Theology Applied THE LIVESTREAM - How Sacralism Saved the Church
Shortly before His ascension, our Savior commanded his followers to "Go and disciple all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit," and to teach them "all that [He] had commanded them." In pursuit of this command the Apostles and their successors commenced a multi-century struggle to preserve the faith once delivered and declare it to the nations. These men, our spiritual fathers, laid the foundations of the Church and preached the Gospel to every city they could, frequently inviting the wrath of the pagan authorities for upsetting the pax deorum, the peace of the gods. Most of the Apostles would be martyred, along with many later men like Polycarp of Smyrna—a bishop and disciple of John—and Cyprian of Carthage.
But divine providence would change this state of affairs over a mere few decades. Not long after the Diocletian persecution of the early 4th century, Flavius Valerius Constantinus, or Constantine the Great, would ascend to dominance over the Western half of the Roman Empire. Constantine would adopt the Christian faith, and by consequence he would set off a chain of events that saw the increasing fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah, that the Law would go out from Zion, and the Lord would judge between the nations.
His successors would solidify his Christian measures, culminating in the declaration of Nicene Christianity as the official faith of the empire through the Edict of Thessalonica, delivered by Emperor Theodosius I in A.D. 380. Though paganism did not disappear overnight, these decrees oriented the Roman state and eventually other European kingdoms towards the full dominance of Christianity in all parts of their kingdoms, to the point that even our mere knowledge of various pre-Christian folk religions is patchy—sometimes pure conjecture.
It was by these means that the faith would dominate Europe, and through the European empires be exported across the globe. Further, the intellectual development of the faith that we enjoy today was done under the patronage of princes, guaranteeing the time, resources, and security necessary for theologians of old to exercise their gifts. Though the preaching of the Word was the absolutely essential spark that lit the flame of the faith, it was the Christian magistrate who carried the torch and spread the light into all spheres, and thus fulfilled the prophecy of David: Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.
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Tune in to today’s episode as we are joined by special guest The Other Paul to talk about sacralism, the state, and how God established Christianity in the West.
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