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Bart D. Ehrman attributes the rapid spread of Christianity to five factors: (1) the promise of salvation and eternal life for everyone was an attractive alternative to Roman religions; (2) stories of miracles and healings purportedly showed that the one Christian God was more powerful than the many Roman gods; (3) Christianity began as a ...
[7] [8] Sociology has also generated the theory that Christianity spread as a grass roots movement that grew from the bottom up; it includes ideas and practices such as charity, egalitarianism, accessibility and a clear message, demonstrating its appeal to people over the alternatives available to most in the Roman Empire of the time. The ...
[25] [26] By the third century, it had spread as far as Roman Britain in the West, into North Africa, and into the Balkans in the East. [46] [47] A more formal Church structure grew over the second and third centuries AD, but at different times in different locations.
Archaeologists uncovered a nearly 1,800-year-old amulet that offers new insight into the early spread of Christianity across the Roman Empire.
In the year before the First Council of Constantinople in 381, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire when Theodosius I, emperor of the East, Gratian, emperor of the West, and Gratian's junior co-ruler Valentinian II issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, [1] which recognized the catholic orthodoxy [a] of Nicene Christians as the Roman Empire's state religion.
These teachings, along with the proliferation of chastity among slaves who became Christian, [96] and the spread of asceticism through Roman society as a respected value, may have lessened their sexual use and their reproductive value and impacted slavery directly. [76] [97] Chrysostom reflects Paul's dual teaching on slavery.
Christianity in the 4th century was dominated in its early stage by Constantine the Great and the First Council of Nicaea of 325, which was the beginning of the period of the First seven Ecumenical Councils (325–787), and in its late stage by the Edict of Thessalonica of 380, which made Nicene Christianity the state church of the Roman Empire.
A. N. Sherwin-White records that serious discussion of the reasons for Roman persecution of Christians began in 1890 when it produced "20 years of controversy" and three main opinions: first, there was the theory held by most French and Belgian scholars that "there was a general enactment, precisely formulated and valid for the whole empire, which forbade the practice of the Christian religion.