You have just GOT to stop reading Dan Brown.
Let's see YOUR evidence, please. And check with some of our Orthodox brethren to see if they agree with you, if their evidence matches yours.
Also let's see if we can distinguish, please between "forming" and "legalizing". It seems to me the burden is to show that by giving legal status to something that already existed and by providing some legal framework within which it could operate Constantine showed that the thing he legalized pre-existed his state.
When I was an Episcopal Priest (that is, uh, Protestant), I had to register with the state of NY and of VA to be able to do weddings. In a certain sense, I was an agent of the state government. While it is at least arguable that the Episcopal Church, as a distinct,legal corporate entity began with Henry VIII, nobody says that my ministry began when NY said I could do weddings that the state would acknowledge as legally binding. Furthermore, when Henry VII and his parliament outlawed the RC Church and started killing its members, would you maintain it ceased to exist? If not, then are you saying that a Church only comes into existence by an act of civil or secular law but cannot pass out of existence by a like act? Interesting!
This is an easy distinction to make. It's the blurring of existence on the one hand and legal acknowledgment on the other that is hard to understand. You'd have us believe that a baby doesn't exist until it has a birth certificate!
Another pro-choice position! If you kill it before it has a birth certificate, it never was a baby - no harm, no foul!
(Okay, I admit it, I've been reading Ann Coulter again ...)
Been meaning to tell you this for several comments now.......
STOP IT. STOP POSTING RIGHT NOW!!!!!
You are making me laugh, aloud, while I sit in the office by myself. My four year old keeps running in to see what mommy is laughing at. And she doesn't get it. And now she thinks I'm crazy, which totally undermines my authority. So knock it off, you are causing problems in my family.
And that goes for a whole bunch of you....one thing's for sure, Catholics/Orthodox have fantabulous senses of humor. Because, there's no way a slightly educated person is going to take this article seriously in any way, shape or form.