https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2015/03/constantine-defended-and-revisited.html
Recently, I decide to re-read this book and the article I
wrote about it in 2015. The book I'm referring to is "Constantine
Revisited: Leithart, Yoder, and the Constantinian Debate" edited by
John Roth (Wipf and Stock 2013). This book was written in response to Peter
Leithart's "Defending Constantine"
(IVP Academic 2010).
As I wrote in 2015, the book made many good points against
the Leithart thesis, but most of the contributors missed the mark and some
don't even belong within its pages.
As Christians, we should be able to argue that the Bible
interprets history, a point I made in 2015, but one that needs to be made more
emphatically. Leithart's bad read of the Bible means a bad read of history. He
begs questions left and right and yet if challenged exegetically, his
assumptions fail all down the line. If he's wrong on the Bible (which is easy
enough to demonstrate) then it follows without too much difficulty that his
read of Church History is not only off, but completely and perilously wrong.
The argument for the Constantinian Shift starts with the
Bible then turns to historical interaction. We're not looking for a purely
historical phenomenon and a conscious moment. That would not be the way such a
shift takes place. The shift is doctrinal and theological – and demonstrable by
means of what takes place in time. Similar arguments can be made with regard to
twentieth-century Fundamentalism and the way it succumbed to the larger
Evangelical movement. There are some rumblings here and there and a few distinct
voices of protest, but for the most part the change was gradual over a
generation or two, and the majority of people seem to have not even noticed,
even as they lived through it. When it's pointed out to them and outlined, they
can see and identify the shift in terms of everything from doctrine, to
liturgy, and ethics, and yet as they lived it and experienced it incrementally
over the course of decades, they don't see the sharp break or division – even
though the shift has in fact been quite remarkable, even revolutionary. The
fact that such a shift took place in the fourth century and is not easily
evidenced in the record of history as a distinct and documented event or series
of events isn't all that surprising.
Leithart begins with a set of assumptions about Christianity,
its nature, ethics, and earthly telos, and then imposes them onto history and utilising
this narrative launches an assault on the critics of Constantinianism – cherry
picking at best here and there from a few verses he thinks support his case.
Re-reading my earlier piece I can say that I didn't emphasize
near enough the severity of Leithart's postmillennial errors and the way this
shapes his thesis as well as his read of history. His assumptions of what a
'victorious' Christianity would look like are not in accord with Scripture (and
particularly the New Testament) and as such his worldly theology finds its
fulfillment in the worldly unfaithfulness of a figure like Constantine.
It also needs to be emphasized that those who believe a Constantinian
Shift took place and can be identified (from the martyrs of the First
Reformation to the disgruntled descendants of the Magisterial Reformation), the
events of the fourth century mark a functional apostasy, a moment in which the
Church (collectively) turned its back on the New Testament and made what must
be described as a Devil's Bargain, exchanging the concept of Christendom (at
the time rooted in the Roman Empire) with the Kingdom of Heaven.
While philosophy had been making inroads and was the subject
of debate, with the Shift and the subsequent Council of Nicaea, the floodgates
were open. The Church of nonresistance and poverty became a sword-bearing
Church that anathematized conscientious objection and embraced wealth and
political power. It's very character changed and the persecuted quickly turned
persecutor and within a very short time (and with the swelling numbers) Church
leaders lowered the moral bar and justified all manner of immorality,
entertained and propagated lies, and were willing to plot and commit murder by
state as they used the power of the throne to destroy enemies. Faithfulness
became confused with victory as a Consequentialist 'end justifies the means'
ethic was embraced. By the fifth century the Church was almost unrecognizable
as this shift in values and thinking also opened the floodgates to worldly
compromise. Worship changed, the Church of the catacombs now worshiped in grand
basilicas and its leaders were atop society and had become worldly lords,
filled with the hubris to match their rich dress and adornment.
The Church entered a period rightly called the Dark Ages.
This terminology once universally held by Protestants but now largely rejected
can have two points of reference.
Some refer to the entire period between the Fall of Rome and
the Renaissance (roughly 500-1500) as the Dark Ages. This would be an error –
painting with too broad a brush.
Some refer to the period from c.500-1000 as the Dark Ages,
followed by the Middle Ages. There's some truth to this if one understands that
culturally the period extending from the Fall of Rome (410-500) to the eleventh
century was one of massive upheaval, broken societies, nations wandering,
invasions, and a decline of culture and learning. In that sense it was a Dark
Age and it can be contrasted with the relative stability of the Middle Ages
(1000-1500) which was marked by the formation of states, trade, the growth of
towns, universities, the building of cathedrals and so forth.
But Christians used to understand that the Dark Ages referred
generally speaking to both the debated cultural paradigms mentioned above as
well as to the darkness that overwhelmed Europe in terms of the gospel. These
were the Roman Catholic centuries wherein the faithful were but a persecuted
remnant living dangerous lives in the Medieval Underground. The Sacralist and
totalitarian culture created by Catholicism was suffocating and satanic. It
produced many evils from the Papacy, to the Inquisition, and of course the
Crusades. The Church dominated society but it wasn't the Church of the New
Testament but a False Church, a Mystery Babylon presided over by the Man of
Sin.
The Protestant Reformation (so goes the narrative) recovered
the gospel and carved out a place for safety, and according to older narratives
created a matrix for a new culture and great cultural advancement. Not only was
tolerance granted but it led to a new era of scientific advance and political progress
– creating a new world in which even the smallest dissident sects could be
tolerated.
While I can't quite sign on to the Magisterial Reformation's
old Dark Ages-Reformation contrasting narrative, it contains more truth that
what we find today, let alone what we witness in the Romanticised
glory-narratives of modern day Dominionists or the Theonomists like Leithart
and Wilson who seek to recapture the ethos of the Middle Ages and supposedly
enhance and improve the sacralist culture of that period. And with this revisionist
recasting of Church History, many of the evils and abuses of the Medieval
period once decried and condemned by Protestants – are now celebrated.
We can debate the narratives of Church History, its
structure, and interpretation but these are also shaped by how the Scriptures
are understood and the imperatives and ethics that flow from eschatology and
one's understanding of the Kingdom. Leithart has misread the Scriptures on a
massive scale and as such we shouldn't be surprised that his reading of Church
History has also been inverted and results in conclusions both erroneous and
perilous.