HOME ARTICLES & COMMENTARY: TOC: The Rise of Church-State Alliances: Imperial Edicts & Church Councils between 306-565: Emperors Constantine through Justinian: The Rise of Protestant Alliances of Church and State: Martin Luther and the German Reformation The Rise of Protestant Alliances of Church and State: Ulrich Zwingli and the Swiss Reformation The Constitution and the Commandments The Classical Temple Architecture of Washington, DC A History of Religious Tests: 312 to 1961 The Bible and the Quran: A Scriptural Comparison Religion and Women's Suffrage Religious Tradition and Interracial Marriages The Slaves of Jefferson and Washington and the 1782 Virginia Law of Manumission Slavery and the Churches Gays & Social Conservatism as a Coercive Tool of the State Einstein's Religion The Changing Religious Identification of America Moral Hypocrisy in the Bible Belt Ring Species, Evolution and why Intelligent Design isn't science. Who am I : Why this project? : Contact me INFO & EYE OPENERS FROM OTHERS: Court Holdings on Church and State Historical Revisionism: On David Barton's Christian Nation Biblical Archeology Review Special: Captivity, Exodus, and Conquest Sexual Orientation in Nature The Biological Basis of Morality by Edward O. Wilson MEDUSA HEADWEAR  Buy High Quality PolarTech 200 Fleece Headwear From the Author The Council of Elvira in 306 Emperor Constantine and the Church Arianist Emperors and Emperor Julian the Apostate Emperor Theodosius the Great and the Church Pulcheria, Theodosius the Younger and the Church Emperor Marcian, Pope Leo and the Council of Chalcedon Emperor Leo and the Monophysites The Age of Emperor Justinian A Timeline of Temple Destruction Primary and Secondary Sources Church Council Sources The Constitution and the Commandments The Classical Temple Architecture of Washington, DC A History of Religious Tests: 312 to 1961 American Founders on Church-State Alliances The Bible and the Quran: A Scriptural Comparison Religion and Women's Suffrage Religious Tradition and Interracial Marriages Slavery and the Churches Gays & Social Conservatism as a Coercive Tool of the State Einstein's Religion The Changing Religious Identification of America Moral Hypocrisy in the Bible Belt Ring Species, Evolution and why Intelligent Design isn't science Who am I : Why this project? : Contact me Court Holdings on Church and State Historical Revisionism: On David Barton's Christian Nation Biblical Archeology Review Special: Captivity, Exodus, and Conquest Sexual Orientation in Nature The Biological Basis of Morality by Edward O. Wilson MEDUSA HEADWEAR | During the time his father Constantius rose to power, Constantine was kept in the court of Diocletian and then that of Galerius as a deal to keep Constantius' loyalty. After convincing Galerius that Constantine was needed in Britain to fight the Picts, Constantine joined his father in early 306. Meanwhile, Diocletian and Galerius decided to retire and Constantius was elevated to Augustus in May of 305. A little more than a year after his acclamation, Constantius became ill and died. By this time, Constantine had become a popular leader so the soldIers declared him Augustus. Of the four Ceasars, Constantius was the mildest in his implemetation of Diocletian's persecution of Christians. When Constantine came to power, he unofficially ended the persecutions in his region of authority. At this point he still offered up to Sol Invinctus, Mars and Apollo but he was increasingly interested in Christianity. And in the tradition of the times, he could offer up to as many dieties as he wished. The life of Constantine would become a pivotal period in the history of the Roman Empire and of Europe. His decisions would change everything. Constantine's Christianity had a sort of pagan beginning. Lactantius, the tutor of his son Crispus, tells us that (in 312) Constantine had a dream in which he was commanded to place the sign of Christ on his soldier's shields. In the pagan world of the time, it was normal for the gods to communicate thru dreams. Twenty five years later, Eusebius would embellish the story by claiming that a cross of light and the words, "by this sign you will be victor" appeared in the sky. During the night, Christ then came to Constantine's dreams and commanded him to put his sign on the shields. In the pagan world of this time, many a military leader changed gods when they thought a different god might be a more powerful ally. At times chieftains and generals were converted to honor other gods as they saw more power in their opponent's deity than in their own. Constantine followed the same pattern. Unfortunately for the world of late antiquity, Constantine really didn't know what he was getting the empire into. This was not only an attack on public order and the pillars of Roman tradition, it was atheism to the vast majority. To most, Christanity blasphemed the protectors of homes, temples, and cities. In the Roman world of the 4th century, it was customary for people to honor and offer up to the deity of another home, village, or city. It was custom to join in religious festivities with people who honored different gods. To Roman social order, this was social currency. This tolerance for diversity was very important social capital, creating more mutual respect and a stronger social glue everywhere. Religiously, it was mostly a live and let live world with a handful of exceptions. But Christianity, when empowered, attacked all other religions head on whenever it could. Christians who attacked religions violated the social codes and sought to overturn the public order, ripping apart the social fabric of Rome. Conservatives of the empire were aghast. The new religion was antagonistic and hateful towards Roman religious and intellectual traditions and was seen as the great divider. It was a polarizer, one full of divine threats and demands for exclusive belief from a pluralist religious society. In a world of religious pluralism and interfaith marriages, they separated themselves from society and forbade their sons and daughters to marry a outside of their religion. Classical scholar Ramsay MacMullen, in his "It followed in their logic, or at least in their practce, that no deity could inflict wrong on another. In Homer's day, perhaps, things had been different. That was long ago and mere myth. Only the Christian propagandists recalled it, to raise laughs, or eyebrows, against their rivals. Living worshipers in the world we are considering instead entered a shrine of Isis to put up a vow or an altar to Aphrodite, and the priest let them. They worshiped Mithras in Hadad's temple. West or east, wherever one looked, there reigned a truly divine peace and undisturbed religious