For most of the Roman political and social obligations were becoming religious obligations as the center of what was sacred, untouchable. However, the Christian movement was formed as a threat to the social and ethical system of the ancient world as altering the structural patterns and hierarchy established in the empire.
The message was clear: to change a society that ranked each person within a social hierarchy according to class, family, wealth, education, sex and status, one that does not distinguish between slaves and free people, given that under the Christian precepts, was granted the freedom and equality to society and the eyes of God.
But in principle motivating this group of people to risk their lives for a less abrupt change in their society? As pointed out in her book Elaine Pagels Adam, Eve and the serpent, when people worship him as God who are only human, and often the worst of humanity the hope of a just God, expressing the will of the disadvantaged and to promote equality before the heavens and the earth was very appealing.
A clear example of this is the case of Perpetua and her slave, declared and convinced Christians who were sentenced to death for protecting their faith until the end.
In Rome, political power was held by the emperor (man blessed by the gods, the powers of the universe and endowed by the divine to govern human beings) and the Senate, but what kind of emperors and gods were if they allowed social promiscuity, revenge and murder of innocent people rather than a benefactor and just God? That power was in vigorous propaganda, colossal monuments and the idea that the people God had chosen them and his dynasty to rule over all mankind and the known world.
Notwithstanding the contradictions of the gods, the protectors of humanity should be kind to his subjects led many philosophers to rise up against the regime once established, questioning its very foundation.
is the case of Justin, Philosopher of the line of Plato, who, after looking for answers to the great questions of life is only a logic output, the Christian faith, that he had been able to enlighten the martyrs killed in the amphitheater imposing a smile even on the day of his death.
He questioned the decisions of the emperor when he is condemned to death Ptolemy, renowned philosopher, declaring Christian saying how it was possible to murder a man he did not commit adultery, do not He was a murderer, thief, kidnapper or convicted, but simply had been faithful to their beliefs. Ptolemy, the day of his death, he thanked God (the Christian) to rid him and his companions about "so evil rulers and bring them to the Father and King of Heaven."
This series of events lead to the conclusion that the emperors are not gods, even mere appearances, but demons, evil forces, active, determined to corrupt and destroy human beings, some people hide from the truth that there is one God, creator of everything and did the same to all mankind.
This kind of approach were completely crazy at the time, first instance, suppose, in a production system of slavery, that all human beings were equal was ridiculous and even more was the fact detract from the power of the emperor and giving it to a "beggar" as commonly referred to Jesus. However
This caused considerable controversy and hence the idea that the worship of the divine spirit of the emperor was a lie perpetrated by demons. This broke with all existing schema and Christians stood as a clear threat that sought to replace the Roman pantheon of gods and goddesses by one God, creator of heaven and earth, and men, all made in His image and likeness .
Changed ancient and traditional belief that the elemental forces of the universe were divine and embodied by the emperors for a natural, which accounted for about gods and fallen angels expelled from heaven, gods who tried to compensate their losses by joining the Demons to enslave the human race by the emperors who were their benefactors, cruel, powerful, immoral, corrupt and brutal. Step
then be Jupiter, the ancient god of hospitality, the protector of beggars and avenger of the wrongs of an unjust law violator and the law, inhuman, violent, seductive, adultery and incest. To that extent most of the gods of antiquity lost credibility and worship.
Some authors, most recently, say that the Christian movement attacked not just the pagan gods and the imperial cult if I try to change the traditional construction of the origins of the Empire.
From this perspective, to the Romans, the Christians gained a sense of freedom different from their masters, broke with all the traditional systems, making fun of them, discredited slavery, were, in short, an outbreak of anarchy very peculiar in the final stages of the Roman Empire.
The Christian movement was a challenge to the Roman tradition, and it was possible the emergence and subsequent consolidation by consciousness the group in which the image of God could not be existing, and therefore the power of the emperors should be questioned. Such is the evidence that in later centuries new proposals moral rights as inalienable sought extended to all people, race and sex, and if it were not for these outbreaks as ancient history now, it would be very different.
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