Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom

I read the Kindle version of this book. I am sold out to using Kindle, or some other e-book format for reading and writing book reviews, for the ease of referencing, and being able to highlight, and make notes that then become immediately searchable, and can easily cut and paste into book reviews and blog articles. So my references are Kindle locations, and not page numbers (my apologies to those with the Picard syndrome; those who must have a book in paper form).An defense of Constantine the Great. Leithart takes on many historical misrepresentations of the man, stemmed by "classical" enlightenment thinkers, as well as other historic Constantine bashers I was not even aware of, such as John Wycliffe.Leithart pays particular attention to a modern Mennonite (Ana-baptist) scholar, Howard Yoder. I am familiar with the Ana-baptist view of Constantine, and how they have argued that the true Church went into hiding when Constantine rose to power (or more properly, "converted"), and I have always felt that the Ana-baptist version of what happened was easily refutable. Thanks to writers like Lord Acton, Jean Gimpel, Otto Scott, R.J. Rushdoony, Gary North, and a short paper Leithart had written over 20 years ago (I can't remember the title of the paper), I began to see that the Middle Ages had been seriously neglected in our modern age; dismissed as irrelevant.Still, my view on Constantine prior to reading this book, is that he probably was not a Christian until he agreed to be baptized just before his death. He, and Eusebius, in my previous view, were Arian, and Arianism was compatible with the old Roman cult (Jesus, just a man, ascends to godhood, if he can, so can Caesar). So, although I am intensely interested in redeeming the Middle Ages, I had, up till now, been disinterested in Constantine.Surely, I thought, from reading Rushdoony, the spread of Christianity had been pervasive enough, that Constantine only did what any other pagan emperor, in his right mind, would do to save the empire. And admit defeat to Christianity, which up until this point, had spread into every institution within Rome. Not that Rushdoony had ever stated that (did he?), but it seemed to be implied from his argumentation. Yet Leithart states: "Constantine's reasoning here was less sociological than many of the modern accounts suggest. When he rebuked Christians for their quarrels, he was not arguing that the church should remain unified so it could serve as the glue of imperial power. Such a claim would be nonsensical, since at the time of Constantine's conversion the Christian population-cohesive and well organized to be sure-amounted to about 10-15 percent of the population. The church did not provide enough glue to stick the empire together. Constantine's argument was directly theological." (Kindle Location:825-28).I found this astonishing! 10 - 15% of the population? Well then, that puts just about everything I thought I knew about Constantine and this time of history on its head. Leithart continues: "In a letter of 332 urging the people of Antioch to desist from their efforts to call Eusebius as their bishop, he referred to "our Savior's words and precepts as a model, as it were, of what our life should be."71 He rebuked the Arians for "declaring and confessing that they believe things contrary to the divinely inspired Scriptures."72 He was acting on this faith when he provided fifty copies of the Bible to the churches under Eusebius' care." (Location: 902-5)So then, so much for Constantine being Arian.Leithart touches on the treatment of the Jews under Constantine, and in defending where the Church landed on the issue (against persecuting Jews), points out: "Yet it was one of Yoder's main "Constantinian" theologians, Augustine, who stemmed the tide. Augustine's sermons are nearly as full of the themes of adversus Iudaeos as those of any church father, but after working through his "literal" commentary on Genesis and formulating a response to Faustus, he came to a quite different position. Crucially, he affirmed that the sacrifices and rites of the Old Testament were commanded by God and, moreover, that precisely by putting the law into bodily practice, the Jews became fitting types of the coming Lord. Their dignity in salvation history depended on obedience to what earlier Christians had dismissed as "carnal" law. God told them to sacrifice, and when they did, they foreshadowed the passion of the incarnate Son. It was a brilliant maneuver, striking down the anti-incarnational and anti-Jewish elements of Faustus's theology at a single blow while simultaneously correcting the soft Marcionism of Catholics by binding Old and New unbreakably together." (Location:1396-1401)He references Paula Fredriksen's book Augustine and the Jews. Which I may add to my 'to-read list'. This is a crucial development in the history of the Church, and also, an excellent counter-view to our wide-spread Marcionism in today's Church.Another point that Leithart gives to my utter instruction is that the concept of the "liberty of conscience" had its origin in the Church father, Lanctantius (Location:1455-58). And here I figured it was an idea that had been worked out much later, either in the Middle Ages or during the Reformation. I am most definitely adding Lanctantius' book Divine Institutions to my reading list.Yoder's Ana-Baptism, according to Leithart, gets in his way of assessing Constantine rightly. Constantine would appear more in agreement with Yoder than Yoder had realized. Leithart points out: "Eusebius's account is revealing for our purposes, particularly in the contrast that Eusebius draws between Constantine the emperor and Constantine the baptized Christian. Baptism was the moment of his "regeneration and perfection," the moment when the emperor was received into the people of God. Constantine had the same view. Not only did he discard the imperial purple when he took on the baptismal white, but in his final speech to Eusebius and the other bishops he expressed his wish that, should his life continue, he would be "associate[d] with the people of God, and unite with them in prayer as a member of his church" and devote himself to "such a course