Tag Archives: Defending Constantine

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April 23, 2013

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cultural commentary

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Constantine and the Gladiators: Politics or Culture? (Mere-Orthodoxy Piece)

I don't care how obvious or cliche this is--this is Gladiator.

I don’t care how obvious or cliche this is–this is Gladiator.

Is the legal and political downstream from culture, or vice versa? That’s the debate going on in religious conservative circles today. A rising number of voices, mostly in reaction to the excesses and missteps of the Religious Right, have been arguing that religious conservatives have been largely blind to the way that culture is upstream from law. In an effort to secure legal ground against progressive advances, the Right was ceding the deeper war for the imagination and affections of the populace. Gay marriage is an obvious example of this. As social conservatives secured dozens of temporary political victories, the vision of the general population was being captured through media narratives that were laying the groundwork for the generation-shaping, sea-change in popular opinion we’ve witnessed in the last few years.

While many of us might have been nodding our heads in agreement with this line of critique over the last couple of years, a jaunt into early church history might complicate the picture a bit. Peter Leithart’s fascinating cultural analysis of the Roman spectacles and their proscription by Constantine in Defending Constantine: The Twilight of An Empire and the Dawn of Christendom suggests a more intricate relationship between the two spheres than any strict dichotomy can capture.

You can read the rest of the piece here at Mere Orthodoxy. 

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April 15, 2013

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ethics, new testament, politics

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A Political Non-Pacifist Reading of The Sermon on the Mount

constantineIt’s often alleged that any reading of Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount that doesn’t result in a pacifist ethic is a depoliticized and de-historicized one. Jesus’ commands against retaliation and of neighbor-love, (Matthew 5:38-48) set in a context of Roman oppression and violence must lead obviously one of non-violence lest the politics of Jesus be lost. Leithart notes that for John Howard Yoder without pacifism Jesus’ ethic loses its political force because Yoder believes that Jesus’ teaching offered no instruction for his disciples in political power because his followers were never to have that sort of power.

In a striking passage Leithart moves to counter that contention by offering a brief, non-pacifist, “political” reading of the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus’ words for his disciples can shape the governance of those disciples who happen to hold political authority; for a way in which the “Eucharistic city” of the Church can offer guidance to the City of Man based on the teachings of her King:

  1. “Turn the other cheek” gives instruction not about self-defence but about honor and shame. To slap someone on the right cheek, you have to slap back-handed, and back-handed slap expresses contempt, not threat. Is this relevant to political ethics? Of course. The Roman Empire was built on a system of honor, insult and retaliation. Before Rome, Thycidides knew that wars arose from “fear, honor, and interest.” Remove retaliation and defense of honor from international politics, and a fair number of the world’s wars would have been prevented. There would have been a lot of slapping but not nearly so much shooting.
  2. The Eucharistic city would teach rulers to agree with their adversaries quickly, to defuse domestic and international disputes before they explode.
  3. What if rulers were instructed not to look at a woman lustfully? That would also prevent some wars, keep presidents busy with papers and things at their desks, protect state secrets, save money and divisive scandals. The church would insist that rulers be faithful to their wives and not put them away for expediency or a page girl (or boy.)
  4. The church would insist on honesty and truth telling, urging rulers to speak the truth even when it is painful.
  5. The church would insist that a ruler not do alms or pray or fast or do any other good things to be seen by others, especially by others with cameras—a rule that would revolutionize modern politics.
  6. Rulers would be instructed to love enemies and do good to all. Obama would be seeking the best for the Republican Party, Ms. Anonymous Republican would be doing her best to serve the president. A ruler would have to stand firm against the antics of tyrants, not out of hatred but out of love, to prevent the tyrant from doing great evil to himself and others. If the tyrant attacked, the rule would have to defend his people out of love for them and out of love for his enemy. Punishments would be acts of love for the victims, the public and the punished, just as a father disciplines his son in love. The church would insist that the ruler not use his legitimate powers of force for unjust ends, on pain of excommunication.
  7. The church would urge rulers to beware their own blind spots and remove logs from their eyes so they can see rightly in order to judge.
  8. The church would remind a ruler that she will face a Judge who will inquire what she had done for the homeless, the weak, the sick, the imprisoned, the hungry.
  9. At the extreme, a ruler might place himself on a cross, sacrifice his political future and his reputation, for the sake of righteousness. In certain kinds of polities, he would be the first soldier, the first to fly against the enemy, because being the leader means you get to die first. In great extremity, he might follow Jeremiah’s example and submit to conquest, defeat, deportation—endure a national crucifixion to preserve people for future rebirth.

Defending Constantine, pp. 338-339

Whether you’re in full agreement with this list or not, Leithart demonstrates that one doesn’t have to be a pacifist in order to give “an earful of the politics of Jesus” to any ruler.

Soli Deo Gloria

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April 7, 2013

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cultural commentary, history, theology

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Could Constantine Have Been James Madison?

Definitely not a 4th Century Emperor.

Definitely not a 4th Century Emperor.

So after a few months of having it stare at me from my book shelf, I was able to start reading Peter Leithart’s Defending Constantine:The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom.  Admittedly I’m only about half-way through the work, but to me this is a tour de force of historiography and theological polemic re-examining the life and times of the first Christian Emperor, as well as the theological critique of “Constantinian” relations between church and state a la John Howard Yoder. Given that I’ve just arrived in Orlando for the Gospel Coalition 2013 National Conference I can’t take time for a truly substantial post about it yet. Still, one section in particular stuck me as worth briefly sharing and commenting on.

In reviewing his involvement in the internal affairs of the Church such as the Arian controversy and conflict between the Catholics and the Donatists, Leithart addresses the criticism Constantine receives as an un-baptized Emperor with no particular religious authority mucking about in such matters. For us moderns, it seems so obvious that there ought to be a separation between Church and State. Constantine should have taken a hands-off approach and left it bishops to handle their “spiritual” business while he took care of the affairs of state. Leithart calls this suggestion “implausible” and comments:

As we saw in the last chapter, Constantine did in fact follow a policy of tolerant concord. Beyond that, no one in the fourth century would have thought that a political regime could function without religious sanction, and it is naive to think that Constantine’s conversion  would have instantly turned him into James Madison…The question is, what were Constantine’s historical options in the fourth century? What were the constraints on his action? What, perhaps more important, were the limits of his imagination? Only when we have considered those questions are we capable of doing justice to Constantine’s interventions in church politics.

Defending Constantine, -pg. 132

The point is, when dealing with Constantine’s political legacy, we need to consider our historical distance and the limits of the subject’s own political horizon. Constantine wasn’t ruling his Empire after the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the various historico-political developments that have shaped Western thought on religion and politics. Indeed, the separation between the two would have been an entirely foreign one, and so would the idea of an Emperor who kept a distance from the cultus. While admittedly not the biblical ideal, Leithart gives us good historical reason to think that Constantine’s foray into a constructive relationship between the State and the Church isn’t the sheer, unmitigated disaster that popular polemics would have us believe.

Soli Deo Gloria