Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (20 page)

Behind this is Locke's assumption that the essence of religion is internal: "All the life and power of true religion consist in the inward and full persuasion of the mind; and faith is not faith without believing." Outward professions are nothing "if we are not fully satisfied in our own mind that the one is true." The church's realm is the care of souls, and everything
external is committed to the civil magistrate.53
Such a definition of religion as nothing more than inward "belief" or piety is at odds with most major world religions, and is certainly at odds with Christian orthodoxy. Besides, how does Locke go about locating the boundary between "inward" and "outward"? He does not try; it is self-evident.

In addition, Locke's claims about the character of religion depend on an equally radical disjunction of Old and New. If you want a de-Judaized faith, Lock provides it. He describes the Jewish commonwealth as "an absolute theocracy" and contrasts it with the faith of the New Testament. "If anyone can show me where there is a commonwealth at this time, constituted upon that foundation [i.e., established by God]," he wrote, "I will acknowledge that the ecclesiastical laws do there unavoidably become a part of the civil, and that the subjects of that government both may and ought to be kept in strict conformity with that Church by the civil power." It is nowhere to be found: "there is absolutely no such thing under the Gospel as a Christian commonwealth." Though "many cities and kingdoms ... have embraced the faith of Christ," yet "they have retained their ancient form of government, with which the law of Christ has not at all meddled."sa

Locke's position is, besides, politically fragile and quickly collapses into tyranny. Though he claims to be arguing for toleration and freedom for religion, he ends up ceding final determinative authority over religion to the civil authorities. Locke asserts in his "Letter Concerning Toleration" that since "speculative opinions and religious worship" have "no direct influence upon men's lives in society," these matters have "a clear title to universal toleration, which the magistrate ought not to entrench on."55
But there's absolute and then there's absolute. Believers cannot always tell what counts as a matter of speculative opinion and religious worship, and they are in dined to "mix with their religious worship and speculative opinions other doctrines absolutely destructive to the society wherein they live." Catholics are especially apt to do this, in Locke's view, since they blend "opinions with their religion, reverencing them as fundamental truths, and submitting to them as articles of their faith," and therefore "ought not to be tolerated by the magistrate in the exercise of their religion, unless [it] can be secured that he can allow one part without spreading the other, and that those opinions will not be imbibed and espoused by all those who communicate with them in their religious worship."

Even if the opinions themselves are tolerable, there might be a danger that too many people will begin to hold opinions that isolate them from the general public. People tend to attach themselves to fellow believers more strongly than to fellow citizens. Magistrates have to put a stop to such things too: "When ... men herd themselves into companies with distinctions from the public, and a stricter confederacy with those of their own denomination and party than other [of] their fellow subjects, whether the distinction be religious or ridiculous matters not, otherwise than as the ties of religion are stronger, and the pretenses fairer and apter to draw partisans, and therefore the more to be suspected and the more heedfully watched." When a sect like this becomes numerous, it is "convenient" for the magistrate to do what he can "to lessen, break, and suppress the party, and so prevent the mischief." Quakers are tolerable because they are few, but "were they numerous enough to become dangerous to the state," they "would deserve the magistrate's care and watchfulness to suppress them." Magistrates should act even if Quakers are "no other way distinguished from the rest of his subject but by the bare keeping on their hats." Hats are a "very indifferent and trivial circumstance," yet too many people wearing the same hat might "endanger the government," and thus it is the magistrate's duty to "endeavour to suppress and weaken or dissolve any party of men which religion or any other thing hath united, to the manifest danger of his government." Locke's argument is little more than a theoretical endorsement of Tocqueville's "tyranny of the majority." Not that this is an attack on religion, or a limit of toleration of worship and speculative opinion. Not at all: "they are not restrained because of this or that opinion or worship, but because such a number, of any opinion whatsoever, who dissented would be dangerous."

These limits are on the surface of Locke's essay, but the suppressed issue is the question of classification. Worship and speculative opinions are left more or less free, but practical opinions and actions, even if indifferent, might have to be suppressed for the peace and prosperity of the state. But who decides? One man's speculative opinion is another man's practical opinion. Locke never addresses this directly; it's as if the distinctions are self-evident. But the only possible answer is, of course, the magistrate. What guides the magistrate in deciding what religions are tolerable? For Locke, that guidance cannot come from any particular religious tradition, because that would favor one religion and violate the fundamentals of toleration. The only guidance he provides is that of state interest. Religions are tolerable if they do not threaten public peace and order, as defined by the state. Thus Locke's doctrine of religious toleration deconstructs in practice into tyranny over religion.

Locke is the great theorist of religious freedom? Constantine, more like.

Constantine's policy is more coherent than Locke's because it is more honest. Locke pretends to offer a level playing field but tilts it in the direction of a latitudinarian and sectarian Protestantism. Constantine openly favored one religion, Christianity, and dedicated the empire's pulpit, its incentives, its persuasive powers to encourage ultimate unity in religion. He allowed other religions to continue, in the hope that their adherents would convert. As we have seen and will see more in the following chapter, Constantine at times resorted to force, and he sometimes made things worse by resorting to force clumsily. When he did attempt to shut down Donatist churches or exile Arians (and Athanasius!), he was at least open about what he was defending and what he was attacking, open that he was using the power of the empire to defend the church and arrest its enemies.

Constantine's system was by Augustinian standards more just. Like Augustine, Lactantius insisted that no society could be just while it ignored the living God, while it failed to "give what is due" to the Creator. For all the dangers and drawbacks of its practice, Constantine's policy embodied that insight. He was intent on ensuring not only that the Christian God be worshiped but that he be rightly worshiped.

