community of people from diverse ethnic backgrounds who were united by their commitment to some basic, transcendent values identified with “Christ.” (The connection between this development and the OT hopes for the “ingathering of the gentiles” was not lost upon the early Church.) The situation was, of course, radically reversed when Christianity (especially the church at Rome) became systematically associated with the institutions of political power after the time of Constantine. Under those very
Volume 1, Page 1199