Talk #4 HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (PART I)



Talk #3 AN OVERVIEW OF CHURCH HISTORY (PART I)

CONSTANTINE WINS FREEDOM FOR THE CHURCH

CHRISTOLOGICAL HERESIES

FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND THE RISE OF ISLAM

CONSTANTINE WINS FREEDOM FOR THE CHURCH

Constantine, around 300 A.D. succeeded as emperor of the West. He made up his mind to destroy Maxentius, ruler of Italy and Africa and leader of the East. In 312 A.D., he defeated Maxentius in two battles, and finally came to the city of Rome where Maxentius had taken a final stand. The night before the battle, Constantine saw in the sky a cross of light surrounded by the words, “In Hoc Signo Vinci – In this sign thou shalt conquer”. A Voice from heaven told him to adopt the cross as a standard instead of the Roman eagle. He won that decisive battle. The next year, (313 A.D.), he passed the Edict of Milan granting religious toleration throughout the Roman Empire. This edict was thus also known as the Edict of Toleration. The edict granted religious tolerance to pagans and Christians alike. Eusebius, who knew Constantine, reproduces the imperial edicts in his The History of the church: “Christians and non-Christians alike should be allowed to keep the faith of their own religious beliefs and worship . . . Christians and all others [should have] liberty . . . [N]o one whatever was to be denied the right to follow and choose the Christian observance or form of worship . . . [E]very individual still desirous of observing the Christian form of worship should without interference be allowed to do so . . . [W]e have given the said Christians free and absolute permission to practice their own form of worship.” Christianity was no longer an illegal religion! The church came out of the catacombs and entered the palaces of power, for good and for ill, as subsequent history shows.

Although Constantine was not baptized until his last days on his deathbed, he declared himself a Christian. In order to rule the east and the west from a good vantage point, he decided to move the center of his Empire in Turkey and founded the city of Constantinople and he was even regarded as the patriarch of that city and a dominant figure in the Church. Under Constantine, Christians were favored with special privileges. Those who belong to the clergy were exempted from paying taxes and military service. They were given public role and power in the civil government. This attracted more people to the clergy, consequently, the seed of corruption started creeping into the Church because of secular minded clergy. The Church was also allowed to acquire properties. Constantine enforced “orthodoxy” by either granting or limiting privileges. He treated and controlled religion as part of the state. Christianity became socially acceptable and popular because in part of its secularism.

The move of Constantine in Turkey slowly but steadily strengthened the seat of the church in Rome since it remained the center of the Church. The Bishop of Rome acquired greater autonomy for ecclesial role and slowly stamped out secularism in the Church. Charismatic religious leaders evolved such as St. Ambrose, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, St. Basil the Great, and St. Gregory. Monasticism, which sought to restore religious fervor, became popular.

In the meantime, the successors of the apostles were called bishops, and the successor of St. Peter is the Bishop of Rome, who had always been the head of the Church. In all the larger centers where Christian communities had been established the apostles appointed bishops as shepherds of the flock. Patriarchates (present-day dioceses) were formed in these centers among the earliest of which were in Jerusalem, Antioch (the biggest patriarchate), Alexandria and Rome. The bishops ordained priests and deacons to assist in their work. The bishop of Rome directed and guided the bishops of the smaller towns. He was everywhere regarded as the supreme head of the Church.

CHRISTOLOGICAL HERESIES

The greatest doctrinal controversy in the history of the Church was the question of Christ’s divinity. The church, faithful to its task as the guardian and preserver of truth, rejected all heresies that denied Christ’s full humanity and his full divinity.

Arius, a priest of Alexandria (Libya) flatly denied the divinity of Christ arguing that before Christ was begotten, he did not exist. Constantine directly intervened in this controversy calling the first ecumenical (worldwide) Council of Catholic bishops, the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., which attempted to stop Arius’ denial of Christ’s divinity. The council also defined the teachings of the Church and drew up a profession of Faith that we know as the Nicene Creed. However, the error had already spread like wildfire and soon there were Arians in every part of the world. This heresy persisted, even supported by some bishops and emperors.

In response to this, the bishops began to develop official lists of inspired writings, called canons, which later resulted in a general agreement on what writings make up our Bible today. In the Councils of Hippo, 393 A.D. and Carthage, 397 A.D., the Church officially decided which books comprise the canon of the bible. In these three centuries, the community of believers sought a way to hold the far-flung Church together and maintain its unity. To this end, they created a system of authority based on bishop, canon, and creed. The Church confronted the sin of apostasy by excommunicating those who denied the faith but all who did penance could be re-admitted.

Despite such action of the Church in canonizing scriptures, Christological heresies persisted. Around 428 A.D., in the East, Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, denied that Mary could be called “theotokos” or “God-bearer” as according to him, that would mix up God and man since Mary did not bring God into existence. In response and in order to lay to rest once and for all the question of the divinity of Christ, Mary was proclaimed “Mother of God” by the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. The Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.) finally settled this issue of Christ’s divinity declaring that “the two natures (divine and human) are united without change, and without division, and without confusion in Christ.” Thus, Christ is one divine person in two natures – human and divine.

Another group called the Monophysites came up with another extreme claim that Jesus was only divine. They rejected Chalcedon’s decision. Their so-called Byzantine theology was influenced by Greek philosophical thought, including the logic of Aristotle. They also developed their own liturgies.

Fall of the Roman Empire in the West and the Rise of Islam in the East

The fall of the Roman Empire occurred in 476 A.D. Waves of barbarian armies swept into Europe and dismantled the civil structures of the empire. In response, the church in the West made efforts to convert the invaders. The leaders of the Church succeeded in finding patrons from the leaders of the invading tribes. For instance, Clovis, the King of Franks, married a Christian woman and consequently was baptized in 496 A.D.

Pope Leo the Great (590-604) brought order to the chaos caused by the Barbarians. The Barbarian king, Attila, was deeply impressed by the Pope in that here was a ruler with greater authority than his own. Pope Leo established the papacy as the de facto ruler of central Italy. He strengthened the papal primacy over the churches of the West. This was supported by the founding of monasteries all over Europe spearheaded by St. Benedict when he established the Benedictine Order at Monte Casino in 520 AD. It became a great source of missionary outreach and of the preservation of Christian culture. During the Barbarian invasions, had it not been for the Church, all of Europe would have fallen into a state of ruin, and the ancient culture of Greece and Rome would have been lost.

In the east, Islam gained grounds in light of persistent Christological heresies. It was offered as an alternative to such controversies and they began to take over the Empire. The eastern churches practically lost contact with the western Church as they were preoccupied with defending against the rise of Islam. Islam resorted to conversion through conquest and by force and eventually replaces the Byzantium. Christianity became a minority religion in much of the Eastern Empire by 660 A.D.

The standard view of history propagated by Fundamentalist is that the Roman Catholic Church became very powerful due to the fact that it was the seat of power of the Roman Empire and many emperors and high-government officials joined that Church after it was legalized in 313 A.D. It then engulfed all the other churches and forced its false doctrines on them until God restored Christianity to its original form at the time of the Protestant Reformation. No serious secular historian, however, subscribes to that. As a matter of fact, the anti-Catholic historian Edward Gibbon, in his monumental work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, goes so far as to declare that it was the existence of the Catholic church which eventually destroyed the Roman empire. Standard works of history likewise maintain that there never was a Western Christian Church apart from the Catholic Church until the time of the Protestant Reformation. They also admit that Catholicism is the mother church of Christianity.

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