The Love-Hate Relationship with Constantine
If there is anybody in Christian history that Protestants love to hate, it’s the Emperor Constantine. Now, I never had people bring him up to me as the one who "changed Christianity", but quite consistently, in the experience of other Orthodox Christians I have talked to about this, Constantine is certainly an issue that comes up frequently.
Brief history lesson...Emperor Constantine is most well known for the Battle at Milvian Bridge in the year 312. According to two (somewhat contradictory) accounts, Constantine saw the chi-rho (☧) symbol, which is the Greek abbreviation for “Christ”, in the sky, and heard the words, “in this sign, conquer”. Having placed the symbol on his shields, he defeated Emperor Maxentius on the field of battle, and soon after consolidated total control of the Roman Empire.
The following year, Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which granted leniency toward the Christian religion, which is often misunderstood as making Christianity the official religion of the empire. From what I understand, and I am only trying to summarize the ill feelings toward Constantine, he was seen to have changed Christianity and somehow ruined it. Feel free to spend 30 minutes or so searching online how Constantine changed the Church, and I challenge you to find any place that lists sources for their claims. At best, it seems Constantine is the scape goat for many grievances. At worst, he is being used as a convenient justification for ignoring the Church, and instead, attempting to live out church life as it was in the first couple centuries from scant and scattered information.
There definitely was a significant amount of change in the fourth century to Christian church practice. The shift from side-lined, minority religion, which, in one place or another, was frequently under persecution those first three centuries, to the religion practiced by the emperor, necessarily changed much. This is not a change to the faith, per se, but more a change to how church was conducted. When you read reliable attempts at describing church practice before that time, it is clear that more of the core of the services stayed the same than that which changed. An excellent read on this topic, but ultimately just a tasting of the issues, is Priest Alexander Schmemann’s Introduction to Liturgical Theology.
Also worth noting is the flowering of monasticism in the fourth century. At the same time that practicing Christianity becomes easy, there is a reaction in the opposite direction. The flight out to the desert was motivated by many who saw that a soft Christian life would not be to their benefit.
That is why they are called ascetics. Ascesis, or askesis, is where we derive the English word ‘exercise’. No athlete prepares by sitting on the couch watching movies. The exercise, the training, the pain, the sweat, the exhaustion—the askesis—better prepares them for the contest. As St. Paul said, let us “press toward the goal for the prize” and “run in such a way that [we] may obtain it”.
And before we leave our look into Constantine, we cannot fail to mention his greatest feat: to call what later became known as the First Ecumenical Council. There was a growing controversy in the Church, centered on the teachings of Arius, and the council was intended to work through this issue. The council was most certainly not intended to “decide” what the Church believed, but only to protect the truth of the Gospel in the face of a highly questionable teaching.
If Constantine had really pushed his own agenda at the council, as the Constantine-haters claim, why would he not have enforced what the council decided in the following years? In reality, just a couple decades later, almost every bishop ascribed to the Arian teaching, in opposition to the conclusion of the First Ecumenical Council. Then, when the more extreme Arian bishops took their doctrine to its logical conclusion, that not only was Christ not of the same essence as God, but that he was not even of a like essence—meaning, God only in title, but not in actual reality—a growing number of bishops could finally see that it was not the faith they knew. And for those who do not like the idea of ecumenical councils deciding these kinds of things, without those councils, the official Christian teaching would have otherwise been that the created being, Jesus, taught us some really great things and died and was raised by God. In the often quoted words of St. Athanasius, though, “what is not assumed is not healed.” If God Himself did not take on human flesh, how could human flesh have been healed?
Constantine was indeed integral to bringing about the first council, and did bring about great change (mostly indirectly) to the Christian practice, but there is more to the story of the changes of those times. Maybe we would do well to look into the reaction against legalized, easy Christianity in the study of the Desert Fathers, the thousands of monks who preserved a different (not more pure or better) aspect of our faith. If we are to live our Christian lives in a similarly easy-living world today, riddled with doctrinal confusion, we would do well to look even more to the fourth century and learn how they achieved a balance in their spiritual lives.
