The Triumph of Christianity

by Bart D. Ehrman

  As for Constantine not always acting as a Christian and doing things that Christian ethicists strongly insist one should not do, we need always to remember that his conversion was not an instantaneous adoption of traditional Christian beliefs and practices—or ethics. Moreover, historians must resist the urge to define “Christian” according to certain preconceived notions and then judge Constantine accordingly. Are we to imagine that someone is not a Christian if they behave badly? It is true, some of Constantine’s actions were highly transgressive of traditional Christian morality. On the other hand, he did have an empire to run. He would not have lasted a month if he had styled his rule on the Sermon on the Mount.

  What about Constantine’s decision to delay baptism until the last minute? This is probably the least convincing of the arguments, since it was not an unusual practice. This was especially true among Christians who took seriously theological claims that sins committed after baptism could not be forgiven but would lead to eternal punishment. We see such claims already in the New Testament: “For if we willingly sin after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there is no longer left to us a sacrifice for sins but a fearful expectation of judgment and a furious fire that will consume the enemies” (Hebrews 10:26–27; see also Hebrews 6:4–6). Anyone who believed this can hardly be excused for delaying baptism until the very end. Many did so.

  There is in fact overwhelming and public evidence that Constantine was a very real Christian during his reign, even if he only gradually came to understand fully what that meant. Some of the most striking policies he enacted after his victory at the Milvian Bridge involved favors poured out on the Christian churches. Within months of assuming control of Rome he came to an agreement with his co-emperor Licinius, now ruling the East with the passing in 311 of Galerius, that brought a complete cessation of the persecution begun ten years earlier under Diocletian. This so-called Edict of Milan (which was not an edict and was not from Milan) gave complete freedom of religious expression to all inhabitants of the empire, ending once and for all the prosecution of Christians.22

  Christianity, however, was not only decriminalized; it went from being a persecuted faith to being the religion of most-favored status. Constantine commissioned and financed the building of numerous Christian churches both in Rome and abroad, most notably the Lateran Basilica, which was to play such an instrumental role in the history of Christianity as the official cathedral of the Roman bishop (i.e., the pope). He showered beneficences on Christian clergy. He instructed the leading administrator of Africa to restore all the property that had been confiscated from the Christian churches during the persecutions.

  One might argue that Constantine was simply siding with the church for reasons of his own without being personally committed to Christian truth claims. In theory that could be so, but it is completely discredited by two other kinds of evidence: the first is Constantine’s almost immediate involvement with Christian practical and theological disputes, and the second are words that issued from his own pen in which he spelled out with clarity his religious views.

  In terms of his active participation in church affairs, already in 313 and then more vigorously in 314 Constantine inserted himself into the rancorous Donatist controversy of Northern Africa. This was an intense debate over what should be considered the legitimate Christian church community and who should be considered its legitimately appointed leaders. Constantine threw himself into the fray not particularly caring at first which side was right, but over time he came to a very clear opinion on the matter, siding (to no one’s great surprise) with the view supported by the great majority of church leaders, especially those in Rome.23

  Yet more striking was the Arian controversy, which came to a head some thirteen years later. Now the issues did not involve church polity but hard-core theology, specifically the hot and detailed question of the identity of Christ and his relationship with God the Father (Are they equal? Or is the Father greater? Are they co-eternal? Or did the Father exist first?). Constantine, like most Christians to this day, did not follow, or even much appreciate, all the nuances of the debate. But he was deeply invested in it and called the famous Council of Nicaea in 325 CE in order to resolve it. He not only called the council; he actively participated in the discussions and enforced the final decision. It is a remarkable moment of history. Here was a hardened, experienced, and seriously bloodied military commander and iron-fisted ruler of the Roman state debating the philosophical meaning of words of Scripture with Christian bishops. It is hard to say he was not committed to the cause.

  Above all we have words that Constantine wrote and publicly spoke, which show beyond any doubt his deep Christian sensibilities. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in his address widely known as the Oration to the Saints.24 In written form the speech spans twenty-six chapters. It would have taken two hours to deliver orally. We know it was given around the time of Easter, but we don’t know which year, with scholars proposing dates ranging from 315 to (somewhat more plausibly) 325 CE. The speech is principally a defense of the Christian belief over the views of paganism. It expresses Constantine’s philosophical and theological views, even though no theologian then or now would consider it overwhelmingly deep or perspicacious. Constantine was highly educated, but he was no professional thinker. Still, the speech gives us his religious perspectives and shows clearly how deeply he felt committed to them—and how closely they aligned with his political objectives. It is always important to remember the point made at the beginning of this chapter. Ancient people, whether pagans, Jews, or Christians, did not neatly differentiate between the religious and the political. They would have had a hard time understanding the difference.

  There certainly is not a clear difference in this speech. Early on, Constantine makes an impassioned plea that there is and must be only one ultimate divine ruler, one god over all. If there were many divinities, then people would commit a sacrilege anytime they chose to worship any one of them. But, even more significant, if there were many divine rulers, there would be divisiveness rather than unity. What the world needs is unity. Constantine is quite openly not thinking only of the unity of heaven. He is equally, if not more, concerned about life on earth.

