unempowered masses looking for a way of life that was less cruel. But after reading this book I found out that Roman culture was more complex than I had thought and while several of the rulers were extremely cruel, many of the schools of philosophy and pagan beliefs were not. And Kirsch does a good job showing how cruelly the early Christians treated each other and makes a good case that monotheism was the start of religious intolerance and that the roots of the Spanish Inquisition and 9/11 can be traced back to the actions of Constantine and the early leaders of the Christian Church. (This is the main point of his book, but not the one I‘d like to discuss in this thread.)

While I usually don’t believe that major turning points in history have only one or even two causes, I find Kirsch’s points persuasive. It may very well be that if Constantine had not favored the Christian Church, most of the world may have never practiced monotheism during the last two millennium.

What do you think?

Constantine was an 800-pound-gorilla with the power to influence history for centuries to come. Just like IBM was when they hired a little company named Microsoft to write the OS for their new personal computer.

Would Microsoft had gotten as big if IBM hadn't given them a push? That's a very similar question to the one you've asked about Christianity.

Another factor in the spread of Christianity is that prosletism has always been one of the most important principles of the faith. I could be wrong, but I think this was a very new phenomenon back in the beginning of the Common Era. Most religions were about tribal affiliations, not something to spread like a virus among different cultures.

 

[IDB87]

While I usually don’t believe that major turning points in history have only one or even two causes, I find Kirsch’s points persuasive. It may very well be that if Constantine had not favored the Christian Church, most of the world may have never practiced monotheism during the last two millennium.

What do you think?

Ehhhh, I don't know. While he certainly made it popular, the bastard monks are to blame I think. The Merovingians were happy as clams to be polytheists until their conversion by the wandering holy men, and then the Carolingian dynasty (Charlemagne most notably) really hammered Christianity into the Saxons and Slavs and Lombards.

 

[Loss Leader]

I think the Constantine hypothesis is probably correct.

The view of individual rights we have in the west today is less than 400 years old. Before that, it was unthinkable that the serfs and other subjects of a kingdom would be of any religion other than that of their leader. And when the nobleman switched, so did everybody else. Henry VIII's story isn't amazing because it started the rift between Anglicans and Catholics. The amazing part is how many people followed Henry in his break from the church.

Constantine's conversion was probably the most significant event in the history of Christianity. Not only did it bring a tide of new converts, but it ensured that the vast bulk of Christian converts would be pagans. In bringing over their traditions and beliefs - including their attachment to divine trios and their fully-formed concept of hell - they made Christianity what it is. It's the same way that peanut butter makes a Reese's different from a chocolate bar.

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

It might also have something to do with the fact that christianity has a number of things that would make a god seem more plausible and attractive.

Our god is WAY more powerful than yours, but he's decided not to interfere in this world anymore until the end, so that's why prayers don't give you immediate results.

But praying does make him like you and unlike the old faiths, our heaven is fun to be in, rather than a boring place of eternal nothing.

Unlike your gods who will be there and ignoring you forever, ours is going to come back 'real soon' and then kill everyone that you don't like and make you live forever in happy fluffy land.

And once it's been made a state religion (anywhere, first the roman empire, later the frankish empires and other european states) Only by following this religion will people be saved. So anyone not following this religion is both damned and seducing our youths away from salvation. So they are evil. So they need to convert or die, for their own good.

This last attitude was pretty unknown before Christianity (although Islam took it up as well). The older religions were to a degree far more tolerant of each other.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Credit where it's due--it was Constantine's mother who deserves credit (or blame) for his Christianity. Yeah, he was officially pagan himself, but without a devout harridan of a mother do you really think he'd have been such an easy sell onto that particular sect?

Could have been Mithraism instead. Or a modified sun cult like the Sol Invictus stuff, except Christianity took steps to absorb some of that. Which is funny, seeing how Christianity owes a little bit to Heliogabalus's crazy cult. I wonder if modern Christian ministers are aware they owe a small debt to a sect of people whose sacred rites included ceremonial ejaculation?

