Constantinian shift is a term used by
Anabaptist and
Post-Christendom theologians to describe
the political and theological aspects of the 4th-century process of
Constantine's
legalization of Christianity. The term was popularized by the
Mennonite theologian
John H. Yoder.
Historical context
According
to Roman Catholic tradition Constantine I adopted Christianity as his personal system of belief
after the Battle of Milvian Bridge
in 312. His
legions, who were victorious, fought under the
"
labarum", a standard with the first two
Greek letters of
Christ's name.
In 313 the
Edict of Milan legalised
Christianity alongside other religions allowed in the
Roman Empire. In 325, the
First Council of Nicaea signalled
consolidation of Christianity under an orthodoxy endorsed by
Constantine, though this did not make other Christian groups
outside the adopted definition illegal, the dissenting
Arian bishops were initially exiled. Though
Constantine restated
Arius before his death
and exiled Orthodox
Athanasius
of Alexandria. In 380 Emperor
Theodosius I made Christianity the Roman
Empire's
official religion (see
Byzantine Empire and the
Goths) and did enforce the edict in 392 he passed
legislation prohibiting all
pagan cultic
worship.
During the 4th century, there was no such unity between church and
state, though: In the course of the
Arian controversy, leading trinitarian
bishops such as
Athanasius,
Hilary of Poitiers, and
Gregory of Nyssa were exiled by
Arian emperors, as were leading Arian and Anomoean
theologians such as
Aëtius.
Towards the end of the century, bishop
Ambrose of Milan made the powerful emperor
Theodosius do penance for several months after the
massacre of Thessalonica before
admitting him again to the
eucharist.
On the
other hand, only a few years later, Chrysostom, who as bishop of Constantinople
was notorious for criticizing the excesses of the
royal court, was eventually banished and died while traveling to
his place of exile.
Theological implications
Critics point to this shift as the beginning of the era when
Christianity and the will of
God gradually came
to be identified with the state. This phenomenon is known as
Caesaropapism. In its extreme form,
such critics say, Christianity became a religious justification for
the exercise of power and a tool in the expansion and maintenance
of empire, a Christian empire, also known as
Christendom.
Augustine of Hippo, who
originally had rejected violence in religious matters, later
justified it theologically against those he considered heretics,
such as the
Donatists, who themselves
violently harassed their opponents. Before him, Athanasius believed
that violence was justified in weeding out heresies that could damn
all future Christians. This continued a line of thought started by
Athanasius who felt that any means was
justified in repressing the
Arian heresy.
In 385,
Priscillian, a bishop in Spain,
was the first Christian to be executed for heresy, though the most
prominent church leaders rejected this verdict.
Theologians critical of the Constantinian shift also see it as the
point at which membership in the Christian church became associated
with citizenship rather than a personal decision. American
theologian
Stanley Hauerwas names
the shift as the foundation for the expression of Christianity in
the United States today that is closely associated with
patriotism and
civil
religion.
Criticisms
Vladimir Lossky in his discourse on
theology in
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church,
argued that Western Christianity had changed its understanding of
the Christian religion theologically, which he attributes to a
disconnect with
Eastern traditions,
mainly due to the Middle East falling under Islamic rule and the
Schism of 1054 between the
Pope of Rome and the
Orthodox churches of the Middle
East.
Little of the historical events addressed in the "Constantinian
shift" have been addressed in the West by Eastern Christian
scholars or Eastern Christian theologians. There are a marked few,
small exceptions.
From the Eastern Christian traditions, this part of their history
does not contain any modern address or refutation as church
doctrine. This disconnect also comes from historical distortions.
Constantine continued to engage in imperial pagan religious
practices. He also engaged in
astrology
even though possibly being addressed as a
catechumen. It was only on his death bed that
Constantine himself was baptized a Christian, though this was a
common practice at the time.
Constantine, after the council, eventually
recalled Arius from exile and banished
Athanasius of Alexandria to
Trier
.
Within a historical context, these two factions of Christianity
(
Arianism and
Trinitarianism) did not resolve this conflict
at the Council of Nicea.
As for the matter of Christian dominated state religion, or the
charge of
Caesaropapism, it is an
absolute historical fact that shows direct and wide-reaching
influence. The vast potential political power that can be used by
controlling a people's religion is evident in that none of the
major world historical religious traditions has ever functioned
within the framework of
not being a state religion
at some point in history. In the
Buddhist
traditions, we see the
theocracy of
Tibet, which was only brought to an end by the
Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959. In the
Hebrew tradition, this practice can be seen starting
in the
Torah with
Abraham, followed by the
Levite, and continuing through to the
Sadducees.
Islam grew in tandem
with the caliphate, and it enjoys the
status of state religion in numerous contemporary countries, from
Saudi
Arabia
to Pakistan
to Iran
. Each
of the above exemplifies a civic power controlling a religious
institution even though the civic power may not actually subscribe
to the given religion or act in the best interests of the religious
tradition it has co-opted. These examples, and many others,
directly indicate that power and control over the people by means
of state-endorsed religion is an extremely effective and pervasive
phenomenon. They also clearly indicate that the specific religious
tradition is relatively arbitrary; it does not truly matter which
specific religion is used, once an appropriate tradition is
established it can be used to effectively wield immense influence
over the people.
