Constantine 1 was not great!

Clips from this video were taken from the following BBC documentary:

"Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire, part 5 of 6, Constantine"

Constantine 1st, whether he considered himself a Christian or not, played a major role in the rise of Christianity. That major role he played paved the road that ultimately led to many atrocities that were committed with relevance to Christianity: The Crusades, Crusader sacking of Constantinople during the so-called Fourth Crusade, Medieval Inquisition, Spanish Inquisition, Spanish conquistadors, French wars of religion, Spanish Armada, 30 Years War (started as a civil war between rival religious factions, estimated death toll at 7 million), Protestant witch-hunts, use of Bible to justify slavery, Ku Klux Klan, Abortion clinic bombings, and the use of the Bible to justify the murder of homosexuals. Such atrocities that are relevant to Christianity surely would have never happened had it not been for Constantine's role in the rise of Christianity. Why, on these occasions, did the "loving, peaceful and merciful God of the Bible" not intervene in order to save these people from such disgusting crimes against humanity? Christianity holds that God is of love, peace and mercy. In this vidoe of mine, I challenge these claims. If one "accepts" the existence of the Christian God, then that individual would have to accept that this same God allowed certain historic events to take place. That is not saying that, with having "accepted" the existence of the Christian God, God MADE these particular events happen, but that he ALLOWED them to happen. There is a difference. I accuse Christianity of having perverted meanings for the words love, peace and mercy. As far as I'm concerned, if the Christian God was loving, peaceful and merciful, then he one, would have raised his children (humanity) by teaching them that violence and murder is not the answer, two, would have intervened in matters of violence out of love and concern for the welfare of his children, and three, would always be there for his children instead of being ultimately responsible for creating a situation in which his children have to be irrational people by putting faith in a man who is akin to many ancient mythological characters (including Gilgamesh and the Greek god Dionysus) in order to save them from burning to a crisp in the afterlife. That, to me, sounds like a God who has major mental issues. If God knows the future (omniscience) and loves his children, then why did he give his children a book that he knew beforehand was going to be relevant to so many atrocities throughout history? Absurd!

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Constantine
• the
• great
• first
• emperor
• roman
• empire
• Constantinople
• Christian
• Christianity
• bloodshed
• bad
• evil
• love
• peace

[TheYu87]

f***** you! Infedel! Muslim!

[tothboy01]

@TheYu87, I am not a muslim. Islam is as dumb as Christianity.

[TheJam1192]

@Lhein33 I'm not saying Constantine was responsible for everything. I think you missed my original point and now we've moved to topics elsewhere.

[Lhein33]

@TheJam1192 Ofc, Constantine was no god; he couldn't change the flow of history. When the Turks came (700 yrs after his death) they caused a lot of problems and finally (1,100 yrs after his death) the took the City. But there are so many events between the 2 periods that we cannot say that Constantine was responsible for everything.

It's a historical fact that Constantine stopped the crisis & the financial crisis with crucial decisions; few men can say they changed their state better than him

[TheJam1192]

@Lhein33 Well you can't deny that the person's faith going to effect what they did in history. The eastern half of the empire was not hit as heavy by the migration and the west was nearly broke financially during that time. I use the word curtail because it was still headed toward decline. It wasn't on its way back up. It still slowly came to a tumble. If you look at the later migrations of nomads like the turks, the east still fell to the same problems.

[Lhein33]

@TheJam1192 When I study history, I don't care if somebody was Christian, Muslim or pagan. I see only what he did.

Constantine is not responsible for the Völkerwanderung; the fact that the prefered by him half of his state lasted DESPITE the hostility the migrated people had against it shows how skilful he was.

Also, how can you use the word "curtail", since we talk about 7 to 11 centuries? How long should his currency or his empire had lived to say that he breathed life into them? 3,000 yrs?

[TheJam1192]

@Lhein33 All he really did was curtail the decline which continued back again after he died because of more civil war, barbarian migration, ect. Funny how Christians don't talk about him very much with all he did for them.

[Lhein33]

@TheJam1192 It's important to know WHY, when we study history though.

About the decline of the Roman empire, I can't understand why you think that. Constantine created a currency that remained unaltered for 700 years (world record!), built a city that became the strategic, diplomatic & trade center of the world for 1,100 yrs, regenerated/restructured an empire that marked positively the world for 1,100 yrs, saved thousands of people from the persecutions & followed a wise policy of appeasement.

[TheJam1192]

@Lhein33 I don't much care why he did it. Only he can know that. In my opinion however it marks one of the turns toward the decline of the Romans and of technological advancement. I do think he was a very impressive figure of history though.

[Lhein33]

@TheJam1192 It's funny how half of Constantine's critisizers accuse him of "creating" Christianity from almost nothing for his own ambitions, while the other half accuse him of having understood the certain victory of Christianity and having adapted his policy to this. Can't you agree what really happened? Was Constantine certain that Christianity will prevail or he took an insignificant religion and exalted it to consolidate his rule?

[MegaVenom777]

@MrGendawy you are not a great christian and need to go to church more or read your bible or something. wow just wow.

[MegaVenom777]

@TheJam1192 Constantine was always pagan he was never christian he tried to ruin the religion by mixing it with paganism at the same time making himself look like a god(statue of apollo having a cross but having Constantine face, his arch marked with all paganism symbols and him wanting to be a part Flavian dynasty so much so he named himself Flavian Constantine .) Constantine never wanted to kill Christians instead fight and destroy their ideals.