WI Diocletian doesnot persecutes Christians?

Diocletian returned to Antioch in the autumn of 302. The arrogance of this Christian displeased Diocletian, and he left the city for Nicomedia in the winter, accompanied by Galerius. According to Lactantius, Diocletian and Galerius entered into an argument over imperial policy towards Christians while wintering at Nicomedia in 302. Diocletian argued that forbidding Christians from the bureaucracy and military would be sufficient to appease the gods, but Galerius pushed for extermination. The two men sought the advice of the oracle of Apollo at Didyma. The oracle responded that "the just on earth" hindered Apollo's ability to provide advice. These "just", Diocletian was informed by members of the court, could only refer to the Christians of the empire. At the behest of his court, Diocletian acceded to demands for universal persecution.
WI the superstitius Diocletian interpreted differently Apollo's answer and didnt persecuted any Christians? Could this lead to a "religious" civil war with his partner Galerius over Christians? How is a free Church in early 4th century alters History? Any thoughts?
 
Other than that I wouldn't trust Lacantius' account as far as I could throw it, if Diocletian just only set a political practice barring christians from certain offices and posts, perhaps they would only remain as one of many minority cults. With as much as 5% of the Empire's population professing to be christians, all Diocletian and Galerius needed to do was to deny employment to the most overt christian yes-men. I mean, they can't have been the only cult, existing at the time, whose leading members were seeking employment in the government. They shouldn't even allow a single christian a job as a lowly clerk. By not arresting and executing them in droves, they won't have any of this pseudo-heroic rep to preach about. If they never rose to power, than the fairytales about them being persecuted since the time of Tiberius, would be bought by no one.
 
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Yep. Well, it seemed to be the master plan on their part anyway.
A religious group whom empathically denied everyone's gods but their own?! What else was going to happen once they intergrated themselves into authority. If you could suggest something that would make them less fanatical politically, then I'd like to hear. But since I'm personally biased, I'll just stick to the policy I've previously mentioned.
 
Forget this. You're flame-baiting. Monotheism isn't exclusive to Christianity, nor are monotheist religions the only faiths that lead to oppression and violence when in power. You're also ignoring that for whatever faults Christianity has, the earliest Christians were probably the most tolerant in terms of not killing people they disagreed with, because, I don't know, maybe they were at the mercy of an entire empire? The earliest Christians were some of the ones closest to the normative values of the religion; helping the poor, caring of the sick, regarding slaves as no more or less than free citizens, etc. Surely they believed in things that would be objectionable to you, but attacking a religion when it was closest to its core of "love God, love your neighbor" is as ridiculous as the Zinnian notion of attacking the Founding Fathers and the creation myth of America just to denigrate the United States. And talking about a "master plan"? How very Cylon of an accusation.

You're going to write a post eviscerating this one, I'll write a rebuttal, and this will continue on ad nauseum before Ian bans both of us. Forget it.

You're flame-baiting.
 
Flame-baiting? I'm telling it as it is. I'm not here to pick fights with anyone. In which case, if you think I'm "flame-baiting", then why the hell are you responding? All my life, I have always held the christian faith in some contempt. I, personally, believe that it's agents, upon ascending to power, did more harm than good. It has harmed more people than it helped. It was not, I agree, the sole and only reason for the deterioration of the Roman Empire, and the general decline of culture and political stability in the west, but it's divertion of taxes for the christian clergy from the army and public buildings and the temples did much to exacerbate the problem, not to mention cause widespread resentment. Thats the truth. If all they did was give alms to the poor, then I wouldn't have a bad thing to say about them. But the bad they did much outweighs the good.

Also, there is nothing in the Bible that condemns slavery. Nothing.

I don't believe in any of that Zionist crap either.

What have the Cylons got to do with anything? This is about history, not science fiction.

Perhaps I was over the top when I said that Diocletian and Galerius should have kept the christians well away from government posts. But I'm a very discriminatory person, and thats just how I feel about it. No ones going to break me from that. To affirm that I'm not "flame-baiting", this will be my last reply here. If you imagine yourself as the bigger man here, you'll do the same. Ok?
 
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About slavery, the way Paul's letter to Philemon is worded, it is possible that Paul was ordering Philemon to free his runaway slave Onesimus.

There's a later account of a bishop named Onesimus--due to the timing, it strikes me as a strong possibility they're the same person. Hard to be a bishop if you're a slave, although I'll concede in the early 2nd Century, being a bishop might not have been such a status position.
 
About slavery, the way Paul's letter to Philemon is worded, it is possible that Paul was ordering Philemon to free his runaway slave Onesimus.

There's a later account of a bishop named Onesimus--due to the timing, it strikes me as a strong possibility they're the same person. Hard to be a bishop if you're a slave, although I'll concede in the early 2nd Century, being a bishop might not have been such a status position.

No, Paul was guilting the guy into freeing Onesimus. And, yes, the guilting worked and Onesimus became a bishop.

