Thank you too, Tim, and what’s my point? Simplicity itself actually!

In that opportunely feigning ignorance seems a regular part of your normal debating repertoire, your response is delightfully predictable though.

No, the Romans were not religious dogmatists or “violently intolerant” of other religions or cultures, or “of anything else” that wasn’t “Roman-like.” They did however oppose practices perceived as a threat to state stability or social unity.

Your bizarre assertion is contradicted also by how even when the empire was ruled by non elected rulers wielding absolute power, people in other provinces overwhelmingly sought to be Roman, associating freedom with citizenship and of being part to the empire. In fact by the time the fourth century rolled along, even those troublesome Jews had lost their earlier insistence on an independent state.

And contrary to what you’re touting, it follows that the early Church’s ruthless pursuit of religious intolerance was solely their own self-serving outlook: they weren’t obliging Roman modes in the least. In this regard we may only hope that you’re not pursuing some hidden ideological agenda.

No, a cultural, moral or social aversion to Druid human sacrifice does not amount to “religious dogmatism”!

And no, apart from the concept’s complete irrelevance, Judaism was not “religio licita”. More misdirection on your part, also apparently one of your ubiquitous debating tactics.

I really can’t thank you enough.

Lewis wrote:No, the Romans were not religious dogmatists or “violently intolerant” of other religions or cultures, or “of anything else” that wasn’t “Roman-like.” They did however oppose practices perceived as a threat to state stability or social unity.

And, in doing so, they felt certain types of cult, certain new religions they regarded as "superstitions", cults that didn't respect their idea about a special relationship between the gods (including deified emperors) and the Roman state sufficiently or in the right way and practices which they considered taboo (human sacrifice, the worship of severed heads) made the gods and manes angry and threatened the stability of the state. So they persecuted these cults violently and did everything they could to suppress or exterminate them.

This means they were tolerant so long as you didn't belong to one of these cults or didn't take part in these taboo religious practices. If you did, they were highly intolerant. Violently so - as only the Romans could be.

Got it now?

When Christianity was adopted by the emperors the parameters of what the emperors were prepared to be religiously intolerant about shifted, but the tools and the effects of their new focus for their religious intolerance stayed the same - non-tolerated cults and practices were restricted by law (eg the public practice of pagan rites was banned), crippled by repression (books of magic and divination were burned) and oppressed by violence. So nothing changed apart from what the emperors were intolerant about.

This means that Christianity didn't teach the Empire violent intolerance over religious matters, it was the other way around.

No, a cultural, moral or social aversion to Druid human sacrifice does not amount to “religious dogmatism”!

Whereas a "cultural, moral or social aversion" to sacrifice to Jupiter does, I take it? Sorry, but I can't see the difference between Augustus, Tiberius and Claudius making laws banning druidic practices under pain of death and Theodosius I, Arcadius and Theodosius II making laws banning pagan sacrifices. How is it that one is simply "a cultural, moral or social aversion" and the other is an expression of “religious dogmatism”? They are exactly the same thing. They are precisely what I state above - the same old Roman methods applied to the new religion.

And no, apart from the concept’s complete irrelevance, Judaism was not “religio licita”.

Judaism had legal protections under Roman rule from Julius Caesar onwards by merit of its antiquity. Christianity, on the other hand, was regarded as a "superstition" because it was a new religion and so was illegal and persecuted. Even after the two great Jewish revolts Judaism was never made illegal and the Romans simply imposed a tax (the Fiscus Judaicus) on Jews as punishment and to discourage conversion to Judaism. But they never made Judaism illegal.

You can keep up your usual boring tactic of repeating the same crap over and over again, but it's quite clear that you are wrong. The Romans had clear limits to their religious tolerance, they did have dogmatic ideas over which they persecuted people and all that changed was the focus and the parameters of their intolerance. These are facts. Wibble and wave your hands around all you like, they won't change. You can also try your silly "oh Tim, how foolish you are - behold my arch wisdom" act, but that just makes you look stupid when you don't actually come up with anything that contradicts the facts and evidence I've presented and the clear, logical conclusions that anyone with a brain can see derives from them. You lose.

Why you keep up this pathetic little vendetta while continually getting your arse royally kicked is quite a mystery. My only guess is that you are some kind of masochist.

As with that Pope-UK-visit topic, TimONeill, no matter how robustly you’re proved wrong you will insist on the last word, only to assert you were right all along!

And since by now I’ve grown accustomed if not inured to your rhetorical absurdities (expecting nothing less in fact!), you’d do better wasting it elsewhere.

A panoply of many different cults and creeds peacefully coexisted throughout the polytheistic empire (at least before Christianity came along denying the existence of any god but their own; the Jews were largely simply deemed perverse).

It was this very inclusiveness which cemented the empire into one: had it been otherwise it would have needed innumerable additional legions merely to combat ongoing provincial rebellion, whereas few would have sought to become Roman citizens. Your assertion defeats logic itself!

First conquest tended to be a bloody affair but provincials were quick to realize that being part of the empire offered benefits and a level of security hugely outweighing what they’d previously experienced.

You only cited the practices of two cults as proof of violent religious persecution (extermination even!): Bacchalania and Druid human sacrifice.

Alack, no, a cultural, moral or social aversion to something like human sacrifice and acting on it, doesn’t necessarily amount to religious persecution, then or now. Would you call it religious persecution if today’s Witnesses took up slavery and were then ‘persecuted’ for it! Sacrificing some animal to Jupiter is far removed from human sacrifice! (Scraping the barrel’s bottom with that one, friend!

Wikipedia on Bacchanalia:

“Some modern scholars doubt Livy's account and argue that the Senate acted against the Bacchants for one of the following reasons:

Women occupied leadership positions in the cult (contrary to the patriarchical Roman values of the time).

Slaves and the poor were the cult's members and were planning to overthrow the Roman government.

