- Church, Government, and Society: The Early Church
- From the Early Church to Christendom
- From Christendom to the Modern Church
- Where Should the Church Go From Here?
A Great Apostasy?
There is a popular belief among many Christians that in the early fourth century, with the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine to Christianity, the church suddenly committed a “Great Apostasy” by turning away from the Way of Jesus, making a grab for worldly political power, and embracing “Constantinianism.” Usually this is accompanied by a belief that this “Great Apostasy” remained until we (Protestants, or, alternatively, modern Christians) came along to set things right.
This is a simplistic and distorted reading of Church history. Constantine legalized Christianity, but he did not force people to convert to Christianity or make Christianity the established religion of the Roman Empire. Furthermore, Constantine was not baptized into the Church until the end of his life, and it is clear that Constantine himself believed that being Roman Emperor and being a disciple of Jesus were incompatible.
This reading of Church history is also theologically problematic. It essentially implies that the Holy Spirit took a nap for 1,000 years or more until we came along to wake the Spirit up, which is absurd. And the comforting conviction that the modern Church does a better job of getting the relationship between the Church and political power right compared to the medieval Church is a serious, dangerous error (I will say more on this in my next post.).
Nevertheless, it is true that an enormously significant turning point in Church history took place over the course of the fourth century. Following Constantine, most Roman Emperors claimed to be Christian, and the Church gradually became more and more entangled in the politics of the Empire. By the end of the fourth century, Emperor Theodosius (a baptized Christian) was willing to make Christianity the established religion of the Roman Empire and to effectively outlaw traditional pagan Roman religion.
In the early fourth century, the Church was a small, persecuted minority (10-15% of the population). By the fifth century, the great majority of the inhabitants of the Roman Empire were claiming to be Christians. In fact, they were forced to convert, be baptized, and to identify as Christians. It is highly unlikely, of course, that most of these “conversions” were instances of genuine repentance and faith. In the early Church, becoming a Christian was a radically countercultural act that required serious consideration and commitment. One could be quite confident that those who made such a commitment were genuine disciples of Jesus Christ. By the fifth century, being a Christian was something that society forced upon people, and one can be confident that most taking the name “Christian” were probably nominal Christians.
As the Roman society became Christianized, and many nominal Christians became part of the visible Church, the Church began to compromise regarding some of the demands of Christian discipleship. In particular, with the Christianization of the Roman Empire came a radical shift in the Church’s attitude toward violence. The Church of the first three centuries held firmly to the teachings of Jesus and His apostles that they love their enemies and refuse to use violence in any situation.[1]See Ceaser and the Lamb: Early Christian Attitudes on War and Military Service by George Kalantzis (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012). Over the course of the fourth century, though, more and more Christian theologians began to accept the use of violence by Christians in the context of war and capital punishment. Christian participation in government-sponsored violence came to be widely accepted, first as a necessary evil, and eventually as a positive good. This was not for any good biblical or theological reason. Rather, it was because the Roman Empire, its Emperor, and its armies had been declared to be “Christian,” and Christians increasingly felt they had to change their theology in order to justify this new political and ecclesial status quo.
The Birth of Christendom
The changes that took place in the Church over the course of the fourth and fifth centuries were thus quite radical. The early Church was a countercultural community of followers of Jesus seeking to live out the politics of God’s Kingdom in the midst of a hostile culture. By the fifth century, all of society was declared to be Christian, and the Church became an institution serving a religious function for all of society. The early Church was committed to following Jesus on the way of the cross, and using only the nonviolent methods consistent with that way to grow the Church and advance God’s Kingdom. By the fifth century, the Church had largely come to accept the use of coercion and violence to advance the cause of the Church. The early Church understood taking the name “Christian” necessarily meant committing to the radical and costly demands of Christian discipleship. By the fifth century, “Christian” had become a label that applied to just about anyone in society, and the Church began to compromise on the demands of Christian discipleship in order to accommodate this new status quo.
These changes gave birth to “Christendom,” the form of the relationship between Church, government, and society that lasted from the late Roman Empire, through the Middle Ages, and into the modern period. In Christendom, the political powers of this world, their leaders, and their armies identified as Christian, and these powers freely used coercion and violence to force people to be part of the visible church. While there was a distinction of role between political leaders and church leaders, they both occupied positions within the one entity of Christendom, which declared all of society to be Christian. The political ruler thus was understood to act in a Christian manner when using violence, whether for the sake of social order or for the sake of the Church. And the radical demands of Christian discipleship – self-sacrifice and love for enemies – were to be followed, if at all, only by a special class of people: clergy who have made special religious vows. For all other Christians, it was understood that not only were they free from these radical demands, but that they actually ought not to follow them.
Christians who advocated this form of the relationship between Church, government, and society were right that Jesus is truly Lord of the whole world, and that His Lordship is a literal political Lordship. However, they were wrong in thinking that Jesus’ Kingdom can be advanced through the violent, coercive methods of this world. While claiming to be advancing Jesus’s Kingdom through these methods, what Christians actually did was advance a quite different kingdom, a worldly kingdom, and then falsely label it as Jesus’s Kingdom. Jesus established His Kingdom through the cross, and the Body of Christ can advance Jesus’s Kingdom only through the same methods: love, truth, and self-sacrifice. The supposed triumph of the Church in gaining control of worldly political governments using their violent, coercive power to impose Christianity on the Mediterranean world was in fact a serious shift towards unfaithfulness for the Church.
It is easy for us, centuries later, to look back and to criticize the Christians who contributed to this shift towards unfaithfulness. But we should recognize that, for the most part, they were well-intentioned. Christians who contributed to the Church becoming entangled in the politics of the Roman Empire in a gradual, piecemeal fashion were probably just trying to do what they thought would be best for the Church at the time. And we should not ignore the fact that they did much good in moving Roman society to some extent away from the brutality, immorality, and idolatry of pagan Roman culture. But they did not foresee what the fateful consequences many of their decisions would eventually give rise to.
Many Christians did recognize the problematic nature of some of the changes that took place during that time. For example, writing at the end of the fourth century, St. Jerome remarked upon how the Church, “as it gained strength, it grew by persecution and was crowned with martyrdom; and then, after reaching the Christian Emperors, how it increased in influence and wealth but decreased in Christian virtue.”[2]Life of Malchus.1 Even as a mass of nominal Christians were forced into the visible Church, there remained many genuine followers of Jesus within it. There was no sudden “Great Apostasy.” There was only a gradual, messy, and complicated shift by the whole Church into serious unfaithfulness.
It is important for us to consider this and to learn from the mistakes of fourth century Christians as we seek to live faithful Christian lives today. When faced with a decision, instead of simply considering what seems to be easy, expedient, or useful for our church in our particular time and place, we must ask, “What direction am I contributing to moving the Church in? In the big picture, will this contribute to moving the Church in a more faithful or less faithful direction?” We must be willing to call into question ideas and practices that have only recently become widely accepted in the Church. We must be skeptical when people claim that recent departures from Scripture and/or the Christian Tradition are by the leading of the Holy Spirit, rather than “the spirit of the age.” Otherwise, we could easily find ourselves making the same kind of fateful, unfaithful decisions as many Christians in the fourth and fifth centuries did.