This is still not anything like a prohibition on slavery. It's 'this guy was lots of use to me, I'd count it a huge favour if you'd free him for me'. Now, you can make the case that it's a bad idea for Christians to own other Christians, but clearly the Bible states that if you're a slave you be the best one you can be. Convince your master to convert? certainly, but no rebellions!
 
I must apologize for calling it flame bait. That was uncalled for and I was acting out of heated foolishness. It is my bad.

At the time, though, I dislike it when people attack a religion or an ideology by the actions of the institutions that proclaim it. Human hyprocrisy is universal. Human corruption in power is an unescapable fact. To mistake a religion and its normative values with the actions of a naturally falliable humanity, not to mention beliefs not imposed by the religion but by its ambient culture and the circumstances of times, is something I find people to be doing too often. One must understand context to understand the crimes. And so one cannot just say that Christianity is the cause of more suffering than its benefits, because, well, it's a lot more than that.

And this is an alternate history board. Surely we can have a better persepective. If a different religion had taken Christianity's spot as the one with the biggest number of adherents, the same crimes and mistakes would have happened still, just with different actors and a different script.

Also, the whole accusing the early Christians of wanting to eventually take over the Roman Empire and kill all the unbelievers is presposterous to me. They were a community that was obssessed with eschatology, not future generations. The concept that they had a "master plan" is as ridiculous as sci-fi.

And the Bible does not say anything against the instutiton of slavery, yes. The early Christians believed that the world was soon ending, and there would be no need to do away with such institutions. But what you're ignoring is that they did call for slaves to be treated well by their masters, and all were equal in the faith, and all deserved to be treated equally. To ignore this aspect of Christianity, which transcends both slave/free and race (see the incident with the Samaritan woman at the well) and class (the early church had both poor and the rich, and they were expected to treat each other the same) is, in my opinion, a lack of objecive foresight. Yes, the Bible doesn't deny slavery. But it certainly denies treating people like the idealized conception of chattel slaves.

Besides, Roman slavery wasn't exactly the same thing as chattel slavery anyways.

Again I must apologize for my accusations.
 

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But I'm a very discriminatory person, and thats just how I feel about it. No ones going to break me from that. To affirm that I'm not "flame-baiting", this will be my last reply here. If you imagine yourself as the bigger man here, you'll do the same. Ok?

Discrimination, religious or otherwise, isn't welcome on this board. I am sure that in the future you will keep "how you feel about it" off the board.
 
Actually Diocletian wasnt persecuting Christians for what they believed... He persecuted them for their refusal to sacrifice to the Emperor's Genius...
Plus because of his superstitius beliefs he was convinced by his court that Christians had offended Apollo and thats why he refused to prophecy for him... Dont forget that he had received a prophecy in Gaul while serving as a centurion there (hence his superstitius attitude) from a Druid that "When u kill a boar Flavius Diocles u will become Emperor"
Ironically the prophecy was fullfiled 20 years later in 284 when after the death of Emperor Numerian he accused Praetorian Praefect L. Flavius Aper for Numerian's death and killed him on the spot... "Aper" is the latin equivallant for "boar"...
If he was a little more sceptical i think that he would decline to persecute any christians...
 
No, Paul was guilting the guy into freeing Onesimus. And, yes, the guilting worked and Onesimus became a bishop.

This is still not anything like a prohibition on slavery. It's 'this guy was lots of use to me, I'd count it a huge favour if you'd free him for me'. Now, you can make the case that it's a bad idea for Christians to own other Christians, but clearly the Bible states that if you're a slave you be the best one you can be. Convince your master to convert? certainly, but no rebellions!

I think Paul said something to the effect of "since you owe me your very life, I could order you but I want you to do this freely."

About slave rebellions, if Christianity was seen as something that innately sowed sedition in addition to the whole "don't pray to the Emperor" thing, things would be even worse.

(yes, I know that the persecutions of Christians weren't as bad as any people think, but they were still pretty ugly at times)

Plus in the notes in my Teen Bible, there's a comment about so many slaves were being freed in the First Century that the owner taxes slavers 5% of the freed slaves' value, so perhaps slavery was declining anyway.

(not 100% sure of where they came up with this, since I don't recall any citation)

Perhaps God/Paul wasn't wanting an early version of the Nat Turner rebellion--there was a lot of talk of abolishing slavery in Virginia until the revolt and then nobody wanted to afterward.

(not sure of the rationale, but people can be really dumb sometimes)
 
To be fair, the Christians had some parts of the Old Testament to justify persecutions of unbelievers or "heretics," so it wasn't solely a matter of human corruption.

That being said, according to Gibbon's Decline and Fall, the notion of God holding the magistrate accountable for sins he allows to take place (probably the big justification for government enforcing morality) only appeared around the time of the conversion of Constantine or soon afterward, so had Christianity not become powerful, this might not have been thought of.

Furthermore, SR has a good point--it is improbable in the extreme the early Church was some kind of secret society intent on domination or they had a Cylon-like "Master Plan."

(in case LA is reading this, the Cylons in the new version of Battlestar Galactica are always described as having some kind of plan)
 
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