Legends and Myths

The Myth of the Dark Ages

The standard secular humanist perspective on European history was wrapped up and handed to us by Enlightenment philosophes.  The basic thesis was that rational thought and accomplishment ended with the waning of the Roman Empire.  It was succeeded by the Dark Ages–a period of ignorance, disease, poverty and brutality–until Charlemagne (circa 800AD), who represented a flickering, dying ember of former glories.  But human history did not recommence its triumphant upward movement until the Enlightenment, which it began to hymn brazenly, and with just a smidgen of self-serving chutzpah, declaring “We are the Champions of the World”. 

Nowadays only the untutored cling to such a deceitful trick, and then only for the purposes of propaganda–which is elegantly appropriate, since this was largely why Gibbon wrote his magisterial Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  The way the story “rolled” was to magnify Rome and its Empire and contrast its glories with the succeeding degradations, then slip in an association of the “decline and fall” with the spread of Christianity (a superstition undermining classical thought), leading to the “inevitable” conclusion that the Christian religion was bad for the general well-being of mankind. 

Here is Gibbon’s paean of praise to Roman accomplishment:

In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilised portion of mankind.  The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour.  The gentle, but powerful, influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces.  Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury.  The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence, etc. etc.

Then came the barbarian hordes in the fifth century, destroying and trampling all before them, tearing down Rome’s civilised accomplishments, bequeathing a dark night of degradation, poverty, squalor, and disease upon Western Europe.

These days pesky archaeologists have nosed around sufficiently to demonstrate comprehensively that it never happened.  With the passing of Roman control, the end of a slave-based “civilisation” came to an end. Having shrugged off the dark aspects of the Roman Imperium, Western civilisation continued to develop and progress.

Peter S. Wells, professor of Archaeology at the University of Minnesota, writes in the preface to his book, Barbarians to Angels,

We now have the benefit of archaeological material from the first millennium, which is rich enough to give us a powerful alternative picture.  As I show in this book, the time once known as the Dark Ages–the fifth through eighth centuries–was anything but dark.  It was a time of brilliant cultural activity. . . . Subsequent developments in Europe, including the Renaissance and modern civilization, owe as much to the “barbarians” as to Rome.  Rather than a disjuncture in cultural life, the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries–the “Dark Ages” to some–were times during which Europeans created the basis for medieval and modern Western civilization.  [Peter S. Wells, Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008), p. xiv.]

Some of the advances included:

1. The moldboard plow, which greatly increased agriculture productivity and food production.
2. The development of medieval architecture, along with its engineering underpinnings, eventually leading to the huge cathedrals with their magnificent lying buttresses, as just one application. 
3. Written law codes, incorporating Roman law, but also the traditions and equity of local ethnic traditions.  “Frankish, Irish, and Anglo-Saxon law codes were written down in the course of the sixth century.” (Ibid., p.11)

Moreover, there is no solid archaeological evidence for “Saxon invasions” or other mass migration of peoples into Western Europe and Britain, destroying much of what was before them. The presence of new forms of pottery, jewellery, and objects of various kinds in “Dark Ages” Britain seems to be due not to invaders conquering native inhabitants and imposing their cultural patterns upon them, but to the gradual influence of trade goods and the imitation of styles and tastes found in Western Europe, by merchants and travellers picking up goods and ideas and bringing them into Britain, where they found a ready market.

Why is it important to get these kinds of things right?  It seems there is a perpetual tendency to idealise some aspects of the past.  There is also a persistent tendency to denigrate other aspects of the past, in the attempt to make the present seem more triumphantly glorious, in the ilk of “We are the champions . . . ”  In the case of the myth of the Dark Ages it was both.  The Roman past was idealised as a golden age of human civilisation.  The Modern Period (from the Enlightenment onwards) has been glorified as a continuation of humanity’s upward rationalist trajectory.  Christianity has been denigrated as producing a “middle age”–which was a Dark Age of Western history: ignorant, prejudiced, superstitious, and degrading. 

It’s the stuff of legends and myths. 

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

The Great Cat Poo Medallion

Posted on Monday, August 26, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

Rod Dreher has a good piece here on the great looming alternative that now confronts us.

Within the biblical framework of a rightly-ordered patriotism, it is easy for Christians to take our native loyalties to our native land as a simple given, while reserving to ourselves the right to disagree with or oppose the decisions and mandates of the current administration. Jeremiah was no less a patriot for challenging King Zedekiah. Seems simple.

But when the canker of rebellious idolatry is well-advanced in any nation, the possibility of the regnant idolaters seeing believers as part of a loyal opposition begins to steadily erode. A totalitarian miasma sets in, and any disagreement with the current forms of legislated disobedience is taken either as mental illness or treason. When Stalin wanted to deal with his political enemies, he used psychiatry to define them into his version of the outer darkness. When the ancient Romans persecuted the Christians, they did so because the Christians were enemies of mankind. And in our day, simple disagreement with the proposals surrounding same sex mirage is categorized simply, routinely, and quite handily, as “hate.” That was an extraordinary move, and entirely predictable.

And someone who is mentally ill, or treasonous, is not someone who can be a loyal son of his nation. He cannot be one who simply disagrees with the current push for same sex mirages. He is outside the pale, and he is out there by definition.

So Christians need to start making some emotional adjustments, by way of preparation. “I love my country, I fear my government” is a common sentiment among us, reflecting the common distinction I mentioned above. And our position is that our fear of God necessitates that we oppose certain actions of our government, but we need not say that it necessitates a contempt for our people, customs, language, culture, etc. That is, it does not necessitate it on our end. It very well may become a requirement coming at us from the other direction. In fact, that is what is happening, and it has been the strategic play since the appearance of the very first “Hate is Not a Family Value” bumper sticker.