  The divine situation, then, reflects the human. Numerous divinities all vying for attention would create division, envy, and jealousy. This, in his words, “would mar the harmonious concord of the whole, as many disposed in different ways of the shares allotted to each, and took no thought to maintain the whole world in the same state and according to the same principles.” Such a state of affairs would lead to the “confusing of all things.” And by “all” Constantine really means all. “The constellations would be in disarray, the seasons could not change in consistent patterns, the fruits of the earth could not grow, day and night would be confused.” There has to be one ruler over all. The implication, should anyone miss it, is that there needs to be one emperor over all as well.

  That does not mean that Constantine’s speech is simply a power grab. It means that his religious commitment to worship the one God of heaven affected his sense that he himself was to be the one ruler on earth. As such he was completely committed to the Lord of all. His allegiance was completely Christian, as he himself declares in the oration: “My proper task is to hymn Christ through my way of life and the thanksgiving due to him from us in return for many great benefits” (Oration, 5).

  Constantine was decidedly in favor of the “many great benefits” that were his through the worship of the Christian god. That may not sound like a disinterested view of theology or worship. But in an ancient context it is the least extraordinary thing about his deeply held commitment.

  CONSTANTINE’S CONVERSION: IN SUM

  Some historians have argued that if Constantine were really a Christian, he would have worked harder to convert his pagan subjects. That he clearly did not do. As Harold Drake has shown, however, this is no argument against his commitment to the Christian cause. It is evidence of the kind of
Christian Constantine was and wanted to be. There were many, many Christians of his day—just as there have been many, many Christians in all the centuries that followed—who did not find it incumbent upon themselves to foist their Christian views on those who adhered to other religious traditions.25 He had seen with perfect clarity the failure of forceful governmental intervention in religion, and he wanted no part of it. He was happy to support the Christians, to promote monotheistic piety of various kinds, and to allow people to worship God or the gods as they saw fit.

  His conversion had serious repercussions. All the emperors of Rome from that time on—with one brief but notable exception—were Christian. Christianity was to take over the Roman world, becoming the official religion of the empire and eventually the dominant religion of the West.

  Chapter 2

  Back to the Beginning: The Conversion and Mission of Paul

  Constantine’s decision to worship only the god of the Christians may have been a major turning point in the history of the West, but it pales in comparison with a conversion that occurred nearly three centuries earlier. Had the apostle Paul not “seen the light” and become a worshiper of Jesus, the religion of Christianity, open to all people, both Jew and gentile, may never have developed into a worldwide phenomenon of any description whatsoever. It may well have instead remained a sect of Judaism fated to have the historical importance of, say, the Sadducees or the Essenes: highly significant for historians of Jewish antiquity but scarcely the stuff of world-shaping proportions.

  It would be difficult indeed to identify two people more different than Constantine and Paul. Whereas Constantine was by far the most powerful, influential, and wealthy figure of the entire empire, Paul was an impoverished and embattled itinerant preacher unknown to most of the world at large. Constantine commanded the most powerful armies of his day and ran an enormous empire; Paul preached principally to lower-class day laborers in his workshop as a simple artisan. The magnificence and splendor of Constantine’s life and surroundings beggar description; Paul’s existence can be nicely summed up in his own words, where he compares himself with other supposed apostles:1

  Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one . . . with more numerous labors, more numerous imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times from the Jews I received the forty lashes minus one; three times I was beaten by rods, once I was stoned, three times I have been shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, in danger from robbers, in danger from those of my own race, in danger from gentiles, in danger in the city, in danger in the wilderness, in danger at sea, in danger from those falsely claiming to be brothers, in labor and toil, in many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in the cold and naked . . . . (2 Corinthians 11:23–27).

  We have, then, an exalted emperor and a beleaguered, impoverished craftsman. These are the two most significant converts of Christian history. Without the latter, this history would never have been written.

  THE SOURCES FOR PAUL’S LIFE AND WORDS

  Unlike for virtually anyone of equal insignificance at the time, for Paul we have rather good sources for his Christian life, including his conversion and his subsequent missionary efforts to convert others. These sources have come down to us in the New Testament. Later believers may have ascribed scriptural status to these books, but historians cannot discount them on these grounds. They are documents produced by people who, at the time, had no idea they were writing the Bible.