toleration". While there were some exceptions such as the repeated persecutions against the Persian religion of Manicheanism, MacMullen has it mostly right. According to the faithful of ancient tradition, Rome fell was because Romans had turned their backs on the gods of old. his tactic is not exclusive to pagans. Throughout history, Christians have used similar excuses in times of plague, pestilence and wars. Religious policy in the empire was about to change with three Imperial decrees issued from 311 to 313. From Nicomedia, In May, 311, the Emperor Galerius issued the first Edict of Toleration which gave Christians religious equality with pagans and Jews. Christianity was finally a legitimate religion in the empire. In it, Galerius states: "we had desired formerly to bring all things into harmony with the ancient laws and public order of the Romans, and to provide that even the Christians who had left the religion of their fathers should come back to reason." But as Galerius and his predecessors had learned over the years "most of them persevered in their determination." Galerius wished to extend clemency and grant freedoms to the growing minority of Christians to practice their religion as the rest of the empire's subjects were able to do. The empire was one of great religious diversity and philosophical pluralism so Galerius thought it only made sense to finally "grant our most prompt indulgence also to these, so that they may again be Christians and may hold their conventicles, provided they do nothing contrary to good order." Galerius ends his decree by wishing that the Christians too, might "be able to live securely in their homes." Galerius promises to "tell the magistrates in another letter what they ought to do". That letter would be required to settle this surprising development. Little did Galerius know just how badly his edict of tolerance would backfire and become a weapon with which Christians would turn the tables and become the persecutors as soon as they could get away with it. Christians were happy to achieve equality but equality was not what they were seeking once they achived this state of affairs. It was total domination they sought. It was dominion they eyed. As soon as Christians attained political power, they would begin to persecute anyone who thought differently. This is the same mind found in radical Islam and the worst of secular dictatorships. The historian Eusebius records in Book 9 of his History of the Church that in the following year, Galerius did finally issue another edict in order to clarify the Edict of Toleration. A copy of this edict is found in Chapter 7 of Book 9 of the book. The officials of the empire were not quick to act on the decree in the letters which were "sent last year in which we decreed that, if any one wished to follow such a practice or to observe this same religion, he should be permitted without hindrance to pursue his purpose and should be impeded and prevented by no one, and that all should have liberty to do without any fear or suspicion that which each preferred." According to Galerius he could not "help perceiving that some of the judges have mistaken our commands, and have given our people reason to doubt the meaning of our ordinances, and have caused them to proceed too reluctantly to the observance of those religious rites which are pleasing to them." To remove any "suspicion of fearful doubt" regarding the Edict of 311, Galerius "commanded that this decree be published, so that it may be clear to all that whoever wishes to embrace this sect and religion is permitted to do so by virtue of this grant of ours; and that each one, as he wishes or as is pleasing to him, is permitted to practice this religion which he has chosen to observe according to his custom". Galerius also granted Christians the right "to build Lord's houses" and "if any houses and lands before this time rightfully belonged to the Christians" and were taken from them by any means, "all these should be restored to their original possessors". This was a major step for the new religion's rights of conscience and an important return to the classical traditions embracing religious diversity. Naively, it was probably thought that by extending religious liberty to Christians, the empire would settle into the public order under the ancient laws as it always had in regards to philosophy and religion. It had worked for a thousand years. Why shouldn't it work now? And persecutions had not worked. But Galerius didn't seem to think it through enough to consider that the persecuted could become the persecutors. He knew not that unlike pagan religions which celebrated side by side since antiquity, this new religion had no virtues of acceptance and tolerance to extend to others. Galerius was a pagan who completely failed to fathom the extent of the intolerance of Christians who would use their power to attack Roman public order and tradition. In the coming centuries, it would be made clear by the alliance of church and state that there was no path to God but through Jesus Christ so the counterfeits, who were really demons in disguise, had to be wiped out. But before this, another edict of tolerance was issued two years later. |
In 313, the Christian leaning and spiritually eclectic Emperor Constantine of the West and a reluctant pagan Emperor Licinius of the East together issued an edict regarding "those regulations pertaining to the reverence of the Divinity". Constantine expanded upon Galerius' edict by addressing all people and their religious belefs. The similarities of these edicts present the possibility that Constantine was possibly in part behind the dying Emperor Galerius' edict of tolerance. Like Galerius' edict, Constantine's edict "thought to arrange that no one whatsoever should be denied the opportunity to give his heart to the observance of the Christian religion". This edict went beyond the scope of the first Edict of Tolerance in its language. This Edict of Milan sought to "grant to the Christians and others full authority to observe that religion which each preferred". Every subject of the empire now had the right to choose the "religion which he should think best for himself". Unfortunately, this last remark would be forgotten as the increasingly Christianized Europe's road into the future would become one of religious intolerance on a grand scale costing the lives and welfare of tens of millions of people.
Here is more of this edict:
".....it has pleased us to remove all conditions whatsoever, which were in the rescripts formerly given to you officially, concerning the Christians and now any one of these who wishes to observe Christian religion may do so freely and openly, without molestation."