I do love my country, and detest the current regime (and by “regime” I am referring to more than the current administration). Well, of course the current regime has the ability to make us choose between their policies and Jesus — that’s the easy part — but they can also frame the debate in such a way that it appears we have to reject our people and nation for the sake of Christ. It does no good to complain about them taking hostages like this — one of the results of them being in power is they can manipulate things in this way. We are not all the way there yet, but we are most of the way there.

In other words, what happens when the definition of fundamental allegiance is formally and officially altered (actually, or in effect), such that any true believer in Christ would be prohibited from professing it? The early Christians were not persecuted because of their loyalty to Jesus. That was fine with the Romans. Whatever you wanted to worship in your spare time was fine with them. The problem was caused by the Christian loyalty to Jesus precluding a certain kind of loyalty to the state. The Christians were not persecuted because of their prayers to Jesus. They were persecuted because of their refusal to say a dinky little ceremonial prayer to Caesar.

As Chesterton puts it in The Everlasting Man . . .

“A convenient compromise had been made between all the multitudinous myths and religions of the Empire; that each group should worship freely and merely give a sort of official flourish of thanks to the tolerant Emperor, by tossing a little incense to him under his official title of Divus” (p. 163).

The only problem was that faithful Christians, a lot of them, wouldn’t do it. From a secular vantage point, the Romans really were being extremely tolerant, and were fully prepared to continue being that tolerant — as long as they were recognized as the final authority. And the Christians, refusing to make that concession, seemed to the authorities to be driven by sheer cussedness. But given God’s Word to us, Christians simply cannot do this kind of thing. Not to overstate the case, it is the “Supreme Court,” not the “Supreme Being.”

Because of this, again in Chesterton’s words, the enemies of Christ responded the way they always do, by surrounding us with their own peculiar forms of organized malice — “the halo of hatred around the Church of God.” And as American Christians, once free and happy, prepare themselves to start wearing that peculiar halo again, a recent move is to accuse them of being whiners about a bunch of nothing, a charge that appears to be right on schedule. You poor, delusional thing, you. “The people answered and said, Thou hast a devil: who goeth about to kill thee?” (John 7:20).

It is most clear that we are on the verge of that stage of the proceedings now. So when the decree comes down and we are told — as we are now being prepared to be told — that we cannot oppose same sex mirage and be good Americans, our first reply ought to be “very well then, have it your way. We shall be bad Americans.”

My citizenship, my affections, my loyalties whether national or regional, my manner of expression, my lever-action Winchester, my language, my love of pie, my Americanism . . . these are all contingent things. They are all creatures, because they are attributes of my life and existence, and I am a creature. Our nation, and all its pleasant things, is a creature. The grass withers, and the flower fades.

The purveyors of soft despotism want to arrange things so  that we conform fully to their agenda, or consign ourselves to their idea of the outer darkness, which turns out to be the same kind of place as Stalin’s.

Because I think like a Christian, I don’t necessarily think it is a necessary choice at all. But it is only not necessary in a nation that is not despotic — and ours is metastasizing into despotism. So under their terms, under their rule, such a choice is mandatory — because in times of persecution, they will make it necessary — which means that I will swallow the reductio. Force me to choose between Jesus and America, and then watch me choose Jesus.

The apostle Paul knew what it was to be a true Jew (Rom. 2:29). He loved his native people intensely (Rom. 9:3-5). But he also knew that it was possible for the earthly chess pieces to be maneuvered in such a way that we might have to sacrifice our queen, and real Christians are always prepared to do this gladly. This was something Paul was willing to do, and so if you successfully got him into the position where he had to decide between being a Hebrew of Hebrews, of the tribe of Benjamin (Phil. 3:5) and the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ (Phil. 3:8), he didn’t even have to think about it. The prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:14) or the Medal of Freedom? Well, if you make me choose, friend, the Medal of Freedom strikes me as a haphazard affair, as a Pringles lid hung around some compromised neck with frayed shoe laces, and said lid heavily caked with cat poo.

Is it really the settled public policy of the American nation that we must choose between our love for Jesus Christ and His heavenly kingdom, on the one hand, and on the other, parades in all our major cities celebrating anal intercourse? Well, let me think about it. Can you give me some more time?

Those believers who have had an ordinary love of country, coupled with a naive (and very unbiblical) belief that America could never become an idolatrous adversary to the kingdom of God, are the kind of people who would be quick to acknowledge on paper that if we had to choose between God and country, we should always and everywhere choose God. But having ticked that box, they murmur to themselves that they are very glad that they could never be called upon to make that choice. Sorry, but here it is. Right on top of us.

Our nation is a nation just like all the others, and we can spiral into spiritual apostasy just like all the others. We are now more than halfway down the line of statues in the royal hall of Charn, where the look of our earlier nobility has vanished and we are just three elections away from the coldest forms of despair. Just think — all over the world, drone strikes making the world safe for sodomy.

As a nation like all others, we do have the option of repentance as well. But the first sin requiring the deepest repentance will have to be that damn-fool notion of American exceptionalism.

This is why pastors have a particular and pressing duty here. If this despotic modern state is the idol of our age — and it is — then pastors have a pressing duty to prepare their parishioners to resist it. We have a duty to prepare our people to refuse to bow down when they hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer (Dan. 3:5). Those instruments seem odd to us today, and so does Nebuchadnezzar’s statue, but you may depend upon it — at the time, bowing down to that statue to that music at that time was about as mainstream as you could possibly get, and the only people left standing were the extremists and weirdos.

