A New Constantine?

Is Chinese Premier Xi Jinping Going to Follow The Example of an Ancient Roman Emperor

There have been a series of articles published in Epoch Times over recent months to the effect that the current Chinese Premier, Xi Jinping is going to change the stance of the Chinese Government toward Falun Gong.  Epoch Times is an international media organisation owned and controlled by Falun Gong, an erstwhile religion which has been severely and implacably persecuted by the Chinese regime for over a decade.  

We read:

Through a number of unusual political gestures, Xi Jinping appears to have hinted at a departure from the policy of his predecessor toward the persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual discipline, a large group that was targeted for elimination in 1999 shortly after they mounted that appeal to the central government.

Xi Jinping’s recent actions—which include moderate remarks on how to treat petitioners, the purge of some particularly rough security officials, demands that the security forces conduct themselves with probity, and what borders on conciliatory remarks about religion in China—while subtle, indicate, in part due to their sequence and timing around such a sensitive anniversary, a potential shift in stance and emphasis to the Party’s status quo policies.

We are unable to comment on the reliability of this report.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow (About Vlad the Impaler)

5 Reasons for Thinking that Putin is No Constantine

By Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

The reason for this small piece is that some Western Christians, who really ought to know better, have been taken in by Russian photo ops, propaganda, and posturing, and have begun to describe Vladimir Putin as a new Constantine. It just goes to show. What, I am not sure exactly, but it does go to show.

I want to outline five reasons why I believe this is not the case, but first I want to put an important disclaimer up front. Some of my reasons below are critical of Eastern Orthodoxy, and so I want to place some important context here as a preamble. We live in a generation when not a small number of eastern Christians have been beheaded rather than deny Christ, and nothing said here should be taken as disparaging the honor of those martyrdoms. They bowed to icons more than they should have, but they have also died for the sake of Jesus Christ more times than I have. So that should be kept in mind. And second, none of my arguments should be taken as justification for continued Western apathy about the plight of such Christians in the Middle East. What we should do about it is a subject for another time, but what we should not do is continue to not care.

That said, why is Putin not a new Constantine?

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.

Church and State--Whither Now?

Constantine Versus the Apostle of the Secular Public Square

The issue of church establishment is one which Christians need to start thinking seriously about again and commence reading, writing and debating the teachings of Scripture and of the historical church.  In the West our debates and discussions and research will of necessity be largely academic and theoretical (although not completely so) because of the small (and shrinking) proportion of the population that is Christian and because of the dominant strength of secularism. 

The same cannot be said of other regions and countries, where Christian growth is explosive.  It is also true that in countries where Christians live under authoritarian governments and the church continues by means of state permission, the issue of church and state is alive and very pressing. 

But we in the West have one great contribution to make to this discussion: we have proven that a secular public square, neutral to religion, is a chimerical myth.  It is an oxymoron.

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?

The Constantine Problem

Wolf in Sheep's Cloth, or a Christian Brother?

One of the debates that has swirled around Constantine the Great is the issue of whether he was a genuine Christian.  One theory is that he was an exponent of Realpolitik.  He remained a pagan, but exploited the Christian church and elements of Christian doctrine to exert his control over rivals who served pagan gods.  In this view, Constantine was leveraging off  the Christian God to claim authority for his rule, his precepts, and his control.  He was never a genuine believer. At best he was a cynical manipulator. 

Another theory is that Constantine was a genuine Christian, which is to say he was two shades away from a credulous superstitious simpleton, since all Christians alike are to be thus characterised. 

In his book,  Defending Constantine: The Twilight of and Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2010), Peter Leithart gives careful consideration to this question.

Defending Constantine

 Bring It On

We have been reading with appreciation Peter Leithart's Defending Constantine: The Twilight of and Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2010).  The issues raised give fuel to to the fires of reflection.

