Church and World

Eusebius's, Augustine's, and Yoder's Interpretations of the Constantinian Shift

Simon P. Schmidt

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781532651540
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Systematic Theology & Ethics

"In the world but not of it"--an expression that has been interpreted in a multitude of ways. With the publication of Rod Dreher's much-debated book The Benedict Option in 2017, the question of just how the church is to exist "in but not of the world" is once again on the minds of many. To provide answers true to the context in which the Western church now finds itself, it is worth first investigating how the question has been answered in the past. In determining what to do today, it helps to understand how we got here in the first place.At the beginning of the fourth century, people were persecuted for being Christians; by the end of the fourth century, people were persecuted for not being Christians. This book is an academic investigation of how three paradigmatic theologians interpreted this so-called Constantinian shift: Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 260-339), Augustine of Hippo (354-430), and John Howard Yoder (1927-1997).Surprising similarities between the theology of Eusebius and Yoder become apparent, and underlying theological structures of how to interpret what it looks like to be a community that follows Christ are revealed.

Part I

The Constantinian Shift—An Introduction

1

History and Theology

1.1 Problem

How to be “in the world but not of the world” is a classic theological question. The tension in the question is related to two models of the good life laid out in the Christian Scriptures. Is the good life modeled in the stories of the patriarchs, living in accordance with this world order and dying as octogenarians surrounded by goats and grandchildren? Or is the good life modeled in the stories of the prophets and Christ, speaking out against the wrongs of this world order and dying as a martyr at age thirty-three? These two models of the good life can both be found in OT and NT but are not immediately reconcilable. Nevertheless, Christians throughout the ages have had to live their lives in tension between these two models. Christians have had to answer this question of how to be in this world on an individual level, applying it to their own life. But also on a communal level, with respect to how the church is to exist and organize, they have had to contemplate the question of how to be in the world without being of the world. A lot of Protestant theological consideration has gone into answering the question on an individual level, but much less consideration has gone into answering it on a communal level. In particular Lutheran theologians have not considered the question of how to be “in the world but not of the world” along the lines of an ecclesiological question.1

No universal answer can be given to the question of how to be in the world without being of the world, as it is a question, both on the individual and the communal level, heavily dependent of the context. The question of how to be in the world without being of the world on a communal level can, with precaution, take the form of the question of the relationship between the church and the state.2 How the church is to relate to the state is a question that likewise will have to take into account the historical setting of the church and can thus never be answered in a one-time, abstract manner. Stanley L. Greenslade expressed this succinctly in 1953, when he gave the F. D. Maurice lectures at King’s College London under the heading Church and State from Constantine to Theodosius. Greenslade states that one must “recognize the difficulty of finding any pattern of Church and State relations which shall conform to luminously clear Christian principles.”3 Also, when posed as pertaining to the relationship between church and state, the theological question of how to be in the world but not of the world cannot be answered in a definitive normative way, as it would disregard the context in which that question is posed. However, what can be accomplished, in terms of a general approach to the question, is to gain a better understanding of what is at stake theologically and historically. And gaining an understanding of the nuances in a question constitutes the first step in approaching an answer. Thus, to achieve a better understanding of what is at stake theologically in the question of how the church is to be in the world without being of the world is the modest aspiration for this book.

One way of achieving such an understanding is to look into what theologians at various times have thought about this question. Though these theologians might well be situated in vastly different contexts, an investigation of different interpretations of how the church is to be in the world will contribute to a better understanding of the question in general. As it is difficult to analyze such a foundational matter in itself, a certain entry point needs to be identified. One such entry point is an analysis of how the Constantinian shift is interpreted in three paradigmatic works. Such a focused question provides a perspective necessary to yield meaningful insights pertaining to the abstract question of the relationship between church and world. An investigation of the historiography of the Constantinian shift will hence serve as a way to gain knowledge of how to think about these matters historically and theologically.

By analyzing paradigmatic interpretations of the Constantinian shift, two insights will hopefully be achieved. The first insight illumines how interpretations of the Constantinian that shift through the history of the church have been influenced by theological underpinnings. As a result of this a second insight will illumine overarching theological issues at stake in the question of the relationship between church and state.4

After an account of the research question, I will here move on to provide a necessary account of two key terms and then provide a short outline of the book, thus enabling us to begin the investigation.

A question pertaining to historiography, such as the one that has occasioned this book, could be answered in a short-ranging manner. Such a book might consist in a detailed analysis of how, for example, Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 260–339) and Lactantius (ca. 250–325) depicted and interpreted the Constantinian shift. It could be supplemented with a discussion of how scholarly literature within the last thirty years or so has reevaluated Eusebius’s works. A book like that would surely prove interesting. But such a narrow investigation would not provide the insights into the foundational theological underpinnings that influenced the interpretation of a historical event like the Constantinian shift. To understand what has formed the historiography of the Constantinian shift it is necessary to get to the theological presuppositions of the theologians who interpreted it. These are theological presuppositions pertaining to ecclesiology, ethics and eschatology.

Church history is a theological discipline that takes into account both how the interpretation of history will have a theological aspect to it as well as how the interpretation of history can be informed by theological presuppositions. This book takes a theological approach, as it is precisely at this point that church history has something distinct to offer the wider academic field of history.5

How theology can contribute to the wider academy is one of the questions I will touch on when I look into the theoretical and methodological framework for this book below. Why have I chosen to look at interpretations of the Constantinian shift as expressed by three theologians? What material will I be looking at and why has it been chosen? How will I approach the analysis of this material?

Prior to Constantine’s (ca. 272–337) so-called Edict of Milan (313) the Emperor Diocletian’s persecutions of Christians had made it potentially fatal to be a Christian in parts of the Roman Empire,6 whereas the Emperor Theodosius in 380 made it potentially fatal not to be a Christian in the Roman Empire.7 During a short period of time, Christianity went from being one religion among many to being the only allowed religion.8 This made it necessary for the church to reconsider a whole range of questions. What is the relationship between church and the empire? What does a proper church service look like? What is good government? Is God in control of the course of political history?

Only since the Enlightenment has this union between the church and the state, founded in the fourth century, started to be partly broken up institutionally and intellectually, thereby once again raising a number of questions about how the church is to be in the world.9

As we will see throughout the book, there seems to be some similarity between the situation in the fourth-century Roman Empire and the contemporary situation in the West in regard to a multi-religious environment. Such an environment spurs new questions in theology and did both in the fourth century and in contemporary time lead to new interpretations of the Constantinian shift and its consequences. Within contemporary Anglo-Saxon ecclesiology, the questions of how to be the church in a post-Christendom context has come to expression in considerations on how to situate the church in this new landscape in the West.10 But such questions are not new. It is not the first time the church has to be the church in a situation in which questions of the relationship to wider society are being renegotiated. To look at how theologians at earlier ages have interpreted the role of the church in a plu...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Part I: The Constantinian Shift—An Introduction
• Part II: An Early Interpretation
• Part III: A Corrective
• Part IV: A Current Interpretation
• Part V: Perspectives
• Bibliography