What can be done so that modern Christianity is incompatible with the nation state, and instead had something like a caliphate in the past?
What would be the implications?
What would be the implications?
Considering how neither Jesus nor the Apostles said anything about government aside from "Fear God; honor the king" - pretty much nothing without changing the religion beyond recognition. You can have Constantine establishing a concept of the Emperor as isapóstolos - but he did that IOTL, and the concept of the Emperor persisted into medieval theoretical political theory, but the nation-state still developed.What can be done so that modern Christianity is incompatible with the nation state, and instead had something like a caliphate in the past?
What would be the implications?
But, there was never a principle of "One emperor rules all Christendom," except very abstractly in the medieval period. Even post-Constantine - when the Christians in Persia and Germany could maybe be forgotten - the Imperial crown could be split among, say, Constantine's sons. In Byzantium, single rule was more solid, but they never even claimed to rule all of Christendom.Was the Holy Roman Emperor and similar other titles like Emperor of Rome and or Byzantium similar? The title of Emperor of Rome is not too dissimilar from the Amir al-Mu'minin (deputy of the faithful or believers), in its post Christian sense.
What can be done so that modern Christianity is incompatible with the nation state, and instead had something like a caliphate in the past?
What would be the implications?
They did stated "in the past". Which is a bit irrelevant anyway (giving that nations-states didn't existed in the caliphal period), but they certainly didn't implied that IMO....are you implying modern Islam is incompatible with nation states?
...are you implying modern Islam is incompatible with nation states?
Throughout the Byzantine period, the Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople were two distinct people. Until near the end, the Patriarch was definitely under the Emperor's thumb, and the Emperor was hailed as "Equal to the Apostles," but the offices never merged.Of course, Islam was from the beginning a political religion, but in theory I see no reason why Christianity could not have developed in a direction that would have fused the position of emperor and pope. Didn´t that happen in the Byzantine Empire?
Throughout the Byzantine period, the Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople were two distinct people. Until near the end, the Patriarch was definitely under the Emperor's thumb, and the Emperor was hailed as "Equal to the Apostles," but the offices never merged.
In practice? Probably during the Empire's glory days; look at the iconoclast controversy. But absolutely never in theory, and not in practice either toward the end; look at the reunion controversy.But did the emperor have more power than the patriarch when it came to religious questions?
Could there be some sort of pope-emperor? As in could a pope take political power in the dying Western Roman Empire before it falls? I'm not the most well-versed in this part of history, but this sounds like an intriguing possibility.