Can someone explain the joke?
The Romans were supposedly in the habit of executing prisoners with captured lions in their arenas. When Christianity was still a minor cult it was at one point technically treason to deny the Emperor was a god, and so being a Christian was technically a crime against the state by default. In these arena matches you’d throw some ill-equipped criminals against something they had no hope of beating and call it justice when they get mauled to death in the “trial by combat.”
Anyways, the Christians with persecution complexes really like focusing on these few centuries of history with their millennias old church. This is a joke about both sets of prisoners signing up for the for “match” like it was a casual sporting event.
You can be a Christian and still believe in other gods. Those people chose to deny the emperor’s kintype, if they really did so at all.
No, Christians believe in only one gd. They would be extremely offended at the notion of other people declaring belief in other gds or themselves a gd. It’s the best way to piss off both an atheist and a christian at the same haha, at least according to me (atheist) and a (Mormon) friend I have. Before there were Christians, you had people believing they were multiple gds and then the Christian gd clearly says he is a jealous gd and he is the only one that can be worshipped according to Moses and the ten commandments.
The ten commandments don’t say no other gods. They say “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”. It’s absolutely fine to have other gods behind Deus, or equal to Him. Just no worshipping other gods more than Deus if you’re a christian.
Monotheism isn’t an essential part of christianity, it’s a pointless and harmful choice that assholes decided to justify by hiding behind the abuse of their own supposed religious beliefs.
1 Corinthians 8:6, Deuteronomy 6:4, 1 Timothy 2:5, Isaiah 44:6, James 2:19, John 17:3 would disagree with you.
Need any more?
You got any pre-roman sources or are you just going to trust what the Romans made up about Christianity after Jesus died?
Deuteronomy and Isaiah are Pre-Roman.
And the New Testament was not written by the Romans, but by first Century Christians
They’re differentiating between belief in a god and worship of a god.
Also, put a backslash before asterisks and it won’t make italics.
Thanks, I couldn’t figure it out haha
So there’s these things called the 10 commandments…
And the first one is to have no other gods before Yahweh. Not to have no others, period
That seems unlikely in mainstream, especially pre-protestant, Christianity. Typically festivals survived a culture turning Christian, but not the gods
“unlikely” “typically”. Yeah, I’m not saying it was normal for christians to be tolerant of others, I’m saying it’s normal for them to CHOOSE to be exclusionary. Being put to death isn’t a proportional response, but it’s not that much worse than they deserved. Look what happened when we put the monotheists in charge and let them do whatever they wanted; the crusades and the genocides in the new world. Monotheism is dangerous and you need to stamp it out. With violence if necessary. There is such a thing as polytheistic christianity, and it is the only good form of it.
Did you just call Christians exclusionary and then tried to justify executing monotheists… Which makes up like a quarter of the world’s population?
No, I didn’t justify executing them, I mitigated it. I justified a more general call to violence against monotheists. Pay attention.
Monotheism is a choice. It’s not an essential part of any belief system unless you count being a dick. It’s violent, and it deserves a proportional response.
No. The Bible makes it clear that you can only believe in one God and the first line of the Nicene creed is “We believe in one God”
I’ve never heard of this creed, it must not be important
I hear about Assassin’s Creed all the time. It must be important
/s
Really… Really wanted to give this comment gold… 🥇
Or you’re just simply not part of The Church…
Which one?
The one that Christ established. Christianity. The one with the Nicene creed that I just mentioned.
The Old Testament does makes it fairly clear that there are other gods, because it started as a polytheistic religion, Jehovah is just supposed to be your favorite (or he’ll kill you).
It’s the modern interpretations that decided to interpret that as monotheism, but that includes Christianity.
There’s no evidence for your claim. And the old testament does not. Yes, it refers to other gods as concepts but not as literal Gods
Wrong, read a book.
You tell him to read a book.
I think you should open your eyes.
Their claim does have support in so far that the early testament contains a lot of work written by polytheistic people that later in would become the monolatrists and even later monotheists that we know as Jews, further branching off into what today are Christians.
This does not mean that Christians in any sense are not purely monotheistic. Not only are they so, it’s one of the most critical parts of their beliefs, to the point where even believing that their one god has in any way shape or form some kind of tangible division is considered strict heresy from trinitarian churches which form the mainstream of Christianity and have done so for hundreds of years.
Edit: There is a great video by Alex O’Connor interviewing Esoterica on that topic in particular and they talk about the evidence that supports the viewpoints.
The first commandment is literally “you shall have no other gods before me.” If you look at different historical translations and viewpoints, it is well accepted that Judaism experienced a shift from polytheism to monotheism, and there is more evidence of that in the Old Testament. Passages referring to Yahwehs wife, waging war to defeat other gods, etc.
It’s talking about concepts, and the false gods existing as a concept. You could even have something like money, etc, be your god. What’s your source on “Yahweh’s wife” apart from the Church itself being His bride? (Which still doesn’t make the Church a god)
I feel it’s pretty clear from context that it means to not put other gods before their god rather than acknowledge the existence of a god.
