Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (61 page)

24Panegyric 6.9.4-5, in ibid., p. 232.

"Panegyric 6.1.5, in ibid., p. 218.

"Panegyric 6.8.3, in ibid., p. 230.

uPanegyric 6.12.1-3, in ibid., pp. 234-35.

"Panegyric 6.17.2, in ibid., p. 243, with n. 79 identifying the references.

27Panegyric 12.23.2-3, in ibid., p. 329.

28Eusebius Life 1.8. The poet Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius, known as the "Ovid of the Constantinian Age," thought the same. He described the homage paid by Indians, Arabs, Ethiopians and Armenians to Constantine (Elizabeth Key Fowden, "Constantine and the Peoples of the Eastern Frontier," in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine, ed. Noel Lenski [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006], pp. 377-98, 389). In the fourteenth of his Carmena he, like Eusebius, described Constantine's progress toward the east as the spread of light into the world's darkness:

29Letter to the Provincials of Palestine, quoted in Eusebius Life 2.28. Though his movement is from east to west, the roundel on the east side of the arch of Constantine shows Sol rising on his quadriga.

'Hugh Elson, "Warfare and the Military," in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine, ed. Noel Lenski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 339; Michael Ku- likowski, "Constantine and the Northern Barbarians," in Cambridge Companion, p. 358.

31Kulikowski, "Northern Barbarians," p. 358.

32Ibid. See also Fowden, "Peoples of the Eastern Frontier," p. 378.

33TUlian Caesares.

34Zosimus New History 2.

"For an excellent brief summary of the pre-Constantinian relations with Persia, see Fowden, "Peoples of the Eastern Frontier," p. 382-84.

36Timothy D. Barnes, "Constantine and the Christians of Persia," journal of Roman Studies 75 (1985): 135-36, analyzes an early-fourth-century text known as the Itinerarium Alexandri that links Alexander and Trajan and hints that Constantine's son Constantius was getting ready to invade Persia. The text, Barnes argues, illustrates "the hopes which Constantine aroused."

37Fowden, "Peoples of the Eastern Frontier," p. 390-91; see also Barnes, "Constantine and the Christians," pp. 126-36; Garth Fowden, "The Last Days of Constantine: Oppositional Version and Their Influence," journal of Roman Studies 84 (1994): 146-53.

38Eusebius Life 4.56.

39Fowden, "Peoples of the Eastern Frontier," p. 393.

40Barnes, "Constantine and the Christians," p. 131.

41Eusebius Life 4.9-13, along with notes in Eusebius, Life of Constantine, trans. Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), pp. 313-15.

42Barnes, "Constantine and the Christians," p. 132.

45Dorries (Constantine the Great, pp. 128-29) gets the tone right in describing it as "evangelistic" and an offer of "brotherhood."

46Hermann Dorries, Constantine and Religious Liberty, trans. Roland Bainton (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1960).

43Fowden, "Peoples of the Eastern Frontier," pp. 391-92.

"Barnes, "Constantine and the Christians," p. 136.

47Panegyric 6.7.3, in In Praise of Later Roman Emperors, ed. and trans. Nixon and Rodgers, p. 351. Nazarius refers to God as summa ilia maiestas (16.1) and benigna maiestas (19.2).

50Ibid., 2.

51Ibid., 3.

52Ibid., 5.

"Panegyric 4.18.1, in ibid., p. 363.

49Oration S.

53John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), pp. 82-83, 145.

'John Howard Yoder, Christian Attitudes to War, Peace and Revolution, ed. Theodore J. Koontz and Andy Alexis-Baker (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2009), p. 58. This is true in the trivial sense that the gospel contains no "mirror for magistrates."

57Ibid., 4.16, 21.

581bid., 4.5-7; see Cameron and Hall's edition, pp. 311-13, for the background.

59See also ibid., 2.28, where Constantine tells the people of Palestine that he "banished and utterly removed every form of evil." This sounds like hubris, but he claims to be nothing more than God's instrument who, by "the aid of divine power," recalls all nations to "the holy laws of God."

55Eusebius Life 1.46; see comments in Eusebius, Life, ed. and trans. Cameron and Hall, p. 222.

56Eusebius Life 2.12; 4.19-20.

60Thomas Heilke, "Yoder's Idea of Constantinianism: An Analytical Framework Toward Conversation," in AMind Patient and Untamed: Assessing John Howard Yoder's Contributions to Theology, Ethics and Peacemaking, ed. Ben C. Ollenburger and Gayle Gerber Koontz (Telford, Penn.: Cascadia, 2004), pp. 89-125. According to Yoder, the early Christians believed that "creation" and its institutions, including the state, were subordinate to the order of redemption, but after Constantine this was reversed-Christian life became a matter of submitting to the standards internal to created institutions. Heilke's criticism reverses Yoder's standard criticism; his complaint is that post-Constantine Christian writers subordinated the order of creation to the order of redemption.

61This, once again, is one of Yoder's formulations of the "heresy of Constantinianism." He says that for the Bible "the meaning of history had been carried by the people of God as people, as community" (Priestly Kingdom, p. 138). While true in a sense, this concept neglects the central role of representation in Scripture; the history of the Davidic kingship is the history of the people because the Davidic king personally embodies Yahweh's son, Israel (cf. Exodus 4:23; Peter J. Leithart, A Son to Me: An Exposition of 1 and 2 Samuel [Moscow, Ida.: Canon, 2003]). Besides, while Scripture includes accounts of patriarchs and Moabite widows, it also includes 1-2 Kings and 1-2 Chronicles, telling the story of the monarchy twice! There is no 1-2 Peasants.

