“Ishmael will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.” —Genesis 16:11
“Islam did not arise in a backwater from some obscure Judaic-Christian sect, but arose in the full stream of religious life in Asia.”—R. Bell, Origins of Islam in Christian Environment, London: Macmillan & Co., 1926

It’s not very widely known how deeply rooted in Roman Catholicism is the religion of Islam. Recognizing the nature of this relationship will help considerably in understanding America’s religious wars in the middle east.

When Mohammad (c570-632) founded Islam, Christianity ruled an evildoing world under full authority of the mark of Cain, the double-cross now separated into sword and +.

It was the Emperor Constantine (c 285-337) who had given the mark to the Christian bishops, and Augustine of Hippo (354-420) who developed the theological system under which the mark would be enforced by the masters of the Roman Church until today and perhaps beyond.

During the lives of the apostles and for several generations afterward, the Christian churches had lived and preached straight from the original Greek Scriptures the gospel of a loving and accessible God, all in a joyous spirit of reconciliation and intellectual freedom.

http://www.tuppersaussy.com/html/writings/religiouswar/godlessintro.html

Don’t forget that in Beowulf, the monster Grendel is akin to Cain. Is Benedict XVI merely the latest in a line of anglo-saxon-monster-Popes?

If by world you mean the Mediterranean region and nothing much else. And there wasn’t one strong authority. The Patriarchs disagreed amongst themselves, the Popes and Constantinople had long running disagreements, and the Egyptian Copts went their own way.

“of the mark of Cain, the double-cross”

I don’t believe the Bible states what the mark of Cain was. The mark was there to protect Cain from others not from the Garden of Eden.

The history is interesting, but statements like:

“With Augustine, who in his own words “hated Greek” and “was not competent to read and understand” the language, came an approach to Scripture that suffered from his insensitivity to it. Important meanings were overlooked or denied, resulting in a majestic, Saturnian indifference to mankind, the promotion of priestcraft, and a nasty impatience with any opinion that disagreed with his own. According to Farrar, “Augustine was the first and ablest asserter of the principle which led to Albigensian crusades, Spanish armadas, Netherlands butcheries, St. Bartholomew massacres, the accursed infamies of the Inquisition, the vile espionage, the hideous large fires of Seville and Smithfield, the racks, the gallows, the thumbscrews, and the subterranean torture-chambers used by churchly torturers.” [Frederic Farrar, Lives of the Fathers]“

Are distracting. Blaming Saint Augustine for the French invasion of Southern French, or a Spanish naval expedition to England, is strange. It is like blaming Charles Darwin for Nazism — but of course far stranger, because Augustine lived a thousand years before some of those events.

Hello-o! He commissioned the religious genocide of thousands, tens of thousands of Christians across the known world in cruel and unusual ways. How was this not cruel? Sure, it may have been a part of what you claim as his “political genius”, but surely a real genius could have conceived a subtle way of destroying his enemy, rather than wholesale slaughter! (Which by the way strengthened and spread Christianity even further anyway, as persecution tends to do.)

Thank you for your comment. Perhaps I should have said “needlessly cruel” or “sadistic.” Like any politial leader, Diocletian was willing to inflict harm to achieve his goals. Emperor Diocletian attempted to turn Christianity into a militant insurgency, which could have been easily crushed by the Romans. He failed to do this, and because of his failure the Empire would be remodeled on Christian lines.

We are thankful for that failure. But because he failed did not make him an idiot. It made him someone who chose the wrong strategy.

As for whether or not Christianity grew because of the persecution, see Simon Johnson’s comments elsewhere on this blog at http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2005/07/10/4gw-tactic-love-your-enemy-as-you-would-have-him-love-you.html.

I think the failure of the persecution was a big propoganda coup for Christianity, but I’m not sure if it was helpful at the time.