Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom

by Peter J. Leithart

  "Quoted in Roland Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace: A Historical Survey and Critical Re-evaluation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1960), p. 72.

  12Tertullian Apology 38.

  13Origen Contra Celsum 4.70.

  14John Howard Yoder (For the Nations: Essays Public and Evangelical [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997], p. 70, n. 46) admits that "Christians did in some way participate in the Roman army" and accurately adds that "we know about it only from the words of those who thought they should not, and there is no way to know how many there were, or what their roles were." Yet somehow (as he adds in the same sentence) he knows that those who participated were not motivated by "any responsible theocratic visions of taking charge of history, or controlling the destiny of the empire." Rather, they participated-"in peacetime" only-because "the work was easy and the rewards generous," and they did not take time with "much moral analysis." That latter point may well be true, but Yoder's comments are sheer speculation. See also Yoder, Christian Attitudes to War, Peace and Revolution, p. 47.

  1tBainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, p. 68. For more on Christians in the Roman army, see Arthur Darby Nock, "The Roman Army and the Roman Religious Year," Harvard Theological Review 45, no. 4 (1952): 223-29.

  16Eusebius Church History 5.5.1-2; see Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward Warand Peace, p. 157. Interestingly, Tertullian also knows of this story. This is likely the same event recounted in chapter 2, though Dio tells the story without reference to Christians. Whether or not the incident happened is somewhat immaterial. Helgeland notes that "there must have been enough Christians enlisting" to make the Christian use of the story plausible ("Christians and the Roman Army from Marcus Aurelius," p. 796).

  191bid., p. 152.

  20Stephen Gero, "Miles Gloriosus: Christians and Military Service according to Tertullian," Church History 39 (1970): 292, calls these "technical military terms."

  21Tertullian Apology 37.

  17Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, p. 68.

  "Ibid., pp. 69-70.

  22Tertullian De corona militis 11.

  "Hunter, "Decade of Research," p. 93.

  24This entire paragraph is indebted to Gero, "Miles Gloriosus," esp. pp. 289-91. The summary of the "domestication" of the military is on p. 290.

  2SSaraceni's painting has the discarded armor and weaponry next to the dying saint.

  26The text is available online at .

  27Eusebius Church History 9.8.2-4.

  28Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, p. 70. Bainton summarizes the evidence up to Constantine: "Until the decade A.D. 170-80 we are devoid of evidence; from then on the references to Christian soldiers increase. The numbers cannot be computed. The greatest objection to military service appears to have been in the Hellenistic East. The Christians in northern Africa were divided. The Roman church in the late second and early third centuries did not forbid epitaphs recording the military profession. The eastern frontier reveals the most extensive Christian participation in warfare, though concurrently we find there a protest against it among groups tending to ascetic and monastic ideals" (pp. 71-72). On Edessa, see also L. W. Barnard, "The Origins and Emergence of the Church in Edessa During the First Two Centuries A.D.," Vigiliae Christianae 22, no. 3 (1968).

  29John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), pp. 206-7.

  3oOliver O'Donovan, The Desire of Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 152.

  31John Helgeland, "Christians and the Roman Army, A.D. 173-337," Church History 43, no. 2 (1974): 162. Bainton (Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, p. 79) acknowledges that Christians served in this detachment of the Roman military.

  32Helgeland, "Christians and the Roman Army from Marcus Aurelius," pp. 793-94.

  33On Christian violence in the post-Constantinian period, see Michael Gaddis, There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); the quotation from Theodosius is on p. 208. K. A. Hari ("Sacrifice and Pagan Belief in Fifth- and Sixth-Century Byzantium," Past and Present 128 [1990], p. 21) mentions the destruction of shrines in the East as a key element in the decline of paganism.

  34Thanks to my colleague Tim Griffith for his help in translating Tertullian's "omnem postea militem, in Petro exarmando, discinxit."

  35Tertullian On Idolatry 19.

  36Tertullian On the Dress of Virgins 11.

  37Origen Contra Celsum 8.73.

  38Helgeland, "Christians and the Roman Army from Marcus Aurelius," p. 817.

  39In addition to my summary in chapter 2, see Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, The Making of a Christian Empire: Lactantius and Rome (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000).

  42Tertullian On Idolatry 19.

  43lbid. 23.

  40Helgeland, "Christians and the Roman Army, A.D. 173-337," p. 151.

  41Ibid., p. 152.

