Constantine and the Church: Imperial Favor and Vanity by Joseph Harvey Waggoner

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 5, 1875

Constantine and the Church: Imperial Favor and Vanity

By Joseph Harvey Waggoner

CONSTANTINE.—NO. 3.

BY ELD. J. H. WAGGONER.

We must not lose sight of the fact that in making the church attractive Constantine was glorifying himself. While the bishops readily accepted personal favors and counted them as so much gained to the cause of Christ, they in turn seemed to think they were glorifying God by extolling the emperor, with much of the same feeling that actuates the followers of the pope to this day. Thus Neander says:—

“It flattered his vanity to be considered the favorite of God and his destined instrument to destroy the empire of the evil spirits (the heathen deities). The Christians belonging to his court were certainly not wanting on their part to confirm him in this persuasion, having many of them come to the same conclusion themselves, dazzled by the outward splendor which surrounded the emperor, and which passed over from him to the visible church, and by looking at what the imperial power, which nothing any longer withstood, could secure for the outward interests of the church.”

“Bishops in immediate attendance upon the emperor so far forgot, indeed, to what master they belonged that at the celebration of the third decennium of his reign one of them congratulated him as constituted by God the ruler over all in the present world, and destined to reign with the Son of God in the world to come. The feelings of Constantine himself were shocked at such a parallel!”—Neander, pp. 22, 23.

Willard (Universal History) says:—

“Surely it was not in the spirit of Christ, who said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world,’ that Constantine made it the religion of the empire; and from henceforth we find its heavenly influence sullied by mingling with earthly things.”

Whelpley, in his Compend of History, says:—

“From this period the Christian church was loaded with honor, wealth, and power, nor did her virtue ever sustain a severer trial. The chief dignitaries of the empire could scarcely do less than imitate their master; and Christianity soon became a necessary qualification for public office. The church now no longer appeared in her ancient simplicity and purity; lords and princes were among her converts, and she was dressed in robes of state. Her ceremonies were increased; her forms of worship were loaded with pomp and splendor; her doctrines were intermingled with the senseless jargon of a philosophy equally absurd and vain, and the way seemed prepared not only for the decay of Christian doctrine and morality but of every science which distinguishes civilized from savage nations.”—Page 206.

Guericke goes so far as to ascribe to Constantine and his unwise course the evils which befell the empire under Julian; and this not without a show of reason, as the following extract gives us to understand:—

“Julian, a nephew of Constantine the Great, who, when a child, had seen his nearest kindred fall a sacrifice to the jealousy of Constantine, and had been trained up in solitude by worthless teachers for the clerical profession, soon learned to look with a secret bitterness upon the existing state of things, while a Christianity thus forced upon him by a hated court could not take root in his heart.”—Ancient Church, p. 244.

With worldly preferments came bitter jealousies between the bishops, and from the time of the Nicene Council there was unceasing strife and war of words about doctrines and forms. The example set by Constantine of compelling conformity was followed by the several bishops to whom he had given the power of determining causes in the State as well as in the church. And while his action in that respect was for the purpose of giving uniformity of faith to the churches, it had directly the contrary effect when imitated by a number of bishops, as their creeds differed and their powers conflicted. Thus unmistakably does an evil tree bring forth evil fruit, however much men may admire it in its growth. It was in this age that the controversy between the Arians and Trinitarians raged fiercely, and the temporizing policy of Constantine, who, in the vain hope of uniting them, now favored this party and now that, served to embitter both parties, and to render them more determined and vindictive as their hopes and fears were raised alternately. We may be excused for giving at least one specimen of church literature, coming to us from the age immediately succeeding that of Constantine, to show both the spirit and subject of the controversy. It is from the “Orthodox,” or Roman side of the question:—

“Since, then, Nestorius, that God-assaulting tongue, that second conclave of Caiaphas, that workshop of blasphemy, in whose case Christ is again made a subject of bargain and sale, by having his nature divided and torn asunder, . . . . . since, then, he thrust aside and rejected the term, Mother of God, which had been already wrought by the Holy Spirit, through the instrumentality of many chosen fathers, and substituted a spurious one of his own coining, Mother of Christ.”—Evagrius’ History, p. 4.

