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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kevin McGonigal, post: 2198982, member: 72790&quot;]Oh, yes. The emperors had little interest in the theology of Christianity or probably any theology at all. Arguments among Christians, important to them, such as whether Christ was divine and eternal or created by the Father, assisted by the Holy Spirit would have been a matter of indifference at best to the rulers, though of extreme importance to Church Fathers as Arius was to demonstrate. Yes, the opposition of the Emperors was based on their fear that alienating the old gods might not be prudent and that Christianity might be a demobilizing and destabilizing force. Considering the unholy uproar Christian theological disputes were about to unleash on the stability of Rome they may have had a point. None of this, however negates the bias of Christian authors who were determined, no matter how much they disagreed among themselves over the inexplicable, to smear the reputation of any emperor who opposed them for any reason, political or theological. Lactantius in particular did a splendid job of creating the jaundiced image of the tetrarchy that we have and Jerome and Augustine of the Fourth century emperors. Gibbon may have had an insight when he ascribed the fall of the Roman Empire to a combination of barbarism and religion, each of which he theorized was a destabilizing force in the weakening of Rome and both major problems late Roman Emperors were at wits end trying to deal with.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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