^ On "Turning the other cheek".
Excerpts marked as from http://christianism.com
1. On Gibbon's Decline and Fall again
2. Constantine's conversion again
While all the capitalisation is part of the original, I applied the bold and the blue in the excerpts to follow.
Pasted two paras of the following once before. But I found the whole piece very insightful. There's a pattern somewhere in all this that may be helpful. History may be our best friend here.
(The below-mentioned Tillemont is I think the person mentioned by McCabe as being one of the christian historians who cut out some of the many fake martyrs from church history.)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->'The pious men of Tillemont's [1637 - 1698] day who brought to history precision, clarity, and accuracy, also did much of the spadework for the attack on Christianity to be launched by the Enlightenment. Their labors cleared the ground of ecclesiastical history of the rubbish of centuries. The example was not lost on the enlighteners. The step from the rejection of some legends to the rejection of all legends was very short. Tillemont carefully--and perhaps sadly--pruned from the history of the primitive church some of the most colorful, but spurious, legends. With a sigh (Gibbon imagines) he rejected the Acts of Artemius, "a veteran and a martyr who attests as an eye-witness the vision of Constantine."31 IT IS NOT UNUSUAL FOR THE SINCERE EFFORTS OF ONE GENERATION TO PROVIDE THE NEXT WITH THE PRECONDITIONS FOR DESTROYING AN OLD IDEOLOGY. In the case of Tillemont the case is very clear: it is Edward Gibbon who inherits these labors.' [133-134].
'Tillemont's myopia about Roman civilization arises directly from his religious views. The Romans were pagans, and paganism was anathema. His Christian charity did not extend to paganism. He delighted in the horrible deaths of the fourth-century emperors who had persecuted Christianity: they provided wonderful proof of a vengeful God.36 He was deeply disturbed that God had permitted the pagan emperors Marcus Aurelius and Trajan to escape an excruciating death: "Suffer me, O Lord, to ask if You always destroyed those who did not understand the work of Your hands...? You ["Lord"] have visibly destroyed Nero, Domitian, and others. But did you destroy Trajan and Marcus in the same way? They certainly deserved destruction, for they failed to apprehend the miracles of Your grace when they had these miracles before their eyes. In addition, they persecuted Your servants. Yet, they died in their beds, honored, revered, loved, and esteemed by all men."37 He [Tillemont] despised pagan Rome, and "he never dismisses a virtuous emperor without pronouncing his damnation."38' [137].
["Tillemont, Louis Sébastien Le Nain de (1637-98), French Church historian....
His fame rests on the Memoires pour servir a l'histoire ecclesiastique des six premiers siecles (16 vols., 1693-1712), a work of enormous erudition, covering the development of the Church from the beginning of Christianity to the year 513....
For comprehensiveness the work has not been surpassed, though it lacks elegance of style. It was much used by E. Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire...." (Ox. Dict. C.C., 1997, p. 1622)].
'It is not Gibbon's want of accuracy that makes his treatment of Christianity so distasteful to devout men. Gibbon would never play fast and loose with the facts. What makes his classic account so Gibbonian is the withering irony with which he treats the subject. And as is well known, Gibbon says he learned to handle the weapon of irony, "even on subjects of Ecclesiastical solemnity,"73 from Pascal
[Blaise Pascal 1623 - 1662].
It is possible to argue that Gibbon's reliance on Tillemont has nothing to do with Jansenism. Tillemont was a great historian and a superb source for a historian of Gibbon's interests and temperament. With magisterial ease he swept away the pious foundations and assumptions of Tillemont's work, and used him merely as an exceptionally reliable guide. That Tillemont was a Jansenist fanatic is merely coincidental so far as Gibbon is concerned. This would be a perfectly adequate explanation of Gibbon's numerous references to Tillemont and his respect for the work of his predecessor. It would be a perfectly adequate explanation, that is, were it not for the fact that Gibbon was fascinated with Jansenism throughout his life, and that another Jansenist fanatic, Blaise Pascal, was singled out by Gibbon himself as central to his intellectual development.' [145].