According to a theory proposed by Erich Gruen, as a display of the Senate's supreme power to the Italian allies as well as competitors within the Roman political system, such as individual victorious generals whose popularity made them a threat to the Senate's collective authority.

In Empires of Trust: How Rome Built—And America Is Building—A New World by Thomas Madden, the author cites the words of a Roman investigative consul in his report to the Roman Senate:

There was no crime, no deed of shame, wanting. More uncleanness was committed by men with men than with women. Whoever would not submit to defilement, or shrank from violating others, was sacrificed as a victim. To regard nothing as impious or criminal was the sum total of their religion. The men, as though seized with madness and with frenzied distortions of their bodies, shrieked out prophecies; the matrons, dressed as Bacchae, their hair disheveled, rushed down to the Tiber River with burning torches, plunged them into the water, and drew them out again, the flame undiminished because they were made of sulfur mixed with lime. Men were fastened to a machine and hurried off to hidden caves, and they were said to have been taken away by the gods. These were the men who refused to join their conspiracy or take part in their crimes or submit to their pollution.”


Does this strike you as mere religious persecution for its own sake? Got it now!

Naturally, you’re still sticking to “this means that Christianity didn't teach the Empire violent intolerance over religious matters, it was the other way around.”

Here too, let’s see what Wikipedia has to say:

“In 313 Constantine I and Licinius announced that it was proper that the Christians and all others should have liberty to follow that mode of religion which to each of them appeared best, thereby granting tolerance to all religions, including Christianity. The agreement of Milan went a step further than the earlier edict of Galerius from 311, returning confiscated Church property. This edict made the Empire officially neutral with regard to religious worship; it neither made paganism illegal nor made Christianity the state religion (that would occur later with the Edict of Thessalonica).”

Hey, fair enough, just like the empire of old!

Not for long though:

“During the course of his life he progressively became more Christian and turned away from any syncretic tendencies he appeared to favor at times and thus demonstrating, according to his biographers, that ‘The God of the Christians was indeed a jealous God who tolerated no other gods beside him. The Church could never acknowledge that she stood on the same plane with other religious bodies, she conquered for herself one domain after another’.

According to the historian Ramsay MacMullen Constantine desired to obliterate non-Christians but lacking the means he had to be content with robbing their temples towards the end of his reign. He resorted to derogatory and contemptuous comments relating to the old religion; writing of the ‘true obstinacy’ of the pagans, of their ‘misguided rites and ceremonial’, and of their ‘temples of lying’ contrasted with ‘the splendours of the home of truth’.

The reign of Constantine established a precedent for the position of the Christian Emperor in the Church. Emperors considered themselves responsible to God for the spiritual health of their subjects, and thus they had a duty to maintain orthodoxy. The emperor did not decide doctrine — that was the responsibility of the bishops —, rather his role was to enforce doctrine, root out heresy, and uphold ecclesiastical unity. The emperor ensured that God was properly worshiped in his empire; what proper worship (orthodoxy) and doctrine (dogma) consisted of was for the Church to determine.”


You were saying, Tim!
It rather seems Christian doctrine was irrefutably responsible!

The more I read your posts, the more you seem akin to some self-appointed Catholic PR flack, as distinct from mere apologist.

Ideology and reason make for poor bedfellows, Tim, as your entries so amply exemplify. Also, this section is meant for history, not religious apology.

Lewis wrote:A panoply of many different cults and creeds peacefully coexisted throughout the polytheistic empire

Which no-one has denied. But some cults didn't fit the parameters of what was to be tolerated, such as ...

(at least before Christianity came along denying the existence of any god but their own; the Jews were largely simply deemed perverse).

Right, so the Jews were "simply deemed perverse" and so their faith wasn't made illegal or persecuted but Christianity wasn't "simply deemed perverse" because ... ? Ummm? Way to scupper your own argument.

It was this very inclusiveness which cemented the empire into one: had it been otherwise it would have needed innumerable additional legions merely to combat ongoing provincial rebellion, whereas few would have sought to become Roman citizens. Your assertion defeats logic itself!

What "assertion"? I've fully acknowledged that IF your cult or religion fitted the Roman parameters of what was "proper" religion you were fine. And most religions did. But it was the ones that didn't that attracted the Roman intolerance and persecution that you're trying to pretend didn't exist at all. Which is ludicrous, because it clearly did. Ask the Christians.

You only cited the practices of two cults as proof of violent religious persecution (extermination even!): Bacchalania and Druid human sacrifice.

Wow, you forgot the Christians pretty damn fast! I suppose that's what happens when you claim that there was NO Roman religious intolerance and you have to try to whittle my THREE examples down to zero by any means necessary. Simply skipping over one of them reduces things to two. So long as no-one with a brain is reading this thread, of course.

Alack,

"Alack"? Are you for fucking real?

no, a cultural, moral or social aversion to something like human sacrifice and acting on it, doesn’t necessarily amount to religious persecution, then or now.

Better tell that to Suetonius, who tells us that Claudius "utterly abolished the cruel and inhuman religion of the Druids among the Gauls" (Claudius XXV.3). He didn't just ban their practice of human sacrifice - he "utterly abolished (their) ... religion". The Romans' attitude to human sacrifice was much more complex than a simple "cultural, moral or social aversion", as you would understand if your grasp of this subject went beyond a hopeful Wiki search and some flatulent bluster. The Romans themselves practised human sacrifice, but only very rarely and in the most extreme of circumstances. These sacrifices consisted of burying victims alive in the Forum Boarium and we know that this rare form of sacrifice - reserved for when Rome itself was in danger - took place at least three times, in 228, 216 and 113 BC. Vestal Virgins who had supposedly broken their vows were also buried alive, and it was "discovered" (rather conveniently) that one had done so when Rome was defeated in war or some other particularly bad omen was observed.

