27 September 2007

Constantinian Christianity

The Militant Pacifist has believed for some time that early Church-State accommodations so heavily influenced the history of Western Christian thought that a 1st-century saint might not even recognize a present day professing "American" Christian.

How could this happen?

Well, a wrong thought (if thought for long enough) may begin to seem right (i.e., "not wrong"). When this happens, the thought is still wrong - but the thinker has lost the perspective to see that the thought is wrong. S/he has become so convinced of the "rightness" of the thought, that only a radical change of mind can make such a thinker reject the wrong thought.

The article linked in the posting title above briefly describes how some of this wrong thinking got started.

The echo of Tertullian’s famous question rings still - "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?"