On Constantine and Mithra Controversy

  • Thread starter Thread starter patrickcarbonell
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
P

patrickcarbonell

Guest
There is this YouTube documentary from a channel called Syndicado that is trying its best to decieve Christians that Christianity (especially Catholicism) during the time of Constantine was dilluted by Constantine itself and that his visions of Christ’s cross was merely his propaganda to win over Christian soldiers from both sides to fight for him. May I know your position on this? It will be great if you watch their so-called researches to be able give a clearer response to this. Thank you and God bless you.
 
Last edited:
I think too many people are too trusting of videos on YouTube instead of actual historical facts. Just because someone claims something does not make it so. I’ve noticed that many atheists (not all) are not as skeptical as a lot of them claim to be. By the way, I think what you’re talking about is what is called a pagan influence policy. You would think for people that claim to be into logic, they would know logical fallacies
 
Last edited:
Those who try to disprove Christianity always fall back on Constatine. This is
nothing new.
 
Gives me the opportunity to remind folks of the BEST satire site online!

 
Have you seen Horus reads the internet? I think that’s, what it’s called, on the same channel.
 
The fact is Constantine stopped the persecutions of Christians and was baptized. But all that happened after he won the crucial battle where he saw the chi-ro symbol. He was the Emperor so he didn’t need to ‘win over’ soldiers, in those times the people didn’t have power. Only the Senate which represented the rich could oppose him.
 
The video does show that the host went to investigate Constantine’s Arch near the Roman Colosseum showing that if Constantine really envisioned Christ, then the Arch made after his triumph must show even tiny evidences such as crosses on the shields as well as banners, but not one was ever depicted on the images. Other images on it shows Mithra priests due to their unique hoods but not a single Christian image is found. This is being used as a way for them to conclude that the Christianity of Constantine is Mithra-inspired and is not anymore the Christianity of the 1st century. There are other more so-called evidences or non-evidences shown in the video. I just want to know what Catholic apologetics may say about this.
 
Last edited:
That is a bad argument. It doesn’t prove or disapprove anything, other than preference for a certain type of architecture.
 
Last edited:
Give it a thumb down, post the truth and do not look back. You will burn yourself out opposing evil in all its forms. Let God do the heavy lifting through your prayer.
 
From time to time we hear (or read) the expression “Constantinian Christianity”. It seems to be a fairly recent term, though I don’t know exactly who originated it, and when. I found three names, Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, and Cornel West, but whether it dates back earlier than any of these three, I don’t know. It seems to be used, invariably, in a derogatory sense, implying that “Constantinian Christianity” is an inferior, second-rate kind of religion. We don’t see people describing themselves as “Constantinian Christians,” only other people, that the writer or speaker disapproves of.

Another term, the “Constantinian shift,” seems to be more neutral in tone, expressing neither approval nor disapproval, but just labeling an event that happened in the history of Christianity. I have seen it defined as “First and foremost, what happens to the church when worldly power is used to accomplish what God has given his people to do without such power.”

The three writers I named are certainly not Catholics, but the argument they are advancing seems to have some substance to it. It’s not just an obvious production-line fabrication of the common anti-Catholic, Chick Tract kind.

Maybe if @billsherman sees this he can help?
 
Last edited:
I don’t know Cornel West, but I’m something of a Hauerwas fan (😅) and if I remember correctly, he uses that expression to describe what he sees as an unhealthy collusion between Christian faith and temporal power, particularly military power. I don’t think he’s making any pronouncement on the sincerity of Constantine’s conversion.
 
Thank you, @OddBird. I have never read anything by any of those three writers, but I believe they are all reputable scholars whose work deserves to be taken seriously.
 
Last edited:
Hauerwas is well worth a read, but he’s an ethicist, not a historian of the early Church.
 
Last edited:
I’ve always been a huge fan of Stanley Hauerwas and John Howard Yoder. Yoder was in fact the first Mennonite and pacifist I ever read. A brilliant mind, but a man I later found out was a serial sexual abuser. His life is sadly another lesson that even a person who can write so beautifully about the command to love our neighbor, can also be a monster in private life.

More to the point of the topic, Yoder uses the term Constantininism to refer to a mutually beneficial relationship between the Church and state. Essentially, whenever they aid each other in achieving their goals. He saw the relationship between the Church and state as fundamentally anti-Christian because it required the Church to seek temporal power (or at minimum alliances with temporal power), and he believe that Christians must reject temporal power and pursuits. Yoder believed that temporal power is based on violence and the threat of violence, and that all Christians must reject this. Christians must be what he called “radical pacifists” who, like Christ, would peacefully accept their death rather than compromise with temporal power.

I want to emphasize that Yoder was not a Catholic, so his theology is also not Catholic. Additionally, he is a good example of a person who clearly talked the talk, but didn’t walk the walk. His personal life severely damaged the lives of dozens of women, and his superiors covered for him for years.
 
With regards to the Arch of Constantine, we must approach this topic first from an archaeological and historical perspective.