So it wasn't just that the Romans simply had a "cultural, moral or social aversion" to human sacrifice. They had very particular taboos around when it shouldn't be practised and when it should. The druids and some Germanic cults broke those taboos and so were suppressed out of strict religious principle.

See, it helps to actually know the material, not just scrabble around on Google and Wiki and then think adopting a lofty tone and using fatuous words like "Alack" will make people think you know what the fuck you're talking about. You don't.

Seriously, why do you bother?

willhud9 wrote:@ TimONeill: Too be honest, I do not have an answer. I had my high school history book which states that Nebuchadnezzar did in fact believe himself a God and demanded people worship him, but as for the historical accuracy of Daniel, I could not suitably answer at this time. I shall of course research this and in due time, I will answer. I am sorry for the lack of information; however, instead of attempting to formulate some crude theory I shall concede in a temporary defeat

As for Hitler being a Christian. He may have said he was a Christian, proclaimed he was a Christian, but being as the man was a lunatic, and a liar, I have serious doubts as too whether his words can be trusted. However, his actions speak louder than words and I feel confident when I say that he was far outside the realm of Christianity.

Please tell me you didn't go to a public school and learn this bullshit.

The No True Scotsman Fallacy doesn't wash.

willhud9 wrote:

Grimstad wrote:

willhud9 wrote:
As for Hitler being a Christian. He may have said he was a Christian, proclaimed he was a Christian, but being as the man was a lunatic, and a liar, I have serious doubts as too whether his words can be trusted. However, his actions speak louder than words and I feel confident when I say that he was far outside the realm of Christianity.

You just described the far right in the US, perfectly. The very heart of Christianity in America.

Say what?! The far right?! What political spectrum are you looking at? Fascism(what you I guess call ?far-right?) is located near government control. My political spectrum and one that many scholars follow has total government control on the far left and zero government control far right. Fascism is further on the left on this spectrum. I am near the right, not too far but moderately so. I and many fellow Christians am for freedom of beliefs and defenders of the Constitution.

Yeah, you'll defend the Constitution....selectively....

As for zero government control, yeah, I call bullshit. Or do you think it's a woman's right to choose and that gays should be allowed to be married?

willhud9 wrote:

Grimstad wrote:

willhud9 wrote:

Say what?! The far right?! What political spectrum are you looking at? Fascism(what you I guess call ?far-right?) is located near government control. My political spectrum and one that many scholars follow has total government control on the far left and zero government control far right. Fascism is further on the left on this spectrum. I am near the right, not too far but moderately so. I and many fellow Christians am for freedom of beliefs and defenders of the Constitution.

I thought we were discussing Christianity (and Islam) not Fascism. Though sometimes it's easy to confuse the 3. And yes, many do feel as you say you do, but then that would not make you far right. But far too many only pay lip service. My favorite quote from The West Wing is, "They want government just small enough to fit in the bedroom".

But that is not the heart of Christianity in America though

Yes it fucking is.

gleniedee wrote:It' s a common claim amongst anti-theists that the world would a better place without religions(or a particular religion). Theists commonly claim religion generally,or a least theirs, are the basis of order and morality.I think both views are mistaken.


Putting aside arguments about the truths, origins and function of religion,let's just look at behaviour. A challenge:try to determine the beliefs of any number of people based only on their behaviour.

My perception is that few people ever consistently live up to the lofty moral codes of their religion.Eg The Torah commands "love thy neighbour as thyself",a commandment accepted in Christianity.The New Testament says "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to to enter the kingdom of heaven". A common Muslim prefix is "in the name of Allah,the merciful,the compassionate"

People have always cherry picked their religious beliefs to justify the most appalling acts.Remove religion and something else takes its place.EG the personality cults of Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, or North Korea today.


Thought for the day

Man is a rationalising animal rather than a rational one

Well, that's a silly assertion. You really think you believing in God is the only thing keeping you from being a mass murderer?

Atheism doesn't claim to make people moral. Religion does.

Religion fails.

Extraordinary!
Despite the vacant wordiness, your last post completely fails to acknowledge the fact that Christian intolerance flowed directly from its own dogma, not any entrenched Roman tradition, as you repeatedly asserted!

It’s worth repeating though: “The reign of Constantine established a precedent for the position of the Christian Emperor in the Church. Emperors considered themselves responsible to God for the spiritual health of their subjects, and thus they had a duty to maintain orthodoxy. The emperor did not decide doctrine — that was the responsibility of the bishops —, rather his role was to enforce doctrine, root out heresy, and uphold ecclesiastical unity. The emperor ensured that God was properly worshiped in his empire; what proper worship (orthodoxy) and doctrine (dogma) consisted of was for the Church to determine.”

And now nobody denies that “a panoply of many different cults and creeds peacefully coexisted throughout the polytheistic empire”?

Then what have you been going on about all this time!

Ah, we mustn’t forget those “parameters” of yours - give us a break!

Like those parameters hedging the Inquisition, the Crusades, the persecutions during the Reformation, that of the Early Church and hence?

We already discussed why the Christians were seen as a threat to stability. The empire had also already existed for a score of centuries before Christianity ever reared its ugly head.

And do you really reckon that highlighting the banning of extreme Druid or Bacchanalia practices, and now some scarce thing to do with Vestal Virgins, in any way demonstrates some sort of pervasive cultural or religious intolerance (other than where it threatened unity) across an incredibly diverse, thousand-year-long empire, one built on inclusiveness by necessity! Alack!

And by whom? The elite? The many ordinary folk?

By the way, abolishing Druid practices “among the Gauls”, or ostensibly so according to Suetonius (who wasn’t even about then), hardly amounts to their “extermination”. They surely must have had fun scavenging across the length and breath of France identifying and isolating Druids from the rest of the population.

