Constantine is dead, milvian bridge lost: what happens to christianity?

Archon of Thessaly

Constantine is, after Christ, the most important man in Christianitys history. Before him, Christianity was a persacuted, reviled personality cult that was a constant scapegoat when things went wrong. Christianity itself was undergoing an idenitiy crisis in the peroid, with full scale conflict between bishops and monks over tiny details of christs' life ( one meeting between bishops and dignitaries ended in a full scale fight that left the church floor covered in 140 bodies........what happened to " turn the other cheek?)

Constantine gave order and momentum to the cult. He gave it direction. The doctrains so familier to chritians today were mostly introduced by constantine- including the highly imprtant concept of jesus being the son of god ( prior to constantine to suggest such a thing would get you killed.)

So if he was killed at milvian bridge, his army destroyed, then what happens to christianity? Does it remain a a large cult fueding for power against other paganistic religion? Will it wither under its own internal squabbles? Will it sieze power anyway? Will Islam ever develop?

To ask what the world would look like without christianity would be too much i think for us to even think about ( unless your me and you just butterfly away mankinds existance in my TL " a brave new world ")

And this is not just me hinting at my next project of course........

My latest TL:
A brave new world: Dinosaurs not quite wiped out......
 

Basileus Giorgios

Archon of Thessaly said:
Before him, Christianity was a persacuted, reviled personality cult that was a constant scapegoat when things went wrong.
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It was a sporadically persecuted major religion, that had majority status in plenty of the prosperous cities of the Greek East. The idea that Christians were a tiny, reviled cult by the fourth century isn't true.

Archon of Thessaly said:
He gave it direction. The doctrains so familier to chritians today were mostly introduced by constantine- including the highly imprtant concept of jesus being the son of god ( prior to constantine to suggest such a thing would get you killed.)
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No-one's disputing that Constantine did a heck of a lot of clarifying what positions were "Orthodox", but it'd be a big step too far to suggest that he was actively involved in making up doctrine on the spot. I've not read anything that suggests that Jesus was not already considered the Son by the time of Constantine's conversion- although there were certainly Jesus-venerating Jewish sects about that did deny him that title.

Archon of Thessaly said:
So if he was killed at milvian bridge, his army destroyed, then what happens to christianity? Does it remain a a large cult fueding for power against other paganistic religion? Will it wither under its own internal squabbles? Will it sieze power anyway? Will Islam ever develop?
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Most likely the third option, I think- at the very least, some states will be Christian. Armenia already had been for some time, and the Iranians and Arabs could well adopt Jesus-venerating religions, either Christianity or closely related ones. Islam will certainly be butterflied, though a similar religion could quite easily arise, combining Jewish, *Christian, Arabic pagan and Zoroastrian ideas.

Hope these thoughts help. :)
 

Mikestone8

Maybe Christianity spreads from Armenia and Abyssinia into Arabia (as happened to some extent OTL), the Peninsula is united under a Christian leader, and we get Arab invasions in the name of Christianity instead of Islam.
 
Alex Richards

Alex Richards

Donor
I think the main effects will be more hierarchical than doctrinal.

The Primacy of the Rome is unlikely to come about here, and indeed the Pentarchy itself is probably not going to happen, being based on significant Roman cities as much as Christian sees.

If we see any sort of organisation, it could be both more fractured (with more churches in the West and East that nominally were under the juridstriction of Rome and Constantinople) and also more unified, at least nominally, by not having a strict dividing line drawn between the Nestorian and Roman/Orthodox Churches.
 

Lysandros Aikiedes

Its one thing for Christianity to spread, but without ever being endorsed by the far-flung and centralized (relatively-speaking/some-of-the-time) Roman Empire, it will lack the social influence and state support to develop anything as powerful and wide-ranging as the Catholic Church. It'll just divide ever more into new rival sects, which would be lucky to gain high favour in specific locality.
 

QuoProQuid

A documentary I watched a few months ago made the assertation that Christianity was a very popular religion among Roman soldiers and that Constantine's conversion may have been partly to avoid any loyalty issues with his forces.

Would it be possible for part of the Roman Army to rise up and install a Christian Emperor? I really do not know much on the period.
 