  44Gero ("Miles Gloriosus," p. 298) puts it vividly, if prejudicially: "The church in North Africa could not sell her soul, so to speak, to Constantine; she had already sold it much earlier, to Septimius Severus and to Caracalla."

  45This is the opinion of James J. Megivern, "Early Christianity and Military Service," Perspectives on Religious Studies 12, no. 3 (1985): 181.

  46Lactantius Divine Institutes 6.20.15-16.

  47The passage is quoted in Louis J. Swift, The Early Fathers on War and Military Service, Message of the Fathers of the Church, 19 (Wilmingon, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1983), pp. 67-68. See also Gregory M. Reichberg, The Ethics of War, ed. Henrik Sye and Endre Begby (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), p. 66. Perhaps revealingly, Yoder (Christian Attitudes, pp. 54-55) quotes the "pacifist" passage but not the dedication.

  48Lactantius Death 52. The passage about courage in found in his Epitome, quoted in Swift, Early Fathers on War and Military Service, p. 65.

  49Helgeland, "Christians and the Roman Army from Marcus Aurelius," pp. 815-16.

  °°On Elvira and its canons, see H. A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics oflntoler- ance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), pp. 223-25. Duumvir normally refers to an alliance of two magistrates.

  "Arles VII, in Migne, PL, 84; Elvira LVI, in Migne, PL, 84.

  12Hermann Dorries, Constantine the Great, trans. Roland Bainton (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972), p. 112.

  "Ibid., p. 113; Dorries's interpretation of the canon is endorsed by Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, p. 81. Yoder, Christian Attitudes to War, Peace and R evolution, ed. Theodore J. Koontz and Andy Alexis-Baker (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2009), pp. 50-51, claims that this "sword" is not a fighting sword but a "ceremonial" sword that symbolizes "administrative status."

  54Sulpicious Severus Vita Martini 4.

  "Basil Epistle 188, 13.

  56Athanasius, quoted in Dorries, Constantine the Great, p. 114.

  17 That characterization of Moses' "murder" of the Egyptian comes from the first martyr, Stephen (Acts 7:24). On Ambrose, see Louis J. Swift, "St. Ambrose on Violence and War," Transactions and Proceedings of the American PhilologicalAssociation 101 (1970).

  "Ambrose De officiis 1.35, quoted in Swift, "St. Ambrose on Violence and War," p. 537.

  `Swift, "St. Ambrose on Violence and War," p. 538.

  60This is the argument of R. A. Markus, "St. Augustine's Views of the Just War,' " in The Church and War, ed. W. J. Shiels (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), as summarized in Hunter, "Decade of Research," p. 89. The relativization of political loyalties is a major theme of Markus's Saeculum and will be taken up in the following chapter.

  "Augustine, "On the Lord's Sermon," quoted in Swift, Early Fathers on War and Military Service, pp. 124-25.

  62Augustine Letter 138, quoted in Swift, Early Fathers on War and Military Service, p. 122. Stressing this point is one of the im
portant achievements of Daniel Bell,Just War as Christian Discipleship: Recentering the Tradition in the Church rather than the State (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2009).

  'Yoder claims that "there is wide recognition that the Christians of the first two centuries were pacifist, or at least that their most articulate teachers of whom we have record were" (John Howard Yoder, For the Nations: Essays Public and Evangelical [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997], p. 68). The second formulation is the more accurate, but it nullifies the opening assertion. We have record of only a tiny handful of the articulate leaders; if the only evidence we have comes from a small number of "articulate leaders" whose writings have, providentially, survived, then we simply have no way to know that "Christians of the first two centuries were pacifist."

  2Tertullian Apology 25; here I am using the translation found in Mark A. Burrows, "Christians in the Roman Forum: Tertullian and the Apologetic Use of History," Vigiliae Christianae 42, no. 3 (1988): 223. Thanks to David Rankin for the reference. Tertullian probably draws this from Minucius Felix: "quidquid Romani tenent colunt possident audaciae praeda est: templa omnia de manubiis, id est re ruinis urbium, de spoliis deorum, de caedibus sacerdotum" (quoted in R. P. C. Hanson, "The Christian Attitude to Pagan Religions up to the Time of Constantine the Great," ANRW23 [1980]: 932).

  3Tertullian Ad scapulum 2.