".....that you may know that we have given to those Christians free and unrestricted opportunity of religious worship."
".....we have also conceded to other religions the right of open and free observance of their worship for the sake of the peace of our times, that each one may have the free opportunity to worship as he pleases; this regulation is made we that we may not seem to detract from any dignity or any religion."
Although religious diversity and tolerance of diversity had been normal in the classical world before Christianity, nothing like this powerful decree for religious tolerance would again become law in the west again until the late 18th century. The edists of toleration would be swept away and forgotten quickly when Christians rose into the ranks of the imperial court. After a thousand years of religious diversity for the sake of public order, Christianity triumphed and nearly wiped out every religious competitor, old and new, by law and by force. The European Renaissance eventually exposed Christianity's failure to exterminate classical thinking and religious dissent. Although reaching its zenith around 1100, church-state alliances lasted another six centuries and continued right into Enlightenment Europe and America. Daring men and women challenged the church-state alliances over the centuries but no government considered extension of religious liberty to all for a long time. Religious conservatives of the church-state alliances fought religious liberty with every weapon they could muster.
This edict of religious liberty in late antiquity lasted only three years as the persecuted became the persecuors. Over the next two centuries Europe entered into a period where intellectual expansion, liberty, and diversity were stunted for more than a thousand years.
Over the next two centuries, the empire went from the persecutory extremes of Decius and Diocletian to the persecutory extremes of Christian emperors Theodosius and Justinian; of fanatical religious leaders like Augustine, Ambrose, Martin of Tours, John Chrysostom, and Patriarchs Theophilus and Cyril of Alexandria. Why Constantine changed his mind and began his alliance with the church may be partially explained by pressures from the church leaders, a naivete regarding the exclusivity and intolerance of Christanity, and a deepening faith in Biblical literalism. The church leaders reminded Constantine that scriptures condemn all other religions.
Unfortunately, the returning light of religious liberty faded quickly. Centuries of religious persecution began when Constantine legally favored Christianity against all other religions. In 316 he began his persecutions and attacks on religious diversity by outlawing the Christian sect of Donatism and banishing it's adherents. Ironicly, Donatists and Catholics were equally persecuted by Diocletian. The problem with the Donatists was that they considered anyone who denied Christianity during the persecutions to be unworthy of any position in the church. The Catholics disagreed. Back in 314 the Donatist problem had been addresses at a council in Arles, Gaul. The Council of Arles was ordered by Constantine after a failed attempt a year earlier at a small council in Rome. The emperor had hoped the schism between the two groups could be healed. But this was about a strident and puritanical Christian sect versus the Catholics who wished to allow people an easier way back into the church after the persecutions. They had profound disagreements regarding sacraments and the communion of the believers. They weren't to be fully addressed until Augustine's writings in the next century. The council at Arles was only a temporary patch.
The council at Arles condemned the Donatists. This was not accepted by the Donatists and an increasingly impatient Constantine soon issued an edict against the schism. Church leaders were be exiled and Donatist properties and churches were confiscated. Diocletian had done the same things to Donatists. It was not long before Constantine sent imperial troops to North Africa to deal with their rebellion against the council and the edict. Here we see a harbinger of things to come for the next fifteen centuries with an alliance of church, state and the military. Under the leadership of General Ursacius, troops battled with those seeking the crown of martyrdom. Being enemies of the state set the fires of fanaticism burning hotter than ever. Donatists mobs of wild monks called Circumcellions ravaged the countryside. They murdered, pillaged, and plundered in the name of Christianity. Circumcellions were the terrorists of North Africa, where the Donatists were the majority Christian sect. By 321, Contantine realized the futility of the persecutions and issued an edict giving the Donatists religious freedom. In the next century, Augustine and the west's Emperor Honorius took up the cause again, supporting persecution and violence against the Donatists.
After the Edict of Milan, Licinius slowly returned to persecuting Christians and sought more power, conspiring to topple Constantine. Both sought to rule alone, determining military and religious policies. War erupted in 316 and 326. In the end Licinius was executed and Constantine was left with sole possession of imperial power.
The next major crisis and debate regarding Christological doctrine was the Arian controversy. Since 311, Arius had been an ordained presbyter of Alexandria. Arius' teachings arose as a response to what he considered the heresy of Sabellius. Sabellius was a third century leader of those that adhered to the doctrine of Modal Monarchianism, which posited that God was unknowable and indivisible, knowable to humans only through his three modes. Sabellian doctrine taught that it was really God the father that suffered and died on the cross while in the mode of the Son. Sabellius bases his beliefs on scripture such as Deuteronomy 6:4: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD", and John 10:38, in which Jesus says, "the Father is in me and I in him".
Arius opposed this doctrine and saw Sabellian heresy in Trinitarian Christianity which equated the Father with the Son. To Arius, the son was not equal to God the father but became divine as Jesus the man was a creature who was begotten and annointed by the Father. Arius supported this notion that Jesus was a begotten and not coequal with the Father with scripture such as John 3:16 which states, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." First Peter 1:20 also speaks of a being who "was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you."
To Arians, ordinations have origins in time. Arius was sure that if the Son was begotten by the Father then the son was a creation of the father, having a beginning in time before the foundation of the world but having a beginning nonetheless. Arius argued that because the Son was begotten of the Father, there was a point at which the Son began to exist. If this is so, Arius charged, there was a time when the Son did not exist. Bishop Alexander and the rest of Arius' superiors did not approve of his teachings and sought to suppress his views. By condemning and exiling him, they could exclude him from the growing Christological debates and controversies. In truth, they didn't want a debate; they wanted to silence Arius in the name of Christian conformity.
