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. 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”
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.
No, Christians believe in only one g*d. They would be extremely offended at the notion of other people declaring belief in other g*ds or themselves a g*d. 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 there were multiple g*ds and then the Christian g*d clearly says he is a jealous g*d and he is the only one that can be worshipped according to Moses and the ten commandments.
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.
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.
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.