62Robert L. Wilken, The Myth of Christian Beginnings (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970), pp. 57-59.

63 Quoted in Marc Mastrangelo, The Roman Self in Late Antiquity: Prudenti us and the Poetics of the Soul (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), p. 56.

"Quoted in ibid., p. 54.

611bid., p. 116.

"Augustine City of God 5.24.

67Thousands of books have been published on empire, many in recent years. Theologians and biblical scholars have entered the fray. See, for example, Wes Avram, ed., Anxious About Empire: Theological Essays on the New Global Realities (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2004); Richard A. Horsley, ed., Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1997), Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), and In the Shadow ofEmpire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History ofFaithful Resistance (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2008); Bruce Ellis Benson and Peter Goodwin Heltzel, eds., Evangelicals and Empire: Christian Alternatives to the Political Status Quo (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2008); John Dominic Crossan, God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now (San Francisco: Harper, 2007). In the wider debate, the works of Noam Chomsky have a large place; see also various works by Chalmers Johnson and Andrew Bacevich. Yale Ferguson, "Along the Imperial Continuum: Varieties of Empire," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, 2007, available at , and Alexander Motyl, "Is Everything Empire? Is Empire Everything?" Comparative Politics 39 (2006), are representative of the debate within academic political science.

68John Howard Yoder, The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism (Scottdale, Penn.: Herald, 1971, 2003), p. 68.

69Yoder wrote his books before the current obsession with empire, and he rarely deals with the subject directly.

70Tertullian On Idolatry 19. The Latin reads "non potest una anima duobus deberi, deo et Cae- sari."

'Ibid., pp. 53-54.

"Yoder, Christian Attitudes, p. 49.

"Ibid., pp. 49-51.

74I examine some of these theological and ethical concerns in the final chapter, though even there it will be impossible for me to deal fully with Yoder's concerns, especially the issue of pacifism.

'Though Yoder asserts more than he can prove on the historical question, his careful and probing ethical treatments of the subject are very challenging for just war thinkers. See especially John Howard Yoder, When War Is Unjust: Being Honest in JustWar Thinking (1996; reprint, Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2001).

4Yoder argues in many places that the basic problem of Constantinianism is its ecclesiology and eschatology. Yet pacifism looms very large in his analysis of church history, and hence of Constantinianism. Without pacifist assumptions, much of Yoder's edifice crumbles. Yoder describes Constantinianism as, in part, the belief that "the Roman emperor and their God were allies" (John Howard Yoder, The War ofthe Lamb: The Ethics of Nonviolence and Peacemaking, ed. Glen Stassen et. al. [Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2009], p. 45). But how can Yoder know that this is not the case? The apparent presumption that it is impossible for a political ruler to be an "ally" of God rests on his pacifist ethic. Perhaps it is best to say that the church's supposedly shifting views on war and peace are, for Yoder, the leading symptom of the church's apostasy.

2justin Dialogue with Trypho 110.

'Justin First Apology 39.

'Ibid., p. 204, n. 10.

'John Helgeland, "Christians and the Roman Army from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine," ANRW2.23.1 (1979): 764-65.

7Yoder, War ofthe Lamb, p. 45.

'Again, assumptions about pacifism shape the answer. If one takes the Sermon on the Mount as a pacifist manifesto, then of course Ambrose and Augustine and others who formulated Christian "just war" theory abandoned the Sermon on the Mount. But if the Sermon on the Mount does not entail pacifism, the assessment of post-Constantinian theologians will be very different.

9James Jordan regularly makes this point in many different contexts.

10See the summary of research in David G. Hunter, "A Decade of Research on Early Christian Military Service," Religious Studies Review 18, no. 2 (1992): 87-94. On page 93 he concludes that the recent research has shown that "the efforts of Christians to justify participation in warfare for a `just' cause ... stand in fundamental continuity with at least one strand of preConstantinian tradition."

"Quoted in Roland Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace: A Historical Survey and Critical Re-evaluation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1960), p. 72.

12Tertullian Apology 38.

13Origen Contra Celsum 4.70.

14John Howard Yoder (For the Nations: Essays Public and Evangelical [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997], p. 70, n. 46) admits that "Christians did in some way participate in the Roman army" and accurately adds that "we know about it only from the words of those who thought they should not, and there is no way to know how many there were, or what their roles were." Yet somehow (as he adds in the same sentence) he knows that those who participated were not motivated by "any responsible theocratic visions of taking charge of history, or controlling the destiny of the empire." Rather, they participated-"in peacetime" only-because "the work was easy and the rewards generous," and they did not take time with "much moral analysis." That latter point may well be true, but Yoder's comments are sheer speculation. See also Yoder, Christian Attitudes to War, Peace and Revolution, p. 47.

1tBainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, p. 68. For more on Christians in the Roman army, see Arthur Darby Nock, "The Roman Army and the Roman Religious Year," Harvard Theological Review 45, no. 4 (1952): 223-29.

16Eusebius Church History 5.5.1-2; see Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward Warand Peace, p. 157. Interestingly, Tertullian also knows of this story. This is likely the same event recounted in chapter 2, though Dio tells the story without reference to Christians. Whether or not the incident happened is somewhat immaterial. Helgeland notes that "there must have been enough Christians enlisting" to make the Christian use of the story plausible ("Christians and the Roman Army from Marcus Aurelius," p. 796).

191bid., p. 152.

20Stephen Gero, "Miles Gloriosus: Christians and Military Service according to Tertullian," Church History 39 (1970): 292, calls these "technical military terms."