The following seems to fairly sum up Roman notions on human sacrifice:

“By the Late Republic the Romans came to be as horrified by the practice of human sacrifice as any modern might be. The practice of human sacrifice was prohibited by senatorial decree in 97 BCE under the consulship of P. Licinius Crassus. The Romans afterward proscribed the practice by the different peoples they conquered, regarding the practice as barbaric and distinguishing their own civilization from those outside the empire.

The first instance of this is with Licinius Crassus in Further Spain where he was governor (96-93 BCE). The Romans accused the Carthaginians of sacrificing infants, a question still being debated by historians. The Romans made similar accusations in later times against the Druids, Jews and Christians, and unpopular emperors like Egalabalus. Horace’s portrayal of Medea and especially of Canidia employed scenes of human sacrifice as a way of denigrating the use of magic and witchcraft. Likewise Pliny the Elder, on discussing the origins of magic among the Persians, uses the practice of human sacrifice to distinguish it as un-Roman.

So in different ways Roman abhorrence towards human sacrifice came to be regarded as what set themselves apart as a sophisticated, civilized people from those who were barbarians. That was true of the literate elite at least. The literate elite of Rome had come to admire the Greeks, by which they measured themselves, yet recognized in the stories of Andromeda and Iphigenia that human sacrifice had been practiced even in that high culture. They also looked into their own past and noted where their ancestors had employed human sacrifice.”


Vestal Virgins not only enjoyed an exalted status, but also over the whole of the empire’s history the number put to death barely numbered half a dozen. And what’s this got to do anyway with persecuting non-Roman creeds?

Why do I bother? Other than to correct sweeping, bizarre assertions?

I only mean to learn the secret of your winning debating style, Tim.

I can easily see how Google or Wikipedia represents a bit of a nuisance - much more profitable to cite some far-fetched external resource that others simply haven’t got. Alack, a curse we’ll just have to wear…

The world without Christianity and Islam?

Evidence that there would be a god?

@Lewis:

First of all intolerance is a fickle word. I could be intolerant of your post and you'd be done the wiser. Tolerance and and intolerance are nothing more than a mind-set. Regardless of this, mind-sets are hard to distinguish in history and therefore we must look at a recorded event of actions. The Roman Empire was you could say "tolerant" of many beliefs primarily because they had they had so many Gods that so what if 30 more were added, more feasts for Rome! Certain sects of Jewish people; however, believing firmly in "I am the Lord your God....1) You shall not have any God's before me...2) You shall not make a graven image" could not and would not bow down and serve or worship false God's. That is not intolerant but rather their firm belief.

When Christianity arose after the death of Chris, the Jewish people hunted Christians down persecuting Christians for almost 100 years until Constantine declared the Empire a Christian empire. False idols were destroyed, worship of any false God was prohibited because that was now the state religion. The tide turned. Where at first the Roman Empire seemed "tolerant," it was only because they were taking in other polytheistic cultures and thus had no effect on the status quo. When Christianity became the state religion, it wasn't intolerance that lead them to stamp out the "infidelity" but rather they believed it to be righteous and for God.

Too often we pull things out of history and look at it and go, "Oh how intolerant and why were these people so stupid and dogmatic?" The reason we do this is because we look at it through our eyes where slavery is outlawed, where in most countries freedom of religious belief is the law. Back in those days, it was not. The Roman Empire before it became a Christian empire had days you HAD to worship so and so god(s). You could not work, or do anything on that day, because it was designated for that deity. That was how it was back then, it was the norm. Same thing with the Christian Roman Empire, it was normal.

Lewis wrote:Extraordinary!
Despite the vacant wordiness, your last post completely fails to acknowledge the fact that Christian intolerance flowed directly from its own dogma, not any entrenched Roman tradition, as you repeatedly asserted!

You mean my last post fails to "acknowledge" something that is total bullshit? Gee , I wonder why ...

It’s worth repeating though: “The reign of Constantine established a precedent for the position of the Christian Emperor in the Church. Emperors considered themselves responsible to God for the spiritual health of their subjects, and thus they had a duty to maintain orthodoxy. The emperor did not decide doctrine — that was the responsibility of the bishops —, rather his role was to enforce doctrine, root out heresy, and uphold ecclesiastical unity. The emperor ensured that God was properly worshiped in his empire; what proper worship (orthodoxy) and doctrine (dogma) consisted of was for the Church to determine.”

Yes. And? Is anyone here disputing this? The point that you keep deliberately missing is why Constantine did this. It's because a relationship between the emperor and the cult of choice had been established for centuries. For most of the history of the Roman Empire, as I keep explaining to you, the state cult tolerated most other religions because they fitted more or less what was considered "proper" or "legitimate" in religion. But the ones that weren't considered this way were not tolerated, they were banned, they were suppressed, they were made illegal and their practitioners were persecuted. Constantine and his successors simply inherited this structure. Naturally the exclusivist nature of Christianity made the focus of their tolerance far narrower, - no-one is pretending otherwise - but the principle was inherited by them, not invented.

Which is why there is little difference between the Theodosian Code's language about the spread of "heresy" and Diocletian's condemnation of Manicheanism:

We have heard that the Manicheans .... have set up new and hitherto unheard of sects in opposition to the older creeds, so that they might cast out the doctrines vouchsafed to us in the past by divine favour for the benefit of their own depraved doctrine. .... our fear is that with the passage of time they will endeavour to infect the modest and tranquil Roman race .... as with the poison of a malignant serpent..

So he declared Manicheanism illegal, persecuted its followers and executed their leaders, just as he did with Christianity. Ooops, there's another example of a religion not being tolerated by your kind and noble Romans. Starting to see a pattern yet pal?

And now nobody denies that “a panoply of many different cults and creeds peacefully coexisted throughout the polytheistic empire”?

Then what have you been going on about all this time!

See above. If you seriously haven't got it then you are either (i) monumentally thick or (ii) trying to be deliberately obtuse as part of your pathetic little vendetta. I'm going with option (ii).

