Thinking in Christ

Review: Constantine Verses Christ

Russ — Thu, 17 May 2012 11:00:03 +0000

Constantine Verses Christ
Alistair Kee

One of the underlying concepts that undergird the Middle Ages, including the divine right of kings concept that dominated so much of history until the Glorious Revolution, was the Constantinian Synthesis. This combination of Christianity and state was natural within the context of the Roman Empire; world history is replete with nations built from a sacral base, where religion and religion melded into one hierarchy of power.

Into this morass wanders the question, ”was Constantine a Christian?” While the question might seem of little import to the history of the world, the impact is actually great. If Constantine was a Christian, then he was simply a Christian trying to get an empire to accept what he believed to be the truth in the quickest and least painful way possible. If he was not, then he was not only a fake, he was a radical destroyer of God’s people —possibly worse than all those who had persecuted the Church before him.
In this book, Constantine Verses Christ, Alistair Lee argues for the latter —Constantine used religion for his own good, rather than the good of the Church. In short, that the Constantinian Synthesis was simply a way for Constantine to provide a new basis for his rule, since the gods of the old Republic had obviously failed, and could not support him in his bid to unify Rome under his command.

As we have seen, Constantine’s approach to religion was not a personal or private one. It was necessary for him to adopt the most appropriate form of religious legitimation available. This had in turn led him to associate himself with and dissociate himself from Hercules. He then turned to Apollo. But of course he could not simply decide to exchange one divine patron for another. The decision was his, but it had to have some element of heavenly confirmation. This is the effect of the ‘pagan’ vision, as recorded in the Panegyrici Latini. The basis of the decision was not a religious one, in a narrow sense, but a pragmatic one. Which god was more likely to bring him victory and success? –Page 12

The author supports his contention from the original sources, primarily Eusebius and a few references to other writers of that time. He deconstructs what Eusebius writes in his various histories of the Church, pulling from their pages the pieces he considers valid, and discarding that which he considers invalid. His, in fact, is the weakest point of the entire effort; in simply discarding that which he considers to be invalid evidence, he sometimes falls into begging the question. ”We know Constantine was not a Christian, so we can safely disregard those sections of the record which say that he was.”

Beyond this flaw, however, Kee argues his case well. By the end of the book, the reader is left with little choice but to conclude that Constantine was, in fact, primarily interested in politics, rather than religious belief —that his background, beliefs, and drive would push him in this direction, and there’s little in the record to contradict that reading. This supports the thesis that the Constantinian Synthesis was not a good thing for the Church, but rather a bad thing, bringing in its wake problems the Church has struggled to outgrow for over 2000 years.

Kee’s work is well worth reading, even though he pushes a bit far in his thesis, and his support isn’t always as strong as it could be.

Obedience to the State (Addendum)

Russ — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:20:48 +0000

Walter Williams has taken up the issue of whether or not we should obey immoral laws here. He is focused on the direct personal relationship between the individual and the state at large, while I came to the conclusion that there must be intermediaries between the state and the individual, but his point on immoral laws is well put.

People Power?

Russ — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:00:02 +0000

The mantra repeated most often is that we need to return power to the people. If you don’t reflect on the idea a lot, it sounds like a good plan. But let’s reflect on it a bit, and see if it really is a good plan.

Does it mean turning power over a simple majority? Clearly this can’t be the case; if it were, then there could be no complaints about things like “gay marriage,” as the majority has already spoken within the US, and they’ve clearly spoken against the idea. Instead of acceptance of majority rule, we get a lot of cries about rights —the right to marriage in the case of gay marriage, the right to being treated like a person in the case of immigration enforcement, the right to life in the case of arguments against self-defense, and the right to privacy in all things touching sex, including abortion.

So if it’s not handing over all the power of the state to 50.01% of the voters, then what does it mean? For an answer to this, we can turn to the financial markets.

Another problem that led to the financial crisis was that, over the years, politicians and regulators determined that banks had become so good at risk management that they no longer needed to abide by consistent rules—fixed limits on borrowing, for example, so that banks could fail without leaving behind so much unpaid debt that they endangered the economy. Instead, banks could largely do what their executives wanted, as long as regulators believed, on a case-by-case basis, that they knew what they were doing. -City Journal

We can define people power, then, as this simple rule: We don’t need regulations, we just need to hand the power of doing what needs to be done to people who understand the problem, and can implement the right solution. People power, in essence, simply replaces the rule of law with the rule of people.

And what’s wrong with that? After all, if you take someone who’s highly educated in a specific problem, and you let them loose —no rules— to solve that problem, aren’t you likely to get good results? Isn’t this how business works?

Well, not quite.

The problem is that humans aren’t perfect. To put it more bluntly, humans are fallen. They aren’t just mentally imperfect, they are morally imperfect. People will intentionally do things for their own profit at the expense of others. And here is where people power falls apart. People will use power given to them to solve the problem you’ve given them to solve, but they will always solve the problem in a way that benefits them.

The difference between living under law and living under people is just this: people power destroys people.