Constantine venerates Gnosticism above Christianity

Rather than venerate Jesus and the Christian cause, Emperor Constantine instead finds more faith and common ground with the Gnostic sects, and venerates their beliefs to the point where Gnostic beliefs become the chief religion in the Roman Empire. How does this change the course of religion in the world?

Thought Gnosticism was another form of Christianity. Googled the subject and it apparently is but not Pauline.

While it's possible that an emperor could try to elevate Gnosticism into the Roman mainstream like Constantine did with Proto-Orthodox Christianity, there were some big problems with Gnosticism taking Christianity's place. The largest problem was how both religions were organized. While Proto-Orthodox Christianity wasn't nearly as centralized as most Christian denominations are today, most P-OC communities had a spelled out hierarchy. Gnosticism didn't have anything like that, which made it very difficult for an emperor to be a patron for Gnostics like Constantine was for Christians. Another big problem was that most Gnostic communities were highly exclusionary. This comes directly from Gnostic theology, which posits that "ordinary" Christians didn't possess the whole knowledge of Christ's teachings and that having that knowledge leads to salvation. This is pretty much opposite from Pauline Christianity's ideas about salvation for all people. Also, tied into Gnosticism's exclusivity is how complex and intricate everything was. The the Apocryphon of John is a great example for how complicated Gnostic Christanity was. In contrast, it makes Jesus' weirder teachings appear simple enough for Sunday School.

tl;dr: Constantine or any other Late Roman Emperor could have tried to bring Gnosticism into the Roman mainstream instead of Christianity, but he wouldn't have been very successful with the endeavor.

demonkangaroo said:

Constantine or any other Late Roman Emperor could have tried to bring Gnosticism into the Roman mainstream instead of Christianity, but he wouldn't have been very successful with the endeavor.

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He could have chosen Manichaeism, which is sort of gnostic.

TudorQueen said:

Rather than venerate Jesus and the Christian cause, Emperor Constantine instead finds more faith and common ground with the Gnostic sects, and venerates their beliefs to the point where Gnostic beliefs become the chief religion in the Roman Empire. How does this change the course of religion in the world?

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Yeah no not going to happen. Gnostics were a minority of a minority who no one of importance took seriously. Now if he was an open Arian that could influence history.

fi11222 said:

He could have chosen Manichaeism, which is sort of gnostic.

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The problem there is the Iranian origin of the religion, which makes it very hard to justify involvement with while Iran is one of Rome's greatest rivals. Even if it is a persecuted minority within Iran. It will be seen as a foreign religion coming from the lands of a hated enemy.

Constantine was a very sneaky guy. His vision of 'In Hoc Signo' was ambiguous - a cross on a disc. If Christianity did better, he'd emphasize the Cross, if Sol Invictus, then the disc.

He picked Christianity because it was the rising religious power, that he could harness for his support. He didn't pick some random minor sect, because that wouldn't have done him any good. (See Heliogabalus)