Killing Christianity with Kindness

In the face of genuine persecution the Church preserved the exclusivity of its worship and was never amalgamated with traditional religion in the way that other revealed religions were.

If Christianity found official support earlier on than it did, did it risk this?

You could picture Jesus presiding over the other gods in the temple or the local spirits being baptised.
 
Unlikely, Christianity is a continuation of the exclusivity of the Jewish JHVH as only god.

That's how we see it in retrospect, but several pre Constantine Emperors included Christ in their personal pantheon besides Epona, Jupiter, Mithras and whomever else. If someone does it "publically" you could see toadys of all stripes jumping on the bandwagon of whatever the Emperor was pushing.

In fact, that under Constantine was what happened. You had a religion that was between 5-10 percent of the population in 300 but you had 40% who would go with whatever the Emperor pushed. But the demand for exculsivity over a couple generations (312-361) then changed that pardign.

Have a different Emperor and have the toadys jump on a different bandwagon and the call for exculsivity could be buried.....except for a wacky cult of fundamentalists who make up no more than 5% (excess percentages shaved off by the 'offical' cult) of the population.
 
In which case it is no longer Christianity (going by it being a collection of Gentile Judaic sects).
Asking if a version of Jesus can be appropriated by a state sanctioned syncretism is a different question and certainly possible.
 
In which case it is no longer Christianity (going by it being a collection of Gentile Judaic sects).
Asking if a version of Jesus can be appropriated by a state sanctioned syncretism is a different question and certainly possible.

Yes, but the title of the thread is "killing Christianity with kindness" . So l took for granted that syncretism as a way of killing it was what was being talked about.

Truthfully, I think Christianity had a lot of lucky breaks. It was percecuted just enough to get martyrs. but not enough to wipe it out. It got a string of Emperors in the Constantine dynasty rather than having a "Julian" right away. The Emperor who pushed it had long successful reign so in the "go with what works" nature of transactional Roman piety dovetailed well circumstantionally with Christianity rather than "remember when what's his face tried that wacky Jewish Messiah thing. God's know how that turned out."
 
Well, one could argue that Christianity under the Constantines essentially syncretised other religions under a "Christ is the one god" banner.
Essentially things went from JHVH is the Jewish aspect of Jove/Jupiter to the reverse. And that Christ is Jove rather than Hercules.
 
In fact, that under Constantine was what happened. You had a religion that was between 5-10 percent of the population in 300 but you had 40% who would go with whatever the Emperor pushed.

It's more complicated than that, actually. Most of Constantine's successors were Arians rather than Trinitarians (Constantine himself flip-flopped on the issue, depending largely on whom he'd spoken to most recently), but from what we can tell Arians seem to have always been in the minority, and it was Trinitarianism that ended up becoming the official view. If people had just been going along with whatever the Emperor said, we'd expect Arianism to have won out instead.
 

trajen777

Banned
Well Constantine who made it the official religion was still (in his mind ) a God. So I thin you have a view by the leadership on what it was and what it was not vs how the people had a more detailed view
 
Well Constantine who made it the official religion was still (in his mind ) a God. So I thin you have a view by the leadership on what it was and what it was not vs how the people had a more detailed view
Constantine the Great didn't make Christianity the official religion, that was Theodosius the Great several decades later. Constantine I merely legalized it.
 
Well Constantine who made it the official religion was still (in his mind ) a God.

Was he? I know he was officially called "divus Constantinus", but that was just a standard Imperial title by this time, and its use doesn't necessarily tell us much about Constantine himself other than that he preferred not to rock the boat in this particular area. Plus, according to Lewis and Short, "divus" could also be applied to things "of extraordinary excellence or distinction", not just literal gods, so it's possible Constantine and his Christian subjects just used the title to mean that Constantine was really great.
 
I think you might have a good template in Julian the Apostate. His goal was to minimize the influence of Christianity by, in part, abolishing any forms of persecution. What that really meant was keep whichever creed was in power at the time from consolidating, and giving the minority creeds more strength, so that they'd all be divided, making the whole weaker. Given how much the general persecution did to tamp down such internal disputes, he was certainly on to something there.

In short, what would be likely is a great many Christian churches that consider each other heretical, most of which would be recognizable to us as Christian, but quite possibly, some smaller syncretic ones.
 
Christianity would be more like Islam. The faith would be less syncretic, have a law system more directly integrated with the faith in practice, be structurally, culturally, and administratively much more attached to Old Testament judaism, and might see a much more militant attitude catch on in some quarters once the faith faces its first real reversals from "universal dominion".
 
Christianity would be more like Islam. The faith would be less syncretic, have a law system more directly integrated with the faith in practice, be structurally, culturally, and administratively much more attached to Old Testament judaism, and might see a much more militant attitude catch on in some quarters once the faith faces its first real reversals from "universal dominion".

I find that unlikely. I don't see a Christianity sans Roman Imperial influence to be s particularly legalistic religion.
 
I find that unlikely. I don't see a Christianity sans Roman Imperial influence to be s particularly legalistic religion.
Because Rome is the only possible source of law in the Mediterranean basin in this era. Not the Greeks, Jews, Assyrians, Persians, or Egyptians. Rome and Rome alone. Right.
 
Because Rome is the only possible source of law in the Mediterranean basin in this era. Not the Greeks, Jews, Assyrians, Persians, or Egyptians. Rome and Rome alone. Right.

The point is that with less Roman influence, Christianity's blend of Greek, Jewish, and all those other cultural influences would still be founded on opposition to the authority of Caesars, and that Christianity was never particularly legalistic in the first place.
 
The point is that with less Roman influence, Christianity's blend of Greek, Jewish, and all those other cultural influences would still be founded on opposition to the authority of Caesars.
Then persecution would result, and we get OTL. Unless Rome collapses in the first or second century CE.
 
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