Why do I bother?

You lack a hobby? Beats the fuck out of me. Feel free to go away.

Well, Tim, good to know that when you decide that “something is total bullshit”, it must of course be so – a precept that seems to run through all your posts, even while trumpeting some kind of special rationality for yourself, with all those who disagree automatically labeled irrational, and all else you can think of.

So let’s see: you agree that the emperor ensured that God was properly worshipped, and that “what proper worship and doctrine consisted of was for the Church to determine”, the Bishops in other words.

And what I keep deliberately missing, you say, “is why Constantine did this”; which according to you is because “a relationship between the emperor and the cult of choice had been established for centuries.”

Poppycock!
The era you seem so keen on, the one subsequent to Marcus Aurelius, saw a succession of politically insecure, yet absolute and variously capricious and often highly-flawed flawed emperors, and then mostly with their own unique outlook on what served themselves and the state best, and as intimately intertwined with contemporary political expediencies. It’s almost as if you’ve never even heard of the Republican era!

And where Constantine is concerned, I already explained how:

“During the course of his life he progressively became more Christian and turned away from any syncretic tendencies he appeared to favor at times and thus demonstrating, according to his biographers, that ‘The God of the Christians was indeed a jealous God who tolerated no other gods beside him. The Church could never acknowledge that she stood on the same plane with other religious bodies, she conquered for herself one domain after another’.

According to the historian Ramsay MacMullen Constantine desired to obliterate non-Christians but lacking the means he had to be content with robbing their temples towards the end of his reign. He resorted to derogatory and contemptuous comments relating to the old religion; writing of the ‘true obstinacy’ of the pagans, of their ‘misguided rites and ceremonial’, and of their ‘temples of lying’ contrasted with ‘the splendours of the home of truth’.”


A very long way from what Rome had always been about, friend!

You then repeat the same tired old spiel: “For most of the history of the Roman Empire, as I keep explaining to you, the state cult tolerated most other religions because they fitted more or less what was considered ‘proper’ or ‘legitimate’ in religion. But the ones that weren't considered this way were not tolerated, they were banned, they were suppressed, they were made illegal and their practitioners were persecuted.”

Rubbish!
I already explained that as to whether a creed was deemed proper, perverse or mere superstition or whatever else had little to do with whether it was tolerated or not, but much with social unity and state stability: “The Decian edict appealed to whatever common mos maiores might reunite a politically and socially fractured Empire. Within its multitude of cults, no ancestral gods need be specified by name.”

Your nonsense about banning of anti social Druid practices, as including human sacrifice, or Bacchanalia excesses proves nothing at all, with the Vestal Virgins thing plain irrelevant.

Take that 313 AD Edict of Milan struck between Licinius and Constantine:

“We thought it fit to commend these things most fully to your care that you may know that we have given to those Christians free and unrestricted opportunity of religious worship. When you see that this has been granted to them by us, your Worship will know that we have also conceded to other religions the right of open and free observance of their worship for the sake of the peace of our times, that each one may have the free opportunity to worship as he pleases; this regulation is made that we may not seem to detract from any dignity or any religion.”

“For the sake of the peace of our times”!

Neither did condemnation of Christianity originate with the state, but with the general public:

“For the first two centuries of its existence, Christianity and its practitioners were unpopular with the people at large. Christians were always suspect, members of a ‘secret society’ whose members communicated with a private code and who shied away from the public sphere. It was popular hostility—the anger of the crowd which drove the earliest persecutions, not official action. In Lyon in 177, it was only the intervention of civil authorities that stopped a pagan mob from dragging Christians from their houses and beating them to death. The governor of Bithynia–Pontus, Pliny, was sent long lists of denunciations by anonymous citizens, which Emperor Trajan advised him to ignore.”


You say: “Which is why there is little difference between the Theodosian Code's language about the spread of "heresy" and Diocletian's condemnation of Manicheanism.”

Hogwash!
And why not pick something out from the next century, with the Church’s stranglehold over state affairs complete, and an empire set for disintegration!

Diocletian saw the Manichees as subversive because of their connection to the Persians: ”Had sprung forth very recently like novel monstrosities from the race of Persians – a nation hostile to us – and have made their way into our empire, where they are committing many outrages, disturbing the tranquility of the people…”

Under Theodosius, the Christians really got into the act: “When Christians first encountered Manichaeism, they deemed it a heresy, since it had originated in a heavily Gnostic area of the Persian empire. In AD 381 Christians requested Theodosius I to strip Manichaeans of their civil rights. He issued a decree of death for Manichaean monks in AD 382.”

It didn’t stop there of course: “During the Middle Ages, there emerged several movements which were collectively described as ‘Manichaean’ by the Catholic Church, and persecuted as Christian heresies through the establishment, in 1184, of the Inquisition.”

Well, between this topic and the Pope-UK visit one, I haven’t seen much rationality from you yet, but I live in hope.

In fact, not that you’d ever be that silly of course, but your reasoning reminds me a bit of those irrational religionists who prove Jesus existence by quoting from the Gospels!

Your debating style is a winner for sure: If belligerence and personal slurs fail to cow one’s opponent, one turns to feigned ignorance, misdirection and omission or whatever red herrings spring to mind, or even plays the hapless victim if need be, forever demanding evidence and rationality without displaying any, and as all wrapped within a smokescreen of self-justifying rhetorical hyperbole and belittling one’s opponent at every turn, with above all, unmitigated persistence?

Tim, could it be, then, that the intolerance of Christian states towards other religions stemmed from the Roman idea of persecuting religions which didn't fit their ideal, rather than Christianity itself?

Lewis wrote:Well, Tim, good to know that when you decide that “something is total bullshit”, it must of course be so

Not quite as pompous as trying to castigate someone for not "acknowledging" something supposedly self-evident, when that something just happens to be ... your position in the argument. Hilarious. Please get your hand off your cock before you go blind.

