arnoldo

This Roman Emperor had some interesting ideas in reference to Christianity. Apparently he was raised a christian however he "lost his faith" and wished Rome to return to it's pagan religion. In fact he seemed to be somewhat tolerant of other religions and wanted to establish "freedom of all religions" as well as rebuild the Jewish temple in the year 363. From my brief reading of his history he seemed to be tolerant of christianity however he wanted to "separate church from state" which is not a bad idea IMHO. Any thoughts?

alpha centauri

Hmmm ... he certainly is a fascinating historical figure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_the_Apostate

According to the link on the above website, he ordered Christian churches to return the wealth they had plundered from pagan temples after the Christians had become dominant in Rome.

arnoldo

If Julian was in fact christian at one time that should disprove the ridiculous theory that Constantine invented christianity sometime before his death in 337. After all why would Julian be a christian if he knew his uncle Constantine invented the religion out of thin air?

GakuseiDon

It's been many years since I read it, but I highly recommend Gore Vidal's "Julian (or via: amazon.co.uk)", a fictionalized account of his life and thoughts.

Toto

This hardly follows. Julian was in no position to know if his uncle had invented Christianity out of thin air (or a vision in the sky.) And even if he had known this, why would that cause him to reject the religion?

arnoldo

Julian obviously was taught Christianity by various family members including his cousin Constantinus II as well as other teachers such as Eusebius, Gregory Nazianzus and Basil of Caesarea who obviously didn't all hear this brand new gospel of christianity from Constantine. In any event Julian was taught a "heretical' form of christianity which pre-dated Constantine called Arianism. Arius (250-336) developed this heretical branch of christianity which was spoken against in the First Council of Nicaea in 325.

aa5874

Why do people de-convert? Why did Tertullian become a so-called heretic?

arnoldo

In the case of Julian his so called "christian" cousin, Constantinus II, murdered his family so that was a good reason for Julian to wish to reject christianity. IMHO Julian was rejecting that the State should have an official religion, he wanted all people to have freedom of religion be it christian, judaism,paganism or atheism.

arnoldo

It's a fact that Christianity flourished under persecution so actually it would have been better if Julian had succeeded and separated the christian church from the state of rome. In fact, frequently in the new testament an entity called "babylon" is refering to rome and a future one world religion. Constatine simply created a sect of christianity which united State and Religion which is against the intention of the gospel message. Remember Yeshua said "my kingdom is not of this world."

mountainman

Actually it is a conjecture of part of the maintream theory
of ancient history -- one for which no evidence exists
other than that provided by sponsored authors writing
in the time of the despot and military supremacist Constantine.


That Julian was an "apostate" is an invention of the christian
regime of ecclesiastical historians whose histories today are
extant and survive. Julian is known to have been essentially
under house arrest for the period of his youth (to 20 years).

He was a political prisoner of Constantius for his entire youth.
Constantius fed Julian the standard christian texts, but we
have absolutely no objective reason to think that Julian ever
considered himself among "the Galilaeans".

Secondly, Julian expressly states that he rejected the way
of the christians around his 20th birthday. The Gore Dival
book earlier recommended is a good read -- it may be a novel
but there is a huge amount of ancient historical citations
that have been incorporated into the story.

Best wishes,


Pete Brown