Religious Ground Motive - The Synthetist RGM of The Slowly Christianizing Age

The Synthetist RGM of The Slowly Christianizing Age

As the Form/Matter RGM continued from Ancient Greek times (Homer, Hesiod, Musaios) through Classical times (Heraclitus, Parmenides, the Sophists and Socrates, Plato, Aristotle) and then into the times of the Cynics, Skeptics, and Stoics; another RGM arose slowly and spread by winning converts and generating a system of internal self-governance. That self-governance was always subordinate in the public arena to the state power of the Roman Empire, but as the Christian Church grew and its churches and dioceses arose in ever more areas, the Emperor Constantine the Great, born and raised by a Christian mother Helen, granted the Christians toleration. That meant more and more people underwent conversion, although Constantine himself did not become a Christian until on his death bed. Prior to that, however, he decided that the pagan religious system of temples supported by the Roman Imperial state, were not adequate to their task. So, he called together the leaders of the Christian Church/es to a council in the city of Nicaea to decide what the official teachings of the Church would be, and thereby established a consistent uniform doctrine - on his part, as a necessity of state. In the meantime, over the three hundred or so years between the life of Jesus regarded as the Messiah become the Christ, and the establishment of the Christian Church as the official religion of the Empire, the religious ground motive of Christianity contested the hold of the Greek Form/Matter motif, in many respects blended with it, and on this view produced a synthesis of the two RGMs. The Christian RGM, according to Dooyeweerd's conceptual construct, may be schematized in terms of Creation, Fall, and Redemption (especially some Anglicans have suggested revising this to Creation, Fall, Incarnation, and Redemption). However, this RGM never really gained uncontested power, and gained formative influence only in a form synthesized deeply with the older Form/Matter RGM.