Alex Richards

Alex Richards

Donor
QuoProQuid said:
A documentary I watched a few months ago made the assertation that Christianity was a very popular religion among Roman soldiers and that Constantine's conversion may have been partly to avoid any loyalty issues with his forces.

Would it be possible for part of the Roman Army to rise up and install a Christian Emperor? I really do not know much on the period.
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Well, the army did have the capacity to cause at least a civil war over the rightful emperor by acclaiming someone else as one.

It'd need to be a relatively ambitious, popular general who happened to be a Christian though.
 

MerryPrankster

Archon of Thessaly said:
Constantine gave order and momentum to the cult. He gave it direction. The doctrains so familier to chritians today were mostly introduced by constantine- including the highly imprtant concept of jesus being the son of god ( prior to constantine to suggest such a thing would get you killed.)
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That's not accurate. The Arian/Athanasian dispute arbitrated by Constantine was over whether the Son was a created being or not. In both camps, He was the Son of God.
 

MerryPrankster

QuoProQuid said:
A documentary I watched a few months ago made the assertation that Christianity was a very popular religion among Roman soldiers and that Constantine's conversion may have been partly to avoid any loyalty issues with his forces.
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It was? I thought the army was mostly into Mithraism.

When Julian the Apostate, well, apostatized, the army didn't have any problems with hailing the emperor in a pagan fashion IIRC.
 

Emperor Constantine

Well one Emperor, I can't remember which but I want to say it was Alexander Severus, wanted to add Jesus to the Pantheon. So maybe another emperor does just that. Jesus the savior and son of Zeus or something like that. With Jesus in the pantheon Christianity could become a more official sect/cult in the empire.
 
DanMcCollum

DanMcCollum

Emperor Constantine said:
Well one Emperor, I can't remember which but I want to say it was Alexander Severus, wanted to add Jesus to the Pantheon. So maybe another emperor does just that. Jesus the savior and son of Zeus or something like that. With Jesus in the pantheon Christianity could become a more official sect/cult in the empire.
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Now, THAT, would make for a fascinating timeline. Greeco-Roman synthising at its best. I wonder what that would do to Christianity; it seems that many of the church leaders were fairly wedded to maintaining the Jewish connections to the new sect by this point. This could easily break the movement, with those who maintain the Old Testament, and those who see Jesus has springing from the Greek religious tradition. Hmmmm.
 
Athelstane

Athelstane

Hello Archon,

one meeting between bishops and dignitaries ended in a full scale fight that left the church floor covered in 140 bodies........what happened to " turn the other cheek

Exactly what meeting were you thinking of here?
 

Mongo

Emperor Julian said:
I'd place Paul ahead of Constantine. Some might even say that Paul is more important than Jesus himself.
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Agreed. Considering that Jesus considered himself a Jew, and his original followers in Jerusalem considered themselves Jewish, whereas Paul never met Jesus, and introduced the bulk of what we now call Christian theology without any reference to (or apparent knowledge of) the life of Jesus, and apparently was regarded with a lot of hostility by the Jerusalem Jesus organization, I would argue that he was more important to Christian theology than Jesus himself.
 

The Ubbergeek

is it possible anyway that another power figure take later Christians as power base, and so...

maybe an heretical early branches, like Arianists?

Heck, the Goths when they come later, maybe.. they started Arianists...
 

veni vidi vici

constatine only adopted Christianity because it had one God so that it would not have people worshiping multiple gods, placing one ahead of another, and potentially fighting over it. HE also adopted Mirthraism because their was only god there to. He was actually baptized on his death bed when he couldn't say no. however I believe that any rebel emperor that is politically savvy enough would adopted Christianity. Edward Gibbson's Decline and fall of the Roman Empire volume I goes into great length about this
 

The Ubbergeek

veni said:
constatine only adopted Christianity because it had one God so that it would not have people worshiping multiple gods, placing one ahead of another, and potentially fighting over it. HE also adopted Mirthraism because their was only god there to. He was actually baptized on his death bed when he couldn't say no. however I believe that any rebel emperor that is politically savvy enough would adopted Christianity. Edward Gibbson's Decline and fall of the Roman Empire volume I goes into great length about this
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Eh, methink it's more complex than this, and Gibbon was kinda disproved by recent works at some parts...
 
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