into moralistic and ethical religious rules and into
creedalistic concepts of correct content of thought. They so
quickly let go of the dynamic life of Jesus Christ as the
essence of Christianity, and allowed it to become merely a
belief-system.
The Roman Emperor, Constantine, solidified this static
concept of Christianity even more in the early part of the
fourth century. Constantine wanted to unify everything –
government, economics, religion, "Christian thought", etc.
He organized the Nicene Council in 325 A.D., bringing
together these philosophically-based thinkers, theologians,
to develop a rigid expression of "Christian belief." They
compressed "Christian thought" into logical propositions of
truth and orthodoxy and called it the "Nicene Creed," to
which everyone who was called "Christian" was to give
mental assent, or be regarded as a heretic.
By 325 A.D. Christianity had been perverted into a
formulated and fixated belief system, demanding devotion
to its doctrine. This process was progressively developed in
the institutionalized Roman or Latin Church. T.F. Torrance
refers to this epistemologically based rationalism as "the
Latin heresy." 1
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