First, Bishop Alexander who originally ordained Arius a presbyter called a council of Bishops from Egypt and Libya. Of the one hundred that attended, eighty voted to condemn and exile Arius. Arius fled to Palestine and then Asia Minor where many bishops like Eusebius of Ceasaria and Eusebius of Nicomedia were supportive. Soon, these bishops held their own synod and decreed Arius' views orthodox. At this point, Arius and his followers petitioned Constantine for a hearing of his case. Constantine tried to supply some remedy to the divided religion but failed. He sent his religious advisor Ossius of Cordova with letters to both Alexander and Arius but Constantine failed to perceive the gravity of the situation by telling them that they really agreed and it was just a matter of words. Constantine called their differences trifling. Nothing came of the letters, furthering Constantine's distress over a doctrinally divided Christianity. The truth is that it had been splintering for some time, with dozens of popular Christian sects. Ossius then presided over a regional Council of the Orient at Antioch. Fifty-nine bishops attended and fifty-six signed the creedal statement condemning Arianism. Those three bishops who didn't sign were provisionally deposed and excommunicated until the Ecumentical Council at Nicea.
In 325 came the first of twenty one ecumenical councils which addressed doctrinal differences within the church. Ecumenical Councils were major councils or synods convened to establish, maintain, clarify and reaffirm official Christian dogma. Ecumenical Councils established unquestionable dogma in the form of canon law. Critical thinking and religious choice were increasingly forbidden in the Christianized Empire. These General Councils were how the core leadership dealt with dissenting views which they termed heresies (heresy means 'choice'). To those Christians in places of authority, heterodoxy simply couldn't be tolerated. Competition was unacceptable, whether pagan or Christian. Where the public order was maintained for a thousand years by accepting religious diversity in a pluralist society, the Christian view was that for public order to be maintained, there could be only one religion in the Empire. All others had to be stamped out by whatever means necessary.
Even though Christians were still a small minority, Christianity was now a tool of the state and the state became a tool for Christians. Public order was to be enforced by the alliance. Speech and writing liberties were now confined to a narrow spectrum. Pagan and heretical books were burned. Temple priests and heretical clergy were arrested and exiled. One's religion was increasingly dictated and controlled by the state. The religious leaders, with the blessings of the state, condemned unorthodox teachings. The power of the state was employed to ban assemblies, destroy literature and confiscate property. At the request of the church hierarchy, the state officiated the confiscation of churches that taught doctrines differing from accepted canon law of the church. Councils demanded of the public certain beliefs and behavior. Council Canons and Imperial Decrees worked hand in hand in an attempt to extirpate religious diversity in the empire. Councils also layed the foundation of an increasingly anti-semitic Europe. Back at the Council of Elvira it decreed that Christians were forbidden to marry, socialize, have sex, or share a meal with a Jew. The same went for Christians and pagans. Parents that allowed their children to marry Jews or Pagans could be excommunicated for life. Canon law one day could become an imperial decree another. Imperial orders became church initiatives.
At the Ecumenical Council of Nicea, over three hundred prominent religious leaders attended. The council issued a major creedal statement that affirmed that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were consubstantial:
"We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made.
And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets."
The Bishops tried to construct creedal formulas with scripture but couldn't stop Arian Christianity with that method. When the council was done, all but eighteen bishops supported the condemnation of Arius and Arianism. Of those eighteen, fifteen changed their minds when Constantine threatened them with exile. Two Libyans and Arius were exiled. Other unacceptable Christian churches and leaders received letters informing them that their meeting places of fellowship and worship were soon to be confiscated if they didn't convert to the Nicene viewpoint. Church and State were now an alliance, plotting to control the religious beliefs of all in the empire. With Constantine's authority supporting them, the trinitarian bishops who signed Nicea pressed to make their religious authority the law of the empire. Eventually, they succeeded. From that point on, the ruling bishops decided who was to become bishop and what the mostly illiterate common folk could believe. Even though Arians were a majority in many places (like the Donatists of North Africa and in the fifth century onward the Monophysites of Egypt and Syria), the alliance of Nicene religion and the state used imperial law, church canon and imperial troops to enforce compliance to Nicene Trinitarian Christianity.
Edward Gibbon writes in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:
"The grateful applause of the clergy has consecrated the memory of a prince, who indulged their passions and promoted their interest. Constantine gave them security, wealth, honours, and revenge; and the support of the orthodox faith was considered as the most sacred and important duty of the civil magistrate. The edict of Milan, the great charter of toleration, had confirmed to each individual of the Roman world the privilege of choosing and professing his own religion. But this inestimable privilege was soon violated: with the knowledge of truth the emperor imbibed the maxims of persecution; and the sects which dissented from the catholic church were afflicted and oppressed by the triumph of Christianity. Constantine easily believed that the heretics, who presumed to dispute his opinions or to oppose his commands, were guilty of the most absurd and criminal obstinacy; and that a seasonable application of moderate severities might save those unhappy men from the danger of an everlasting condemnation."
