How Did St Paul Influence The Spread Of Christianity

Christianity began as a movement of people revolving around a man called Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus preached to the Jewish people and was reported to perform miracles in the name of God. From this, the religion of Christianity slowly developed, with four main factors to help influence its development: the life and message of Jesus, Saint Paul and his message to the Gentiles, Christian persecution and the martyrs, and Constantine’s imperial support for the religion. Jesus’s message centralized around love and God, and taught about the 10 Commandments. Saint Paul contributed to the spread of Christianity through missionary missions, traveling more than 10,000 miles throughout the Roman Empire to bring the message of Jesus to the Gentiles. The martyrs

Constantine had a vision when at war with another general, and had the vision interpreted by a local bishop; of a cross saying “By this sign, conquer.” (Cohen 1-3) Constantine won the war, and, saying that he owed the victory to God, became a patron of the Christian branch that had interpreted the vision for him, and began to support Christianity. It can be concluded Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire because Emperor Constantine legalized and enforced the religion, allowing it to function publicly and be open to everyone.

One of the biggest ways in which Constantine helped Christianity become the dominant religion was by legalizing and enforcing it. He announced the end of of Christian persecution in AD 313 (Beck 171), but before this, he began to target Christian sects across the empire, creating a sort of internal purge. In a way, this unified the Christian bishops into forming a more “unitary policy” (Cohen 3). In the Edict of Milan, he legalized Christianity so that it would no longer be a persecuted religion, leading up to Theodosius’s declaration in AD 380 to make Christianity the official religion of the empire. (Beck, 171) Legalization made way for the Gentiles that