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I'm wondering what others think of Julian the Apostate's (361-363) drive to supplant Christian values and social functions with pagan ones. I'm sure we could speculate about his reasons for doing it, but how about whether it would have been successful? Things I'm referring to are include his changing of pagan hierarchy and the idea of pagan philanthropy to more resemble that of the Christian Church. It seems to me that the more pagans would try to copy the useful aspect of the Church structure, the more their paganism would erode.
I'm wondering what others think of Julian the Apostate's (361-363) drive to supplant Christian values and social functions with pagan ones. I'm sure we could speculate about his reasons for doing it, but how about whether it would have been successful? Things I'm referring to are include his changing of pagan hierarchy and the idea of pagan philanthropy to more resemble that of the Christian Church. It seems to me that the more pagans would try to copy the useful aspect of the Church structure, the more their paganism would erode.
Well of course it continued to erode. If you're imitating something, that just screams to people that you admit what you're imitating is superior. Also, paganism did not have the ultimate martyr figure to capture their hearts as Christianity did with Jesus and also the followers of Christ who died for His sake. Tertullian's commentaries on martyrdom explains why Christianity endured.
I wonder what would have happened had Julian reigned beyond those two years. Would his policies have created chaos? Reverted the empire back to paganism? Probably no on that latter point. But why did he want to implement paganism after so many years of official Christianity? If he ended up trying to model pagan practices after Christianity, why not just go for the real thing instead?
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