THE ROLE OF THE EASTERN CHURCH OVER PUBLIC MENTALITIES IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND CONSCIENCE IN THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CENTURIES

Abstract

Without doubts, the relations between State and Church are one of the continuous actual problems in the history of the Christianity. Debuting with the complex and specific problems during the primary Christianity, between the Judaic authorities and the Roman Empire, the relations will know, until the postmodern contemporaneity, fluctuations that were many times dramatic. Next to the permanent practical changes in the content – especially juridical and the practical impossibility of conceptualising and imposing a unanimously accepted/acceptable model – the fluctuations did nothing more than highlighting the real major significance of the matter. It is well-known the fact that, during the history, the relations between State and Church including the public mentalities, were placed constantly under the sign of permanent political-religious changes, alternating between the reciprocal support and the outspoken hostility. Without a doubt, the expression of the social dimension of religion depends in a determinant manner on its positioning to the state authority; thus, we may deduce that, beyond other conditioning and determinations, the way the mentalities of a society are configured may be placed under the spectre of the connections/ relations between the civil and the religious authorities. From this perspective, we will propose, with the occasion of the international symposium organised by the Romanian Parliament, to follow some of the benchmarks of the impact generated by the religious policy of Emperor Constantine the Great as mentality and behaviour in the exercise of the laic and religious power.