So let’s see: you agree that the emperor ensured that God was properly worshipped, and that “what proper worship and doctrine consisted of was for the Church to determine”, the Bishops in other words.

Who is that quote "what proper worship and doctrine consisted of was for the Church to determine" from? Not from me. Not content with pulling your cock, you're now plucking things out of your arse. Cover the children's eyes.

Poppycock!

First "Alack!" and now "Poppycock!"? What's next - "Balderdash"? I'm starting to think these pathetically bad posts of yours are so weak because they aren't arguments at all but are actually exercises in absurdist comedy.

The era you seem so keen on, the one subsequent to Marcus Aurelius, saw a succession of politically insecure, yet absolute and variously capricious and often highly-flawed flawed emperors, and then mostly with their own unique outlook on what served themselves and the state best, and as intimately intertwined with contemporary political expediencies. It’s almost as if you’ve never even heard of the Republican era!

The violent suppression of the Bacchanals was in your precious Republican Era. The violent supression of the druids was in the Principate. The violent suppression of the Christians and the Manicheans was in the Dominate. The pattern is quite clear - step outside the parameters of what the Roman state considers "legitimate" religion and you will get violently suppressed by the "tolerant" Romans. Roman "tolerance" had clear limits and if you strayed outside them they got very intolerant very quickly. The Christian emperors adopted this from their predecessors, back to and including the republican period.

Suck it up pal.

I already explained that as to whether a creed was deemed proper, perverse or mere superstition or whatever else had little to do with whether it was tolerated or not, but much with social unity and state stability

Because "superstitions" like the Bacchanals, the druidic cults, the Chrisitians and the Manicheans were held to be an affront to the gods and so a threat to the state. You are getting that backwards.

Your nonsense about banning of anti social Druid practices, as including human sacrifice, or Bacchanalia excesses proves nothing at all, with the Vestal Virgins thing plain irrelevant.

See above as to why they were considered "anti-social" - it was a religious matter and they were suppressed out of religious feelings. And "the Vestal Virgins thing" that you've lightly skipped around is far from "irrelevant". The Romans didn't simply have a "social aversion" to human sacrifice. They practised it themselves on rare occasions. But "superstitio" was defined not simply defined as a "novel religion" (something the Romans did not tolerate) but also as an excessive awe and submission to the gods, whereas religio was, by contrast, apt or due awe and submission. The problem with druidic and (allegedly) Carthaginian human sacrifice was not that they were sacrificing humans, since the Romans themselves did that in extreme circumstances, but that they did so regularly. And that was "excessive" and therefore actually offensive to the gods. And so to be suppressed - violently.

So much for Roman "tolerance". Outside the parameters of what they considered "tolerable" the earlier Romans were every bit as intolerant as their Christian successors.

Diocletian saw the Manichees as subversive because of their connection to the Persians: ”Had sprung forth very recently like novel monstrosities from the race of Persians – a nation hostile to us – and have made their way into our empire, where they are committing many outrages, disturbing the tranquility of the people…”

The esteemed editors of The Cambridge Ancient History: The Crisis of Empire, A.D. 193-337, Averil Cameron, lan K. Bowman and Peter Garnsey, seem to disagree with you:

Whilst the Persian connexion is clearly a major determining factor in Diocletian's reaction, the preceding paragraphs make plain that his fundamental objection is to the sacrilegious disturbance of what has been established since antiquity (quae semel ab antiquis statuta et definita), laid down by the immortal gods for the benefit of mankind: 'ancient religion ought not be criticised by a newfangled one'(neque reprehendi a nova vetus religio deberet).
(p. 648)

Gosh, that sounds like ... what I've been saying all along about the Roman attitude to new religions. Intolerance.

Give up pal., Google won't save you when you are simply, plainly and demonstrably wrong.

Wiðercora wrote:Tim, could it be, then, that the intolerance of Christian states towards other religions stemmed from the Roman idea of persecuting religions which didn't fit their ideal, rather than Christianity itself?

Mostly. Christianity inherited the exclusivist attitude of Judaism - like the Jews they considered their religion the only true one, not just the best one or the most appropriate one to them. That narrowed the parameters of what could be "legitimate" religion once the Roman Empire became Christian very sharply. The Roman parameters of religious legitimacy were far wider, which is why they tolerated most forms of religion. But any form that stepped outside those parameters was violently suppressed. It was this violent intolerance coupled with Christianity's far narrower definition of what was "legitimate" religion that made for a deadly and decidedly intolerant combination.

What the capering contrarian above is desperately trying to pretend is that the Romans were completely tolerant. But the examples I've given clearly show that they were not. Christianity simply narrowed the definitions of what was to be tolerated and the Empire merely continued to violently suppress those who fell outside those definitions the way it always had.

I have no stake in the personal confrontation, but I have to say that anyone who holds up the Romans as an example of enlightened religious toleration really doesn't understand how their religion and it's approach to other religions worked. It's not much of a simplification to say that it operated by seeking parallels to their own religion and cultural practices, keeping those elements of the religion of those they absorbed, and totally discarding and eradicating those elements that did not fit.

The most obvious reflection of this is how deities in subject people were identified with aspects of their own pantheon... hence the constant parellels of the likes of Zeus-Jupiter, Hera-Juno, Sulis-Minerva - it is an ignorant but common mistake to believe that these were the same gods just known by different names - when the Romans encountered a new polytheistic religion, they sought to map the deities onto their own, added them if they were compatible... and in some cases had great difficulty in absorbing them because the practices were objectionable to their own cultural outlook. As has been repeated several times the Gallic religion was a great example - the main deities were absorbed without any problems into the general pantheon... if you look in Caesar's Gallic War commentaries he actually describes the deities the Gauls worship by Roman names, contrast that to the disgust expressed at the practices such as human sacrifice that the Romans moved to eradicate.