After the Reformation, many European State Churches themselves were
and remain Protestant (see
Church of
Denmark,
Church of Norway,
Church of Iceland (Protestant
churches being outside the
Roman
Catholic and
Eastern Orthodox
communion,) and also the Anglican state churches of the
Church of England and the
Anglican Church of Canada.
In the West, a very important contextual component of this conflict
seems to lack recognition. Of the two main characters at the Nicene
Council, both
Athanasius and
Arius were from the Egyptian church in Alexandria. As
the teachings of Arius are the basis for the Council of Nicaea, so
too can it be said that the teachings of St Athanasius,
St Cyril of Alexandria were the basis
of the
Council of Chalcedon
through
Eutyches. So to give to the idea
that a shift or change in Christianity's validitity or sincerety
should be attributed to Constantine would be to take the incidents
out of historical context and give far too much weight to Emperor
Constantine's legalization of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Nor
does the Constantinian shift take into account the climate at the
time in the Roman Empire and the effects of both Christians and
Christian sectarians on the stability of the empire.
The conclusions of Constantinian shift would be to deny an active
movement within the Christian communities of the time, and that
movement's historical significance to the clarification of what it
meant specifically to be a Christian ie Orthodox movement.,
The theory of a Constantinian shift also denies the history that
followed Constantine's legalization of Christianity as well as
specifics that proceeded it, a history that contained a brief unity
between the Arians and Trinitarians. When
Julian the Apostate ascended after
Constantine II to the
throne of the
Eastern Roman
Empire, Julian then began to reinstate paganism (see
Neoplatonism and
theurgy) at the expense of Christianity. The theory
of the shift
completely denies the existence of
the two Arian Roman Emperors after Constantine the I,
Constantius II (Constantine's son) and
Flavius Iulius Valens who
ruled Byzantium after the death of Constantine. A point to note
here is that though
Theodosius I did
institute Christianity as a Roman Empire State religion, caused by
the
Gothic War , it was
short lived. One decisive moment was the
Battle of Chalons in 451 piting Christian
against the Pagan Huns. As well as Byzantium being also sacked by
the Goths the Christianity that was instituted by Theodosius I, was
not the one embraced by the ruling Goths (see
Huneric of the
Vandals and
Fritigern). Also see
Belisarius.
While
being in the status of state religion none could guarantee not
being removed from this position (see Julian the apostate), no religious
tradition appears to have been able to keep such a role permanently
either , with the possible exceptions being in the Muslim world
(see Turkey
as a
possible Muslim example of Church and State separation).
With pre-Christian pagan empires being run by the emperor as a
designated pagan god.
This criterion also appears to be unsatisfiable in that either the
religion is subjective to the state aka
Caesaropapism or the religious tradition is
the state aka
Theocracy. Either
characteristic being depicted as a negative one.
Support for the theory of a Constantian shift also would be to deny
that Constantine considered himself to be partial or sympathetic to
Arianism due to the influence of his historian,
Eusebius of Caesarea, as well as the
Arian opposition leader (and relative to Constantine I),
Eusebius of Nicomedia. Eusebius of
Nicomedia was the person Constantine had chosen to perform
Constantine's baptism. Eusebius of Nicomedia's conflict with
Athanasius of Alexandria
and
Marcellus of Ancyra
influenced Constantine to reinstate Arius, exile Athanasius and
contributed to Marcellus being deposed for heresy. In conclusion to
claim such a thing as a Constantinian shift would be a
reductionistic approach which denies in the
ensuing historical struggles, that the Orthodox movement almost
lost out to the Arian movement. It is to attempt to use the idea
that we can superimpose upon the past our modern morals and
perspectives. To suggest that an idea (of separation of church and
state) existed at the time of Constantine and there was some place
in the world were a society practiced separation of church and
state which is patently untrue (and Constantine refused to follow
the example). So to say that Constantian was imposing onto
Christianity an orthdoxy that he espoused would be to deny the
historical context. The Constantinian shift does not acknowledge
the power of the Arian sectarians and or the influence over
Constantine I both the Eusebiuses and Arians had.The theory does
however over simplify history to the point of creating a great many
misconceptions about the true struggles and difficulties of the
Christian church after its legalization. Also strange to the
ancient Eastern Christian traditions is the idea that Christianity
was supposedly corrupted by the involvement of
Emperor Constantine but not when
Charlemagne insisted on the
filioque and the King of England
Henry the Eighth intervened during the
Protestant reformation.
See also
Notes
Further reading
- Timothy Barnes, Constantine
and Eusebius, 1981
- Theodosian Code, Henry
Bettenson, ed., Documents of the Christian Church, (London:
Oxford University Press, 1943), p. 31. see:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/theodcodeXVI.html
- Peter Brown, The
Rise of Western Christendom (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing,
2003),60.
- James Bulloch, From Pilate to Constantine, 1981
- Eusebius of Caesarea,
Life of Constantine, Library of Nicene and Post Nicene
Fathers, 2nd series (New York: Christian Literature Co., 1990), Vol
I, 489-91. see:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/conv-const.html
- Alistair Kee, Constantine Versus Christ, 1982
- Lactantius, Lucius Caecilius Firmianus, On the manner in
which the persecutors died (English translation of De
Mortibus Persecutorum) see:
http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0296/_P18.HTM
- Ramsay MacMullen,
Christianising the Roman Empire, 1984
- Roger E. Olson, The Story of Christian
Theology, 1999
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