CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN EMPIRE

In order to end the problems brought into being when previous Roman Emperors declared themselves to be gods, the Emperor Constantine (300 AD) adopted the Christian Church as the state religion of the Roman Empire. This change led to the flowering of the unique civilization of the Eastern Roman Empire, which lasted for a millennium after the internal collapse of the original Roman Empire.

In it, Greek thought, Roman law, and Christian spirituality combined to create a unique era of civilization that lasted more than a thousand years. That flowering laid the foundations of our European Civilization, until Western Europe disintegrated into the politics and the massive explosions of warfare between nations that shape European history to this day.

At the same time, by bringing the Church formally into the Empire, the founder of Contantinople and of the Eastern Roman Empire began a series of continuing changes in Church law which opened the door to its slow fragmentation into multiple denominations which cannot all be true!

Creation of the Christian psyche

For Christians who seek God, self-knowledge precedes the knowledge of God, and the beginning of self-knowledge is the knowledge of the psyche: of what it is, and the part it can play in the transformation of man. The transformation of the psyche has two main stages; theory and practice. Theory must be brought into agreement with Theoria; the knowledge obtained in contemplation.

Only persistent practice will transform our inner nature and bring our lives progressively closer to that state of the psyche aimed at by the Church in its first two centuries. The practical path to Theosis is the deification of man as defined in both Old and New Testaments, and by the Early Fathers of the Church. The restoration of this kind of Christianity is the best chance we have to restore the original Christian qualities of our civilization.