Christianity's War Agaisnt Free Inquiry

Thomas Jefferson observed that  "Reason and free inquiry are the only effective agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error and error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free inquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free inquiry been indulged at the era of the Reformation, the corruption of Christianity could not have been purged away." 

Now compare this to the reign of Julian the Apostate, and how Christians formentted violence because they were unable to defend their beliefs in the court of public opinion, as Jefferson said was necessary for unmasking falsehood.

After the death of Constantine the Great, a holy trinity comprised of three wise men rose to take control of the Roman Empire. That trinity was comprised of his three surviving sons: Constantine II, Constantius II and Constans, who took the title of Augusti on the 9^th of September. In 340, Constantine II, in an attempt to exert his authority over Constans, invaded Italy, but was defeated and killed at Aquileia, leaving Constans in control of the whole the western empire. In January of 350, Constans' throne was usurped by his army chief, Magnentius, who Constantius II then defeated in 351, leaving Constantius II as the sole emperor of Rome.  Like grandfather, like son.

Rome being too big for one man to handle, Constantius II soon decided to choose someone to help carry the cross of his power: his half-cousin, Flavius Julianus, who became Julian II. Julian II would come to be labeled by Christian historians as Julian the Apostate for daring to introduce the same religious tolerance that Constantine the Great was heralded such a saintly hero for introducing with the Edict of Milan in 313.  

As a successful commander on the Rhine frontier who was popular with his troops, Constantius soon saw Julian as a threat to his power. So, to assuage his insecurity, he pulled a 180 on his co-ruler and decided to reduce Julian's power in 360 AD.  By doing so, Constantius unwittingly caused his worst fear to come true. The attempt to limit Julian’s power only provoked Julian’s army to proclaim Julian Augustus in the west (“King of the North”?). The only choice Constantius had after that was to depose Julian altogether. But as fate would have it, just as he was getting ready to follow in the glorious footsteps of his father in November 361, Constantius died. (Ya gotta hate when that happens.)

Naturally, any pagan in Rome could easily see such a fate as being undeniable proof that the gods of Rome were so displeased with Constantius that they wanted him dead. But Christians, who are incredibly selective in what they choose to interpret as being the result of the will of a god, just see it as bad luck. 

What worried Constantius more than Julian’s popular support with the troops was the fact that, in 351, Julian had begun supporting the restoration of Hellenistic polytheism as the state religion in his half of the empire. With the vast majority of Romans still being pagan at the time, the laws he passed to level the political playing field fell hardest on those who had accrued wealth and power from the privileged status bestowed upon them with the Edict of Milan. That radical minority happened to be Christians.

Not seeking to destroy Christianity, Julian was merely following in the footsteps of Diocletian. But where Diocletian sought to exorcise the “military industrial complex” from controlling political decisions, Julian sought to exorcise the particularly intolerant religion of Christianity which had been doing the same thing Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about. He restored pagan temples which had been confiscated since the reign of Constantine, or simply appropriated by wealthy citizens; he repealed the stipends that Constantine had awarded to Christian bishops, and removed their other privileges, including a right to be consulted on appointments and to act as private courts. He also reversed some favors that had previously been given to Christians over all other religions in the empire. Such privileges, after all, only resulted in a sense of spiritual superiority that only increased intolerance, fraying the fabric of a fledgling empire only all the more.  

A year after the death of Constantius, on 4 February (4/2) 362, Julian promulgated an edict to guarantee freedom of religion for all. Like Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313, so Julian’s edict proclaimed that all religions were equal before the law, and that the Roman Empire had to return to its traditional religious eclecticism, according to which the Roman state did not favor or impose any religion on its provinces.  To the state supported religions that had accrued special privileges since the Edict of Milan, such as the stipend provided to Christian bishops at tax payer expense, Christians interpreted Julian’s attempt to establish equality as an attack on their “faith,” by showing favor toward the Jews. Like God choosing to interpret anyone who dares to freely exercise their “free will” as a “sin” against his command to act like a robot, so Christians decided they should take Julian’s edict as a personal insult.

Prior to Christianity, paganism had produced tolerance within Rome’s pluralistic culture. As Genghis Kahn would later discover, this tolerance made it easier for Rome to annex neighboring lands whenever it found it beneficial to do so. After it, however, Christian monotheists often fomented disunion by encouraging intolerance of other religions. By leveling the playing field, truth was trusted to be able to fend for itself in the arena of ideas. Julian’s edict was designed to implement the very thing not only Jefferson had proclaimed above, but also Benjamin Franklin had proclaimed. “When men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to be heard by the public,” Franklin wrote, because “when Truth and Error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.” After putting the sentiments expressed by both Jefferson and Franklin into practice, neither pagan nor Christian ideology reigned supreme during Julian’s lifetime. Instead, the greatest thinkers of the day were free to argue openly about the merits and rationality of each religion.  This would change dramatically when Christians burned down the library of Alexandria decades later, and St. Augustine implemented the use of torture to convert non-believers.  

In 363, not long before Julian left Antioch to launch his campaign against Persia, and as part of his effort to roll back the special status that a minority of politically connected Christians had managed to accrue for themselves, he allowed Jews to rebuild their Temple. This was also done to help invalidate Jesus’ prophecy about its destruction in 70 CE, which Christians had cited as proof that Jesus was God. (Even though Christians also claimed that the strength of their faith was measured by the degree to which they needed no proof to “believe,” that didn’t mean they weren’t always willing to interpret anything they could find as the “proof” they claimed they did not need.) 

If Christians were looking for “proof,’ they found it in Julian’s death.  Like Jesus, Julian suffered a spear to his side during his battles with the Persians (some have claimed he was assassinated by a Christian,  John Wilkes Booth style, but such claims have never been verified any more than that Jesus was a man-God) and died three days later.