  A number of these are writings in Paul’s own name. Altogether we have thirteen letters, actual pieces of correspondence, allegedly written by Paul, along with several writings from outside the New Testament. Those that did not make it into the Christian canon are without question inauthentic, penned by later Christians claiming to be Paul in order to induce readers to heed their words. Modern readers would call such works forgeries; ancient readers called them equally denigrating things, if and when they realized they were being duped. Since the nineteenth century, scholars have recognized that even some of the letters in the New Testament fit this description. Six of the thirteen canonical Pauline epistles appear to be later productions by authors falsely taking Paul’s name. Even so, that leaves us with seven letters almost certainly from Paul’s own hand, invaluable sources for Paul’s biography.2

  One problem with these letters is that Paul is generally not interested in discussing what we ourselves might like to know. He did not write his correspondence principally to enlighten us about his conversion or his experiences in the mission field trying to convert others. As a rule, the letters are instead addressed to problems his converts were later having in their communal and personal lives, problems involving what to believe and how to behave. If a church of his—for example, the church in Thessalonica or in Corinth—was not experiencing a particular difficulty, Paul had no reason to address it. Moreover, in every case the original audience already enjoyed an intimate acquaintance with the story of how Paul—and how they themselves—had converted. For us to deduce that kind of information, we need to dig deeply into Paul’s passing comments.

  We are fortunate to have a second source of information as well, a narrative account of the spread of the Christian church over its first thirty years, starting from the days after Jesus’s resurrection. This is the New Testament book known as the Acts of the Apostles, allegedly written by someone who had accompanied Paul on his missionary journeys. What better source could we hope for? This book actually describes Paul’s conversion, on three occasions, and spends the bulk of its narrative describing his post-conversion missionary exploits.

  The problem is that this historical narrative, in many, many instances, is not historical enough. Scholars have widely contended that the alleged author, an unnamed companion of Paul, could not have actually written it, in no small measure because both small details and larger narratives of the book are at odds with what Paul says about himself.3 The dominant view of scholarship today is that the author produced his account at least twenty years after Paul had died—a growing number of scholars insists that it was written sixty years later—by an author without firsthand knowledge and a greater desire to tell a compelling narrative than an inclination, and an ability, to preserve solid, accurate, historical information.4 As a result, anyone wanting to know what Paul really did, said, and experienced needs to use the book of Acts cautiously, grateful that it provides us any information at all but wary at every point. Scholars of Paul typically proceed, then, by focusing principally on the seven letters that indisputably came from his pen.

  PAUL THE JEW

  In order to understand Paul’s conversion to faith in Jesus, we need a sense of what he converted from. Unlike Constantine, Paul was raised Jewish, not pagan. Twice in his undisputed letters Paul refers to his prior life. The first occurs in his letter to the churches in the region of Galatia, modern central Turkey. In order to establish his bona fides as an expert on the value and meaning of Jewish faith, Paul stresses that he himself started life as an avid Jew intent on pursuing the requirements of his religion with uncharacteristic zeal. It was this zeal that led him to persecute Jews who were declaring Jesus of Nazareth the messiah:

  For you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism, that I persecuted the church of God violently and was trying to destroy it. And I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my peers among my race, being especially zealous for the traditions of our ancestors. (Galatians 1:13–14)

  In order to make a similar point in his letter to the Christians of the Macedonian church of Philippi, Paul gives a bit more detail:

  [I was] circumcised on the eighth day, from the race of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews, according to the law a Pharisee, according to zeal, a persecutor of the church, according to the righteousness that comes in the law, blameless. (Philippians 3:5–6)

  To make sense of Paul’s Christian faith, we obviously need to know a bit about his Jewish origins. Je
ws made up something like 7 percent of the Roman Empire in Paul’s day; everyone else, of course, was pagan. As is true today, Judaism was extremely diverse, with different Jewish groups both in Palestine and outside—in the so-called diaspora—evidencing a wide range of beliefs and practices.5 Paul was definitely one of the outsiders: even though the book of Acts indicates that he was a highly educated rabbi trained in Jerusalem by the leading teacher of his day (Acts 22:3), Paul himself makes no reference to any pre-Christian Judean sojourn. Moreover, his native language is clearly Greek (the language of his letters), and at a relatively high level. We can assume then that Paul was born and raised outside Palestine, almost certainly in a large urban setting, where he could get an education. The book of Acts indicates that was the city of Tarsus in Cilicia (Acts 22:3), but Paul himself does not say.

  Despite their wide diversity, Jews throughout the empire shared certain constants that made them recognizable and distinct from their pagan neighbors.6 Most obviously, Jews were monotheistic, worshiping just their god, the god of Israel alone. This did not require Jews to deny that other gods existed: some thought they did exist but were not to be worshiped; others thought pagan gods were alive simply in the gentile imagination. In either case, they worshiped only their god.

  In addition, Jews everywhere maintained that this one god, the creator of the universe, had chosen the Jews to be his people and given them a “covenant,” a kind of contractual agreement or peace treaty. The covenant had first been extended to the Jewish patriarchs and then handed down to their descendants over the generations. In it God agreed to be distinctively the god of the Jews in exchange for their exclusive devotion, worship, and obedience. The covenant did not require or expect that Jews would go forth to convert others to their community. As we will see, Jews were by and large indifferent to what pagans chose to do with their devotional lives. But they saw themselves as the chosen people with a unique connection, secured by a kind of political or judicial agreement with the God who was over all.