John warns Christians as little children, telling them to keep themselves from idols (1 John 5:21). This will be a pressing danger when the idolatry is mainstream, when paying your mortgage depends on conforming, when all the networks are asking what the big deal is, when we can’t buy or sell without offering that pinch of incense to the emperor, and the music has been playing for a good minute and a half now. People are starting to look. You see an official in the back writing down your name.

It is quite true that idolatry can exist as a matter of heart motive. Paul does says that greed is idolatry, for example (Eph. 5:5; Col. 3:5). But the idolatrous state doesn’t care if you are an idolater in your heart only — they will at some point insist that you register. We sometimes have a rarefied view of idolatry, thinking that such a sin could only be determined when we appear before God at the great judgment seat. We will appear there in order to answer His series of trick questions, and when He asks us which is more important, being American or Christian, we need to say, “Christian! Of course!”

But the trick questions aren’t there — they are all here.  Pastors don’t need to be preparing men to not deny Christ before the Father. They need to teach them how to not deny Him before men (Matt. 10:33).

Means of Grace

Breaking Down Paganism

Tertullian on church charitable capacities at the beginning of the Third Century, AD.

“There is no buying or selling of any sort of things of God.  Though we have our treasure chest, it is not made up of purchase money, as of a religion that has its price.  On the month day, if he likes, each puts in a small donation; but only if it be his pleasure, and only if he is able; for there is no compulsion; all is voluntary.  These gifts are, as it were, piety’s deposit fund.  For they are not taken thence and spent on feasts, and drinking bouts, and eating houses [as was the case in pagan religious meetings and temples], but to support and bury poor people, to supply the wants of boys and girls of destitute means and parents, and of old persons confined now to the house; such, too, as have suffered shipwreck; and if there happen to be any in the mines, or banished to the islands, or shut up in prisons for nothing but their fidelity to the cause of God’s Church, they become the nurslings of their confession.”  [Tertullian, Apology, Chapter 39.  Cited in Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion (New York: Harper One, 2011), p. 113.]

The Decline and Fall of Rome

Blowing in the Wind

Gibbon blamed the decline and fall of the Roman Empire upon Christianity.  He was, of course, grinding an ideological axe.  The causes of Rome’s decline are, as to be expected, complex and multiple.  One of them is that economies based upon slave labour are remarkably inefficient and unproductive.  Without consistent plunder of others, they cannot survive.  Another cause was the Empire’s declining population.  This curse also had various causes, one of which was the lack of male commitment to their wives bearing children and the fathers taking the responsibility to raise them.  Apart from the occupations of soldiering, peasant farming, property speculation, and politics there were not too many avenues for successful income generation.

There is a significant body of contemporary testimony that the fecundity of Roman women was low.  Rodney Stark comments as follows:

. . . [T]here are compelling reasons to accept the testimony of ancient historians, philosophers, senators, and emperors . . . that the average fertility of pagan [non-Christian] women was so low as to have resulted in a declining population, thus necessitating the admission of “barbarians” as settlers of empty estates in the empire and especially to fill the army.  The primary reason for low Roman fertility was that men did not want the burden of families and acted accordingly: many avoided fertility by having sex with prostitutes rather than with their wives, or by engaging in anal intercourse.  Many had their wives employ various means of contraception which were far more effective than had been thought until recently; and they had many infants exposed. . . . Pagan husbands also often forced their wives to have abortions–which also added to female mortality and often resulted in subsequent infertility. [Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion (New York: Harper One, 2011), p. 131.]

One consequence went beyond the low fertility of women: there was also a significant gender imbalance.  Stark claims that the best estimates are that there were 131 males per 100 females in Rome, rising to 140 males per 100 females in the rest of Italy, Asia Minor, and North Africa.

In a remarkable essay, Gillian Clark pointed out that among the Romans, unmarried women were so rare that “we simply do not hear of spinsters. . . . There is not even a normal word for spinster.”  As further evidence of the acute shortage of women, it was common for them to marry again and again, not only following the death of a husband, but also after their husband had divorced them.  In fact, state policy penalized women under fifty who did not remarry, so “second and third marriages became common,”  especially since most women married men far older than themselves.  Tullia, Cicero’s daughter “was not untypical . . . married at 16 . . . widowed at 22, remarried at 23, divorced at 28; married again at 29, divorced at 33–and dead, soon after childbirth, at 34.”   [Cited in Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion (New York: Harper One, 2011), p. 130.]

Amidst all this, the Christian Church gradually prospered.  One reason is that the Church had a more biblical view of work, of marriage, and of family.  Christians did not regard women as lesser beings.  They regarded both women and slaves as being equally made as all were–in the image of God Himself.  They proscribed abortion.  To our knowledge there was no long term gender imbalance in the Christian communities.

With such beliefs, practices, and convictions Roman pagan culture was eventually subdued and Christianised.  It may take a couple of centuries, but we believe this will recur in the now pagan West.  The ordinary activity of Christians has now become, as it once was, a most revolutionary calling, undermining and ultimately breaking paganism apart.  Critical here are worship and weekly covenant renewal, the pronunciation of the Gospel to those outside the Church, marriage and childrearing, and raising children in the faith of their fathers.  In contrast, the culture of the West has no holy places left, no covenant with God, no good news to pronounce, no recognizable doctrine or practice of marriage, and nothing meaningful into which those children they do have are to be raised. Desiccated and friable, Unbelieving culture is blowing in the wind.

The End of the Beginning

The Baptism of  Rome

For many critics, Constantine gave a Judas kiss of death to the Church.  By recognising the Lord Jesus Christ and His Church, whatever his motives, Constantine seduced the Church to a life of worldliness.  Pleasing and serving the emperor and his empire became ultimately more important than serving King Jesus. 

