Christianity after Constantine

I often object to things that people blame on Constantine. For example, Constantine did not change the Sabbath to Sunday. Saturn was the chief god of the Roman pantheon, and, as you may be able to figure out, Saturday was the day that was named after him. The whole idea that the Romans wanted to celebrate Sunday over Saturday isn't true. The only people who honored Sunday over any other day of the week were the Christians, who called it the 8th day and honored it because Christ rose on that day.

However, things did change drastically under Constantine. I like to call it the great judo throw. In judo, in order to throw an opponent, you push him first, getting him to push back against you. Once he does, you pull him toward you and use his momentum to perform the throw.

That's exactly what happened under Constantine. First, Diocletian orchestrated "The Great Persecution" from AD 303 - 311. Then Constantine gained control of the empire and saw his famous vision. He issued the Edict of Toleration, finally granting Christianity official approval to be practiced in the Roman empire. Up to that point it was a forbidden religion only because its adherents refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods or the Roman emperor.

The favor granted by Constantine proved to be too much for the church. They granted the emperor rights within the church that should never have been his. They failed to keep the separation of church and state, and they paid a terrible price for their courting of imperial favor. Those that want America to be a Christian nation would be wise to learn from the example of the 4th century church. The separation of church and state did not come from America's Constitution. It came from Jesus and his apostles, who proclaimed the kingdom of God, which is from heaven and not from earth. Christians can and should be subject to governments, but they cannot be the government. As Tertullian put it back in AD 200, "The Caesars, too, would have believed on Christ, if either the Caesars had not been necessary for the world, or if Christians could have been Caesars" (Apology 21).

What brings all this up for me is something I read today in Getting to Know the Church Fathers by Bryan Litfin. I haven't read much from the Post-Nicene Fathers (those after Constantine and the Council of Nicea that he presided over), so it's nice to have an introduction like his. In this case, I was reading about John Chrysostom, a late 4th and early 5th century church leader. He began as bishop of Antioch, but in AD 397 he was chosen by the emperor to be bishop of Constantinople. This competed with Rome as the most powerful bishopric in the world, since Constantinople was now capitol of the empire. John gladly took the position, the book tells us.

Now, it's important to keep in mind here that just this part of the story violates many principles held just decades earlier by all the church. Church leaders did not jump from church to church or city to city in the Pre-Nicene church. Elders were men chosen from among the congregation for their godly lives and leadership. They were raised up in that congregation, and then they served in that congregation. They did not do things like move from Antioch to Constantinople, and they certainly didn't do it at the bidding of the emperor.

It gets worse, however. It turns out that Theophilus, the bishop of Alexandria in Egypt, had someone groomed for that position. He was miffed that his man didn't get it, and it was made all the worse that the replacement came from Antioch a long-time rival city of Alexandria. Litfin tells us, "Perhaps you can imagine Theophilus's frustration when he found out that, not only had his candidate been rejected, but that John Chrysostom--an Antiochan!--was to be given this powerful position" (p. 202). In the margin, I wrote, "Only if Theophilus was no disciple."

Of course, I can't imagine that! I'm not in a state church. In the church I'm a part of, leaders serve. They are not in positions of power that they have to fight over, and if they did, it would prove that they are not worthy to lead. Hopefully, should something like that happen, we would take the advice of Cyprian, the great bishop of Carthage, who was fortunate enough to live prior to Nicea, and remove that leader from his position*!

Litfin writes, "From that day, Theophilus became John's sworn enemy. He was an ambitious schemer who wanted to advance Alexandria's power against Antioch or Constantinople. This was the ugly world John entered as a brand new bishop in the imperial capital (sic)" (ibid.). It seems that Theophilus was not the lover of God that his name suggests.

I suppose there's one nice thing in all of this. It reduces the number of church fathers that it's important that we are familiar with. It appears the ones after Nicea were no more familiar with what it is like to live in an apostolically established church than we Americans are.

*footnote: Cyprian wrote: "A people obedient to the Lord's precepts, and fearing God, ought to separate themselves from a sinful prelate, and not to associate themselves with the sacrifices of a sacrilegious priest, especially since they themselves have the power of either choosing worthy priests or of rejecting unworthy ones" (Epistle 67, from The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5).