Talk:Caesaropapism

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I think this article overstates its case. The opening definition of Caesaropapism is that the head of state is the head of the church. The article also says that Constantine did not even accept baptism until close to his death (which is accurate). How could Constantine function as head of the church if he was not even a member of it? Much less made any kind of bishop or pope.

What happened as I understand it is that in Christianity's first millennium, the pope in the West assumed more political power because the empire there was collapsing, and the pagan Vandals were coming. In the East, the empire remained intact much longer, so the patriarchs there did not have a power vacuum to fill, as the Roman pope did. In one of the most striking attempts by Byzantine emperors to reverse Christian faith and practice, iconoclasm, they were ultimately overcome and the icons remained. Wesley 04:52, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I would like to second this. The whole controversy with Caesaropapism was that it made the state the head of the church not that the two worked together in a theocratic manner. All the churches which have rejected this as heresy have done so out of that concern, and most which have rejected it as heresy have been theocratic governments or ones in which religion and the state worked in tandem. kharaku 09:58, 7 Dec 2007

[edit] clear distinctions and East/West

I think this article shouldn't overstate its case and shouldn't understate its case.

My understanding of Caesaropapism is uni-directional: Where the state (Caesar) takes over the power of the hierarch (papa). I would not consider the opposite trajectory to be the same: that is, it would not seem to be Caesaropapism when the papa-hierarch assumes the power of political governance, but "papal caesarism" (or something like that). And isn't it fair to describe the second process as a "counterweight" to the first?

As for your difficulties with Constantine being an "episkopos" in some sense, they speak more to propriety than historicity. Please remember that the term precedes Christian usage, and that the secular meaning of the word did not cease with the Battle of the Milvian bridge. The term means, literally, "overseer" or, if you like, supervisor! One might understand why a non-baptized emporer, being, as you correctly noted, "external" to the church, might claim for himself an oversight of "external" relations! But Ambrose upbraided the Eastern emporers for claiming a seat in the holy of holies, the altar area!

Your comment about Western views of the problem is understandable. I think the term did originate in Western views of the East. I think, though, it is a valid distinction to speak of secular "interference" in church governance as being a separate, but related phenomenon, only an element of Caesaropapism.

Did the scholar Gibbons (who is thought to have turned the term "byzantine" into a synonym for "plotting and scheming") have something to do with the early study of this matter?

All the best,

Genyo 17:23, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

PS. what about the term, "Symphonia" as an orthodox alternative to Caesaropapism and its opposite?

Not workable. Caesaropapism = Political power holders imposes power over the Church. Symphonia = Political power holders and Church work in voluntary concert, neither dominating the other and neither meddling in the other's exclusive domains.

question: Is the only assertion that Constantine gave land to the Church based on the forged "Donation of Constantine?" Isn't it true that he didgive some land to the Church? Genyo 15:47, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)