Constantine created Christianity

[Albion]

There are a few crackpots out there (when I google searched the thread title revealed) that would claim that Constantine 'invented' Christianity at the Council of Nicea.
Yes it's nuts but it does exist.

As though there never was a St. Paul, persecutions under Nero, never any Christians in catacombs, etc.?

Are you sure that they weren't using the word created or invented to mean "as we know it?"

 

[FenderTL5]

As though there never was a St. Paul, persecutions under Nero, never any Christians in catacombs, etc.?

Are you sure that they weren't using the word created or invented to mean "as we know it?"

yep.
excerpted:
"Christianity was invented for political purposes by the Roman Emperor Constantine (“The Great”) in 325 A.D. based on the myth of Mithra (Persian savior god born on December 25th)...
Emperor Constantine-continued: There were too many religions in Rome in 325 A.D. A Council was called in an endeavor to amalgamate the many religions of the Roman Empire into one."

 

[Albion]

yep.
excerpted:
"Christianity was invented for political purposes by the Roman Emperor Constantine (“The Great”) in 325 A.D. based on the myth of Mithra (Persian savior god born on December 25th)...
Emperor Constantine-continued: There were too many religions in Rome in 325 A.D. A Council was called in an endeavor to amalgamate the many religions of the Roman Empire into one."

I still can read that in two different ways, but perhaps you are correct. Some people will say that almost anything that history tells us is a myth, that someone sold us a bill of goods and it never really happened, etc.

 

[HTacianas]

I hear this claim repeated over and over again from different people that Constantine created Christianity after the council of Nicaea or the Edict of Milan. Joe Rogan makes this claim on his podcast which gets millions of downloads, Gnostics make this claim, etc.

Where does it come from?

Who first made this assertion?

What "proof" do they offer in defence of such a claim?

It's repeated often but I haven't been able to track down a source for such a claim, a claim so easily refuted.

Yours in the Lord,

jm

You'll hear that often from atheists, Muslims, Jews, and also any number of protestants. It comes mainly from, if not an outright disdain (to put it mildly) for Christianity, but also from those who oppose the teachings of the original Churches. By way of example, all those "Constantinians" look to many of the teachings of the Church then scour the bible, and believing they cannot be found there, proclaim them to be "unbiblical".

It's only a short hop from there to the Council of Nicea, and the belief takes hold that Nicea must be the origin of those teachings. Since Constantine called that Council and all but outright ordered the bishops of Nicea to resolve the Arian controversy, it's then only another short leap to accuse Constantine of creating all sorts of things. Even Christianity itself.

No real student of Church history, professional or an amateur such as myself, lends any credibility to those accusations. They have no merit whatever. The only thing Constantine actually did in furtherance of Christianity was to order all businesses except agriculture to be closed on Sunday, the long established day of worship for Christians, so that people could attend Church.

 

[Albion]

Just don't give us that "any number of protestants" thing again as part of saying that anyone who subscribes to this Constantine invented Christianity line is in error.

 

[Foxfyre]

I hear this claim repeated over and over again from different people that Constantine created Christianity after the council of Nicaea or the Edict of Milan. Joe Rogan makes this claim on his podcast which gets millions of downloads, Gnostics make this claim, etc.

Where does it come from?

Who first made this assertion?

What "proof" do they offer in defence of such a claim?

It's repeated often but I haven't been able to track down a source for such a claim, a claim so easily refuted.

Yours in the Lord,

jm

It is blatantly absurd since the Apostle Paul, the Emperors Caligula, Nero et al were referring to "Christians" long before Constantine.

What Constantine did was have the vision to recognize the superior organization skills and discipline manifested by Christian groups representing a diversity of people and seeing how such a thing, if it caught on, might help his widely diverse, fractured, and disorganized empire. So unlike other Emperors who largely ignored or persecuted Christians, he gave his blessings to them. And for the first time the Church would be under the favor and protection of the State.

Thus, most--not all but most--of the Church organized itself into the Roman Catholic Church and was free and encouraged to spread even more completely throughout the lands of Northern Africa, Asia, and Europe that comprised the Roman Empire. Thus even as the Empire was dissipating the Church remained. The Roman Catholics remain the largest Christian group but Martin Luther's 39 Theses nailed to the door of the church began the Reformation and was the birth of Protestantism and the rest as we say is history.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

Where does it come from?

I would cite "the Two Babylons" published in the 1800s as one likely source. That book for many was a bit of a trope codifier of the rhetoric you here about Christianity being a pagan corruption by some folks of the radical reformation, and the Hebrew roots movement.

The Two Babylons - Wikipedia


There also are the "Trail of Blood" Baptists
The Trail of Blood - Wikipedia


Besides that, I'm sure there were some Anabaptists that speculated about similar things but in less embellished ways even going back to the Reformation.

 

[Albion]

Not to get too far into the weeds with this, but it seems to me that neither The Two Babylons nor The Trail of Blood maintain that Christianity did not exist, at all, prior to the 4th century. The argument of the latter, in fact, is that Baptists of a sort actually can trace their existence back to the Apostolic Church.

