Except there’s no solid proof that Christians didn’t fight.
Of course there is. As I wrote earlier, at least two examples can be cited of men who opposed service or fighting because of their faith. Besides Martin the best example, there is an account of a guy in North Africa who objected to service saying "I am a christian I can do no evil" e.g. kill. To my knowledge nobody was ever recorded as saying "I refuse to fight for this empire that has made poor peasants out of my family."
As the old rule goes, a line from an ancient historian is better than a whole book of speculations from us, and as Insaid before, if Xiphilinus believed that Christians could fight in the second century for Rome, when the empire wasn’t even remotely Christian, then why wouldn’t they fight later on, when it did become Christian?
As I tried to explain earlier, christians who served in the second century had not yet been exposed to the admonitions of church fathers c 200 who opposed this. And in addition to inherent pacifism, the historical baggage had become much worse in the fourth century--even after the great persecution of c 304 CE, there was Maximinus II Daia and Julian.
As I said, sporadic and localized, every religion had its martyrs, it doesn’t mean it was actively persecuted. The general attitude of the Roman Empire prior to Decius towards Christians is best represented by Pliny’s letters. From time to time, he’d ask Trajan “what am I supposed to do with this damn Christians?” And he’d say “If they don’t cause too much of a fuss, let ‘em go, they aren’t worth the trouble”. And they weren’t, since they weren’t even that widespread until the late third century.
But many Romans saw them as a threat as early as the second. In fact if you read Christianity the first three Thousand Years, you'll see that christian pacifism was already alarming to Roman authorities by c 200. Origen's response to a pagan critic is an indication of that.
In any event, the State had a big, clear role in anti-christian activity in the fourth century, down to Julian, and this may have played an important role in christian abandonment of the State--in the sense of refusing to fight for it-- when they won out.
And why should we suppose that Eusebius and Lactantius were hypocrites? There were a lot of Christians that didn’t necessarily agree with Constantine and lived to tell the tale, although disgraced and branded heretics.
Lol, well not everybody has the guts to endure that.
Besides, it’s not like Goldsworthy doesn’t blame the great estate owners same as Heater and Hughes do.
Heather blamed the Huns, in part for driving the goths into the empire, but Rome had dealt with terrible external threats before. Goldsworthy blames increased corruption. The latter made some interesting observations about the weakness of the empire, though, as did Ferrill.
Yeah, and that large army, also composed of Christians like Valentinian and his brother, got trounced,
It failed in a strategic sense, but tactically it remained proficient and the point is, the Romans down to the time of Julian retained the ability to raise huge armies despite earlier setbacks.
and then another large army got trounced at Adrianople,
Yep and by that time it was a christian army, which had to be implored to fight, and was ridiculed by Zosimus.
Christians aren’t to blame for these gigantic losses, except maybe in the regard that the fighting armies were led by Christian generals.
I didn't say they were to blame for tactical errors just the chronic weakness due to loss of martial spirit and willingness to fight.