(MY NOTE-It was also Constantine's mother who went through Israel and bought
up all the supposed "holy sites". The Catholic church to this day still
holds title to them and has shrine churches built over them.)
Constantine's Impact on Christianity
Constantine's reign as Roman emperor (A.D. 306-337) dramatically changed the
direction of Christianity, though in ways far different from those portrayed
in The Da Vinci Code. This grew out of his strategy for unifying his empire
by creating a "catholic" as meaning universal âchurch that would blend elements
from many religions into one.
While Constantine supposedly converted to Christianity in 312, he wasn't
baptized until on his deathbed 25 years later. In the intervening years he had
his wife and eldest son murdered, and from all appearances he continued as a
worshipper of the sun god. Long after his supposed conversion he had coins
minted with a portrait of himself on one side and a depiction of his "companion,
the unconquered Sol [sun]" on the other.
The "Christianity" Constantine endorsed was already considerably different
from that practiced by Jesus Christ and the apostles. The emperor accelerated
the change by his own hatred of Jews and religious practices he considered
Jewish.
For example, at the Council of Nicea (A.D. 325), church authorities
essentially replaced the biblical Passover with Easter, a popular holiday rooted in
ancient springtime fertility celebrations. Endorsing this change, Constantine
announced: "It appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most
holy feast [Easter] we should follow the practice of the Jews, who have
impiously defiled their hands with enormous sin, and are, therefore, deservedly
afflicted with blindness of soul . . . Let us then have nothing in common
with the detestable Jewish crowd" (Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3, 18-19,
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1979, second series, Vol. 1, pp. 524-525).
Constantine's affection for sun worship had earlier led him to endorse
Sunday, the first day of the week and a day dedicated to honoring the sun, as a
weekly day of rest in the Roman empire . This created considerable hardship on
those Jews and true Christians who continued to keep the biblical Sabbath on
the seventh day of the week. (A century later the Council of Laodicea would
essentially outlaw Sabbath-keeping and Christian observance of the biblical
Holy Days.)
British historian Paul Johnson summarizes how Constantine's approach of
merging religious practices produced a corrupted Christianity that meshed
paganism with biblical elements: "Thus the followers of Isis adored a madonna
nursing her holy child; the cult of Attis and Cybele celebrated a day of blood and
fasting, followed by the Hilaria resurrection-feast . . . the elitist
Mithraics, many of whom were senior army officers, ate a sacred meal ...
"Many Christians did not make a clear distinction between this sun-cult
[Mithraism] and their own. They . . . held their services on Sunday, knelt
towards the East and had their nativity-feast on 25 December, the birthday of the
sun at the winter solstice ...
"How could the Christian Church, apparently quite willingly, accommodate this
weird megalomaniac [Constantine] in its theocratic system? Was there a
conscious bargain? Which side benefited most from this unseemly marriage between
Church and State? ... Did the empire surrender to Christianity, or did
Christianity prostitute itself to the empire?" ( A History of Christianity, 1976,
pp. 67-69).
When we consider the vast differences between the mainstream Christianity of
today and the original Christianity of Jesus Christ and the apostles, we can
trace much of that change to Constantine and the religious system he put in
power. GN
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