"Whatever the initial impact of Pascal, his influence was continuous. This is precisely the problem: why did Gibbon find the Jansenists in general, and Pascal in particular, so fascinating? Gibbon had long been interested in religious problems, and in the Memoirs he sketches that slightly ludicrous sense of the young boy, with an oversized head, disputing earnestly on the mysteries of the trinity, or reincarnation, with his kind, loving, and limited Aunt Porten. This fascination lasted a lifetime, and besides the classics, the two species of books best represented in Gibbon's library are travel books and books on religion and theology. He was forever reading tracts and treatises on the most arcane and arid subjects of theology and church history. His careful and detailed histories of Arians, Monophysites, Gnostics, Armenians, and a dozen other Christian splinter groups, are ample proof of his interest. Perhaps no other man outside holy orders, indeed almost outside the church, knew as much of these things as did GIBBON. And WHAT MOST FASCINATED HIM WAS FANATICISM. THE PATHOLOGICAL SIDE OF RELIGION PROVIDED AN ENDLESS SOURCE OF STUDY for this sceptical rationalist." [147].
'In a sense the Decline and Fall may be considered the first answer to St. Augustine's [354 - 430] City of God. From the vantage point of the high Enlightenment Gibbon is looking back across the centuries to that giant, and is attacking Augustine's explanation of why Rome fell. It is not, Gibbon argues, God's providence that brought Rome down. It is the very real, earthly enemy, the early Christians, that canker in the breast of an already decaying empire. Gibbon's Rome is the work of men, and its fall is the work of men. Gibbon is in many ways a pagan gentleman of the late empire, surveying with sadness and passion the accumulated crimes of lese-majeste against his beloved Rome. His [Gibbon] is the first extensive and comprehensive response to St. Augustine; and as the Decline and Fall recapitulates many of the arguments used by Pagan apologists in the fifth century, so, too, does it plead [1637 - 1698] for an earthly cause for Rome's fall.
Tillemont [1637 - 1698] and the Jansenists are, for Gibbon [1737 - 1794], the modern-day representatives of Augustine's [354 - 430] views. As such they are the enemy. Tillemont accepts, without apparent question or modification, Augustine's explanation for Rome's fall. His compilation of the sources, especially from the age of Constantine to the invasions, rests on an assumption of providential action. It might legitimately be argued that Tillemont's work is the scholarly gloss to the City of God. And there is in this perhaps an additional irony, Gibbon, the pagan champion of Rome, took as his guide a modern Augustinian; and through a mastery of irony, learned from Pascal, he used one Augustinian to confound another. Gibbon's "sure-footed mule" is not only the most important of Gibbon's many guides; he is also the incarnation of the Augustinian view. The Jansenists are opponents of genius and stature. IT IS THROUGH TILLEMONT AND PASCAL THAT GIBBON REACHES BACK THROUGH THE CENTURIES TO CONFRONT ST. AUGUSTINE, AND TO ATTEMPT TO TOPPLE THE CITY OF GOD AND REPLACE IT WITH THE DECLINE AND FALL.' [157-158].<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Constantine
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->[footnote] "1Nero [Emperor 54 - 68 (37 - 68)], the emperor, was refused initiation (into the Eleusinian mysteries) on account of his mother's murder, and, notwithstanding his threats, they [apparently, pagan priests] persisted in their refusal;
and CONSTANTINE [Emperor 306 (312) - 337 (280? - 337)] COULD FIND NO PAGAN PRIEST WHO WOULD CONSENT TO ABSOLVE HIM FROM HIS MURDERS. HE BECAME A CHRISTIAN, AND PROCURED ABSOLUTION.--Philosophy of History; or, A Philosophical and Historical Dissertation, etc. etc., by Voltaire [1694 - 1778] (London, 1829), p. 219." [115].<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->'....WHY, ASKS GIBBON, DID CONSTANTINE RECEIVE BAPTISM ONLY ON HIS DEATHBED? BECAUSE, HE ANSWERS, HE WAS NOT A RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIAST BUT A CRAFTY POLITICIAN <b>and a man terrified about the fate of his soul</b>. Despite the outraged cries of the church fathers, BAPTISM JUST BEFORE DEATH WAS COMMON IN THE EARLY CHURCH: "BY THE DELAY OF THEIR BAPTISM, THEY COULD VENTURE FREELY TO INDULGE THEIR PASSIONS IN THE ENJOYMENTS OF THIS WORLD, WHILE THEY STILL RETAINED IN THEIR HANDS THE MEANS OF A SURE AND EASY ABSOLUTION [FORGIVENESS!]."65
Imagine the appeal this expedient had for an emperor consumed by ambition and willing to pursue his goals "through the dark and bloody paths of war and policy." <b>For Constantine baptism in extremis was more than an attraction: it was a necessity. After his victory over Licinius [324: defeated by Constantine, surrendered, executed] "he abandoned himself, without moderation, to the abuse of his fortune."66 Success had removed the need for dissimulation and the emperor's true character stood nakedly exposed. In 326 he [Constantine] murdered his son, Crispus [d. 326], and soon afterwards, his wife, Fausta [289 - 326]: "he could no longer be ignorant that the church was possessed of an infallible remedy,"67</b> Constantine's Christianity was a rough-and-ready, pragmatic faith. "The sublime theory of the gospel had made a much fainter impression on the heart than on the understanding of Constantine himself."68 Whatever political advantages conversion to Christianity offered, the crimes and tyranny of his last years finally decided the issue. Constantine was baptized on his deathbed to "remove the temptation and the danger of a relapse" and in this act he declared to the public and to posterity the true and insidious nature of his conversion to Christianity....
