I don’t question your intent, or your sense of morality; my objection is to your posts which are extremely inaccurate concerning Church history. Criticize churches for their legitimate faults, but not on the basis of urban legends.
Take Emperor Constantine, for example. You claim, as do many members of Restorationist denominations who believe in a “Great Apoastasy” having occurred immediately after the Apostles, a claim unsupported by historical evidence but maintained as something of an article of faith, that the Emperor introduced paganism into the Christian church. But an analysis of the actual facts proves this to be incorrect. What Constantine actually did is this:
In 314 AD, he issued the Edict of Milan, which legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire. In 325, when Arius, an heretical priest in the ancient Church of Alexandria, whose Patriarch, St. Alexander of Alexandria, had been tortured under the Diocletian persecution which Emperor Constantine stopped, refused to desist from teaching the false doctrine that bears his name, which is that Jesus Christ is not God incarnate, but was rather created by God the Father, as opposed to being begotten, and there was a time when He was not. This is abject heresy, and it was causing strife in the Church, and so Emperor Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea, which upheld the defrocking and excommunication of Arius imposed by the Church of Alexandria, which was the correct thing to do, and which also agreed that Pascha, the Feast of the Resurrection, should be celebrated on the first Sunday following the vernal equinox. It further enacted twenty canons, or guidelines, for church operations. The first canon prohibits any man who has castrated himself from being ordained to clergy, for such a man is a self-murderer. The 20th canon, which most churches ignore, including the Roman Catholic Church, prohibits kneeling on Sundays or during the period from Pascha through Pentecost Sunday, known as the Pentecost or in English as Eastertide (in English Pentecost is also called Whitsunday; there is no actual evidence suggesting these names have pagan connotations, but even if they do, it is irrelevant, since the Council of Nicaea did not create or enforce them, and Greek was the language spoken at the aforesaid council). Lastly, the council adopted a Creed, which in the revised form adopted at the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD, became the basis of normative Christianity and is the integral part of the Christian Forums Statement of Faith, which is located here:
CF Statement of Faith
However the Arians were dissatisfied with this ruling, to put it mildly. An Arian bishop, Eusebius of Nicomedia, began persecuting Christians starting with St. Athanasius, the successor to Alexander of Alexandria, who was also the bishop who presented the case against Athanasius at Nicaea, who he had exiled to Trier for two years under the false allegation that Athanasius had murdered a layman (despite the layman still being alive; eventually Athanasius was allowed to return, although he would be exiled again after Emperor Constantine’s heir, who was moved by Eusebius baptizing his father before his death, became an Arian and persecuted Christians who believed in the deity of Christ throughout his reign.
Additionally, Constantine financed an effort conducted by his mother, St. Helena, to rebuild the city of Jerusalem, whose old name was destroyed (this city had been left largely in ruins following the failed Bar Kochba revolt in 130 AD, with all the Jews and most likely any remaining Christians forced out, in 130 AD, and only gradually allowed to return, so that the center of Christianity in the Holy Land until the rebuilding of Jerusalem in the 4th century and the construction of churches on what were, with good reason, believed to be its holy places, was Caesarea. Indeed the Romans had even renamed Jerusalem to Aeolia Capitolina, signifying its capital of the former provinces of Judea and Galilee, which had been renamed Syria Palestina. Emperor Constantine restored the name Jerusalem and financed the efforts by his mother, who no doubt influenced his conversion as much as the vision he had before moving against his rival contenders for the Imperial throne on the basis of Christianity, to rebuild the ruined city.
So that is what Emperor Constantine did. And what I said can be verified by reading any impartial history of the early church. Basically, the only books which allege Pagan-influenced meddling in the Church by Constantine are works that include the writings of Ellen G White, which Seventh Day Adventists very controversially claim to be inspired prophecy, and similar writings by related movements such as Landmark Baptists and indeed the Jehovah’s Witnesses who were invested in the idea of a Great Apostasy in the Early Church.
Now, if you want to find an example of a secular ruler who had a really destructive influence on Western Christianity, who caused changes that would ultimately lead to the East-West schism in 1054, Charlemagne is a much more valid example.
This all matters because the false narrative against Constantine when promoted by Christians has the effect of inadvertently making the job of Jehovah’s Witnesses and other neo-Arian cults that much easier, since if Constantine is incorrectly believed to have introduced pagan elements, then this makes all the good that he did before his Arianized son Constantius II, who was genuinely horrible for the Christian Church, came along, wrongfully suspected of heresy, when in fact the Council of Nicaea actually worked against heresy.
Also, I would note that the Council of Nicaea enacted two canons, canons 6 and 7 which directly contradict the Roman doctrine of Papal supremacy, by stating that the churches of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, have the same rights and privileges of the Church in Rome. So there is absolutely no reason for Protestants with traditional moral values to oppose this council, since it made correct rulings concerning Pascha, not ordaining men who have castrated themselves either by their own hand or by having a doctor do it (the canon contains a clear exception for surgeries performed of medical assistance or people who were involuntarily castrated against their will), which is important because this canon disqualifies trans-sexual persons from the ministry, who should not be ordained under any circumstances.
And nothing that Constantine did had the effect of contributing to the eventual unpleasant situation in the Western Church with Roman Catholicism which led to the Reformation, which the Roman church could have prevented had it even enacted the reforms it later made at the Council of Trent, not even the reforms made at Vatican II, since the Council of Trent was where the sale of indulgences was officially prohibited, and it had been that which drove Martin Luther over the edge, and I cannot criticize him for this, (not the least because of the demonstrable Orthodoxy of some of my Lutheran friends on the forum, such as the stalwart
@MarkRohfrietsch ) since before Martin Luther, nearly every Pope for more than a century had been seriously problematic, including Alexander VI of the notorious Borgias, and the militant Julius II. By the way, St. Julius was a martyr in the early church, although the Pope bearing his name acted in a manner more evocative of Gaius Julius Caesar, who of course lived before Christians and never personally persecuted them, but who is nonetheless not an ideal model for a Christian bishop.
I am curious why you regard yourself as a Presbyterian despite your investment in the ahistorical narrative of the Great Apostasy, since most Presbyterians and Calvinist Christians known to me, such as my friend
@bbbbbbb , strive for an accurate history of the early church, since John Calvin regarded this as important and it played an important role in his
Institutes, which were very thoughtful concerning ecclesiastical history. I believe an accurate knowledge of ecclesiastical history is extremely important, because it allows us to trace, for example, when the Roman church actually started having the problems that contributed to its decline and the need for the Reformation. It also helps us to identify which churches most closely resemble the Apostolic faith, since contrary to your assertion, some are much closer than others, and we know this because of the historical literature of the first and second and third century churches and the connection with that, the fourth century and so on. One can literally evaluate every denomination and make a reasonable assessment of how apostolic they are, or are not, by comparing them to what is described in these texts and in Scripture.