Not only did Constantine imbibe the maxims of religious persecution, he kept slavery alive and well in the Empire. In classical and Biblical tradition, slaves were to obey their masters without question. For fifteen more centuries, most Christians unquestioningly considered slavery as part of God's ordained natural order. The vast majority of Christians did not weigh factors of justice and morality regarding slavery because that meant challenging divinely inspired scripture. As it was in the Mediterranean cultures, slavery was an ordained position in life. Scripture affirms and regulates slavery. Instead of easing the burden for slaves, Constantine passed a law in which a master could legally beat his slaves to death. The Bible had already treated slaves as third class citizens (women are second class citizens in the Bible and the Quran). Scriptures clearly show us that the Bible regards certain people as lower creatures with less right to personal dignity than others. None of the charactwers of the Bible or the Quran question the morality of slavery which says something about the nature of these books' origin and authorship. It was tradition in those times and all literature is a product of its time. These concepts of rigid social hierarchy and one's ordained station in life found in the Mediterranean culture, the Bible and Constantine's thinking are thoroughly antithetical to principles of liberty. It is then not surprising that Constantine saw nothing wrong the traditions of slavery. Christianity as he saw it, changed nothing regarding slaves and women. In Rome and Greece slavery was a station in life and in the Bible it was the natural social order decreed by God.
And how shall the slave owner be punished if he kills his slave? When it doesn't deal with slaves, it is a life for a life for killing a person. An eye for an eye. The Bible puts no such value on the slave's life or personal dignity. Like the slave of Rome, the slave doesn't reach the level of full personhood in the Bible. Respect for the personal dignity of all people is missing from the Bible and was also missing from the culture of the Mediterranean. The Bible says that a slave is one's money.
Exodus 21:20-21: "And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money."
Constantine seemed to promote families of slaves staying together but unlike the pagan emperor Diocletian before him, he allowed the newborn infants of slaves to be taken from their parents and sold into slavery. Slaves that were caught escaping to seek refuge with pagans could have a foot amputated. This remnds me of the Islamic courts that order the amputation of limbs for theft based upon the Hadiths. Slaves of public service that were caught leaving town were beaten under Constantine's laws. Slaves who sought refuge in churches were returned to their owners by the bishops. This violated a long held tradition that temples were places of sanctuary and neutrality under divine protection. Constantine's reign challenged the age old tradition that gave protections to those that sought sanctuary in houses of religion.
I Thessolonians 2:14-16: "For you brethren became imitators of the churches of God which are in Judea, for you suffered the same thing from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, displease God and oppose all men by hindering us from speaking to the gentiles that they may be saved-so always to fill up the measure of their sins. But God's wrath has come upon them at last"
Acts 7:51-52: "You stiff necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered."
"..the Jews, who had soiled their hands with the most fearful of crimes, and whose minds were blinded. In rejecting their custom, we may transmit to our descendants the legitimate mode of celebrating Easter, which we have observed from the time of the Savior's Passion to the present day. We ought not, therefore, to have anything in common with the Jews,. ...we desire, dearest brethren, to separate ourselves from the detestable company of the Jews..."
"How, then, could we follow these Jews, who are most certainly blinded by error? For to celebrate the Passover twice in one year is totally inadmissible. But even if this were not so, it would still be your duty not to tarnish your soul by communications with such wicked people."
"You should consider not only that the number of churches in these provinces makes a majority, but also that it is right to demand what our reason approves, and that we should have nothing in common with the Jews."
Exodus 20:1-6: "And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God......"
Christianity embraced the violence prone jealousy and intolerance of the Bible's deity regarding religion and sexuality. Death by stoning and eternal torment in the Lake of Fire were the punishments of the Old then New Testament for those who were in error. If a human was this jealous and angry, we would consider them an emotionally disturbed control freak. Emerging in this new Christian world was a deep hostility towards religious liberty in which a religious totalitarianism was sought and then enforced by a church-state alliance. The commandment verses above are antithetical to the modern principles of religious liberty but that is the nature of the Bible's cover-to-cover religious intolerance. The three commandments above and the great commission are the root cause of the constant religious strife of Europe that took so long to overcome. If we had laws based on these commandments, we would not have a first amendment with religious liberties. The speech, press and assembly liberties of the first amendment could not survive in a world ruled by the religious intolerance of the Bible. If we had laws based on these commandments, religious tests in oaths for office would have been banned in the 6th article. Trinitarian Christian declarations would still be one of the requirements for public service. (See
A History of Religious Tests: 312 to 1961)When fundamentalist Christians like Judge Roy Moore or Jerry Falwell say the ten commandments are the foundation of western law, they exhibit a lack of knowledge regarding western history, the evolution of American constitutional law and the religious intolerance basic to the Bible.
When Christians gained civil authority after Emperor Galerius' edict legitimizing Christian belief, policies similar to the positions Emperor Diocletian took against Christians were increasingly instituted against pagans, Jews and heretical Christians. Step by step, the edict's return to the spirit of religious tolerance so important to Roman order was undermined and repealed by the policies of religious intolerance demanded by Christians. This meant that speech, writing, and assembly rights regarding religious issues were under a microscope of some bureaucrat, priest, or both. Other religions were not respected or tolerated and when the tactics of co-opting pagan rituals didn't work, stripping people of their rights, violence, and destruction replaced trickery. Over the coming centuries, pagans were ruthlessly attacked and oppessed by the alliance of government and religion, with their beliefs being progressively outlawed and their temples continually demolished, confiscated, and/or plundered.
