Von Bek

mountainman's response:
Still, his whole point, according to you, was to establish an imperial religion that would reinforce his military. Baptism has been a central component of the Christian faith for as long as we can tell. Along with the practice of communion, it probably stands as one of the defining characteristics of what makes one a member of the Christian faith. If Constantine really wanted people to take his religion seriously why would he abstain from taking part in the ceremony that makes one an official member of it? I understand that Constantine had the power of the sword backing him up so he was under no obligation to do anything. Even granting you that, people with real power constantly engage in symbolic acts for the benefit of those they are trying to control.



mountainman again:
In all fairness to me, the title of this thread is "The Constantine Conspiracy. (Bold mine.)

In your theory though, a conspiracy is needed. You are indeed correct that Constantine did not have to conspire to give orders to his military generals to raze towns and engage in mass murder, but he would have had to engage in a conspiracy to fabricate a religion. This is by your own admission since Eusebius was (according to you) instrumental in writing a completely false history along with totally inventing historical characters.

Let us just briefly compare Constantine to the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten. We know from historical records that Akhenaten radically transformed the nature of Egyptian religion and established the exclusive worship of the Aten. He made enemies of the priests of Amun-Ra. Akhenaten (like Constantine) created a new capitol for his empire. Now look at what happened after their deaths. When Akhenaten died, the priests of Amun-Ra quickly regained their status and in no time the old gods were back in full force. Presumably many common Egyptians never abandoned their old gods in the first place. The Aten cult was recognized as being a recent phenomenon. When Constantine died, no similar dissolution took place in Christianity. From this I assume that Christianity was already widespread before Constantine, therefore his death did nothing to slow the movement down.

Von Bek

Sorry, meant to respond to this earlier.

Constantine's son Constantinus II supported the Arians and and made an Arian bishop of Constantinople. Furthermore, his father Constantine eventually rescinded his earlier dismissal of Arius. I don't understand why Constantine would need Jesus to be co-eternal with God the Father for his empire to prosper, unless he actually believed such an idea and did not wish to blaspheme the Son. That though would undermine the theory that he simply invented the religion to begin with.

He did want a unified church, but I don't think he cared about its theology in any real way.

fatpie42

Oh, I wasn't presuming that Constantine invented the religion. (There's a separate thread for that issue.) My point was that if Constantine was rubbishing Arianism as being as good as paganism, how could he have reached such an opinion if he was once strongly in favour of it?

My point was that the extremity of his dismissal of Arianism suggests that it might be for political reasons. Naturally that would be partly to do with not wanting to blaspheme the Son, but I wondered whether that might not tie in with the idea that Jesus would be undermined if earlier emperors 'outranked' him.

mountainman

Why would anyone think that one could learn nothing from a hostile source?
Such thinking does not exist with military intelligence or at Scotland Yard.
Statements by Constantine regarding Arius are part of the evidence.
The evidence is amenable to examination and analysis.
Often the evidence points to political tensions, as is the case here.

Statements made by Constantine about Arius

He had little piety toward Christ
He detracted from Jesus who is indetractable
He detracted from the uncorrupted intelligence of Jesus
He detracted from the belief in immortality of Jesus
He demoted Jesus
He dared to circumscribe Jesus
He questioned the presence of Jesus
He questioned the activity of Jesus
He questioned the all-pervading law of Jesus
He thought that there was a place outside of Jesus
He thought that there something else outside of Jesus
He denied the infiniteness of Jesus
He accepted Jesus as a figment
He called Jesus foreign
He did not conclude that God is present in Christ
He had no faith in Christ
He did not follow the law that God's law is Christ

Surely these statements tell us something about the way
that Constantine perceived the author Arius of Alexandria
in regard to Arius' belief (or otherwise) in Jesus.



But perhaps Arius was a pagan priest.
Do you know for sure that he was not?
Surely the case is not closed.

This is dogma. The fact that Arius was accused of far more than just being a heretic suggests that he may have refused to have any association whatsoever with Constantine's state religious initiative.

Some of this validation is sourced from the Theodosian Codex.

mountainman

General Background Notes.
Creation of Centralised State Monotheistic Religions in antiquity.

A far more relevant precedent is to be found just one century
before the Council of Nicaea when Ardashir creates the Persian State
Zoroastrian Religion c.223. Here are some notes from

Cambridge Ancient History, Volume XII
The Imperial Crisis and Recovery (193 to 324 CE)
Chapter 5: SASSANID PERSIA
The Sassanian Empire: Political History

Von Bek

I read the notes. In your own examples though, you do not assert that Ardashir fabricated Zoroastrianism out of whole cloth. He may have centralized the religion but it predated him, as your own notes say.

Von Bek

mountainman,

Out of curiosity, why did you think my comparison of Akhenaten and Constantine was not a good one? Akhenaten introduced a novel cult to Egypt that had no connection to the Egyptian people. You claim that Constantine did the same in imposing the cult of Christ on his empire. A cult that, you believe, had no organic connection to the Roman population.

History shows us that Akhenaten's religion died out with him; (unless you hold to Freud's idea that Moses was a renegade Aten priest), and that his new city was abandoned. The cult of Amun-Ra regained imperial preeminence and the people continued worshipping in their old ways. The priests of the old gods had no need to eradicate the remaining Aten worshippers, there were none. The Aten cult had been artificially imposed from above, we would not expect there to be a lot of loyal Aten worshippers.

When Constantine died though, Christianity continued expanding. Constantinople, far from being abandoned, thrived and became the center of one of the greatest empires in world history, a center of culture and religion. If Christianity was a religion that had been forcefully imposed from above; why was a later Roman emperor unable to stamp out the religion with force?

mountainman

That is correct. We have archaeological corroboration
for the pre-existence of an earlier Zorastrian religion that
flourished in Parthian Persia. The same cannot be said with
the same degree of certaintly with respect to "christianity".

mountainman

There is no harm in any comparison.
We can learn from them all.
But IMO Ardashir's actions were probably well known to Constantine.
It was quite recent Political history compared to Akhenaten.

It was too late. The temples had been largely destroyed.
The new architecture (basilicas) were well established.
Also Julian did not have the time: his rule was cut short.
Have you read "Julian" by Gore Vidal?

Huon

fatpie42, if you want to know something about Arius, you could have a look here :

http://www.fourthcentury.com/index.php/alexander-chart

This site, fourthcentury.com is a christian site. They give a translation of many important texts of the controversies of the Fourth Century. There is a letter from Arius to Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, which describes the credo of Arius. Note that there are many Alexander(s).

Note also that the "official" church had time enough to screen the writings of Arius and suppress them.