Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters-Chapter 894 - 13 The Reform Council_3

Chapter 894: Chapter 13: The Reform Council_3 Chapter 894: Chapter 13: The Reform Council_3 Divine Arts were no different.

At the birth of the public faith—not the Church—Divine Arts were regarded as miracles, God’s grace, the gospel spread through the hands of the clergy.

The Ancient Empire originally revered a polytheistic old religion and fiercely opposed the “heretics” who believed in public faith, with massacres and persecutions being commonplace.

Initially, public faith was a religion of the poor, “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,” thus facing the ruling class’s knives with no resistance at all.

For public faith to continue to exist, there was only one way: eliminate the rival and take their place.

Thus, public faith, originally spread among the poor, began to actively court the powerful and even transform itself to cater to the ruling class.

The Church—a strict, centralized organizational entity—also began to take shape during this period.

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Eventually, public faith was formally recognized as the state religion by Emperor Constantine.

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From then on, the Church, with the power of the state, systematically eradicated the old religious system and derogatorily termed it “heretic religion.”

In the battle for the upper echelons between the Church and the old religion, the unique Divine Arts played an immensely significant role.

As the Church’s position became more stable, unshakable to the point of immovability, the Church’s clergy finally had the leisure to ponder one question:

What are Divine Arts?

Divine Arts are certainly God’s grace, but how is it realized? Is it logically provable?

Are Divine Arts purely miracles? Or does the caster have some degree of participation?

If it’s the former, it means Divine Arts can be separated; if it’s the latter, then what is the proportion between the two?

Once the fire of doubt is lit, it immediately spreads uncontrollably.

Discussions became more numerous, and opposing views started to emerge, with the Church in the east and the west of the Empire even severely in opposition, historically known as “the First Debate.”

For the Church, this was a debate about truth. But for the ruling group, it was internal bleeding of the Empire.

The Emperor at that time was Diocletian II, who had no interest in theology and had no desire to watch theological debates.

The Emperor wanted peace and quiet, good and honest.

Therefore, Diocletian II eventually issued the “Mia Edict,” with an attitude of “you are all correct, but no more discussions allowed,” forcibly quelling the First Debate.

If the Angel Envoys who struggled with heretic religions a hundred years ago and laid the foundations of public faith heard the content of the First Debate, they would probably slam the desk and curse: “I think you’re all just full of nonsense!”

But there’s no helping it, once people are freed from the crisis of existence, they begin to ponder the meaning of existence.

The Mia Edict temporarily quelled the debate, but it did not solve the fundamental problem.

The silenced clergy turned to examine ancient records, hoping to find evidence to support their own arguments from historical archives.

However, they could not find the original records of Divine Arts—complete blanks.

Instead, some found something else—descriptions of the heretic religion’s witchcraft.

Although most texts about heretic religions had been erased by the victors, there were still snippets of evidence proving that heretic religions also had the power to “achieve things beyond the ordinary,” just not as valued by the elites as public faith’s Divine Arts.

This discovery caused a huge uproar, if heretic religion also had “Divine Arts,” then… that meant public faith would become a castle in the air.

The Church immediately split into two factions.

One faction shouted hysterically “Stop the inquiry! Divine Arts are God’s grace, a miracle. The witchcraft of heretic religion is the devil’s dark magic, an impure power.”

The other faction believed firmly “We must investigate thoroughly, otherwise the doctrine of public faith will forever exist with logical flaws.”

In the end, it was the Emperor who stepped in to calm the debate.

This time, Diocletian II did not muddy the waters. He fully supported the “Miracle Faction,” and launched a brutal purge against the “Inquiry Faction.”

Members of the Inquiry Faction were branded as heretics, most of their clergy were arrested, judged, and executed by fire.

Those surviving clergy went underground, fleeing to the edge of the world—to the wild lands beyond the reach of the Emperor and the Church.

This was known as “the First Great Schism.”

From then on, the inquiry into Divine Arts became a taboo of the Church, with related content forbidden to be looked up, discussed, or even mentioned.

…

“Diocletian II, and the clergy of that era, might have thought that was the end of it,” said the old man Saul with his back to Winters, reaching his hand closer to the hearth to warm himself: “But do you know what the most terrifying thing is? The reverberations of the First Great Schism still haven’t subsided to this day.”

Winters was so engrossed that he kept sipping the soup, utterly unaware that his cup had already emptied.

“Just as Diocletian II anticipated, the debates subsided, and it was so for a very long time. The Ancient Empire was destroyed, and people built a new Empire on its corpse. The Church sometimes declined, sometimes prospered, but it essentially thrived. The warm lands were all converted, and so the Church began to send missionaries to the northern borders in a planned manner,” said the old man Saul, lost in thought: “That was probably about five centuries ago.”

Winters was momentarily bewildered.

“Then, those monks who went to the north to preach discovered,” Saul’s voice fluctuated in the light of the hearth: “that the ‘Demigods’ of the northern Barbarian tribes actually possessed the Divine Arts unique to the Church… and even could perform even more astonishing miracles.”