Folk who think thus usually believe the Church is the most healthy, powerful, and spiritually vibrant when it is living under the Cross, under persecution, and under oppression.  At such times we are truly following Jesus, truly walking in His steps.  Rather than being conformed to this world, we are being conformed to the eternal Kingdom of Christ Himself. 

The suffering church up to the third century AD was closer to Christ than the Constantine-adulating Church of the fourth and fifth centuries. Or so the story goes, we’re told.  Peter Leithart [Defending Constantine: The Twilight of and Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2010)] has a different view, more profound and more biblically faithful.
  In the first place, Leithart takes seriously the commands and responsibilities of the Great Commission.  If we are to make disciples of all nations what would that look like?  It would mean that all the commands of Christ (that is, as He speaks throughout the whole Bible) were being not just announced to the nations, but that the nations were being conformed and made obedient to King Jesus.  Whilst the recognition of Christ and His Church by Constantine in 313 and following created lots of problems, temptations, and blind alleys it cannot be rejected as something sui generis with respect to God’s Kingdom. 

Secondly, the Church of the time celebrated the cessation of persecution and saw Constantine as an answer to prayer.  God had heard.  He had had compassion.  And He had delivered His people.  Such a response comes straight out of Scripture itself, whether one considers the Exodus, the Exile, the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, or the time of Queen Esther, or many other examples.  The strange theory of purity through perpetual persecution implies something different: a more faithful Church would presumably have prayed for the removal of Constantine (and his temptations) and a return to Diocletian and the horrors of sacrificing Christians to the gods.  Such flagellation is no enemy of the flesh: quite the opposite.  It inflames the flesh with all its vainglory and pride. 

But if Constantine and his christianised empire were so inconsistent and weak in many ways (and they were) what was the point?  What positive interpretation can be given?  Leithart argues at least two things are important.  Firstly, Constantine accomplished the baptism of Rome.  He astutely observes that baptism is always infant baptism, a baptism of children (whether adults or actual children) who have to grow into maturity.  Constantine’s baptised Rome was not an end, but a beginning of Christianisation of the empire.  Consequently, inconsistency, weakness, and incompleteness are to be expected. 

Secondly, the mode of baptism employed by Constantine was the removal of sacrifice in the Roman Empire.  Leithart writes:

Constantine began to eliminate sacrifice from Roman life, and this was no mean achievement.  Roman sacrifice was at the center of Roman civilization.  It was the chief religious act by which Romans communicated and communed with the gods, keeping the gods happy to Romans could be happy.  Sacrifice disclosed the secrets of the future, as the haruspex read the entrails of the slaughtered animals.  Sacrifice was essential to Roman politics . . . . By sacrificing for or to the emperor, [Romans] acknowledged him as Lord, Savior, Deliverer, even, at times, as God.  Christians refused because they knew there was another King, another world Emperor who filled that role, and Romans tried to suppress this Christian rebellion by sacrificing Christians. . . . Sacrificial slaughter in the arena was one of the empire’s chief entertainments. 

Through Constantine, Rome was baptized, and sacrifice in all these senses came to an end or began to.  Constantine stopped the slaughter of Christians.  He refused to sacrifice at the Capital during his triumph in 312.  He ended sacrifice for officers of his empire, thus opening imperial administration to Christians, and eventually outlawed sacrifice entirely.  . . . He stopped the gladiatorial combats. . . . 

With Constantine, the Roman Empire became officially a desacrificial polity.  If he did not entirely expunge sacrifice, Constantine displaced sacrifice from the center of Roman life, pushed it to the margins and into dark corners. . . . He took away the smokey food of the not-gods (Galatians 4:8), and the demons began to atrophy.  (Leithart, p. 327f)

It was not the beginning.  Nor was it the end.  It was the end of the beginning of the Christianisation of the Roman Empire.  Much much more remained to be done.  If we consider Constantine’s contribution in that way, criticisms and exposure of inconsistencies and weaknesses of his Christianised reign can be seen for what they are: unfair and inappropriate. 

Might as well criticise a child for not being an adult. 

The Constantinian Solution

 Did Constantine Establish the Church?

The accomplishment that Constantine the Great is known for more than any other is his official recognition of Christianity and the Christian church.  For some this was momentous for all the wrong reasons: it signalled the beginning of the end.  As soon as the state acknowledges the Christian faith, the church becomes worldly, looking more to the favour of government than to God. 

But it begs an inevitable question: what is the proper and biblically legitimate face of the state towards Christ and the Christian church?  As long as the Church remains a small minority amidst a sea of paganism this question may be avoided, since it is speculative and irrelevant to actual circumstances.  But when the Christian population grows to double figure percentages the issue can no longer be avoided. 

A legitimate question then is where ought we to stand with respect to the Constantinian solution?
  First off, we had better understand what Constantine’s solution was.  Upon assuming control of the Empire, Constantine did not “legalize” Christianity.  Back in 306 when he was proclaimed Augustus of the West at York in Britain, he ended the persecution of Christians.  From that time on it was legal to be a Christian and to live out the Christian faith in the western portions of the Empire. 

Seven years later, in 313 Constantine and his fellow Augusti, Licinius signed two letters after discussing religious policy in general and Christianity in particular.  These letters did not make Christianity the official religion of the Empire.  Instead they declared religious liberty for all. 

Considering it “highly consonant to right reason,” they adopted the policy that “no man should be denied leave of attaching himself to the rites of the Christians, or to whatever other religion his might directed him.”  Thus all Christians “are to be permitted, freely and absolutely to remain in it, and not to be disturbed in any ways, or molested.”  [Peter Leithart,  Defending Constantine: The Twilight of and Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2010), p. 99.]