  4As one proconsul told a group of condemned Christians, Et nos religiosi sumus et simplex estreli- gio nostra, et iuramuspergenium domini nostri imperatoris etpro salute eius supplicamus.

  'John Howard Yoder, Christian Attitudes to War, Peace and Revelation, ed. Theodore J. Koontz and Andy Alexis-Baker (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2009), p. 50, mentions that Origen claims to be more helpful to Caesar with his prayers than with his sword, but Yoder sees it as a sign of growing identification with the world. He does not mention that Tertullian says virtually the same thing.

  6W. H. C. Frend, review of Tertullian and das Romische Reich, by Richard Klein, Classical Review, n.s. 20, no. 1 (1970): 47.

  7This summarizes the argument of Burrows, "Christians in the Roman Forum."

  'Hermann Dorries, Constantine the Great, trans. Roland Bainton (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972).

  'For a brief sketch of the background to this complaint, see W. H. C. Frend, review of 11 Christianesimo e Roma, by Marta Sordi, Classical Review, n.s. 17, no. 2 (1967): 196.

  10Melito of Sardis, quoted in Eusebius Church History 4.26.

  "Ibid.

  12 R. A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 53. Charles Mayo Collier, "A Nonviolent Augustinianism? History and Politics in the Theologies of St. Augustine and John Howard Yoder" (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 2008), p. 91, calls this Augustine's "disavowal of Constantine," but that is overstated. Augustine, rather, relativized Constantine. He plays only a small role in City of God, and his conversion does not, for Augustine, mark a new epoch. Robert L. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 1983), p. 129, writes that in the time of John Chrysostom, Eusebian euphoria had been replaced by "the memory of orthodox bishops languishing in exile, of an emperor offering sacrifices in cities throughout the east [Julian], of laws prohibiting Christians from teaching literature in the schools, of resourceful and aggressive Arian leaders attacking the Nicene decrees."

  "Collier ("Nonviolent Augustinianism") agrees, referring to Yoder's "historically inaccurate criticisms" accompanied by occasional expressions of "condescending gratitude." At least Augustine gets some gratitude; Constantine gets none.

  14John Howard Yoder, The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism (Scottdale, Penn.: Herald, 1971, 2003), p. 66.

  "Augustine City of God 20.7.

  16yoder, Christian Attitudes, 60-65.

  "Ibid., 1.30.

  17Markus, Saeculum, 54.

  "Augustine City of God 1.36.

  20Thomas Heilke, "Yoder's Idea of Constantinianism: An Analytical Framework Toward Conversion," in A Mind Patient and Untamed.-AssessingJohn Howard Yoder's Contributions to Theology, Ethics and Peacemaking (Telford, Penn.: Cascadia, 2004), p. 96.

  21Heilke is quoting from John Howard Yoder, The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical, ed. Michael G. Cartwright (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 259. Elsewhere Yoder claims that Constantinian Christianity identified the mission of the church with the expansion of the empire, regarded those outside the empire as a "challenge" and simply "wrote off" the world outside the Roman empire (The Priestly Kingdom: SocialEthics as Gospel [Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984], pp. 137, 143).

  22Heilke, "Yoder's Idea."

  23Yoder (Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World [Scottdale, Penn.: Herald, 2001], p. 32) also claims that there were "no more outsiders to convert" after the fifth century because the world had been declared already Christian "by imperial edict."

  24Elizabeth Key Fowden, "Constantine and the Peoples of the Eastern Frontier," in The Cambridge Companion to theAge of Constantine, ed. Noel Lenski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 361-62; E. A. Thompson, "Christianity and the Northern Barbarians," in The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, ed. Arnaldo Momigliano (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), p. 63, claims that the Ulfila's mission was to be bishop to "Roman prisoners or their descendants" who lived in Gothia.

  uFowden, "Constantine and the Peoples," pp. 385-86; A. H. M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion ofEurope (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), pp. 170-72.

  26Fowden, "Constantine and the Peoples," p. 392.

  21Conversion through these "normal" channels was in all likelihood also common in the earlier history of the church. Yoder's thesis appears to assume a Billy Graham-style crusade or a Hudson Taylor model of missions. For a stimulating, though admittedly speculative, account of the spread of early Christianity, see Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity (San Francisco: Harper, 1997).

  30Ibid., p. 72.

  2'Thompson, "Christianity and the Northern Barbarians," pp. 60, 66.

  291bid., p. 78.

