{"id":4400,"date":"2008-12-03T14:25:02","date_gmt":"2008-12-03T14:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=1400"},"modified":"2017-09-07T00:05:23","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T18:05:23","slug":"ontology-of-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2008\/12\/ontology-of-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontology of violence"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\">\n<\/head><body><p><\/p><p> Constantine (of all people) provides a neat little analysis of the violent ontology of polytheism is his Good Friday oration, which Eusebius appended to the  <em> Life of Constantine <\/em> : if the dominion of these [created] things, numberless as they are, were in the hands, not of one but of many, there must be a partition and distribution of the elements, and the old fables would be true; jealousy, too, and ambition, striving for superior power, would destroy the harmonious concord of the whole, while each of the many masters would regulate in a manner different from the rest the portion subject to his control.\u201d <\/p>\n<p> He even suggests that polytheism is incompatible with mercy: If there are many gods, \u201cshould I not, while expressing my gratitude to the Power who favored my request, convey a reproach to him who opposed it? Or to whom should I pray, when desiring the know the cause of my calamity, and to obtain deliverance?  . . .  Where then is mercy?\u201d <\/p>\n<p> Not bad for a soldier often described as untaught. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Constantine (of all people) provides a neat little analysis of the violent ontology of polytheism is his Good Friday oration, which Eusebius appended to the Life of Constantine : if the dominion of these [created] things, numberless as they are, were in the hands, not of one but of many, there must be a partition [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology-creation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ontology of violence<\/title>\n<meta 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