Quotes About the Fall of the Church

Quotes about the fall of the Church from throughout Christian History.

You can also see quotes about modern Christianity. It's May 14, 2009 as I write this, and I'm just starting that section today, but I'll include quotes both good and bad as time passes. This quote section grows overall every week.

Philip Schaff, 1875

From the time of Constantine church discipline declines; the whole Roman world having become nominally Christian, and the host of hypocritical professors [i.e., converts] multiplying beyond all control." (History of the Christian Church, vol. III, p. 8)

Socrates and Sozomen [5th century historians] ... date the decline of discipline and of the former purity of morals from [the removal of the office of penitential elder (who heard confessions) in A.D. 390]. But the real cause lay further back, in the connection of the church with the temporal [secular] power. Had the state been pervaded with the earnestness and zeal of Christianity, like the Genevan republic, for example, under the reformation of Calvin, the discipline of the church would have rather gained than lost by the alliance. But the vast Roman state could not so easily and quickly lay aside its heathen traditions and customs; it perpetuated them under Christian names. The great mass of the people received, at best, only John’s baptism of repentance, not Christ’s baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire. (History of the Christian Church, vol. III, sec. 68)

A.W. Tozer, d. 1963

Religion today is not transforming people; rather it is being transformed by the people. It is not raising the moral level of society; it is descending to societyÕs own level, and congratulating itself that it has scored a victory because society is smilingly accepting its surrender. (Unknown)

Justo Gonzalez, 1984

The sorry state of the church during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries gave impetus to various movements of reform. (The Story of Christianity, p. 342)

Tom Lee, 2009

[my note: in Constantine's time] Delivered from physical danger at the hands of the State, the Church was soon torn by theological dissension within; the almost inevitable outcome of its changed character. Having assimilated Hellenic philosophy and ethics and social forms, the Church also assumed a new frame of mind that shifted the emphasis from conduct to belief. The total contrast can be seen by comparing the Sermon on the Mount, which came at the beginning, and the Nicene Creed, which finalized the initial stage of the theological process of elaboration. The former is a sermon on ethics; the latter is a dogmatic, metaphysical credo, unrelated to conduct, in which contentious ideas and surmises with no provenance in Jesus' teaching became improbable dogmas. (The Conversion of Constantine, Part 17.2, from www.catholica.com.au)