The question of Christendom is one every serious Christian should ponder.  The issues are not easy; solutions are not facile.  The fundamental question is whether a time and realm of regnant Christianity is possible and feasible.  Many--the majority, many would say--answer in the negative today.  They believe that a cultural dominance of Christ over human culture and civilisation within history is impossible.  They believe that this has never been God's intention.  They hold to a kingdom beyond human history.

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?

The Rights and Wrongs of Church Establishment

Thieves Seeking Another Way

It is received wisdom that the conversion of the Roman Emperor, Constantine was a disaster for the Christian Church in the West. The evidence is pretty strong, and the argument based thereon, therefore, compelling. But the lessons drawn, more often than not, are shonky.

Rodney Stark summarises the argument:

In many ways, the conversion of Constantine was a catastrophe for Christianity. It would have been enough had he merely given Christianity the legal right to exist without persecution. But when he made Christianity "the most favoured recipient of the near-limitless resources of imperial favour", he undercut the authentic commitment of the clergy. Suddenly, a faith that had been meeting in homes and humble structures was hosued in magnificent public buildings; the new church of Saint Peter build by Constantine in Rome was modeled on the basilican form used for imperial throne halls. A clergy recruited from the people and modestly sustained by member contributions suddenly gained immense power, status, and wealth as part of the imperial civil service. Bishops "now became grandees on a par with the wealthiest senators." Consequently, in the words of Richard Fletcher, the "privileges and exemptions granted the Christian clergy precipitated a stampede into the priesthood."

As Christian offices became another form of imperial preferment, they were soon filled by the sons of the aristocracy. There no longer was an obligation that one be morally qualified, let alone that one be "called". Gaining a church position was mainly a matter of influence, of commerce, and eventually of heredity. Simony became rife: an extensive and very expensive traffic in religious offices developed, involving the sale not only of high offices such as bishoprics, but even of lowly parish placements. There soon arose great clerical families, whose sons followed their fathers, uncles and grandfathers into holy office, including the papacy. As a result, many dissolute, corrupt, lax, and insincere people gained high positions: Pope Benedict IX (1012-1055), the nephew of two previous popes, too office without even having been ordained as a priest and caused so ,many scandals by "whoring his way around Rome" that he was bribed to leave office.  (Rodney Stark, God's Battalions, p. 101f.)

The problem then lay not in the establishment of the Christian religion in the previously officially pagan Roman Empire, but in the ungodly form the establishment took. In effect, the state overtook the government and discipline of the Church, such that the Church became subordinate to the Imperium; ecclesiastical government and discipline withered. Once the Church lost its own spiritual discipline over its members and officers, coupled with the bestowal of imperial favour upon the Church, it rapidly fell under the control of the worldly and corrupt.

We could imagine what would happen to the now vigorous and burgeoning Church in China in similar circumstances. If the government of China were to "establish" the Church in China, it would become one more organ of state--just like thousands of companies, commercial enterprises, organisations, and bodies already are. Securing the favour of the government in such a system is the key to getting ahead. Therefore, if the Church were to be thus established by the state, according to the normal civil, economic, and cultural practice in China, the aspiring and ambitious would rapidly circle around the Church to gain position and station in it, seeing it as an opportunity for personal and familial advancement. The state would approve the appointment to office of those who had its favour.  Simony would emerge rapidly--as is the case elsewhere in China.  Within a generation the Church would have lost control over its own discipline, offices, members, and ministries.

This is pretty much what happened in the Roman Empire when the Church was "established" by Constantine. We believe Stark is right. The Church would have fared far better had Constantine simply recognised the Church as lawful, enjoying the protections of the law. If that had been the case, any greater social and civil recognition of the Church would then have required the growing Christianisation of the population at large. The Church would have become more recognised, revered, respected, and heeded only when and due to the fact that larger and larger proportions of society were its members, as genuine faithful believers.

