Disappearance of Gentile Christian

How and why did the Gentile Christian vanish? I conject here. I am not a scholar of this history.

Kant suggested the Christians made too great appeal to the Jews and instituted priesthoods and laws in order to be look-alikes for the them and so appear more familiar and natural to them. And so gradually the mind set changed and the play-acting took root in the minds of the gentile members.

I happen to think it was something more sudden and intentional, namely where an admittedly benevolent Church teamed up with an apparently sincere State, Constantine the Great (and hailed by the Greeks as St. Constantine, Apostle), to create a world which would be perfect under the conditions of their existence. The Church and State, a union under God, would minister to the world for the sake of God. Each would simply tell the citizen what needed to be done in order to live a happy life, namely this, that and the other. No thinking was required, but merely obedience. The result would be earthly perfection, i.e., an orderly and decent existence with peace of conscience. With this goal in mind I think it would be easy for the Church and State to agree that since a growing population were needful it followed that Paul’s tirade against same sex sex bespoke a law of God, timeless in its import, and that indeed God wanted sex to be used for children only, and not something to be savored (as the humans all tend to do, unlike the animals--the animals never savor sex, they merely have it). Likewise it simply made sense to them that marriages were better off and more stable when the man ran the house and where women did not flaunt their sexaulity openingly at men and indeed people did not even show off at all, but lived modestly. And so since Paul had spoken his words in all candor and sincerity, his words against homosexual contact and all the rest, it was very, very easy just to see this as an law of God imposed upon the world (for its own good, of course [in the mind of Church and State at that time), and where it was better to just go ahead and accept God’s rule now through the laws of text and proclamation, Church and State.The Church will have said: "This (proclaimed law) is an example of one of God’s laws for good conduct that the Church is able to make known to you. Scripture itself, in Paul’s writings, gives an example of an imposition of a law upon all gentiles." Thus Paul's General Rule is relegated to a generalized expression convering many acts and is no longer the sole guide to conscience. The Gentile Christian vanishes and we are left with the gentile Christian who is Jewish in spirit and mindset.

In other words, the Jewish Model of Lawfulness would have made more sense to this benevolent Church of that time than the Gentile Model of Lawlessness, and the Kingdom of God that the Church is always in pursuit of encompasses sense and rationality, in addition to decency.

It is important to keep in mind the fact of the reappearance of the Gentile Christian. We remember that the Gentile/Free Christian stands opposed to the Jewish/Lawful Christian in the way of the left and right hand. Each is equally a Christian and follower of Jesus Christ, and the Church would continue if either (but not both!) of the two, quite different, Christians should vanish. And so while the Gentile Christian vanished at one time, the Church has continued and the Gentile can be resurrected at any time. And so the two Christians can come and go without impeding the work of the Holy Spirit on earth.

And so watch out: here comes the Gentile Christian again and claims his birthright as a gentile in the name of the Council of Jerusalem (of Acts 15, as interpreted), and acceptance via the admonition of St. Paul in Romans 14 (uninterpreted).