Lewis wrote:
“For the first two centuries of its existence, Christianity and its practitioners were unpopular with the people at large. Christians were always suspect, members of a ‘secret society’ whose members communicated with a private code and who shied away from the public sphere. It was popular hostility—the anger of the crowd which drove the earliest persecutions, not official action. In Lyon in 177, it was only the intervention of civil authorities that stopped a pagan mob from dragging Christians from their houses and beating them to death. The governor of Bithynia–Pontus, Pliny, was sent long lists of denunciations by anonymous citizens, which Emperor Trajan advised him to ignore.”

Niiice quote mine here though, it's quite revealing that you miss the next paragraph in the wiki article, that totally goes against your core argument:

"To the followers of the traditional cults, Christians were odd creatures: not quite Roman, but not quite barbarian either.[8] Their practices were deeply threatening to traditional mores. Christians rejected public festivals, refused to take part in the imperial cult, avoided public office, and publicly criticized ancient traditions.[9] Conversions tore families apart: Justin Martyr tells of a pagan husband who denounced his Christian wife, Tertullian of children disinherited for becoming Christians.[10] Traditional Roman religion was inextricably interwoven into the fabric of Roman society and state, but Christians refused to observe its practices.[11][notes 1] In the words of Tacitus, Christians showed "hatred of the human race" (odium generis humani).[13] Among the more credulous, Christians were thought to use black magic in pursuit of revolutionary aims,[14] and to practice incest and cannibalism.[15]"

i.e. Christians were persecuted to their failure to fit in with wider Roman culture, most especially those religious practices that were tied to loyalty to the state, and those practices that were felt by the Romans to threaten themselves and their own relationships with the Gods. In particular, the greatest persecutions were triggered against Christians (and caused problems for the Jews as well) because of what was thought of as their ATHEISM - their refusal to make the proper sacrifices to what the Romans felt were the real gods - and just as in some hardline Christian sects today will shun and isolate heretics because they believe their own souls are at risk merely from associating with them, the Romans felt that the Christians were imperilling the rest of the population by not properly acknowledging the deities they believed ruled and controlled nature.

In short, if your religion "fit" into the Roman system, you were (relatively) fine... if it was objectionable or posed some sort of threat to Roman society, tolerance was non-existent.

virphen wrote:In short, if your religion "fit" into the Roman system, you were (relatively) fine... if it was objectionable or posed some sort of threat to Roman society, tolerance was non-existent.

Exactly. Excellent post.

Thanks for that fine reply, Tim, “cocks” and your own unique idea of rationality in full tilt.

You can’t recall agreeing to “’the emperor ensured that God was properly worshipped’, and that ‘what proper worship and doctrine consisted of was for the Church to determine’, the Bishops in other words”?

You really must learn to focus; allow me to me to refresh your memory.

I quoted Wikipedia: “The reign of Constantine established a precedent for the position of the Christian Emperor in the Church. Emperors considered themselves responsible to God for the spiritual health of their subjects, and thus they had a duty to maintain orthodoxy. The emperor did not decide doctrine — that was the responsibility of the bishops —, rather his role was to enforce doctrine, root out heresy, and uphold ecclesiastical unity. The emperor ensured that God was properly worshiped in his empire; what proper worship (orthodoxy) and doctrine (dogma) consisted of was for the Church to determine.”

Your direct reply: “Yes. And? Is anyone here disputing this?”

Remember now, Pal!


And once more for the umpteenth time, devoid of any real relevance or even logic it seems, you’re wondrously back to tendentiously citing Bacchanals, Druids and Vestal Virgins and the same repetitive spiel that these somehow prove that stepping beyond what apparently to your mindset represent immutable “parameters”, inevitably invoked “violent suppression” - and then as across a thousand-year long empire, one variously subject to tumultuous upheaval yet in essence necessarily predicated on inclusiveness.

With such a galaxy of diverse cultures and creeds and provinces, you’d have to wonder how Rome’s legions ever found time for anything else, friend, apart from how you’re also starting resemble some stuck record!

Didn’t I also just highlight in my last post that Christian intolerance didn’t even flow forth from any official or formal state objection, but from the shared perceptions and varied resentments of the general populace:

“For the first two centuries of its existence, Christianity and its practitioners were unpopular with the people at large. Christians were always suspect, members of a ‘secret society’ whose members communicated with a private code and who shied away from the public sphere.

It was popular hostility—the anger of the crowd which drove the earliest persecutions, not official action. In Lyon in 177, it was only the intervention of civil authorities that stopped a pagan mob from dragging Christians from their houses and beating them to death. The governor of Bithynia–Pontus, Pliny, was sent long lists of denunciations by anonymous citizens, which Emperor Trajan advised him to ignore.”

The fact that the Christians took their creed and God so damned seriously mightn’t have impressed the plebs much either.


And your tedious repetition likewise requires me to repeat Wikipedia on Bacchanalia:

“Some modern scholars doubt Livy's account and argue that the Senate acted against the Bacchants for one of the following reasons:

Women occupied leadership positions in the cult (contrary to the patriarchical Roman values of the time).

Slaves and the poor were the cult's members and were planning to overthrow the Roman government.

According to a theory proposed by Erich Gruen, as a display of the Senate's supreme power to the Italian allies as well as competitors within the Roman political system, such as individual victorious generals whose popularity made them a threat to the Senate's collective authority.