Brief history lesson...Emperor Constantine is most well known for the Battle at Milvian Bridge in the year 312. According to two (somewhat contradictory) accounts, Constantine saw the chi-rho (☧) symbol, which is the Greek abbreviation for “Christ”, in the sky, and heard the words, “in this sign, conquer”. Having placed the symbol on his shields, he defeated Emperor Maxentius on the field of battle, and soon after consolidated total control of the Roman Empire.
The following year, Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which granted leniency toward the Christian religion, which is often misunderstood as making Christianity the official religion of the empire. From what I understand, and I am only trying to summarize the ill feelings toward Constantine, he was seen to have changed Christianity and somehow ruined it. Feel free to spend 30 minutes or so searching online how Constantine changed the Church, and I challenge you to find any place that lists sources for their claims. At best, it seems Constantine is the scape goat for many grievances. At worst, he is being used as a convenient justification for ignoring the Church, and instead, attempting to live out church life as it was in the first couple centuries from scant and scattered information.
There definitely was a significant amount of change in the fourth century to Christian church practice. The shift from side-lined, minority religion, which, in one place or another, was frequently under persecution those first three centuries, to the religion practiced by the emperor, necessarily changed much. This is not a change to the faith, per se, but more a change to how church was conducted. When you read reliable attempts at describing church practice before that time, it is clear that more of the core of the services stayed the same than that which changed. An excellent read on this topic, but ultimately just a tasting of the issues, is Priest Alexander Schmemann’s Introduction to Liturgical Theology.
Also worth noting is the flowering of monasticism in the fourth century. At the same time that practicing Christianity becomes easy, there is a reaction in the opposite direction. The flight out to the desert was motivated by many who saw that a soft Christian life would not be to their benefit.
That is why they are called ascetics. Ascesis, or askesis, is where we derive the English word ‘exercise’. No athlete prepares by sitting on the couch watching movies. The exercise, the training, the pain, the sweat, the exhaustion—the askesis—better prepares them for the contest. As St. Paul said, let us “press toward the goal for the prize” and “run in such a way that [we] may obtain it”.
And before we leave our look into Constantine, we cannot fail to mention his greatest feat: to call what later became known as the First Ecumenical Council. There was a growing controversy in the Church, centered on the teachings of Arius, and the council was intended to work through this issue. The council was most certainly not intended to “decide” what the Church believed, but only to protect the truth of the Gospel in the face of a highly questionable teaching.
If Constantine had really pushed his own agenda at the council, as the Constantine-haters claim, why would he not have enforced what the council decided in the following years? In reality, just a couple decades later, almost every bishop ascribed to the Arian teaching, in opposition to the conclusion of the First Ecumenical Council. Then, when the more extreme Arian bishops took their doctrine to its logical conclusion, that not only was Christ not of the same essence as God, but that he was not even of a like essence—meaning, God only in title, but not in actual reality—a growing number of bishops could finally see that it was not the faith they knew. And for those who do not like the idea of ecumenical councils deciding these kinds of things, without those councils, the official Christian teaching would have otherwise been that the created being, Jesus, taught us some really great things and died and was raised by God. In the often quoted words of St. Athanasius, though, “what is not assumed is not healed.” If God Himself did not take on human flesh, how could human flesh have been healed?
Constantine was indeed integral to bringing about the first council, and did bring about great change (mostly indirectly) to the Christian practice, but there is more to the story of the changes of those times. Maybe we would do well to look into the reaction against legalized, easy Christianity in the study of the Desert Fathers, the thousands of monks who preserved a different (not more pure or better) aspect of our faith. If we are to live our Christian lives in a similarly easy-living world today, riddled with doctrinal confusion, we would do well to look even more to the fourth century and learn how they achieved a balance in their spiritual lives.
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