 

[Trantor]

In my opinion, the two people most responsible for Christianity as it exists today, are Paul and Constantine. Paul came up with his own nutty version of it and spread that beyond Israel. Constantine gave it the power to conquer the Roman Empire, Europe, and beyond.

Jesus was/is but a figurehead.

 

[IDB87]

Credit where it's due--it was Constantine's mother who deserves credit (or blame) for his Christianity. Yeah, he was officially pagan himself, but without a devout harridan of a mother do you really think he'd have been such an easy sell onto that particular sect?

I don't know TM.

When Constantine converted, it would be another 200 years until Christianity really took root in Europe, and that was because of a brutal Tyrant who forced conversion at sword-point. The Eastern Orthodox churches were already established before Constantine's rules - the only thing that changed with his conversion was the persecution they suffered.

So what impact did his Conversion really have?

 

[TragicMonkey]

I don't know TM.

When Constantine converted, it would be another 200 years until Christianity really took root in Europe, and that was because of a brutal Tyrant who forced conversion at sword-point. The Eastern Orthodox churches were already established before Constantine's rules - the only thing that changed with his conversion was the persecution they suffered.

So what impact did his Conversion really have?

Personally, I suspect Constantine's conversion had more to do with political utility than genuine religious fervor. I don't think people get to be emperors unless they are very cynical, very pragmatic people, and certainly a religion could be a useful thing to manipulate if you do it right. The old-style Roman cults were traditional--meaning they were entrenched in the status quo. If you were in charge and wanted to shake up the aristocracy to grab some power from them and increase your own authority, what better way than to promulgate a populist religion that had more support among the lower classes than the upper?

Although how dictators manage to convince anyone that they're just regular Joes and out for the little guy is beyond my imagination, but it seems to happen a lot.

 

[hgc]

...
Another factor in the spread of Christianity is that prosletism has always been one of the most important principles of the faith. I could be wrong, but I think this was a very new phenomenon back in the beginning of the Common Era. Most religions were about tribal affiliations, not something to spread like a virus among different cultures.

Good point there. That's main thing that set them apart from other Jewish sects for instance. Judaism to this day is pretty much a tribal inheritance.

 

[catsmate]

Personally, I suspect Constantine's conversion had more to do with political utility than genuine religious fervor. I don't think people get to be emperors unless they are very cynical, very pragmatic people, and certainly a religion could be a useful thing to manipulate if you do it right. The old-style Roman cults were traditional--meaning they were entrenched in the status quo. If you were in charge and wanted to shake up the aristocracy to grab some power from them and increase your own authority, what better way than to promulgate a populist religion that had more support among the lower classes than the upper?

I agree Constantine seemed to regard christianity as a useful tool, there's little evidence of personal belief.

Although how dictators manage to convince anyone that they're just regular Joes and out for the little guy is beyond my imagination, but it seems to happen a lot.

People delude themselves into believing this.

Might I suggest reading this? It's an alternative history short story about a world where xianity didn't succeed; instead Judaism became the state religion.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I think you're giving Keanu Reeves too much power here.

 

[HansMustermann]

It's hard to tell without knowing the exact claims made in the book. Ultimately we're going to take personal guesses, and answer those.

That said, yes, Christianity didn't exactly fly with the upper classes even after Constantine. E.g., it took the bloody Battle Of The Frigidus to force the western empire to stay Christian, as late as 394 AD. (And the total wipe of the western army, plus the loss of a very capable magister militum, did nothing to stop the implosion of the western empire, if you catch my drift.)

So in a sense, yes, Constantine and his followers are perhaps given too little credit.

In another sense, though, IMHO he's given too much credit.

For a start, yes, Christianity was happening, and happening fast. Rome had a major spiritual crisis (and generally a major, horrible crisis all around), was more than ready to ditch their old gods, and ready to embrace any esoteric stupidity in its place. And several religions were made up to take their place. E.g., Mithras was likely made up from whole cloth by a single person in Rome.

Among the upper and middle classes stuff like Mithranism were more suited for their taste and philosophy. And indeed there is indication that it was specifically made up to match those and answer exactly the philosophical crisis of the time.