This policy of religious liberty for all drew heavily on the teaching of Lactantius, who was very close to Constantine and his family.  He argued that God does not want force to be used in religion; force is always inimical to true belief. 

. . . one cannot be chaste and pious in religion if one is coerced to worship.  Force pollutes rather than purifies religion.  “For religion is to be defended, ” he wrote, “not by putting to death, but by dying; not by cruelty, but by patient endurance; not by guilt, but by good faith: for the former belong to evils, but the latter to goods; and it is necessary for that which is good to have place in religion, and not that which is evil.  For if you wish to defend religion by bloodshed, and by tortures, and by guilt, it will no longer be defended, but will be polluted and profaned.” (Ibid., p. 108)

Lactantius and Constantine were arguing that this was the true Christian position.  True faith in God is inimical to force and compulsion.  Liberty of conscience is necessary to true faith.  Without it, faith cannot be true.  Practically, this meant the toleration of paganism. 

Now this did not mean that Constantine was a pagan sympathiser, or that he adopted a mien of neutrality towards all religions.  Rather, he overtly and deliberately spoke against paganism and idolatries of all kinds: devotees of such were imprisoned in temples of lies.  He also publicly favoured and supported the Church.  But he allowed pagans to worship and believe as they chose, whilst at the same time calling them to come into the light.  In an edict to the Eastern Provinces in 324 he

. . . attacked the irrationality of polytheism and defended monotheism.  He recalled his father’s kindness to the church with fondness and recounted the arrogance and stupidity of the persecuting emperors, “unsound in mind” and “more zealous of cruel than gentle measures.”  . . . .

Having exposed the error, savagery, and the political evils of paganism, and just as the reader is ready for the hammer to fall, Constantine revealed the thrust of his edict.  Insisting that his desire was “for the common good of the world and the advantage of all mankind, that your people should enjoy a life of peace and undisturbed concord,” he declared that “anyone who delight(s) in error, [should] be made welcome to the same degree of peace and tranquillity which they have who believe.”  . . . .

As it comes to a close, the edict modulates from imperial pronouncement to prayer: “We”–he meant “we Christians”–“have the glorious edifice of your truth, which you have given us as our native home.  We pray, however, that they [the pagans] too may receive the same blessing, and thus experience that heartfelt joy which unity of sentiment inspires”. . . . Constantine is less a theocrat imposing Christianity than Billy Graham issuing an altar call. (Ibid., p. 110f)

The official position, then, was that paganism and idolatry were clearly wrong in so many ways, but pagans were free to practise their faith.  Constantine expressed fervent hope that in time they, too, would come to faith in Christ. And that faith could not be forced: such measures would destroy faith.  In the meantime, Constantine encouraged and promoted the Christian faith.  His public square was never neutral.  Nor is our own, despite protestations to the contrary. 

The Constantinian “establishment” was very different from popular misunderstandings and misrepresentations. 

Modern Niceties

 Secularist Persecution

In the early chapters of his book on Constantine, Peter Leithardt sets the scene of Constantine’s accession to the purple, documenting the reign of Diocletian. As part of the scene-setting, he reviews the Diocletian persecution of the Church, which commenced in 303AD.  It was pretty gruesome stuff.  The move was a failure, although the suffering and bloodshed real enough. 

Leithardt also reviews modern revisionist views of Roman persecution of Christians in general, and Diocletian’s in particular.  The revisionism began with the Enlightenment which had a general commitment to a piece of deliberate propaganda: the Christian religion was perverse superstition; therefore, the classical age that preceded it was the watershed of human sophistication and cultural maturity.  The Enlightenment was deliberately styled as a movement to recapture of the high points of classical culture, so that mankind could continue on its glorious upward trajectory.  In order to do so it must throw off the chains of Christian superstition and recapture the glories of ancient Greece and Rome. 

This particular piece of propaganda meant that the persecution of the Church by the Roman Empire needed some decent revisionist work.
  The first plank was to paint Christians as near madmen: stubborn, obstinate, narrow minded, and bigoted, deserving all they got.  The second move was a corollary: to cast Roman magistrates as tolerant, mild, and restrained.

Liethardt cites Edward Gibbon as a classic:

“Such was the mild spirit of antiquity that the nations were less attentive to the difference than to the resemblance of their religious worship,” Edward Gibbon wrote from the comfort of his study.  [In other words, the Romans were an inclusivist lot.]  He avowed that Roman magistrates who persecuted Christians did so reluctantly, “strangers” as they were to the “inflexible obstinacy” and “furious zeal” of bigoted Christians.   If Christians were persecuted, they had only themselves to blame: “as they were actuated, not by the furious zeal of bigots, but by the temperate policy of legislators, [the officials’] contempt must often have relaxed, and humanity must frequently have suspended, the execution of those laws which they enacted against the humble and obscure followers of Christ.”  [Peter Leithart,  Defending Constantine: The Twilight of and Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2010), p. 25.]

A second piece of revisionist history requires that Roman persecution be placed in a more acceptable category of behaviour.  It has been suggested that not all persecution is created equal: some kinds are more tolerable and acceptable than others.  We need to distinguish between religious persecution, on the one hand, and political persecution, on the other.  Religious persecution is when people are persecuted and punished for their religious beliefs.  Clearly this is monstrous because religious beliefs are all alike speculative and represent one ignorant speculation punishing another.  Just as well persecute the fool who believes the moon is made of green cheese. 

