In 313 A.D., the role of Christians in society started to change. In that year, the Roman Emperor Constantine gave official sanction to Christianity for the first time and afterwards gradually added official state support, including building churches and sponsoring the production of biblical books. While Christians saw this turn of events as miraculous, especially as it came on the heels of one of the most brutal persecutions in history, it may have simply been a shrewd political move on the part of Constantine to secure support from the growing number of believers as he struggled to gain sole control of the empire. Whatever his motives, the official sanction of Christianity changed the dynamic between Christians and society. Whereas before, becoming a Christian meant ridicule, suspicion, and the potential for real harm, it now meant gaining not only an acceptable but even favored status. The change of status for Christian bishops was even more extreme—their position, once fraught with danger, began to entail power and authority in the secular realm.
One of the adverse effects of this conjoining of church and state was that it became difficult to distinguish between political and spiritual authority. Church leaders sometimes wielded political power, and sometimes political leaders exercised power over the church. Once he gained control of the empire, Constantine convened church councils deciding major theological doctrines, including the council of Nicaea in 323 A.D. Eventually, in 381 A.D., the Emperor Theodosius made “Catholic Christianity” the official religion of the Roman empire and aligned bishoporics with political territories in the Roman empire so that there was one governor and one bishop for the province of Asia, for example. Soon after, pagan worship was suppressed, and in 385 A.D., the newly Christian government for the first time executed Christians that deviated from the government-endorsed orthodoxy.
Roman coin (c. 350 A.D.) showing the military standard first adopted by Emperor Constantine containing the Chi-Rho, or the first two Greek letters of Christ.
In less than 80 years, the church persecuted by the state morphed into the state-sponsored persecuting church. How could such a thing happen? The Christians who experienced Constantine’s Edict of Milan and those who came after forgot that God’s kingdom and earthly kingdoms exist on two separate planes. Though an earthly government is hostile to Christianity, it cannot hinder the advancement of God’s kingdom as long as the church operates according to the principles of the kingdom. By following the commands of Jesus to submit and serve, Christians can overcome every obstacle. In his first epistle, Peter wrote to the persecuted church in the Roman province of Asia, telling them: “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men, whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right … However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name.”[1] Christians in the early church understood that when they submitted to earthly authorities, they were in fact submitting to God who instituted those authorities, and that they would overcome even as they suffered persecution.
In the euphoria following the Edict of Milan, faithful and well-intentioned Christians such as Eusebius of Caesarea hailed Emperor Constantine as a savior. At the very end of his Ecclesiastical History, finished in 324 A.D., Eusebius describes the consolidation of the Empire under Constantine and the resulting elevation of the Christian religion:
But the mighty and victorious Constantine adorned with every virtue of religion, with his most pious son, Crispus Caesar, resembling in all things his father, recovered the East as his own, and thus restored the Roman Empire to its ancient state of one united body. … All fear, therefore, of those who had previously afflicted the Christians was wholly removed. They celebrated splendid and festive days with joy and hilarity. All things were filled with light, and all who before were sunk in sorrow, beheld each other with smiling and cheerful faces. With choirs and hymns, in the cities and villages, they celebrated and extolled first of all God the universal King, because they thus were taught, then they also celebrated the praises of the pious emperor and with him all his divinely favored children. There was perfect oblivion of past evils, and the past wickedness was buried in forgetfulness. There was nothing but enjoyment of the present blessings and expectation of those yet to come. Edicts were published and issued by the victorious emperor, full of clemency, and laws were enacted indicative of munificence and genuine religion.[2]
Official support from the most powerful empire in the world led believers to believe that the cause of Christ had won a tremendous victory. Certainly, Christians could be excused some relief and even elation that the Roman Empire which crucified Jesus now claimed to submit to him. However, these Christians could not foresee the ramifications of aligning their faith with a particular political identity (in this case the Roman Empire). They could not foresee how the state church would create official dogma out of simple creeds stating apostolic faith, or how the church would eventually burn heretics who refused to submit to that dogma. When bishops of apostolic churches agreed to align their sees with political jurisdictions, they failed to understand how that would one day give rise to hierarchical church leadership headed by patriarchs in Rome and Constantinople. The apostolic churches that served together as stewards of tradition and orthodoxy could not imagine that consensus and appeal to Scripture would one day yield to monarchal rule by church patriarchs—that the term “catholic” would no longer denote allegiance to universally accepted doctrine but instead allegiance to doctrine promulgated by the bishop of Rome. The Christians who won converts through their bravery in martyrdom would have recoiled at the thought of crusades against infidels claiming hundreds of thousands of lives.
Despite their good intentions, the Christians who celebrated Emperor Constantine’s support identified the kingdom of God with an earthly government and thereby lost the uniqueness that distinguished them from the rest of society. Instead of living as though they looked forward to the coming of God’s kingdom, they started living as though that kingdom was already established here on earth. Using its unprecedented freedom and power, the church began subjugating pagan religions and eventually coercing allegiance to the Christian faith.
[This post is an excerpt of my work-in-progress book on social justice in the Old Testament. Feedback is welcome! More on Learning to Do Right.]
[This post is an excerpt of my work-in-progress book on social justice in the Old Testament. Feedback is welcome! More on Learning to Do Right.]
2 comments:
I think your ideas need some more grounding: Christianity under persecution wasn't always squeaky-clean. Early Christians settled their argument with rent-a-mob, so having to go through due process was actually an improvement!
Also, although Christianity did have a cosy relationship with political power in some ways, it wasn't always a bad thing. For the first time, women were considered citizens, with inheritance rights; the poor had free health-care, at new-fangled hospitals (though the medicine was still pretty horrible); the Paterfamilias no longer had authority of life and death over his family; infanticide was outlawed; and slavery was discouraged, replaced on farms by serfdom, which involved rights and duties.
Then, when Rome was sacked by pagan barbarians, the church realised that Christianity didn't depend on Caesar, which set them apart from the Eastern Roman Empire which remained a part of civil power structures. Which in turn is why Orthodox churches tend to be ethnically or nationally based.
Point taken about the rent-a-mobs. However, there was a fundamental shift after Constantine that eventually led to errors such as papal rule, the Crusades, and inquisitions.
Christianity does not need to be aligned with worldly power to be effective. It's true power lies in transforming people's hearts. The reason I'm thinking of including these chapters is only because people might come away thinking that if the Bible says society ought to protect its most vulnerable members, and Christians are to influence society, they might come to the conclusion that Christians should rely on worldly mechanisms of power ... which is wrong because Jesus and the early Christians set a different example.
However, I'm starting to see that this argument perhaps belongs in a separate book or in an appendix. The main portion of the book should focus on exegesis of the Old Testament.
Thank you very much for reading and commenting! I value your feedback!
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