Defending Constantine

Peter Leithart's fascinating book on Constantine is both a defence of the great emperor and also a demolition of the political theology of John Howard Yoder. I was convinced by both parts of his scholarly polemic but less convinced by the arguments he tries to erect as an alternative to Yoder.

Leithart's portrayal of Constantine is lively and persuasive. He believes the emperor was a true Christian who throughout his reign promoted the interests of the church as far as possible but without persecuting pagans. There was therefore a measure of religious toleration for pagans under him that was lost under later emperors such as Theodosius.

There were certainly inconsistencies in Constantine and stains on his reign - the deaths of his wife Fausta and son Crispus are not fully explained, though sexual immorality probably lay behind their executions/deaths. But it is easy to criticise a man in a unique position. There was no clear blueprint for a Christian Roman emperor.

Leithart is concerned above all to unravel the myth of the 'fall' of the church at the time of Constantine. He does this pretty well, showing that there was no consistent policy of merging church and empire under Constantine or after him. There were 'moments' as Leithart calls them, when this happened, but it was not an ideological or political shift. If the church became corrupted in a time of peace was this due to alignment with the state or to too common temptations of the flesh? Does such corruption amount to the introduction of the dark ages of the church which lasted till the end of the middle ages? Was it all dark? Was the church pristine at the beginning of the 4th century anyway? Were not church and empire at loggerheads for much of the time afterwards?

If the emperor at times saw it as his duty to interfere in church affairs, did this amount to a taking over of the church?

John Howard Yoder uses 'Constantinianism' as a label, a symbol, for the view that the church was swallowed up by the state for over a thousand years and this still plagues the church today (sometimes in an even worse way than before the Reformation).

Where Leithart is in my mind quite unconvincing is in his attempt to describe Rome as nonetheless baptised, by which he means that Constantine stopped sacrifices in Rome and introduced a new political regime based on the sacrifice of Christ. Constantine 'desacrificed' Rome 'but at the same time...welcomed into his city another city, a truly just city, a city of the final sacrifice that ends sacrifice...This is the "Christianisation" achieved by Constantine, Rome baptised.' Leithart's final chapter is almost an apologia for baptism - 'all baptism is infant baptism' - as the measure of a 'Christianised' state. At least, that is what appears to come across but Leithart is a somewhat elusive writer at times.

Leithart finally is unconvincing in dismissing Yoder's pacifism, yet trying to establish the acceptability of Christian soldiers on biblical grounds when he has rejected the distinction between private and public ethics and between nature and grace. All is one for Leithart, so he is left with trying to establish that warfare is permissible for Christians without being able to restrict the ethics of 'turn the other cheek' to the private realm. He has some rather elaborate arguments based on the Old Testament and its continuity, but I shall not go into them here.

It is such an 'external' view of the blessings of the gospel which comes through in Leithart's 'federal vision' theology.

But this is still a good book, particularly for what it says about Constantine and in demythologising the rather glib way in which we speak of 'Constantinianism' as the bane of the church. There is a merger of state and church which is invariably harmful for the church but maybe Constantine was not to blame, and Constantinianism is not the best name for it.