Roman persecution of Christians was not religious persecution.  It was political persecution and that makes it decidedly of a higher, better order. This amounts to another variant of the “Christians deserved it” revision.  Citing Frederick Pollock who gave this ratiocination its modern form, Leidhardt writes:

Romans had no “distinctively theological incitement to persecution.”  Believing they had a corner on the truth, however, medieval Christians became intolerant of error out of love for the wandering soul of human beings.  Roman persecution was “tribal.”  True the gods figured into the picture, but they figured in a political picture.  Regarding the gods as “the most exalted officers of the state,” Romans naturally saw Christians as either “a standing insult to the gods” or “a standing menace to the Government,” but in either case “bad citizens.” 

Christians who refused to honor the gods who are guarantors of Roman imperium were more than a nuisance; they endangered the prosperity and existence of Rome itself.  Roman persecution was thus “essentially a measure of public safety.”  For Roman emperors, “the removal of the danger . . . is not merely justifiable, but a plain duty of self-preservation.”  Romans did not persecute from bigotry and zeal, as Christians later did, but out of political necessity.  (Ibid., p. 26f)

Ah, those noble Romans; those bigoted Christians.  This is the sort of stuff of which modern history has been made.

At this point, the ancient Romans were far more enlightened than modern historians.  The Roman imperium understood  well enough what the modern world in its self-willed ignorance denies: that the state is profoundly and inescapably religious.  The Romans persecuted the Christians because they were “a pollution that aroused the wrath of the gods.”  The state depended upon the favour of the gods.  Therefore, whilst Roman persecution was political to be sure, and had the preservation of the state in view, it was also inevitably and profoundly religious persecution: the state was a religious institution animated by the gods themselves. 

It is moderns who are the ignorant ones in this whole equation.  The modern world has banned the gods, the religious, from the affairs of state, from government, politics, and the public square.  Modernity has trumpeted the secular state.  One thing that self-consciously religious states face is the restraining belief that all laws, all institutions must please the deity and reflect the honour of the gods.  Modern secular states have no such restraint.  The only restraint is the vote of the majority.  The vote is the sole manifestation of the gods.  Consequently, the modern secular state persecutes as no state before it has ever done: it has industrialised the persecution and death of those who have no voice, no vote.

Roman persecution of Christians was both religious and political; it was bloodthirsty and exquisitely cruel, albeit sporadic and occasional.  Modern secular persecution is alike bloodthirsty and exquisitely cruel: but it has this distinction.  It is incessant, constant, and industrial.  Human history has never seen the like before. 

The Perfect Reactionary

 The Return of the Imperium

Under President Obama’s direction, the US Federal Government is imposing penalties on any business which does not provide health care coverage for its employees.  It also stipulates that the coverage must include abortifacient drugs and abortions.

Christian churches have objected conscientiously and are suing the Federal Government for violating the consciences and religious freedom of its citizens.  Obama and his coterie disagree.  They argue that what he is forcing people to do has nothing to do with violating their religion. But he dissembles–whether stupidly or maliciously each must decide.

Many, if not most, Christians believe that abortion (in any form) is murder.  The human being being wonderfully nurtured in the mother’s womb has done nothing good or evil; therefore executing the unborn babe (however that babe came to be conceived) can never be justified.  Christians are, therefore, arguing the Obama administration is breaching their First Amendment rights.  (The First Amendment prohibits government from establishing a religion and protects each person’s right to practice [or not practice] any faith without government interference).  Christian seminaries, colleges, schools, hospitals and social services which employ others are caught. 

The Obama administration argues that there is no breach of the First Amendment because that Amendment is restricted to worship (not practice).  In other words, the religious person is prohibited from institutionalising his religion, from practising it, in any sphere of life apart from services of religious worship.  Meanwhile, the hypocrisy of this position is incandescently exposed by the President himself.  He has made no secret, and has publicly boasted, that his religion (which he loosely terms “Christian”) tells him to push his progressive agenda down the throat of everyone. 

So, the US government now has a radically new interpretation of the First Amendment.  The religion of all US citizens may be freely believed and followed, but must be confined to individual (maybe family) and corporate worship.  The religion of the President (his particular perversion of Christianity) shall be imposed on all other spheres of life. 

Justin Taylor profiles the radical threat and intimidation and persecution being faced by Christian businesses in the United States, and by businesses owned by Christians. 

What’s a Christian Business Owner Supposed to Do?

Mark Taylor is president of Tyndale House Publishers in Carol Stream, IL. He recently wrote in World Magazine about the penalties the federal government is seeking to impose on Tyndale in violation of their freedom of religion and right to act in accord with their biblically informed conscience:

My parents founded Tyndale House Publishers 50 years ago as a Christian publishing company. From the very beginning we have published Bibles, and we also publish a wide range of other Christian books. Our corporate purpose is “to minister to the spiritual needs of people, primarily through literature consistent with biblical principles.”
I’ve always thought—in a theoretical way—that I might someday face a situation where the government was asking or telling me to do something that was counter to God’s law as I understood it. If such a situation arose, I hoped I would have the backbone to stand tall and disobey the government mandate. Well, that day seems to have come.

Later in the piece he enumerates the costs to his company:

The HHS mandate became effective for Tyndale House on Oct. 1. If we did not comply, we would be subject to fines of up to $100 per day per employee. We have 260 employees, so the fines could be $26,000 per day. That’s $780,000 per month, and $9.36 million per year—all because our moral and religious compass says that it is wrong for us to provide abortifacient substances or devices under our employee health plan. The federal government is telling us to violate our conscience or pay fines that would put us out of business.