Among the poor and peregrini and slaves, though, yes, Christianity was happening and happening fast. The plagues, the economic crisis, the growing wealth gap, the endless civil wars, the growing disilusionment, etc, had made it even worse than usual for the poor and even lower middle class. A doomsday religion which promised an easy salvation, was a no brainer.

You can track the spread by the "persecutions" -- read: the tip of the iceberg, the most desperate and fanatical people who basically went and trolled the Romans to get martyred and thus get an instant ticket to heavens -- which started and spread all over the place _long_ before Constantine.

I don't think Constantine had all that much choice there. He had to ride the wave somehow, or look at the problems getting worse and worse by the year. Ultimately all he did was try to get both the Mithras cultists and Christians to play nice, and be more under his control.

Second, I don't think he even could force the Christians to reconcile and play nice, for the reasons you mentioned. And also because ultimately they had inherited a pretty empty bubble from Paul, and every other bloody island and church had their own charlatans inventing their own gospels out of whole cloth. Even the number of mutually-incompatible gospels and breadth of beliefs covered by them is bewildering. And then came the interpretations of it, and the Greeks in Egypt just weren't going to arrive at the same conclusions as the Celts in Ireland.

Just the gnostic sects alone were starting to be a major force as early as the 2'nd century AD. (And they too produced their own gospels at that.) And ironically there were even disciples of Paul claiming that Paul's actual doctrine was gnostic, and it was these other guys who got it wrong.

Or look at Revelations, for a glimpse in how different some cults were. There are other churches mentioned in there -- and threatened for their heresy -- ranging all the way to apparently churches where boning the high priestess was some kind of communion. You'd hardly think of such a church as really Christian nowadays, but back then, when there was no real canon, and everyone was making up their own fanfic to fill the gaps, it was as Christian as any other.

By the beginning of the 4'th century, Epiphanius of Salamis lists no less than 80 major heresies in his Panarion.

I really don't see how Constantine or anyone else could possibly get all those fundamentally different doctrines to play nice. Especially since being exclusivist was the whole _point_ for all of them.

Heck, Constantine didn't (and presumably couldn't) even set a canon yet even among the greek non-gnostic faction that would later become the catholic church.

Also remember that we're talking times of major crisis, when a lot of people go out of their way to please their god. You can see the same phenomenon in the middle ages when the plague hit. A lot of people just became even worse block-headed bible-thumpers, in the hope that being a bigger fanboy of God would get some favour out of him. It's not the kind of times when you go all tollerant and freedom of religion. It's the kind of times when (to a certain kind of desperate idiot) it looks like God is pissed off at you lot for your lack of faith, and at any rate is killing you by the millions, and the way to appease him looks to be becoming an even more rabid and intolerant Jesus-fanboy.

The Roman Empire was living through times that weren't too dissimilar, and in some ways were even worse. Those guys weren't going to go "oh, let's all hold hands and not mind who's Pelagian, who's Arian, and who's Gnostic, and acknowledge that in the end we don't know who's right." The whole point of the exercise was believing that you're the one doing it right -- unlike those other heretics who angered God -- and therefore you're the one that might get spared.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Jesus was/is but a figurehead.

It never would have gone beyond a Jewish sect if Jesus had had his way. He specifically told his disciples to preach only to Jews and ignore the Gentiles.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

What do you think?

Interesting to think about, but ultimately probably doesn't matter. Had christianity not taken off, something else would have.

 

[Trantor]

It never would have gone beyond a Jewish sect if Jesus had had his way. He specifically told his disciples to preach only to Jews and ignore the Gentiles.

I agree. In my opinion, what Jesus probably taught, was Judaism with an end times twist. He was probably very similar to many other Jewish preachers at the time, such as John the Baptist.

After Paul had his psychotic episode(spiritual awakening to the believers); the Christianity that we know today was born. The Jesus who came to Paul thru visions, was not the historical Jesus. Even Jesus's own disciples, who actually knew him in person, thought that Paul was a nut. This was the beginning of Jesus the God.