There has been a long strain of thought in the Church, based on the Constantine experience, that whenever the Church becomes socially recognised and respected, corruption and worldliness are fast followers. Whilst there are temptations due to riches, wealth and prosperity, the two do not necessarily follow. If the Church maintains its own discipline and biblical government, distinctly separate from the state, and will not tolerate interference by the state in its God-ordained affairs, then wider public influence and recognition and respect can only come about if growing numbers of the community are found within its doors.

To seek wider public influence for the Church is not at all inappropriate. It is the way that it is sought that makes all the difference. The biblical way--laid out by our Lord under the aegis of His New Covenant--is through the proclamation of the Gospel and the thorough inculcation of the teaching of our Lord into the lives, manners, and praxis of believers and their children under the terms of what we call the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). Any other way, any shortcuts, amount to nothing more than get-rich-quick schemes or thieves trying to get into the sheepfold by "another way".

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

As Sort of a Globo-Joke

Political Dualism - Mere Christendom
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The attendance of Constantine at the Council of Nicea was striking, but more striking than that was the existence of such a subversive council in the first place, and with an emperor's knowledge and blessing. More about that in a moment.

It is often said that in his conversion Constantine was only seeking a unifying principle for his sprawling empire, and that his faith in Christ was not sincere. In some respects, whether or not his faith was sincere is beside the point, but I concur with Leithart that it was genuine. But what makes us think that the two motives are inconsistent? A man might come to Christ because he wants to save his marriage, but this does not make him a hypocrite.

So suppose for a moment that Constantine was not sincere. Why would such a man be tempted to turn to the Christians?


Another commonplace with regard to Constantine is that he was freaked out by the Arian controversy because it threatened to undo his realpolitik principle of unity right after he had adopted it. Right after he bet the imperial farm on the Christian horse, that horse got the staggers.

But why would Constantine have seen the Church as a principle of unity in the first place? The unity displayed by the Church, in the simple fact of such councils, was something that the ancient church had not really seen before. It was a new thing in the world. Rome had its Senate, but that was local, for the Romans. The Romans in turn ruled the world, but they did so in true top down fashion. The traffic flow of authority went outward from Rome. In the church councils, you see the development of a recognizable, universal representative form of decision making. It dealt with the things of God, true enough, but this was a senate gathered from over a huge geographical area. 

So the Christians were not supplying something that the pagan religions had previously supplied, back before their sacrificial fires became impotent. The Christians brought something new. That idea was a visible demonstration of what true representative unity might look like. There is something enormously attractive to everyone in this. We see a secularist (and grotesque) parody of the idea in the United Nations. Whenever worldlings try to produce the fruit of faith on their own, without Jesus, the result is that Iran gets a seat on the body safeguarding women's rights, and the Chicoms get to weigh in on the importance of human rights. The result, in short, is a sort of globo-joke. In other words, without Jesus, fuhgedaboudit.

The fact remains that the thing that Constantine saw was altogether lovely. "My righteousness is near; my salvation is gone forth, and mine arms shall judge the people; the isles shall wait upon me, and on mine arm shall they trust" (Is. 51:5). But in fact, it was the kind of loveliness that cannot be sustained for more than five minutes without Jesus Christ.

What Constantine saw was just a glimpse, a foretaste. It was a cloud the size of a man's fist. The prophet's words are being fulfilled, but they are not entirely fulfilled yet. We still await the latter rains -- which are coming.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

A Shoe Box in the Attic

Political Dualism - Mere Christendom
Written by Douglas Wilson
Tuesday, August 03, 2010

In the previous mere Christendom thread, an important question was asked about my willingness to work together with secularist conservatives in pursuit of shared "common sense" goals. And the answer is that I would be fully willing, sure -- if the secularists get spooked at the size of the national deficit, and turn off the spigot, they can count on my support. And if the Mormons in southern Idaho got a pro-life referendum on the ballot, I would cheerfully vote for it. That part of life is simple. Allies, cobelligerents, all that.