You can read the whole thing here.
Prayers against this ruling, it seems to me, are appropriate, in line with 1 Timothy 2:1-2: “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.” The HHS mandate prevents Christian companies from fulfilling their vocations in godly ways that respect human life and dignity, therefore we should pray that God would move in the hearts of those in high positions so that the government would fulfil its primary calling: the practice and promotion of justice.

Obama is very clear on the nature of evil and sin.

Or as Senator Obama put it when he was asked, “What is sin?”.  Sin he explained, is “[b]eing out of alignment with my values.”  [Cited by Jonah Goldberg, The Tyranny of Cliches (New York: Sentinel/Penguin, 2012),  p. 83]

So, here’s the score.  Obama has a set of values.  In terms of political ideology these require he adopt a secular progressive agenda which necessitates government bringing its version of the Kingdom of God upon the United States.  Not to act according to that agenda would mean violation of Obama’s values.  This, says Obama, would be sin (for him).  Obama is the only one (apparently) who can extend the practice of his religion beyond the private sphere.

But his progressive agenda violates the consciences and values of other citizens (as we see above).  Obama is requiring them to sin–to submit to the Federal Government and do things which are “out of alignment” with their values.  Thus we have now gone precisely back to the situation (mutatis mutandis) that existed in the Roman Empire in the second century.  The Emperor declared that he did not care a fig about what citizens and subjects did in the privacy of their own homes or places of worship.  What he did care about was loyalty of the Emperor and the Empire–which all citizens would show by publicly offering incense to the Emperor and the gods–or face imperial wrath. 

The position of the Obama government on this matter is breathtaking and brazen.  That it could occur in a so-called free country which protects religious freedom by means of the First Amendment to its Constitution is startling.  But the evil here is an ancient one.  Obama is so “progressive” he has acted as the consummate reactionary.  He has gone back to an ancient, evil empire and begun to smear its turds on the faces of free citizens, whom Obama regards as subjects–men and women to be made subject to his “values”, his religion, his version of good and evil. 

 

The Decline and Fall . . .

Breaking Apart Nebuchadnezzar’s Giant Man

In Daniel 2 we are told the Babylonian emperor, Nebuchadnezzar had a dream in which he saw a giant statue in the image of a man.  A stone (made without hands) hit the statue and crushed it.  The stone then became a great mountain which filled the whole earth.

Daniel gave the divine interpretation of the dream.  The huge image of a man made of gold, silver, bronze, and iron represented four successive kingdoms (Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek, and Roman).  In the days of the Roman Empire, we are told, “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.”

But the crushing of the Kingdom of Man was not done by force of arms.  It was done by the Gospel transforming lives, and eventually transforming paganism from the inside out.  David Bentley Hart describes the wondrous nature of this work of divine grace–long ago foretold by Daniel.

Ancient Wisdom

Breaking and Re-Making the World

One of the conundrums surrounding the early Church is how the Gospel spread sufficiently powerfully to where Constantine established Christianity as the Empires official religion in the early 4th century.  Recall how Christianity was a persecuted religion, a radical minority belief during the second century.  Experts estimate that not more than two percent of the population were Christians by the end of the second century.

From the time of the apostles onwards until Constantine there are few records of any missionary activity, or celebrated missionaries.  Yet the Gospel spread and gradually began to make significant progress to where the Roman Empire became officially Christianised.  How did this come about?

Cosmic Warfare, Part II

The Exhilaration and the Scandal

The early Christians understood they were involved in a cosmic battle between the forces of evil–forces which were personal, albeit finite, yet much more powerful than they–and the newly enthroned King of all kings, the Lord Jesus Christ.  They understood that when they were converted to Christ out of paganism both they and their households were delivered from captivity to Satan to a captivity to Christ.  But captivity to Christ meant untrammelled goodness and blessing; it meant abundant, eternal life. 

Modern Christians, deeply influenced by the prevailing secular materialism of the West, tend to gloss over expressions in Scripture which teach just such a cosmology of redemption.  David Bentley Hart summarises the biblical perspective of the cosmological battle:

We today are probably somewhat prone to forget that, though the early Christians did indeed regard the gods of the pagan order as false gods, they did not necessarily understand this to mean simply that these gods were unreal; they understood it to mean that the gods were deceivers.  Behind the pieties of the pagan world, Christians believed, lurked forces of great cruelty and guile: demons, malign spirits, occult agencies masquerading as divinities, exploiting the human yearning for God, and working to thwart the designs of God, in order to bind humanity in slavery to darkness, ignorance, and death.

(T)o renounce one’s bonds to these beings was an act of cosmic rebellion, a declaration that one had been emancipated from (in the language of John’s Gospel) “the prince of this world” or (in the somewhat more disturbing language of II Corinthians) “the god of this world.”  In its fallen state, the cosmos lies under the reign of evil (I John 5:19), but Christ came to save the world, to lead “captivity captive” (Ephesians 4:8), and to overthrow the empire of those “thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers” (Colossians 1:16, I Corinthians 2:8, Ephesians 1:21, 3:10) and “rulers on high” (Ephesians 6:12) that have imprisoned creation in corruption and evil. [David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009),  p.113f.]

In our materialist culture such biblical expressions tend to be viewed as metaphorical or hyperbolic, or even superstitious.  Even faithful Christians these days tend to parse them into referring to personal struggles against sin.  It is uncomfortable to believe in such a biblical cosmos in a time of vaunted scientism.  The more platonically influenced amongst us would artfully see reference to politics, the state, or the realms of coercion.  All the while we reveal thereby how subtlely we have drunk at the wells of Unbelief and how we have been conformed to the mould of our secular materialist world. 