 

[chilehed]

Where does it come from?

It comes from ignorance, mostly.

Who first made this assertion?

I have no clue.

What "proof" do they offer in defence of such a claim?

Essentially just that Constantine asked for a council to be held, therefore it decided whatever he wanted it to decide. It's a load of silly nonsense, the idea that these Bishops who had been so horribly tortured and yet not abandoned the faith would immediately change fundamental teachings at the request of the first Emperor to convert.

 

[JM]

I get it. Most of you agree with me that it's nonsense.

So, where did this conspiracy theory originate? ​

I'm guessing Germany, during the time of Schleiermacher or in the generation that followed, but I have no proof.

Yours in the Lord,

jm

 

[Blade]

Constantine created Christianity … in the past or maybe here once or twice? But when I then talk look into you ..I ME find they really didn't search deep enough. I can SEE and understand how one MIGHT see it that way. But "Christian" was a way of call them names. Making fun of the followers of Christ

 

[ViaCrucis]

The internet is full of errors, misinformation, and quackery. Also, people are frequently willing to believe what they are told is true without bothering to check sources or see for themselves if the information being presented has any veracity. Also at work here is good old fashioned confirmation bias.

None of these things are unique when it comes to misinformation and quackery as it pertains to the history of Christianity, but it is present there as well. Which is why people believe hacks like Alexander Hislop, Jack Chick, and Dorothy Murdock (aka Acharya S) in spite of the fact that these folks provide zero evidence to back up their claims, because there is no evidence to back up their claims.

Such misinformation can range the from the straight up absurdist (Constantine literally invented Christianity) to the more subtle but equally as fallacious (Constantine allowed and/or forced pagan elements to enter into Christian practice).

When it comes to, for example, various claims that there were a lot of virgin-born savior gods who were crucified and rose from the dead it's easy to point out the falsehood in these by simply going back and looking at what ancient people actually believed about such figures in their own mythologies and stories. Mithra emerged from solid rock, Dionysus was the product of sexual relations between Zeus and a human mother, Siddartha (Buddha) was the natural offspring of his parents, Krishna was the eighth child born to his mother and (very human) father. Osiris wasn't crucified and didn't rise from the dead, but instead was reborn as lord of the underworld; Horus wasn't born of a virgin but was the result of sexual union between Isis and the reassembled and magically enhanced corpse of Osiris. And so on and so forth.

The earliest mention of the Nativity feast of Solis Invictus is in the mid 4th century, and there's no evidence that Christians borrowed it to celebrate Christmas, and instead Christians were debating Christ's birth well before the beginning of the Solis Invictus cult. Easter has nothing to do with pagan fertility goddesses, the word "Easter" gets its name from the name of the month, Eostermonath; the name of the month (according to the Ven. Bede) comes from a supposed goddess named Eostre, but Bede is literally our only source and most of the names of the old Anglo-Saxon months are based on natural phenomenon, not gods--besides the majority of Christians have never called Easter "Easter" but use the more ancient term "Pascha" or variant thereof. "Easter" is a uniquely English term shared only with German "Ostern", even in other Germanic languages a variation of "Pascha" is used, such as the Dutch "Pasen", the Icelandic "Paska", the Faroese "Paskir", the Swedish "Pask", and so on.

And it really can go on and on. Some of the problem is that certain bits of misinformation just keep getting repeated over and over and becomes part of the cultural "common knowledge" landscape, sort of like lots of people still think Columbus set sail to prove the earth was round even though everyone in Europe already knew that, we've known the earth is round since the time of the ancient Greeks, hundreds of years before Christ. But these things just self-perpetuate. Which is why we get "Of course Constantine started [catholic] Christianity" or "Of course Christmas, Easter, and Halloween are pagan" and so on. Think of how often people still think the abbreviation "Xmas" is about "taking Christ out of Christmas" even though the "X" in Xmas is a monogram for Christ, it is the Greek letter Chi, not an "X", it stands for "Christ" and Xmas is a very old abbreviation for Christmas. Xmas is not "exmas" it is "Christ-mas".

-CryptoLutheran

 

[PaulCyp1]

Christianity (Catholicism) had already existed for three and a half centuries before Constantine came into power. Constantine was a product of the Church Jesus founded, not the other way around.

 

[Radagast]

Constantine tried to Christianize some pagan rituals which crept into Catholicism.

Not true.

 

[Radagast]

Unfortunately, "christianity" got invented about 200 years before he was emperor.

300 years before. By Jesus.

 

[Radagast]

The internet is full of errors, misinformation, and quackery.

Quoted for truth.

Also, people are frequently willing to believe what they are told is true without bothering to check sources or see for themselves if the information being presented has any veracity.

That too. Plus the fact that people learn so little history at school.

 

[Not David]

Constantine created Istanbul, I mean, Constantinople.

 

[Radagast]

Constantine created Istanbul, I mean, Constantinople.

 

[Dave-W]

300 years before. By Jesus.

Not at all. He wanted to transform Judaism.

 

[Radagast]

Not at all. He wanted to transform Judaism.

Actually, no.