The complicating factor is that of oaths, and the rendering of unlawful allegiances as the price of admission to their game. One of the myths that has been spread about religious conservatives is that they don't know how to bend or compromise (this being the supposed source of their propensity to violence), and the corresponding myth on the other side is that secularists are calm, cool, and collected, and ever ready to make adjustments as the demands of the present reality dictate.

But our secularists are actually hard line sectarians. They will brook no compromise on these issues. We do not have a parliamentary system, where a secularist party can form a coalition with ultraconservatives with funny hats. We have a winner-take-all system, and the absolute demand that secularists place on religious conservatives is a demand of stated allegiance to the secularist arrangement. They make us take these oaths so many times and in so many ways that we scarcely notice them anymore.

Say that a controversy arises over a cross in a county seal, or a Christmas tree on the county courthouse steps. The conservative secularists will bend far enough as to say that the cross or tree should be allowed to stay, just so long as everybody involved in the support of such symbols promises that they don't mean anything by it. If there were any indication that these religious symbols were being taken seriously, the whole coalition would blow apart. They will allow us certain things for the sake of our nostalgia, but nothing else. As we move to their secularist paradise across the ocean, they will allow us to take a few trinkets to remember the old country by, and they do this because they know those trinkets are going to wind up in a shoebox in the attic.

All I am saying is that while I am willing to work with them, I will not do so on their terms, and I won't take any of their oaths. Jesus is Lord, and I want Him to be acknowledged as such everywhere and by everybody. They have no response to this other than to accuse me of being an extreme member of Reformed Taliban, eager to start setting IEDs by the side of Highway 95. These guys are a hoot. But I am a Burkean conservative, and don't want to achieve any of my socio-political goals by revolutionary means. The church, Christopher Dawson wrote, lives in the light of eternity, and can afford to be patient.

But the church also lives in the light of the holiness of God, and cannot afford to be dishonest.

The issue cannot be avoided, because every time a relevant controversy arises, the accusations of church and state relations arise. If some secularist politico sap forgets himself, and prays at some event in Jesus' name, the cry goes up. "Constantinianism! How dare he!" All I am saying is that such a moment is supposed to be our cue to rush in there, saying, no, no, nothing of the kind, and that we should simply refuse to take our cue. See what happens. I can assure you that lots of interesting things will happen.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Avoid that Bummer

Political Dualism - Mere Christendom
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, July 10, 2010

Many of our prophetic voice brethren are willing, like Jonah, to speak truth to power. They, also like Jonah, would be entirely flummoxed if power listens to them.

Jonah's reluctance to preach to Nineveh was not driven by cowardice, or anything like that. He hated Nineveh, a godless power, an oppressor of Jonah's people, and he knew that if he preached to them, there was a very real risk that they might repent, and that God might accept their repentance. And repent they did (Matt. 12:41), and Jonah's complaint was one he anticipated. Isn't this disaster what I said would happen (Jonah 4:2)? If there is one thing worse than a godless Ninevite power structure, that would be a Constantinian Ninevite power structure. Hear what I'm sayin'?

And so here is the trick. If your whole schtick is that of being a prophetic voice, then you have to figure out what to do about the off-chance of real repentance. If that happened, then not only would the Ninevites repent in dust and ashes, but your whole political theology would have to repent in dust and ashes also, and that would be a bummer. Whatever happens, we have to keep our radical political theology. If we want to keep our theology cutting edge, we have to make sure it never cuts anything.

And so it is necessary to configure the preaching in such a way that repentance is structurally impossible. Define Constantinianism as a heresy, and figure out ways to identify the presence of that heresy regardless of what happens. Find it in coercion, and find it in the soft coercion of no coercion. Find it in established churches, and find it nations where the churches are not established, but are influential. Find it where the churches are marginalized, and not influential at all. Meet the challenge! Find it when the magistrate goes right, when he goes left, and when he stays put. Whatever you do, find that heresy, and you can soothe your ruffled Jonah feathers with this. Nineveh didn't really repent.