Gibbon does not set a precise date for the conversion, but he rejects any date prior to 324. He favors 324-326, with a definitive public declaration coming only on his deathbed. Around this time the pagan symbolism disappears, or begins to disappear, from imperial coins; this is the period of Constantine's famous circular letter exhorting his subjects to "imitate, without delay, the example of their sovereign, and to embrace the divine truth of Christianity."71 In 325 the emperor [Constantine] presided over the first ecumenical council; he proscribed the pagan gods in his new capital [Constantinople] soon afterwards, and he secured Christian tutors for his sons. These facts, coupled with the political and personal reasons for Constantine's conversion, satisfy Gibbon, and he rests his case. He [Gibbon] has achieved his purpose: he [GIBBON] has REDUCED THE CONVERSION [OF CONSTANTINE] TO POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY aided by seduction and moral corruption; he has blackened the name of the first Christian emperor [Constantine]; and he [Gibbon] has suggested that Constantine's crimes and political reforms, both of which hastened the fall of Rome, OCCURRED AFTER he [CONSTANTINE] WAS A CHRISTIAN....' [209-211].<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Disagree with the assessment that Gibbon blackened the name of Constantine. Christotyrant/murderer Constantine did that to himself. He's left enough rope for everyone to hang him once over.
The last para makes it seems like Gibbon just jumped to the conclusions he wanted to arrive at. No, the conclusions are staring everyone in the face. He saw the clearly connecting lines, and made sure that when he wrote Decline And Fall that he clarified it for everyone else (in case they'd be so Full of Faith they'd try to miss the obvious - as they often do).
http://christianism.com/ is really a very good site for different insights into christianism. Lots of information even if the organisation and presentation (bold, underline, capitalisation, though no use of colour) confuses me.
Excerpts marked as from http://christianism.com
1. On Gibbon's Decline and Fall again
2. Constantine's conversion again
While all the capitalisation is part of the original, I applied the bold and the blue in the excerpts to follow.
Pasted two paras of the following once before. But I found the whole piece very insightful. There's a pattern somewhere in all this that may be helpful. History may be our best friend here.
(The below-mentioned Tillemont is I think the person mentioned by McCabe as being one of the christian historians who cut out some of the many fake martyrs from church history.)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->'The pious men of Tillemont's [1637 - 1698] day who brought to history precision, clarity, and accuracy, also did much of the spadework for the attack on Christianity to be launched by the Enlightenment. Their labors cleared the ground of ecclesiastical history of the rubbish of centuries. The example was not lost on the enlighteners. The step from the rejection of some legends to the rejection of all legends was very short. Tillemont carefully--and perhaps sadly--pruned from the history of the primitive church some of the most colorful, but spurious, legends. With a sigh (Gibbon imagines) he rejected the Acts of Artemius, "a veteran and a martyr who attests as an eye-witness the vision of Constantine."31 IT IS NOT UNUSUAL FOR THE SINCERE EFFORTS OF ONE GENERATION TO PROVIDE THE NEXT WITH THE PRECONDITIONS FOR DESTROYING AN OLD IDEOLOGY. In the case of Tillemont the case is very clear: it is Edward Gibbon who inherits these labors.' [133-134].
'Tillemont's myopia about Roman civilization arises directly from his religious views. The Romans were pagans, and paganism was anathema. His Christian charity did not extend to paganism. He delighted in the horrible deaths of the fourth-century emperors who had persecuted Christianity: they provided wonderful proof of a vengeful God.36 He was deeply disturbed that God had permitted the pagan emperors Marcus Aurelius and Trajan to escape an excruciating death: "Suffer me, O Lord, to ask if You always destroyed those who did not understand the work of Your hands...? You ["Lord"] have visibly destroyed Nero, Domitian, and others. But did you destroy Trajan and Marcus in the same way? They certainly deserved destruction, for they failed to apprehend the miracles of Your grace when they had these miracles before their eyes. In addition, they persecuted Your servants. Yet, they died in their beds, honored, revered, loved, and esteemed by all men."37 He [Tillemont] despised pagan Rome, and "he never dismisses a virtuous emperor without pronouncing his damnation."38' [137].