of life as befits his service." This comes in the closing chapters of a biography that has described Constantine's vision before the battle with Maxentius, his support for the church and suppression of paganism, his Christian legislation, his devotion to prayer and study, his victories in wars often presented as holy wars, his missionary zeal. At the end of all this, Eusebius quoted Constantine saying that in the future he would devote himself to the service of the God whose salvation was sealed to him in his baptism. As Eusebius recounted the story, Constantine seemed to believe there was a basic incompatibility between being an emperor and being a Christian, between court and church, warfare and prayer, the purple and the white. It would be an ironic conclusion: Constantine, the first anti-Constantinian. Constantine the Yoderian." (Location:3248-56)I have not read Yoder, so cannot fairly say he has dealt with Yoder fairly, but I can say that Leithart points out Yoder's fine qualities. For instance: As noted above, unlike earlier modern forms of anti-Constantinianism, Yoder's critique is not premised on a dichotomy of power and religion, or politics and religion. Yoder says the opposite. The dualism he prefers is church-world, rather than church-state or religion-politics, and that is because the church is a polity, the only true polity, because it is the only polity that does justice in worshiping God. Precisely because it is already political, it is a betrayal for the church to attach itself to and find its identity in an existing worldly power structure. Precisely because the church is always a political power in itself, it does not need to find the stockpile of worldly weapons before it carries out its mission. On all this Yoder is correct. (Location:3621-25) He is also correct in refusing the nature-grace dichotomy on which so much traditional political theology has been based. (Location: 3625-26) The church is a polity, and thus any ethical or political system that minimizes or marginalizes Jesus and his teaching hardly counts as Christian. Here again I think Yoder is correct. (Location: 3630-31)Leithart does, in my opinion, an excellent job in re-telling the story of Constantine using primary resources, stripped of all the Roman Catholic, anti-papal rhetoric, and anti-Christian sentiments of the enlightenment thinkers. The crux for this book to me is this: "That, I think, is a fair historical portrait of the man, his career, his times and his effect on the church. In my judgment, it is a history that John Howard Yoder and other theological and historical critics get wrong on many particulars and in the general outline. Yoder cannot know as much as he claims about the pacifist consensus of the early church, badly misreads major figures like Eusebius and especially Augustine, oversimplifies the history of "mainstream Christianity" to the point of caricature, and tries to convince us that the orthodox church handed missionary activity to heretics for a millennium after Constantine. His rhetoric of anti-Constantinianism discourages Christians from a serious and sympathetic engagement with more than a millennium of Christian theological, and political theological, reflection." (Location: 3314-18)That's why I am very interested in reading clear, well documented history of the Middle Ages. It all begins with this subject, and this book I will be recommending to others for years to come.

Peter Leithart's latest book, "Defending Constantine," should, in my opinion, be considered THE Christian Book of the Year. "Defending Constantine" is a stunning work of scholarship on a closely related collection of issues that are among the most important in Christianity: the life of Constantine, the meaning of Constantinianism, and the radical transformation of the world that took place while he was Emperor. Leithart's work is especially impressive because he has taken on a host of scholars who have so thoroughly denigrated Constantine and "Constantinianism" that it is a truism among most Christians that Constantine was bad for the church and still is. In this scholarly contest, Leithart clearly has proven himself to be the more careful and insightful scholar. It is a work that particularly appeals to me as an Anglican priest, school teacher, and professor of Religious Studies, but it should also be read by every thinking Christian. Despite the lofty themes Leithart tackles, he writes in wonderfully clear English prose.If you read one book on Christian history, Christianity and politics, or Christianity and culture this - this book should be the one: it's THAT good! Don't let the academic topic of the book fool you: this book has radical implications for every thinking Christian and every church."Constantine," as Leithart reminds us, "has been a whipping boy for a long time, and still is today." His name is identified with tyranny, anti-Semitism, hypocrisy, apostasy, and heresy. While experts in the field of early Christianity now believe that Constantine was a genuine Christian who earnestly tried to apply his faith to his role as Emperor, many other scholars and laymen incorrectly continue to claim otherwise.In "Defending Constantine," Leithart audaciously sets out to redeem the reputation of both Constantine and Constantinianism. In both of these tasks, Leithart succeeds admirably. He defines his tasks, more specifically, as being four-fold: to write a life of Constantine, to rebut the popular caricatures of Constantine, to redeem the notion of Constantianism, and to demonstrate that Constantine provides a model for Christian political practice. It is safe to say that anyone who succeeds to a large degree in these tasks has written a magisterial work. "Defending Constantine" is just such a work.Leithart's history of Constantine is good, but the real virtuoso nature of the book begins with his discussion of whether or not Constantine was a genuine Christian or not. Leithart's unequivocal (and correct) answer is "Yes." One of the reasons we misunderstand Constantine is that we import our own cultural and historical expectations into Constantine and his time. This is an important and recurring theme throughout "Defending Constantine." In this case, false views of the