Guest post by Jared Lovell (part 1 of 2)
The streets of Rome thronged with celebrants awaiting the advent of the victorious new emperor. Though it was typical for emperors or kings upon their ascension to be contrasted with their predecessors and praised as the ushers of a new era of peace and prosperity, on this day the world really was different from that which existed in those previous. It was October 29, 313, the day after the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. Regardless of what actually occurred leading up to the battle, whether there was a sign in the sky or a message communicated in a dream, Constantine emerged the victor, and the church of Christ had indeed entered a new era. For the first time, a sympathizer, if not yet a believer, of the Christian faith sat on the imperial throne. This change in the political context of the early church has been regarded as a negative one by many in the modern world. Constantine and “Constantinianism”1 are easy targets for those holding to a broad spectrum of varying theological persuasions and serve as a kind of shorthand for critics for all that is wrong with Christianity in general and the church in particular. From Dan Brown’s fictional Da Vinci Code, which was very popular among secular audiences, to Anabaptist theologians such as the late John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas, to even a segment of the Reformed community,2 the “Constantinian shift” is a lamentable detour in the course of church history. That has happily expired, and any remaining vestiges of it must continually eliminated.
Surely all sides would acknowledge some immediate benefits to the early church due to Constantine’s ascension, the most obvious being the cessation of the fierce persecution of the church begun under Diocletian and continued under Galerius and Maxentius. Some critics, however, would claim that the presence of a Christian emperor and his continued favor towards the church set up problematic trajectories that weakened the church over time through nominalism and syncretism. Others, based on historical myths, would object more strongly to Constantine’s supposed use of the sword to force conversion to Christianity. In either case, Constantine’s legacy is considered to be a net negative for the church in history. However, a proper analysis of Constantine must do more than run his ideas and his actions through the grid of modern liberal secularism, the propositions of which are largely accepted uncritically by moderns, Christian and non-Christian alike. What if the Enlightenment and the precepts of modern secularism are not actually an improvement upon Constantinianism and thus not a valid standard of evaluation? What if agnostic neutrality in the public sphere is a myth? Rather than the standard hasty dismissals of Constantine and Western Christendom that followed in his wake, it is the intention of this author to provide a more Augustinian critique of the church and state relationship in the fourth and fifth centuries from which we may benefit today. In God’s providence, Constantine was used to guard the church as it rose into a new position of prominence in the world which brought its own unique benefits and problems and, tempered by the political philosophy of Augustine, constituted a step forward in the history of the Western church. (more…)