According to the Christan historian, Eusebius, in Constantine's monarchy, the nations of the world "found rest and respite from their ancient miseries, a system and method of government for all states." In Chapter 3 of 'The Oration in Praise of the Emperor Constantine', Eusebius attacked equality and democracy, claiming "monarchy far transcends every other constitution and form of government: for that democratic equality of power, which is its opposite, may rather be described as anarchy and disorder."
In Chapter 2 of the same, Eusebius boasts that Constantine is God's friend, acts as the interpreter of the Word of God, and "aims at recalling the whole human race to the knowledge of God, ...declaring with powerful voice the laws of truth and godliness to the world".
In these modern times this is also the aim of religious fundamentalism of all kinds. Radical Christians (Christianists) and Islamists both claim to be the interpreter's of divine intent, seeking to establish as law what they consider truth and godliness. Both seek to eliminate individuality and pluralism by establishing their religious views as the law of the land. Neither respect democracy unless it somehow supports them. In late 2004, Islamic radicals in Iraq called democracy a Greek word that implies "rule by the people" and anyone who votes should be killed.
Is the hatred for democracy much different with Eusebius as it is today's Islamists and the most fanatical of Christian Dominionists? Eusebius even expressed that Constantine was a "divinely favored emperor, receiving, as it were a transcript of the Divine sovereignty, directs, in imitation of God himself, the administration of this world's affairs".
If you think this kind of church-state government sounds like the same kind of model found in radical Islamist government, you are correct. And so it was when the religion of Christianity and the Roman Empire began to merge as a force under Constantine's favoring of Christianity. There was no room in this emerging Christian state for the anarchy of democracy and the disorder of religious liberty.
Shedding more light on the intolerance of the Empire's new religion, Constantine freed only slaves that were Christians. Slaves that remained non-Christians remained slaves. This particular species of coercion regarding slave rights was a brilliant strategic element of the imperial and ecclesiastical conversion machine. This tactic of exclusion is ubiquitous in Christian history. Christian tactics that used rights as a weapon are not unique to Christanity. For centuries before the Ottoman Empire, Islam conquered but allowed people to continue in their faith. The tactic used in Islam's expansion was to tax only non-Muslims. It was a tax for protection. This was an impressive strategy for evangelizing: instead of being taxed, you convert. Eventually, as Islam was adopted by successive generations and the majority were born into the religion, they ran out of people to tax in this manner. And so it was in the Christian Roman Empire where instead of having fewer liberties and less prosperity, just convert.
In 315, recorded as Codex Theodosianus 16.8.1, Constantine made it a capital offense punishable by burning for Jews to attack with stones Jews who converted to Christianity:
"We wish to make it known to the Jews and their elders and their patriarchs that if, after the enactment of this law, any one of them dares to attack with stones or some other manifestation of anger another who has fled their dangerous sect and attached himself to the worship of God, he must speedily be given to the flames and burn together with all his accomplices."
As mentioned above, in 319, allying church and state, he expanded that exemption to the rest of the religiously correct clergy in Codex Theodosianus 16.2.2. In 321 and 331, Constantine elevated religious courts to the same level of judicial authority as the secular courts. This is very similar to how Islamic Sharia courts were elevated into the same positions of authority as civil courts, eventually becoming equal to or superior over secular civil courts. The Catholic Encyclopedia puts it this way:
"From the beginning of the new era the bishops shared with the secular magistrates the power of settling the disputes of the faithful. Constantine the Great published two constitutions (321, 331) wherein he not only permits laymen to have their cases tried before their bishops, but also decrees that all cases which until then were wont to be tried by the prætorian, i. e. by the civil, law should, when once settled before the episcopal courts, be considered as finally adjudicated."
Continuing the merging of church and state in 321, Constantine made churches the legal beneficiary of those who die without an heir. If you had no heir, it became automatic that your property became the church's. In modern times, the properties of those that are intestate go to the state which is religion-neutral. In late antiquity, the state gave your estate to the church without you or your family's permission. Before long, during Constantine's reign, the church owned 10% of the land. (When Sweden became Protestant, the government confiscated all Catholic properties) The vast majority of acquisitions was due to the special rights and treatments given to the church by Constantine. This and other methods like plunder and property confiscations of pagan temples and heretical Christian churches increased the wealth of the Empire's official religion dramaticly over the coming centuries. In 323 Constantine continued expanding the government's subsidization of building churches and supporting it's clergy. Christianity was established this way, specially supported by the government. This was a theocratic habit that continued right into Enlightenment Europe and pre-ratification America. (Rightwinger Patrick Henry advocated the government support of Christianity in his 1784 Virginia law but lost to Madison and Jefferson when Jefferson's Religious Liberty statute passed in 1786) Constantine's imperial directive to support church infrastructure can be found below in the Codex Theodosianus 16.5.1 which decreed fines for having any errant belief, pagan or Christian. Eventually fines would be the least of people's worries. People would increasingly face, for the cultivation of politically correct religion, the loss of inheritance rights, confiscation of property, bans on assemblies, loss of jobs and community standing, exile, and even execution.
Constantine made his aims clear when he decreed "It is necessary that the privileges which are bestowed for the cultivation of religion should be given only to followers of the Catholic faith. We desire that heretics and schismatics be not only kept from these privileges, but be subjected to various fines."
