RE: What Constantine likely saw.
January 2, 2018 at 6:00 am
(This post was last modified: January 2, 2018 at 6:04 am by Fake Messiah.)
Yeah that miracle of seeing cross had touched Constantine's soul so much that he never even converted to Christianity (some say he converted on his death bed, while others say he never did) and he also regularly offered sacrifices to Apollo, Diana and Hercules, and remained head of the official pagan priesthood throughout his life - as if the whole miracle thing was invented.
Constantine dabbed into Christianity because monotheism preached the need for all to worship a single source of authority - a concept that was music to Constantine's ears. Especially after reading Saint Paul's writings about political leaders receiving their authority from God gave Constantine plenty of ammunition for his totalitarian project. He made his own Christianity in 325, by inviting bishops from all over the empire at the Council of Nicaea and then immediately moved to repress any alternate versions of Christianity.
And also don't forget this saint in many of the Christian eyes got his son executed, and his own wife boiled alive, for he feared they may have been plotting against him. Jesus's message to "love your enemies" must have not gotten to destination and instead he went with Jesus' "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me", since Constantine had some of his rivals beheaded, and others hanged after he had promised them clemency if they surrendered.
Constantine dabbed into Christianity because monotheism preached the need for all to worship a single source of authority - a concept that was music to Constantine's ears. Especially after reading Saint Paul's writings about political leaders receiving their authority from God gave Constantine plenty of ammunition for his totalitarian project. He made his own Christianity in 325, by inviting bishops from all over the empire at the Council of Nicaea and then immediately moved to repress any alternate versions of Christianity.
And also don't forget this saint in many of the Christian eyes got his son executed, and his own wife boiled alive, for he feared they may have been plotting against him. Jesus's message to "love your enemies" must have not gotten to destination and instead he went with Jesus' "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me", since Constantine had some of his rivals beheaded, and others hanged after he had promised them clemency if they surrendered.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