When we succumb to such temptations, however, we diminish the power of Christ’s redemption itself–something which Paul prayed ought not happen to the Ephesian Christians (and, therefore, to us who are their descendants) in Ephesians 1: 17-23.  We also miss the exhilaration of the divine call to battle. 

Again, given the perspective of our age, we can scarcely avoid reading such language as mythological, thus reducing its import from cosmic to more personal or political dimensions.  In so doing, however, we fail to grasp the scandal and exhilaration of early Christianity.  These thrones and powers and principalities and so forth were not merely earthly princes or empires (though princes and empires served their ends); much less were they vague abstractions; they were, according to Jewish Apocalyptic tradition, the angelic governors of the nations, the celestial “archons”, the often mutinous legions of the air, who–though they might be worshipped as gods, and might in themselves be both mighty and dreadful–were only creatures of the one true God. 

It was from the tyranny of these powers on high that Christ had come to set creation free.  And so the life of faith was, for the early church, before all else, spiritual warfare, waged between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of this fallen world, and every Christian on the day of his or her baptism had been conscripted into that struggle, on the side of Christ.  From that point on, he or she was both a subject of and a co-heir to a “Kingdom not of this world,” and henceforth no more than a resident alien in the “earthly city.” [Ibid.]

Without fail, the kingdoms of this world would progressively become the Kingdom of our Christ (Revelation 5:9,10 & 11:15).  Christians were enlisted into the armies of the Lord of hosts to see it come to pass. 

Cosmic Warfare, Part I

Spitting at the Devil, Swearing Allegiance to Christ

The cosmic implications of baptism have been sadly occluded in our modern times.  This is a grave weakness in our contemporary understanding of the Christian faith.  Secularism has demoted and devalued the cosmic invisible realities in the mind of many Christians.  Even as the Bible speaks of the “powers of the air” and traces their demonic connections, we are more comfortable with material causes and effects. 

David Bentley Hart describes the ritual of baptism in the early Church–how it enacted the real cosmic battle and drama.

Whether brief or protracted, however, the period of one’s preparation for baptism could not conclude until one had been taught the story of redemption: how once all men and women had labored as slaves in the household of death, prisoners of the devil, sold into bondage to Hades, languishing in ignorance of their true home; and how Christ had come to set the prisoners free and had, by his death and resurrection, invaded the kingdom of our captor and overthrown it, vanquishing the power of sin and death in us, shattering the gates of hell, and plundering the devil of his captives. . . .

Ideally–again, making allowances for variations in local customs and for the unpredictability of particular circumstances–one’s baptism would come on Easter eve, during the midnight vigil.  At the appointed hour, the baptizand (the person to be baptised) would depart the church for the baptistery, which typically housed a large baptismal pool or (if possible) flowing stream.  There, in the semidarkness of that place, he or she would disrobe and –amid a host of blessings, exhortation, unctions and prayers–descend naked into the waters, to be immersed three times by the bishop, in the name first of the Father, then of the Son, and finally of the Holy Spirit. . . .

Perhaps the most crucial feature of the rite, however–at least, for understanding what baptism meant for the convert from paganism–occurred before the catechumen’s descent into the font: . . . he or she would turn to face the west (the land of evening, and so symbolically the realm of all darkness, cosmic and spiritual), submit to a rather forcibly phrased exorcism, and then clearly renounce–indeed, revile and, quite literally, spit at–the devil and the devil’s ministers.  Then he or she would turn to face the east (the land or morning and of light) to confess total faith in, and promise complete allegiance to, Christ. 

This was by no means mere ritual spectacle; it was an actual and, so to speak, legally binding transference of fealty from one master to another. . . . In thus turning one’s back upon, rejecting, and abusing the devil, one was also repudiating the gods to whose service one had hitherto been indentured, and was doing so with a kind of triumphant contempt; in confessing Christ, one was entrusting oneself to the invincible conqueror who had defeated death, despoiled hell of its hostages, subdued the “powers of the air,” and been raised up the Lord of history. 
(David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009], p. 112,3.)

It is sadly ironic that the dispossession of the Devil over the Western nations as the Gospel spread was replaced by a more subtle and malevolent lie–to the effect that the Devil does not exist at all, but was a fairy-story to frighten children and the illiterate. 

This was a foolish error that the early Church could not make.  In every town and in many groves in the countryside, ubiquitous altars to pagan gods confronted Christians daily of the Devil’s presence.  Repeated public celebrations, festivals and rituals, complete with sacrificial meals, structured the monthly calendar.  The common person was beholden to these beliefs, festivals, and ritual for life itself–for much of the commerce, labour, trade, and economically sustaining work revolved around the gods and their devotion. 

In our days, civic concern and public money may be devoted to facilities such as sports stadia and spectacles such as Rugby World Cups.  Public officials and government justify the expense as “creating wealth” for all.  Fortunately, our economies represent two millennia of divine blessing and so we easily see through the faux promises and public waste.  But in the Roman world of the first and second centuries most economic activity revolved around the gods and acts of devotion.  The population was in thrall to the demons. 

Thus, when a person became a Christian, the Church took seriously the biblical precept that he has passed out of the kingdom of darkness and entered the kingdom of light.  The rituals of baptism reinforced this truth.  Whilst not approbating the particular rituals (which aped pagan practices far too much for our liking and went way beyond biblical prescriptions) it nevertheless remains essential that we recover the Christian truths of the cosmic realities of death to the world and of new life in Christ.  Those realities turn around being delivered from a malicious master and being bound over as a bond-servant to the Lord Jesus Christ; of escaping and rejecting the kingdom of darkness and enlisting in the Kingdom of our Lord; and of being sworn as a fellow soldier in the armies of the Lord.