In another letter written to Anulinus in North Africa, Constantaine added government funds for church building to the clergy's exemption from public duties generally required of Roman citizens:
"Constantine Augustus to Anulinus, bishop of Carthage. Since it is our pleasure that something should be granted in all the provinces of Africa and Numidia and Mauritania to certain ministers of the legitimate and most holy catholic religion, to defray their expenses, I have written to Ursus, the illustrious finance minister of Africa, and have directed him to make provision to pay to thy firmness three thousand folles. Do thou therefore, when thou hast received the above sum of money, command that it be distributed among all those mentioned above, according to the brief sent to thee by Hosius."
"But if thou shouldst find that anything is wanting for the fulfillment of this purpose of mine in regard to all of them, thou shalt demand without hesitation from Heracleides, our treasurer, whatever thou findest to be necessary. For I commanded him when he was present that if thy firmness should ask him for any money, he should see to it that it be paid without delay."
"And since I have learned that some men of unsettled mind wish to turn the people from the most holy and catholic Church by a certain method of shameful corruption, do thou know that I gave command to Anulinus, the proconsul, and also to Patricius, vicar of the prefects, when they were present, that they should give proper attention not only to other matters but also above all to this, and that they should not overlook such a thing when it happened. Wherefore if thou shouldst see any such men continuing in this madness, do thou without delay go to the above-mentioned judges and report the matter to them; that they may correct them as I commanded them when they were present. The divinity of the great God preserve thee for many years."
In the letter above, Constantine was making a direct reference to the North African Donatist church. The Donatists wanted the state to subsidize their churches, too, but Constantine made it clear that only catholic churches would be subsidized by the state. Here is another dangerous precedent in late antiquity that destroyed a world of great religious diversity.
In 323, Constantine made Christians exempt from state requirements for sacrifices and rituals. But Constantine went farther than that, recorded as Codex Theodosianus 16.2.5, he made it unlawful for Christians to participate even on their own accord. Here he made Christians prisoners of their own religion. This signaled a new kind of dictatorship in which laws punishing backsliders would emerge in canons and decrees. On this premise of forbidding Christians sacrificing in the old cults, Constantine had the pagan sanctuary and grove in Mambre, Judea, destroyed.
For pagans, their religious places went beyond buildings. Their religions embraced nature and it's cycles. Pagans knew that human minds and bodies are inextricably tied to the cycles of the planet, the Sun and the Moon. The solstices and equinoxes had great meaning to them because of their bearing on crops, fertility and survival. There were sacred groves, trees or natural formations that had important meaning to pagans. These groves could be on mountains or hilltops, in valleys or in the heat of the desert. Because of 'misguided' Christians sacrificing at Mambre's pagan sanctuary of Abraham, Constantine ordered the altars and idols burned. Destroying the sacred groves of other religions is a virtue in the Bible. Nature and the gods were unified forces to pagans. To pagans, how could they be separated? Only Judeo-Christian monotheism had divorced them completely. To pantheists and other pagans, nature and the supernatural were inseparable.
In more praise of religious intolerance, Chapter 8 of Eusebius' Praise of Constantine tells of "the vigilance of our august emperor who discovers a grove and a temple in Lebanon, dedicated to the foul demon known by the name of Venus. The emperor, judging that such a temple was unfit for the light of heaven, gave orders that the building with its offerings should be utterly destroyed. Accordingly, in obedience to the imperial edict, these engines of an impure superstition were immediately abolished, and the hand of military force was made instrumental in purging the place. And now those who had heretofore lived without restraint, learned, through the imperial threat of punishment, to practice self-control."
2 Chronicles 34:7,33: "And when he had broken down the altars and the groves, and had beaten the graven images into powder, and cut down all the idols throughout all the land of Israel, he returned to Jerusalem. ...And Josiah took away all the abominations out of all the countries that pertained to the children of Israel, and made all that were present in Israel to serve, even to serve the LORD their God"
In October of 324, Constantine wrote the Eastern bishops regarding the government's subsidization of church building:
"Concerning the churches over which you yourself preside, or know others who preside in such places, whether bishops, priests, or deacons -- remind them to be active in the building of churches, either restoring or enlarging existing buildings or constructing new ones where need requires. You may yourself request, and the rest may request through you, what is needed from governors and the prefect's office. For these have been given instructions that they are to lend their assistance to communications from your holiness with all eagerness."
In that same year Constantine ordered persecutions against Pagans in Didyma. Violence escalated against unbelievers. In Asia Minor, the Oracle of the Apollo was sacked and it's priests were tortured and executed. He also drove pagans from Mount Athos, a holy place for pagans, and destroyed all the Hellenic temples in the region. Mt Athos was be taken over by Christians and eventually become a major monastic center and holy place for Eastern Christians. It remains so.
Due to Diocletian's Tetrarchy and their seats of power n Milan, Trier, Thessalonika, and Nicomedia, Rome was slowly losing it's central importance in the empire. Late in 324, Constantine drew up new boundaries for the old Greek city of Byzantium, which would become his new capitol. The new city's area had four times the area of the original and it would be called Constantinople. In 328, the walls were completed and the city was dedicated in May of 330. Like Rome it was built on seven hills. Like Rome, it had a senate and it fed the city with subsidized grain. But unlike Rome, with its hundreds of pagan temples, Constantinople was a Christian city with a diminished pagan influence. To decorate his new city with gold, silver and precious gems, Constantine had pagan properties plundered throughout the Greek and Asia Minor regions. Pagan gold and silver were melted down to decorate churches and make the new gold coin of the empire.