The Arch of Constantine was built in 315 but, contrary to popular belief, it was not built by Constantine and only depicts the Battle of Milvian Bridge on a single bas relief. The vast majority of the features on the Arch were cannibalized from earlier triumphal monuments. From 312 to 315, Constantine did not reside in Rome. He was busy consolidating his power across the Empire against the other competing members of the Tetrarchy (Senior and Junior Emperors in both the East and West).

In Constantine’s absence, the Senate had slowly tried to assume Imperial power within the city and its immediate surroundings. In 315, Constantine returned to Rome to bring the Senate in line. In an attempt to save their positions, the Senate hastily threw up the Arch of Constantine so that Constantine would see that they supported the him. They had to pull down previous monuments and re-carve the images of the old Emperors into Constantine’s likeness. In the tradition of other triumphal arches, they included images of the vast array of Imperial duties which Constantine carried out. The ‘Mithran priests with their unique hoods’ are not actually priests, they are Dacian prisoners (their hands are tied) taken from the Arch of Marcus Aurelius.

There was, however, a very specific political point that the Senate was trying to make. In 313, the Edict of Milan granted religious toleration to all religions within the Empire. For years, when Christians were persecuted, especially under Maxentius, the government recorded the possessions and property of the convicted and those possessions and property were distributed among the government officials and noble class families. With the Edict of Milan, these properties were taken back from the officials and nobles and given back to the families of those convicted. If there was no family left, then they were to be given back to the local Christian Church.

(post 1 of 2)
 
Last edited:
(post 2 of 2)

The families of Senators were the greatest beneficiaries of these Christian lands and properties confiscated by Maxentius. Many of their fortunes were destroyed when they were forced to give them back. While the Edict of Milan gave religious toleration to everyone, Roman pantheism was still the official religion of the Empire. The Emperor, by law, was still required to act as the empire’s Pontifex Maximus, the high priest of the state religion. In the images, the Senators were reminding Constantine of his responsibilities to Roman pagan religion, hoping to petition him regarding the restoration of the confiscated properties to them.

It didn’t work because Constantine not only ordered the continued return of the confiscated Christian properties, he confiscated the entire fortunes of a handful of his most vocal opponents. Some of these funds were given to Pope Sylvester I to renovate the residence he had given to the Christian Church (later known as the Lateran Palace).

The modern understanding of the more mystical events of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge are greatly embellished from the original source. Eusebius was Constantine’s court historian. In his first account of the Battle, written only a year later, Eusebius makes no mention of Constantine’s vision. It only states that Constantine prayed to God and then he won. The only mention of any Christian sign is after the Battle when Constantine crafted an image of the Lord’s passion (what it is, it does not say) while the Senate and the people of Rome were celebrating and placed it in the hand of his statue in Rome.

This sort of votive offering was common in pagan culture and showed, somewhat, Constantine’s ignorance of Christianity as distinct from paganism. These votives would be made of sticks, fabrics, or rope and would be burned later with incense in the sacrificial brazier at the foot of the statue. At this point, Constantine was not a Christian. He only attributed his reign to the God of Christianity. He would not be instructed in the Faith until he settled in Constantinople and would only be baptized a few days before his death.
 
billsherman said:
Constantininism
Click to expand...
BartholomewB said:
“Constantinian Christianity”
Click to expand...
It’s interesting to note that ‘a mutually beneficial relationship between the Church and state’ is looked upon positively in Orthodoxy. Termed the symphonia of powers, (συμφονία, ‘speaking together’) it is held to be the ideal state of affairs between the temporal and sacral spheres of powers.

Orthodox theologians have historically distinguished symphonia against what is described as ‘papocaesarism’ (applied to the Catholic Church) where the religious assumes temporal authority. The idea of the Catholic Church no longer being a church but a state is very common in polemical Orthodox thought (it’s repeated through Dostoevsky’s writings).

Also distinguished is ‘caesaropapism’ where the temporal assumes religious authority. They have historically applied this to the Anglican Church where the monarch is the Supreme Governor, as well as various Lutheran Churches (e.g. Frederick William III via royal decrees amalgamated Reformed and Lutheran churches in Prussia). But Orthodox have also viewed periods of Byzantine rule as caesaropapist.
 
Bithynian said:
It’s interesting to note that ‘a mutually beneficial relationship between the Church and state’ is looked upon positively in Orthodoxy. Termed the symphonia of powers, (συμφονία, ‘speaking together’) it is held to be the ideal state of affairs between the temporal and sacral spheres of powers.
Click to expand...
Fascinating. That is very interesting to note! Thank you for the informative post!
 
no even if we look it from a purely secular historians point of view it makes no sense for one he was already kinda of sympathetic towards them before

Constantine played any role in the persecution of diocletian in 302
when the edict was removed by Galerius and the edict of toleration was singed
It has been speculated that the reversal of his long-standing policy of Christian persecution has been attributable to one or both of these co-Caesars most likely constantine

also his mother was a chirstian the secular historian reason for constantine covertion (its still debated but iam saying the most common) is that he need it a common religion to unite the diverse peoples of the roman empire not that he need it some soldiers to be nice with him.

also the roman version of mithraism and heck even the persian one are so different from christianity that any historian worth their dignity would laugh at the idea that they are similar or that the latter stole from the first
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top