["Tillemont, Louis Sébastien Le Nain de (1637-98), French Church historian....
His fame rests on the Memoires pour servir a l'histoire ecclesiastique des six premiers siecles (16 vols., 1693-1712), a work of enormous erudition, covering the development of the Church from the beginning of Christianity to the year 513....
For comprehensiveness the work has not been surpassed, though it lacks elegance of style. It was much used by E. Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire...." (Ox. Dict. C.C., 1997, p. 1622)].
'It is not Gibbon's want of accuracy that makes his treatment of Christianity so distasteful to devout men. Gibbon would never play fast and loose with the facts. What makes his classic account so Gibbonian is the withering irony with which he treats the subject. And as is well known, Gibbon says he learned to handle the weapon of irony, "even on subjects of Ecclesiastical solemnity,"73 from Pascal
[Blaise Pascal 1623 - 1662].
It is possible to argue that Gibbon's reliance on Tillemont has nothing to do with Jansenism. Tillemont was a great historian and a superb source for a historian of Gibbon's interests and temperament. With magisterial ease he swept away the pious foundations and assumptions of Tillemont's work, and used him merely as an exceptionally reliable guide. That Tillemont was a Jansenist fanatic is merely coincidental so far as Gibbon is concerned. This would be a perfectly adequate explanation of Gibbon's numerous references to Tillemont and his respect for the work of his predecessor. It would be a perfectly adequate explanation, that is, were it not for the fact that Gibbon was fascinated with Jansenism throughout his life, and that another Jansenist fanatic, Blaise Pascal, was singled out by Gibbon himself as central to his intellectual development.' [145].
"Whatever the initial impact of Pascal, his influence was continuous. This is precisely the problem: why did Gibbon find the Jansenists in general, and Pascal in particular, so fascinating? Gibbon had long been interested in religious problems, and in the Memoirs he sketches that slightly ludicrous sense of the young boy, with an oversized head, disputing earnestly on the mysteries of the trinity, or reincarnation, with his kind, loving, and limited Aunt Porten. This fascination lasted a lifetime, and besides the classics, the two species of books best represented in Gibbon's library are travel books and books on religion and theology. He was forever reading tracts and treatises on the most arcane and arid subjects of theology and church history. His careful and detailed histories of Arians, Monophysites, Gnostics, Armenians, and a dozen other Christian splinter groups, are ample proof of his interest. Perhaps no other man outside holy orders, indeed almost outside the church, knew as much of these things as did GIBBON. And WHAT MOST FASCINATED HIM WAS FANATICISM. THE PATHOLOGICAL SIDE OF RELIGION PROVIDED AN ENDLESS SOURCE OF STUDY for this sceptical rationalist." [147].
'In a sense the Decline and Fall may be considered the first answer to St. Augustine's [354 - 430] City of God. From the vantage point of the high Enlightenment Gibbon is looking back across the centuries to that giant, and is attacking Augustine's explanation of why Rome fell. It is not, Gibbon argues, God's providence that brought Rome down. It is the very real, earthly enemy, the early Christians, that canker in the breast of an already decaying empire. Gibbon's Rome is the work of men, and its fall is the work of men. Gibbon is in many ways a pagan gentleman of the late empire, surveying with sadness and passion the accumulated crimes of lese-majeste against his beloved Rome. His [Gibbon] is the first extensive and comprehensive response to St. Augustine; and as the Decline and Fall recapitulates many of the arguments used by Pagan apologists in the fifth century, so, too, does it plead [1637 - 1698] for an earthly cause for Rome's fall.