Eusebius claims that in 326 Constantine ordered the destruction of the Temple of the Asclepius in Aigeai of Cilicia. Asclepius was a healing god and people had brought their sick there for centuries. Like every religion, it claimed miracles. Other sources claim it was a regional bishop that stripped the exterior collonade for use in his church. The point here, and an important point, is that it is easy to find the tyranny of the state and Christianity wed together because we see in so much of Christian historians' writings like Eusebius', a pride in many things we consider unethical or have outlawed in free societies. Many Christian historians and writers of the past parade their religious intolerance as if it is a virtue.
Ramsay MacMullen notes in his "Christianizing the Roman Empire: A.D. 100-400:
"Hostile writings and discarded views were not recopied or passed on, or they were actively suppressed; and, by the overwhelming authority of Eusebius, the father of church historiography, matters discreditable to the faith were to be consigned to silence."
Besides Mambre and Asclepius, temples in Jerusalem, Aphaca, Phoenice, and Baalbek were targeted. Constantine also attacked many regions' Temples of Aphrodite. Orthodox Christianity was also becoming a cult of Mary so Hera, Venus Artemis and Diana were considered competitors and demons in disguise. According to Eusebius above, Venus was a foul demon. Although Constantine damaged the pagans' properties and liberties, it was the later period from the end of the 4th century through the reign of Justinian (527-565) and Tiberius II after him that were the most violent and most organized persecutions.
At this time, Constantine continued his quiet demolition and plundering of pagan temples in Asia Minor and Palestine. Many who practiced magic or claimed to hear the voice of God were crucified. In 335, Constantine's continuing violence led to the murder of the neoplatonist philosopher Sopatrus. Constantine is said to have ordered his death because his magic 'unchained' the winds and prevented ships loaded with grain from arriving in ports in time to halt the spread of famine and disease.
Eusebius' wishes were finally fullfulled when in 346, Constantine's Arianist Christian son Emperor Constantius decreed pagan temples were to be closed. Eventually, these laws and the attitudes they promoted would foster empire wide arson and destruction of temples, shrines and libraries. Recorded as Codex Theodosianus 16.10.4, the decree below supports murdering pagans with the avenging sword and the confiscation of their property by the government.
"It is decreed that in all places and all cities the temples should be closed at once, and after a general warning, the opportunity of sinning be taken from the wicked. We decree also that we shall cease from making sacrifices. And if anyone has committed such a crime, let him be stricken with the avenging sword. And we decree that the property of the one executed shall be claimed by the city, and that rulers of the provinces be punished in the same way, if they neglect to punish such crimes."
"Moreover, if any one of the population should join their abominable sect and attend their meetings, he will bear with them the deserved penalties."
Avenging sword? When you hear right wingers attack Islam as a violent religion, they are not telling the whole story of violent religions. Whether deliberately or due to historical ignorance, the religious right is in denial regarding the truth about the inherent violence found in both the Bible and Christian history. In fact, the anger of Islam towards the west is due partly to the violent nature of Christianity exposed in its history and beliefs. If one takes a serious look at both their scriptures Christianity and Islam are nearly identical in their themes. Both religions are prone tom violence and discrimination when holding the power of government. In the New Testament, Jesus said he came with a sword that would divide people and that sword became the tool of Christianity.
Emperor Constantius, in threatening the avenging sword, was indeed emulating scripture. The Bible continually supports religious intolerance and the destruction of pagan altars and images:
Exodus 34:11-15: "Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee: But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves: For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God: Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods..."
Under the iron fist of church-state alliances, it was deprivation of rights, theft and the destruction of property in the name of a politically correct religion that brought the people into conformity. These are examples of the religious tyrannies and shameful lack of ethics and justice found in every alliance of church and state found in western history. The intellectuals of Rome and the pagans, who supported a world of religious diversity just as modern societies do, knew better. This is why I have found the Catholic Encyclopedia to be so useful. It parades religious intolerance and reveals much about Christianity. This attitude would continue in the doctrines of the Reformation. Nothing much changed as Protestants became the persecutors and also embraced authoritarian theocracies and much violence.
In 333, Constantine reaffirmed the judical authority of Ecclesiastical courts with Constitutiones Sirmondianae 1, once again reaffirming their equal power with the civil judiciary. Constantine insisted that when an ecclesiatical court rendered a verdict, the case was over. At this time Constantine also decreed that Arius be executed and Arian literature be burned. Socrates Scholasticus' Ecclesiastical History Book 1, Chapter 9 preserves this letter of Constantine:
"Constantine the King to the Bishops and nations everywhere. Inasmuch as Arius imitates the evil and the wicked, it is right that, like them, he should be rebuked and rejected. As therefore Porphyry, who was an enemy of the fear of God, and wrote wicked and unlawful writings against the religion of Christians, found the reward which befitted him, that he might be a reproach to all generations after, because he fully and insatiably used base fame; so that on this account his writings were righteously destroyed; thus also now it seems good that Arius and the holders of his opinion should all be called Porphyrians, that he may be named by the name of those whose evil ways he imitates:
"And not only this, but also that all the writings of Arius, wherever they be found, shall be delivered to be burned with fire, in order that not only his wicked and evil doctrine may be destroyed, but also that the memory of himself and of his doctrine may be blotted out, that there may not by any means remain to him remembrance in the world. Now this also I ordain, that if any one shall be found secreting any writing composed by Arius, and shall not forthwith deliver up and burn it with fire, his punishment shall be death; for as soon as he is caught in this he shall suffer capital punishment without delay."
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