RE: What will win the god wars? Faith, Fantasy, Facts, or God?
December 25, 2020 at 7:14 am
(This post was last modified: December 25, 2020 at 7:17 am by The Grand Nudger.)
There would be about ten more emperors between Constantine and the last pagan emperor of the world, Julian. It was a rough period of time. So, some context and an important correction. First, the correction. Gnostics did not invent christianity, they themselves were a split off group of proto-christians.
Now, context. It was often the case during the three to four hundred years it took for something resembling modern chrstianity to shape for one wave of christianization to have little in common with the next (or the one which had preceded it). The gnostic sect was part of the romanizing wave (which was the third, at least), and had very clearly been responsible for turning what would have otherwise been one set of heathen superstitions among thousands under the roman umbrella into a franchised ideology of state. The trouble was that the people who benefitted most from this, who would become instrumental in the next wave, had no further use for them or their specific ideology, though they quite liked the literary tradition that they'd constructed and the recruitment strategy that had coalesced under their apogee.
-and so it was as it has ever been. One group of christians consuming another. It's a predatory belief system, as julian noted on paganisms way out the door. That's always been it's greatest strength, even if it generates a bunch of heat and criticism.
Now, context. It was often the case during the three to four hundred years it took for something resembling modern chrstianity to shape for one wave of christianization to have little in common with the next (or the one which had preceded it). The gnostic sect was part of the romanizing wave (which was the third, at least), and had very clearly been responsible for turning what would have otherwise been one set of heathen superstitions among thousands under the roman umbrella into a franchised ideology of state. The trouble was that the people who benefitted most from this, who would become instrumental in the next wave, had no further use for them or their specific ideology, though they quite liked the literary tradition that they'd constructed and the recruitment strategy that had coalesced under their apogee.
-and so it was as it has ever been. One group of christians consuming another. It's a predatory belief system, as julian noted on paganisms way out the door. That's always been it's greatest strength, even if it generates a bunch of heat and criticism.
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