Space must be organized somehow. Something must be at the center of a city, and that something is, in practice, going to be higher, bolder, bigger, more dazzling than the surrounding cityscape. Modern cities, where even great cathedrals cower in the shadows of insurance companies, banks, law firms, investment companies, high-tech corporations, are certainly not religiously neutral. To a Christian sensibility, modern cities are organized to lift up the idol Mammon above all others and to leave just enough space for the church to be a cheerleader or a marginal, cranky critic. Constantine had many faults and committed many wrongs, but he apparently knew this much: neither society nor social space, neither public life nor the space in which it takes place, can be religiously neutral.

CONCLUSION

Pagans came under attack soon enough.56
Jews too.57
Before the fourth century ended, the "atmosphere" of disapproval for paganism had turned into direct action, as monks and mobs tore down pagan temples and altars and Christian bystanders suffered the reprisals. Early in the fifth century, Christian mobs incited by bishops set synagogues aflame. Eventually, Christian emperors abandoned Constantinian religious policy, perhaps believing they were advancing it. Theodosius issued an edict in 380 that expressed the imperial "desire" for all Romans to "live in accord with the religion which the Apostle Peter committed to the Romans" (CTh 16.2.2) and in doing so effectively "returned to the presuppositions and policy of Diocletian.""
Emperors attempted to treat the church as a department of state. Bishops fought back, as we will see, often vigorously and successfully.

None of this happened in the early fourth century, in the time of Constantine. Under Constantine's policy of concord, the church was flooded with new converts, not through coercion but by force of imperial example and patronage.59
Under Constantine, Jews retained their traditional privileges, and pagans were tolerated and found conditions tolerable. Constan tine favored the church, but he also gave serious attention to protecting the rights of non-Christians. Pogroms and antipagan mob action were products of the abandonment, not the application, of Constantinianism. One cannot help but muse how European history would have been different if Christians had had the patience to let Constantine's original settlement alone.

What of the church? Constantine's favor was too good to be true, and at least for a moment some bishops and other church leaders were careless about the dangers. If the emperor pays for the church building, what happens if he withdraws the funding? Will a softened, fattened bishop have the fortitude to return to the catacombs? Can Christian worship continue to be centered on a common meal when some of the members are 295 feet away from the minister? Won't space shape liturgy, nudging it away from participation toward performance? The city of Jerusalem mattered now as it never had; should it? Were the awesome basilicas too sacred for mere plebs? Would the leaders learn habits of dependence and lean on the next Constantine to suppress the next heresy? They had met the test of Egypt; could they meet the test of conquest? They had borne the cross; could they meet the challenges of vindication? Initially, euphoria may have swept them away.

It was not long before they and the emperor would come down to earth. Supporting the church was, as it turned out, not nearly so easy as the emperor might have expected. As soon as Constantine assumed the throne, he discovered, if he did not know before, that the church was at war with itself. Support the church-but which church? Constantine's policy of tolerant concord was to be severely tested by Christian discord.

Like some general bishop constituted by God, [Constantine] convened synods ofhis ministers.

EUSEBIUS, LIFE OF CONSTANTINE

On a spring day in 325, more than two hundred bishops sat in silent expectation. They had come to Nicaea, a city on Lake Iznik in northwest Asia Minor, by imperial transit, responding to a call from the emperor Constantine. Never before had representatives from all over the empire assembled in council. Most were from the East, most from Asia Minor, more were simple pastors than subtle theologians. But in the crowd were two Roman deacons and one Italian bishop. Ossius of Cordoba was there, more as chair and adviser to the emperor than as a member of the council. Exotic bishops from outside the empire-from the Crimea, from Armenia, even one from Persia-vindicated the bishops' boast that their council and church were not only Roman and ecumenical (oikournene) but truly catholic (katholikos).'
Eventually, legend inflated the number of bishops to 318, but that is a tad too typological to be believed, corresponding as it does to the number of fighting men in Abraham's entourage (Genesis 14).

They had come to settle a dispute that had begun in Egyptian Alexandria, in a conflict between the bishop, Alexander, and a popular presbyter named Arius. Other issues were on the agenda. The Melitian schism, also arising in Alexandria, needed to be put to rest, and the council needed to resolve the disputed question of the date for the celebration of Easter.

Not only was the assembly at Nicaea the first general council ever called, but it had been called by the emperor Constantine. The year before he had defeated the Eastern Augustus Licinius in a series of battles that ended at Chrysopolis, and he had already traced the boundary for and begun to build a grand new city in Constantinople, just across the Bosphorus from Nicaea. For the past decade, the bishops knew, he had identified himself as a worshiper of the Christian God, and most were aware that he had repealed the edicts of persecution, stopped Licinius's mild opposition to the church, and devoted substantial imperial funds to building churches in Rome and elsewhere. Constantine had initially called the bishops to assemble at Ancyra, in central Asia Minor, but then thought better of it. Western bishops would have an easier time getting to Nicaea, he said, and so would the emperor, from his palace in Nicomedia. Besides, the lakeside air would be pleasant.'
What he did not mention was that the bishop of Ancyra was a defiant enemy of Arius and his crowd, which might have made it more difficult for the council to evaluate his theology fairly. Holding the council at Nicaea also meant that the bishops would have an easy trip to Nicomedia, where Constantine, emperor since 306, was planning a splendid celebration of his twentieth anniversary as emperor (vicennalia) at the conclusion of the council.