Tillemont [1637 - 1698] and the Jansenists are, for Gibbon [1737 - 1794], the modern-day representatives of Augustine's [354 - 430] views. As such they are the enemy. Tillemont accepts, without apparent question or modification, Augustine's explanation for Rome's fall. His compilation of the sources, especially from the age of Constantine to the invasions, rests on an assumption of providential action. It might legitimately be argued that Tillemont's work is the scholarly gloss to the City of God. And there is in this perhaps an additional irony, Gibbon, the pagan champion of Rome, took as his guide a modern Augustinian; and through a mastery of irony, learned from Pascal, he used one Augustinian to confound another. Gibbon's "sure-footed mule" is not only the most important of Gibbon's many guides; he is also the incarnation of the Augustinian view. The Jansenists are opponents of genius and stature. IT IS THROUGH TILLEMONT AND PASCAL THAT GIBBON REACHES BACK THROUGH THE CENTURIES TO CONFRONT ST. AUGUSTINE, AND TO ATTEMPT TO TOPPLE THE CITY OF GOD AND REPLACE IT WITH THE DECLINE AND FALL.' [157-158].<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Constantine
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->[footnote] "1Nero [Emperor 54 - 68 (37 - 68)], the emperor, was refused initiation (into the Eleusinian mysteries) on account of his mother's murder, and, notwithstanding his threats, they [apparently, pagan priests] persisted in their refusal;
and CONSTANTINE [Emperor 306 (312) - 337 (280? - 337)] COULD FIND NO PAGAN PRIEST WHO WOULD CONSENT TO ABSOLVE HIM FROM HIS MURDERS. HE BECAME A CHRISTIAN, AND PROCURED ABSOLUTION.--Philosophy of History; or, A Philosophical and Historical Dissertation, etc. etc., by Voltaire [1694 - 1778] (London, 1829), p. 219." [115].<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->'....WHY, ASKS GIBBON, DID CONSTANTINE RECEIVE BAPTISM ONLY ON HIS DEATHBED? BECAUSE, HE ANSWERS, HE WAS NOT A RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIAST BUT A CRAFTY POLITICIAN <b>and a man terrified about the fate of his soul</b>. Despite the outraged cries of the church fathers, BAPTISM JUST BEFORE DEATH WAS COMMON IN THE EARLY CHURCH: "BY THE DELAY OF THEIR BAPTISM, THEY COULD VENTURE FREELY TO INDULGE THEIR PASSIONS IN THE ENJOYMENTS OF THIS WORLD, WHILE THEY STILL RETAINED IN THEIR HANDS THE MEANS OF A SURE AND EASY ABSOLUTION [FORGIVENESS!]."65
Imagine the appeal this expedient had for an emperor consumed by ambition and willing to pursue his goals "through the dark and bloody paths of war and policy." <b>For Constantine baptism in extremis was more than an attraction: it was a necessity. After his victory over Licinius [324: defeated by Constantine, surrendered, executed] "he abandoned himself, without moderation, to the abuse of his fortune."66 Success had removed the need for dissimulation and the emperor's true character stood nakedly exposed. In 326 he [Constantine] murdered his son, Crispus [d. 326], and soon afterwards, his wife, Fausta [289 - 326]: "he could no longer be ignorant that the church was possessed of an infallible remedy,"67</b> Constantine's Christianity was a rough-and-ready, pragmatic faith. "The sublime theory of the gospel had made a much fainter impression on the heart than on the understanding of Constantine himself."68 Whatever political advantages conversion to Christianity offered, the crimes and tyranny of his last years finally decided the issue. Constantine was baptized on his deathbed to "remove the temptation and the danger of a relapse" and in this act he declared to the public and to posterity the true and insidious nature of his conversion to Christianity....
Gibbon does not set a precise date for the conversion, but he rejects any date prior to 324. He favors 324-326, with a definitive public declaration coming only on his deathbed. Around this time the pagan symbolism disappears, or begins to disappear, from imperial coins; this is the period of Constantine's famous circular letter exhorting his subjects to "imitate, without delay, the example of their sovereign, and to embrace the divine truth of Christianity."71 In 325 the emperor [Constantine] presided over the first ecumenical council; he proscribed the pagan gods in his new capital [Constantinople] soon afterwards, and he secured Christian tutors for his sons. These facts, coupled with the political and personal reasons for Constantine's conversion, satisfy Gibbon, and he rests his case. He [Gibbon] has achieved his purpose: he [GIBBON] has REDUCED THE CONVERSION [OF CONSTANTINE] TO POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY aided by seduction and moral corruption; he has blackened the name of the first Christian emperor [Constantine]; and he [Gibbon] has suggested that Constantine's crimes and political reforms, both of which hastened the fall of Rome, OCCURRED AFTER he [CONSTANTINE] WAS A CHRISTIAN....' [209-211].<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Disagree with the assessment that Gibbon blackened the name of Constantine. Christotyrant/murderer Constantine did that to himself. He's left enough rope for everyone to hang him once over.
The last para makes it seems like Gibbon just jumped to the conclusions he wanted to arrive at. No, the conclusions are staring everyone in the face. He saw the clearly connecting lines, and made sure that when he wrote Decline And Fall that he clarified it for everyone else (in case they'd be so Full of Faith they'd try to miss the obvious - as they often do).
http://christianism.com/ is really a very good site for different insights into christianism. Lots of information even if the organisation and presentation (bold, underline, capitalisation, though no use of colour) confuses me.