It's truly amazing how many religions start out this way. A person has a vision and then sets out to convince people that God has sent a message thru them. In my opinion, probably all religions big and small, start this way. Along the way, if the right people in power help that religion to grow and get organized, then it may become a major religious movement. In Christianity's case Constantine and a bit later on, Justinian and other Byzantine Emperors, gave a nice helping hand to the growing Christian Church.

 

[Jono]

I agree. In my opinion, what Jesus probably taught, was Judaism with an end times twist. He was probably very similar to many other Jewish preachers at the time, such as John the Baptist.

Or the essenes, renegage liberal rabbis, free thinkers caught in a web of literal dogma et al. Having read alot of early rabbinical commentary and debates, very little of Jesus' proposed progressivism unto Judaism looked out of place.

 

[Jono]

Interesting to think about, but ultimately probably doesn't matter. Had christianity not taken off, something else would have.

Well "something else" would have been there, but outcomes would not necessarily be equal or comparable in "girth, length, width or consequences".

 

[HansMustermann]

But one question which is generally not obvious, one way or another, is "but would that other thing be better or worse?" Almost invariably everyone has an assumption that either, man, we'd have some uber-great and progressive religion instead, or that we'd have some evil baby-sacrificing satanist stuff. Atheists often tend to err on the side of the former, theists on the side of the latter.

The truth is that most of the ancient religions weren't all that much better than Christianity.

E.g., people don't realize that even the Romans had only gotten very recently out of flat-out human sacrifice, though progressively replaced by in-effigy substitutes. And not just captives. There are documented cases when a commander would charge alone into the enemy line as a way of "offering himself to the Gods", basically as a self-inflicted human sacrifice, to enlist divine help in the battle. Apparently it motivated the heck out of the troops too.

E.g., the Greeks too had a long tradition of sacrificing prisoners at funerals.

Ditto, really, for almost everyone else. Celts, Thracians, Dacians, Germanics, you name it, we loved to kill someone for the gods. Maybe not on the scale that, say, the Aztecs did in other places, but we loved sending people to the gods anyway. Sometimes not even combatants or whatever: see killing widows, for example, and know that it wasn't just the Indians that did that.

Even excesses associated with later Christianity are really present just as well in earlier religions, and arguably just a case of humans everywhere being pricks and a-holes. E.g., Charlemagne's banning the earlier practice of burning witches alive, just tells me that it happened long before Christianity just as well.

Heck, even pre-christian Rome can pull a honourable mention there with some thousands of documented cases of witch executions.

In fact, it's kinda symptomatic that in both cases actually Christianity was what _ended_ the witch hunts. As in, seriously, such witch hunts actually continued in Rome until the bloody 4'th century AD when it was really Christians that put an end to them. (Though Christianity would reinvent them itself almost a millennium later.)

Now that comes out as Christianity being great, which probably it wasn't either. But at the very least, if we didn't have its evils, we'd have the evils of something else. What would be the great net gain if some smaller religions killed people instead of one big religion killing people, really?

 

[Kaylee]

Interesting to think about, but ultimately probably doesn't matter. Had christianity not taken off, something else would have.

Well "something else" would have been there, but outcomes would not necessarily be equal or comparable in "girth, length, width or consequences".

And would it have been of the monotheistic or polytheistic variety?

And I'm breaking my own rules in my own OP by including the author's other main point of his book --but Kirsch believes that religious intolerance such as seen on the Spanish Inquisition and jihad level occurs only with monotheistic faiths, not polytheistic ones.

But one question which is generally not obvious, one way or another, is "but would that other thing be better or worse?" .... What would be the great net gain if some smaller religions killed people instead of one big religion killing people, really?

Even taking into account human sacrifices -- many more people were killed over religious wars and inquisitions than were offered up as sacrafices. Besides, by Constantine's time, human sacrifices were no longer practiced within the Roman or Persian Empires. (At least according to the author. IANAH. )

Kirsch believes that if most of the world has remained polytheistic, most nations would have had more religious tolerance and fewer people would have died over religious issues.