27. (a) What kind of religion did Constantine try to create, and what did he offer to the church bishops? (b) Who was behind this offer made to the bishops, Christ or Satan?

²⁷ As the pagan Pontifex Maximus, Constantine tried to win over all the bishops of the churches. He tried to create a fusion religion, an “interfaith” religion, combining heathen paganism with Christianity. Acting as Pontifex Maximus and hence as religious head of the Roman Empire, he offered the bishops positions of power, prominence and wealth with the Roman government as officers of the Roman State religion. Here now was an offer of human rulership in conjunction with the political government being made to so-called Christian bishops. Are we to think that Jesus Christ in heaven was here offering such “bishops” a human rulership in connection with “all the kingdoms of the world” that He had refused? Or, was it the Tempter, Satan the Devil, who still laid claim to those kingdoms as having been delivered to him? The right answer is not hard to arrive at: it was Satan the Devil through his Pontifex Maximus on earth who was offering to the bishops a temptation similar to that offered to Jesus Christ. But did the bishops, including the “bishop of Rome,” follow Jesus’ example?

28. (a) Did those bishops follow Christ’s example, and so what resulted? (b) What title did the “bishop of Rome” assume, and what happened to the unity of Christendom?

²⁸ Secular and ecclesiastical history answers No! Many bishops fell for the temptation and entered the imperial service as the hierarchy of the Roman State religion, the Roman State Church. Thus Christendom was born and grew. In the year 378 C.E. the bishop of Rome went so far as to adopt the title and responsibilities of Pontifex Maximus, that had been discarded by the Roman Emperor Gratian.

[Picture on page 627]

Did the blessing of the churches on the world wars make those conflicts Christian?

[New York Times, April 2, 1917, p. 4]

[New York World Telegram, October 23, 1944]

[New York Times, June 16, 1940]

[New York Times, April 6, 1917, p. 10]

[New York Times, October 5, 1940, p. 4]

[New York Times, September 30, 1914, p. 3]

[New York Post, October 30, 1940]

[New York Times, April 15, 1917, p. 7]

[New York Post, June 6, 1940]