Timeline for Preventing the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 20, 2022 at 3:30 | comment | added | user86462 | @Graham While I don't buy every part of what elemtilas is saying, there was an organised church before Constantine. Justin Martyr describes various consensus and controversial beliefs by 160 AD and other early texts support it; furthermore, the role of bishops (whether 'monarchial' or not) is attested to by almost every early Christian writer. Polycarp, Eusebius, Clement, Justin Martyr, and many others were or attest to the role of bishops in some form of organised structure, the details of which are contested by Catholics, E.O's, Protestants, and atheists. | |
| Dec 20, 2022 at 3:27 | comment | added | Mary | And all those Epistles were carefully preserved by the other groups. | |
| Aug 11, 2018 at 12:59 | comment | added | Graham | @elemtilas And you're doing what Tim explicitly mentioned in his first paragraph. The pre-Constantine church was not centrally organized, which is why we have all those Epistles from self-proclaimed leaders to tell other groups how they're supposedly getting it wrong, and why the Council of Nicea was necessary to settle on a unified message of what did and didn't constitute Christianity. | |
| Aug 11, 2018 at 12:34 | comment | added | elemtilas | A number of errors here. Peter didn't form the Church; Jesus did and made Peter the first pope. The Church after Constantine was really no different than the Church before, except that it gained in political clout. I'm wondering what kind of uninformed historian would not recognise the three centuries of the Church's existence and activity before Constantine. Until the 11th century, the Church really was, in every sense of the word, unified. There were, of course, heretical groups that were dealt with, but literally, from Britain to North Africa, to Arabia and up into Armenia, one Church. | |
| Aug 11, 2018 at 7:52 | history | answered | Tim B II | CC BY-SA 4.0 |