Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (48 page)

Yoder is famed for his patience, but in dismissing Constantine and the world he left behind, his patience failed. For Yoder, Rome was not radically Christian, Rome's adherence to the faith was infantile, and because of that, he reasons, it was not Christian at all but apostate. He failed, as Augustine said against Pelagius, to give due weight to "the interim, the interval between the remission of sins which takes place in baptism, and
the permanently established sinless state in the kingdom that is to come, this middle time [tempus hoc medium] of prayer, while [we] must pray, `Forgive us our sins.'" He failed to acknowledge that all-Constantine, Rome, ourselves-stand in medial time, and yet are no less Christian for that.61

What can we expect in this middle time? Not much, Yoder thinks. He says that the project of Christianizing the state is doomed. The time when that could happen has long ago passed away. If he is right, we are facing nothing short of apocalypse. I believe that here too Yoder is wrong, and that we can escape apocalypse. But this can only happen on certain conditions: only through reevangelization, only through the revival of a purified Constantinianism, only by the formation of a Christically centered politics, only through fresh public confession that Jesus' city is the model city, his blood the only expiating blood, his sacrifice the sacrifice that ends sacrifice. An apocalypse can be averted only if modern civilization, like Rome, humbles itself and is willing to come forward to be baptized.

ANCIENT SOURCES

I have relied a great deal in this study on secondary literature. Much of the primary literature I have examined is available on the Web, and unless otherwise noted I have used these translations. Unless otherwise noted below, I have used the translations of patristic sources available at . There is also a wonderful collection of documents regarding the Nicene debates, Constantine's legislation and letters, and much else at . The Theodosian Code is available only in Latin on the Web, at , and an English translation of the Justinian Code can be found at . Constantine's letters and many of his coin issues can be found at . I also made use of the incomplete Web editions of the Migne Patrologia Latina (PL) and Patrologia Graeca (PG), both available at . A nineteenth-century translation of Zosimus's New History is available at .

In the footnotes I have usually cited ancient sources with an abbreviated title, unless the title is only a word or two long. In the list below, if the full title is longer, I supply it in parentheses.

Athanasius. Defense (Defense of the Nicene Definition).

On the Synods.

Augustine. City of God.

Basil. Epistles.

Cicero. De domo (De domo sua). Trans. N. H. Watts. Loeb Classical Library 158. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1923.

CJ (Codex Justianus).

CTh (Codex Theodosianus).

Cyprian. Ad Donatum.

Dio Cassius. Roman History. Trans. Earnest Cary. Available at .

Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Roman Antiquities. Trans. Earnest Cary. Available at .

Eusebius. Church History (The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine).

. Life (Life of Constantine). Trans. Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999.

Oration (Oration in Praise of Constantine).

Eutropius. Breviarium (Abridgement of Roman History). Trans. John Selby Watson. Available at .

Herodian. Roman Histories. Trans. Edward C. Echols. Available at .

Historia Augusta. Selections available at .

Julian. Caesares. Trans. W. C. Wright. Available at .

Justin. Dialogue with Trypho.

FirstApology.

Lactantius. Death (Of the Manner in Which the Persecutors Died).

. Divine Institutes.

Livy. From the Foundation of the City. Available at .

Optatus. Against the Donatists. Trans. and ed. Mark Edwards. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1998.

Origen. Contra Celsum.

Ovid. Ars amatoria. Trans. J. Lewis May. Available at .

Rufinus. Church History. Trans. Eusebius, with additional material to 395.

Seneca. Epistles. Trans. Richard M. Gumere. Available at .

On Providence. Trans. William Bell Langsdorf. Available at .

Socrates. Ecclesiastical History.

Sozomen. Ecclesiastical History.

Sulpicius Severus. Vita Martini.

Tacitus. Agricola.

Tertullian. Ad scapulum.

Apology.

De corona militis.

De spectaculis.

On Idolatry.

On the Dress of Virgins.

Theodoret. Ecclesiastical History.

Zosimus. New History. English translation available at .

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