In Empires of Trust: How Rome Built—And America Is Building—A New World by Thomas Madden, the author cites the words of a Roman investigative consul in his report to the Roman Senate:

There was no crime, no deed of shame, wanting. More uncleanness was committed by men with men than with women. Whoever would not submit to defilement, or shrank from violating others, was sacrificed as a victim. To regard nothing as impious or criminal was the sum total of their religion. The men, as though seized with madness and with frenzied distortions of their bodies, shrieked out prophecies; the matrons, dressed as Bacchae, their hair disheveled, rushed down to the Tiber River with burning torches, plunged them into the water, and drew them out again, the flame undiminished because they were made of sulfur mixed with lime. Men were fastened to a machine and hurried off to hidden caves, and they were said to have been taken away by the gods. These were the men who refused to join their conspiracy or take part in their crimes or submit to their pollution.”

And how do you think the public even today would react! What religion!


And similarly repeat their admirable notions on human sacrifice, both the public’s and state, and the way they changed over time:

“By the Late Republic the Romans came to be as horrified by the practice of human sacrifice as any modern might be. The practice of human sacrifice was prohibited by senatorial decree in 97 BCE under the consulship of P. Licinius Crassus. The Romans afterward proscribed the practice by the different peoples they conquered, regarding the practice as barbaric and distinguishing their own civilization from those outside the empire.

The first instance of this is with Licinius Crassus in Further Spain where he was governor (96-93 BCE). The Romans accused the Carthaginians of sacrificing infants, a question still being debated by historians. The Romans made similar accusations in later times against the Druids, Jews and Christians, and unpopular emperors like Egalabalus. Horace’s portrayal of Medea and especially of Canidia employed scenes of human sacrifice as a way of denigrating the use of magic and witchcraft. Likewise Pliny the Elder, on discussing the origins of magic among the Persians, uses the practice of human sacrifice to distinguish it as un-Roman.

So in different ways Roman abhorrence towards human sacrifice came to be regarded as what set themselves apart as a sophisticated, civilized people from those who were barbarians. That was true of the literate elite at least. The literate elite of Rome had come to admire the Greeks, by which they measured themselves, yet recognized in the stories of Andromeda and Iphigenia that human sacrifice had been practiced even in that high culture. They also looked into their own past and noted where their ancestors had employed human sacrifice.”

Attitudes changed - get it now, buddy!


During the chaotic period that you’re so tendentiously preoccupied with, successive emperors’ cardinal preoccupation, unlike Stoic Marcus Aurelius and immediate predecessors, was to secure their own rule and position, fending off other usurpers and thus yet another civil war, an end toward they’d invoke whatever was politically and militarily necessary. Keeping the army on side foremost and the general populace content overrode everything else.

And as your Crisis of Empire declares: “A long tradition of studies has represented the third century as a watershed, or at least as a moment of intersection separating two radically different, even opposed, worlds. More specifically with regard to the imperial authority, it has identified two different ways of governing the empire, of legitimating the exercise of imperial power and even of providing a self-representation.”

Thus Constantine constantly touted how he ruled by divine sanction, which later on in his reign explicitly became the all-powerful God of the Christians - the same god that denied the existence of all others! He simply discarded whatever he didn’t like about Diocletian’s transformation, promoting Christian tolerance instead, along with personal favoritism and patronage.

That misfit Elagabalus saw even fit to bring his own sun god over from the East, replacing Jupiter as the state’s main deity, apart from some mucking about with one of those Vestal Virgins!

Whereas at the beginning of his rule, “Theodosius seems to have ignored the semi-official standing of the Christian bishops; in fact he had voiced his support for the preservation of temples or pagan statues as useful public buildings. In his early reign, Theodosius was fairly tolerant of the pagans, for he needed the support of the influential pagan ruling class.”

Despite which in 380 AD he issued the "Edict of Thessalonica in order that all their subjects should profess the faith of the bishops of Rome and Alexandria (i.e., the Nicene faith).”

And you still tendentiously reckon that all these drastic to-and-fro reversals somehow illustrate compliance with Roman traditions or any sort of traditional inclusiveness, without which the empire would never have come into being to begin with!


Some bits on Diocletian from Wikipedia:

“Diocletian saw his work as that of a restorer, a figure of authority whose duty it was to return the empire to peace, to recreate stability and justice where barbarian hordes had destroyed it.

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 impious on Earth hindered Apollo's ability to provide advice. Rhetorically Eusebius records the Oracle as saying ‘The just on Earth...’

These impious, 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.

But Eusebius, Lactantius and Constantine state that it was Galerius, not Diocletian, who was the prime supporter of the purge, and its greatest beneficiary. Galerius, even more devoted and passionate than Diocletian, saw political advantage in the politics of persecution. He was willing to break with a government policy of inaction on the issue.”

And so it was decided…! Political expediency, power struggles and oracles!


Of course then arrives Constantine, who reverses the belief thing, smitten by the fact that the Christian God engineered his marvelous military victories, figuring his rule is undoubtedly divinely blessed by the Christian God himself!


Before you know it though, raised as a devoted Christian and pretending at first to be just that, along comes Julian.

He’s in turn obsessed by some personal mystical version Platonism, the old Greek religions, Olympian gods, abundant animal sacrifice and the notion of one supreme deity to boot, in this case King Helios - what better proof than his past ‘victories’ in Gaul!

He never bans Christianity outright, something which had never worked anyway, but instead cancels the hindrances Constantine had put on ‘pagan’ rituals and the assorted perks previously bestowed on Christian priests and bishops, wanting to create a pagan church instead, but now one along Christian Church lines…


Theodosius on the other hand…


Get the picture, Tim – a series of power-hungry, ruthless dictators whose personal idiosyncrasies and military self-survival outweighed every other consideration.

Meantime the general populace from Britain to Egypt, to your mind apparently synonymous with the antics of the elite and state, simply struggled along from day-to-day as they always had.

Now, why not pick some straw man from the Western Empire’s next century, carefully ignoring any reference to Church doctrinal influence of course, and use that to prove your religious intolerance for the whole of the previous millennium…

And no, I never said the Romans were as such tolerant at all, only where different creeds, cults and creeds were concerned, assuming they didn’t threaten state stability or social unity.