  31See the discriminating letters of Gregory to Augustine.

  "On all this, see now Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity (New York: Henry Holt, 1997).

  33The term is Fletcher's.

  34Geza Alfoldy, The Social History ofRome, trans. David Braund and Frank Pollock (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988).

  "Arnaldo Momigliano, "Christianity and the Decline of the Roman Empire," in The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, ed. Arnaldo Momigliano (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963).

  36This is the argument of Garth Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in LateAntiquity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993).

  41Ibid., p. 71.

  391bid., pp. 58-59.

  40Ibid., p. 59.

  37Yoder, For the Nations, pp. 66-69.

  38Ibid., p. 66.

  42Ibid., p. 57.

  43Ibid., pp. 63-64. He makes the odd claim, though, that "the one thing that never would have occurred to the Jews in Babylon was to try to bridge the distance between their language world and that of their hosts by a foundationalist mental or linguistic move" and that they "did not look for or seek to construct common ground" (p. 73). But that sounds very much like Philo's life work. Philo in fact went beyond foundationalism, allegorizing biblical stories to turn them into parables of Greek virtue, and it is hard to see how Hellenistic Judaism (which is a reality, whatever qualifications need to be made) fits into Yoder's picture.

  44Yoder (ibid., p. 75) is aware of the issue but says only that "a fair reading of the account of Luke in Acts 2 will be compatible" with his reading of Genesis.

  41Ibid., p. 74. He characterizes Ezra as a book full of "politicking for imperial authorization to rebuild the temple" and says that Ezra's title of
"scribe" meant "secretary for Jewish affairs" to the Persian emperor: "It was a title for a cabinet role in the pagan empire" (p. 74, n. 57).

  47 Ibid., p. 76, n. 60.

  46Ibid., p. 57.

  41 More deeply and broadly, Yoder's account of exile-without-return raises the question of vindication, which I will address in the next chapter.

  "Yoder, For the Nations, p. 107. He adds that the "time is past when it could be attempted with any hope of success." But when, one wants to ask, did success become the criterion of Christian action?

  "Acts of the Blessed Silvester 6-10, 16-17; in Constantine and Christendom, trans. Mark Edwards (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003), pp. 99-104, 112-13. For discussion of the various accounts of Constantine's baptism, see Garth Fowden, "The Last Days of Constantine: Oppositional Versions and Their Influence," Journal ofRoman Studies 94 (1994): 153-68.

  S1Eusebius Life 4.61-64.

  52Ibid., 4.62.

  'Preserved by Socrates; quoted in H. A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics oflntol- erance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), p. 269.

  2Daniel H. Williams, "Constantine, Nicaea and the `Fall' of the Church," in Christian Origins: Theology, Rhetoric and Community, ed. Lewis Ayres and S. Gareth Jones (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 119.

  6Ibid.

  3lbid.

  'Ibid., p. 120; the second quotation is from Hoffmann.

  5Ibid., p. 123.

  7 entire paragraph is indebted to Gilbert Dagron, Emperor andPriest.- The Imperial Office in Byzantium, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 282-86.

  8Ibid., pp. 294-95.

  9Lactantius Death 1.

  "On Constantiniasm in Yoder's writings, see John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), and The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical, ed. Michael G. Cartwright (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994). For secondary literature, see Thomas Heilke, "Yoder's Idea of Constantinianism: An Analytical Framework Toward Conversation," in AMind Patient and Untamed: Assessing John Howard Yoder's Contributions to Theology, Ethics and Peacemaking, ed. Ben C. Ollenburger and Gayle Koontz (Telford, Penn.: Cascadia, 2004), pp. 89-125; Craig A. Carter, The Politics of the Cross: The Theology and Social Ethics ofJohn Howard Yoder (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2001), and Rethinking Christ and Culture: A PostChristendom Perspective (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006); J. Alexander Sider, "`To See History Doxologically': History and Holiness in John Howard Yoder's Ecclesiology" (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 2004); "Constantinianism Before and After Nicaea: Issues in Reconstitutionist Historiography," in A Mind Patient and Untamed, ed. Ollenburger and Koontz; Gerald W. Schlabach. "Deuteronomic or Constantinian: What Is the Most Basic Problem for Christian Social Ethics?" in The Wisdom ofthe Cross: Essays in Honor ofJohn Howard Yoder, ed. Stanley Hauerwas et al. (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2005), pp. 449-71.