The word “catholic” is the compound of two Greek words, kata (meaning “according to”) and holos (meaning “the whole”). The use of the term in Constantinianism alluded to allegiance to the state-sanctioned order of the Church (also called sacralism, meaning a societal system of common religious loyalty, whose commitment involves sacred rites or symbols). The idea conveyed was a Christianity that was according to “the whole” or officially accepted sanction. Thus Rome, under Theodosius, would order the following in a.d. 380:

It is our will that all people we rule shall practice that religion which the divine Peter the apostle transmitted to the Romans. We shall believe in the single deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, under the concepts of equal majesty and of the Holy Trinity. We command that those persons who follow this rule shall embrace the name of “Catholic Christians.” The rest, however, whom we adjudge to be demented and insane, shall sustain the infamy of heretical dogmas, their meeting places shall not receive the name of churches, and they shall be smitten first by divine vengeance and secondly by the retribution of our own initiative, which we shall assume in accordance with divine judgment.¹ Theodosius I

Already Church-State authority was being mingled and the Church in Rome was asserting determinative authority over all who would claim to be Christian. They were also assuming the authority of capital punishment, which was never given by Christ to the Church—that was left to the state (Romans 13:1-7).

The changes and impositions that Constantine made on the Church substantially contributed to her drift away from the light of the gospel and into darkness.

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