way conversion really works have led some to deny that Constantine was ever a Christian. But Leithart demonstrates how Constantine constantly appeals in his writings to the Christian God who is the heavenly Judge and who, in history, opposes those how oppose Him. Constantine also demonstrated a genuine and sustained desire to protect the Church - not from political motivations (although they were likely also present) - but from a genuine desire to see the Church remain pure and united.Another common damnation of Constantine is based on the notion that he meddled terribly in ecclesiastical matters and acted, apart from the bishops, as the defender of Christian orthodoxy. Once again, Leithart has done his homework and dramatically, though graciously, dismantles Constantine's critics. There is no evidence, contrary to assertions by scholars such as Burckhardt and Carroll, that Constantine ever acted as the final authority in church matters. In dealing with the Donatist controversy, Constantine deflected responsibility to the bishops assembled in Rome. Constantine refused to be seated at the Council of Nicea until he was invited by the bishops. It's true that he facilitated the work of the Church's councils by calling them and providing venues, but these and the legal recognition of the conciliar decisions were unavoidable in the political and cultural situation of the time. Constantine not only did not dominate the discussions at Nicea: he also did not formulate the final creed nor sign off on it.Leithart's discussion of Constantianism is also excellent. He defines it as "a theology and ecclesial practice that took form when the church assumed a dominant position in Roman society. Constantianism is "the wedding of power to piety, the notion that the empire or state, the ruler of civil government rather than the church, is the primary bearer of meaning in history." Leithart reserves his most withering and sustained attack for the Anabaptist theologian, John Howard Yoder, on this point. He shows that Yoder misrepresents the facts and has an axe to grind that comes from his presupposition as an Anabaptist that the church had been in a state of apostasy from the fourth to seventeenth centuries.If this popular hypothesis were true, we would expect to see dramatic evidence of decline in the lives of Christians and their godly effect on Roman culture. But the opposite is true. In the first place, the bishops refused to be reduced to mere chaplains of the Empire. Second, it was at the instigation of Constantine that the gladiatorial shows and other immoral public entertainments were reduced and eventually abolished. Constantine's legislation looks very much like the kind of legislation Christians should desire the civil magistrates to enact. Constantine removed previous Roman penalties against the celibate and the childless. He extended the rights of women, removing deprivations such as loss of property and double standards for divorce. He discouraged sex with slaves and was the first in Roman history to legislate against rape. In turn, all of these reforms fostered a new kind of Christian masculinity that relied less on sexual prowess, victory in battle, and political power. Constantine also provided for many laws that elevated true justice and protection for the poor, including children who were exposed, orphans, outcasts, and slaves. He issued laws that enabled slaves to be liberated, as well as those to ameliorate slave conditions (for example, trying to keep slave families together). Finally, in the area of law, Constantine began the "Christianization" of the law, not by legislating for the Church but by giving the Church freedom to be itself, build its own buildings, erect its own legal structures, organize its own system of conflict resolutions, and to carry out its own sanctions.Leithart concludes his magnum opus by refuting three related errors concerning Constantine and Constantinianism: the early church was uniformly opposed to Christians serving in the Roman army; the earliest Christians opposed the Roman Empire; the Roman Christians so identified the Church with the Empire that they ignored or despised the barbarians. In each of these three cases, Leithart demonstrates conclusively that the attitudes of early Christians were ambiguous and not uniformly anti-Empire as Yoder and others have assumed.As if all of this weren't enough, Leithart saves the best for last. He argues brilliantly that what Constantine actually did was to "desacrifice" Rome in order to establish it upon the true sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Constantine enacted a "baptism" out of the world of Rome, and so he eliminated the competing Roman sacrifices: those associated with senatorial decisions, military victories, and the emperor. Instead, it was the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that became the founding sacrifice of the new city, the eschatological city. As with our individual baptisms, the consistent and holy implications of this baptism of the Empire would have to be worked out, imperfectly, in history."Through Constantine, Rome was baptized into a world without animal sacrifice and officially recognized the true sacrificial city, the one community that does offer a foretaste of the final kingdom." Breathtaking stuff!Leithart is a fair and careful scholar; however, I wish he'd offered more evidence for the negative sides of both Constantine and Constantianism. Both are present in the book, but only in minor ways. This is a forgivable oversight, due to the complexity of the task Leithart has already taken on.This is a book that will explode in your mind and then in your soul! You owe it to yourself to read, learn, mark, and inwardly digest this book. Sit back and enjoy the ride as Leithart skillfully and artfully articulates a more edifying way of thinking about Constantine, the church, culture, and our lives. This is one book that deserves 6 stars!

Riguroso y de actualidad. Se trata de una obra que corrige tópicos y valora la extensa bibliografía existente sobre el asunto con equilibrio, para llegar a conclusiones claras y fundadas.

Excellent work of a much maligned person Constantine is shown as a person rather than the icon some may want