Romanism did not appear until the 4th century when it combined with the State to make a Church/State religion as found in the Vatican today.
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INDEED.
Political ENGULFMENT is not at all the same thing as God’s anointing or blessing or approval.
“Political ENGULFMENT is not at all the same thing as God’s anointing or blessing or approval.”
Q, why do you persist in the belief that whatever problems the non-Roman Catholic West has with the Church of Rome began with +Constantine the Great? That is simply, historically untrue. There was a time, centuries later, when the Western Church and at least in some parts of Western Europe, the State, became one. But that was centuries and centuries after Constantine. It is true that Orthodoxy became the “State Church” in most of the East, just like various forms of Roman catholicism and Protestantism did in Western Europe and here in the Americas. But there was never a theocracy in the East. In fact, throughout the history of Orthodoxy, even in Russia, the Church has been at odds with the secular rulers near (in some places far more often than not) as often as on their side.
It is a myth that +Constantine the Great created the Roman Church just as it is a myth that “Roman Catholicism” as such, existed before the Great Schism, perhaps even before the Reformation. To say that an emperor who called a great council, the First Ecumenical Council, thereby created a politically, and religiously compliant and hierarchial Roman Church defies history. That great gathering of hierarchs and priests did just what +Constantine did not want them to do; they gave us the Creed and condemned the foul heresy of Arianism. Certainly God approved of that, wouldn’t you say? The 6 great Ecumenical Councils which followed defined basic Trinitarian and Christological theology shared by virtually all of us. I am at a total loss as to why anyone believes that +Constantine established Roman Catholicism or that anyone would think that that belief advances the cause of non-Latin or non-Orthodox Christians one whit.