Such effusions as the above, by no means scarce in that age, are worthy of the place they occupied, standing as they did midway between the inquisition and the corrupting influence of Constantine’s conformity acts, which paved the way for the inquisition.

We turn now to the consideration of the story of Constantine’s vision of the cross. By those who are wont to ascribe to Constantine the qualities of a genuine Christian, and to extol his actions as of great benefit to the cause of pure religion, this vision has been dwelt upon as an event of the utmost importance, yes, as the very turning point in the struggle between paganism and Christianity.

It is to be regretted that so often idle stories will obtain general credence and pass into history for settled truth, because they are suffered to exert an influence which truth alone should be allowed to exert. There are few who have not heard the story that Alexander the Great, after conquering the world, wept because there were no more worlds for him to conquer, and the belief in this story has become so general that it is considered, in the minds of most people, a truth not to be disputed. Yet the story is utterly groundless. This will illustrate our remark. This story about Alexander, however, is entirely harmless. But not so the story of Constantine’s vision of the cross. That has been used as an evidence that he was led by the Lord himself, even in his battles, and that he was the favorite of Heaven, chosen to establish the Christian religion in the Roman Empire. Yet history plainly shows that it is only an idle tale.

And here again we should feel called upon to apologize for the amount of evidence offered, were it not that we consider the subject one of real importance. For, surely, if Constantine did see such a vision, if Heaven thus miraculously called him to set up the cross of the Prince of Peace as the standard by which he should establish his empire and slay his enemies; if the life and acts of Constantine were not only favored but directed by the Lord, as his flatterers assumed, that fact should be well attested. But, on the other hand, if it was a mere fable by means of which a superstitious people were deluded into the belief that a selfish, jealous, ambitious warrior was divinely directed in his battles; and if this fable has been, and even yet is, used to give influence to systems or forms of worship invented by Constantine or adopted from paganism and forced upon the church by imperial authority, then too much pains cannot be taken to expose the cheat, and thus to rescue the minds of men from the bewildering mazes of traditional error.

We may say here with the apostle Paul, “If any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant;” that is, any man may choose ignorance if it pleases him. But there is no necessity for remaining so; for no point seems to be made more clear. Whelpley speaks of it thus:—

“There are various accounts given and various opinions formed concerning the conversion of Constantine. Whether his mind was swayed by the power of truth, or by temporal, political, and interested motives, is not easy to determine. It is related, and believed by some, that his conversion was miraculous. They say that he saw in the heavens the sign of the cross with this inscription in radiant letters, touto nika, i. e., ‘By this conquer;’ and that upon this, he immediately embraced Christianity. His life and conduct were by no means eminent for Christian virtue; nor was he wholly free from crimes of the deepest dye.”—Compend, p. 206.

He discredits the story on the just ground that Constantine’s life, neither before nor after that time, gave any evidence of being guided by Heaven or influenced by Christian principles.

And Milman says:—

“The silence not only of all contemporary history, but of Eusebius himself, in his Ecclesiastical History, gives a most dangerous advantage to those who altogether reject the story.”—History, p. 287.

Neander takes the same view of the case that is given by Whelpley above:—

“But the supposition of a miracle here is one which has in itself nothing to recommend it, especially when we consider that the conversion, as it is called, of the Roman emperor, such as it really was, could in no wise possess the same significance in the sight of God, who respected not the person, but looked upon the heart alone as an acceptable sacrifice, as it had in the eyes of men dazzled and deceived by outward show. In this particular way it is scarcely possible to conceive that a change of heart, which is the only change which deserves to be called a conversion, could have been wrought. Much rather might we presume that, in this way, the emperor would be misled to combine pagan superstition with a mere coloring of Christianity. And were we to judge of the end which this miracle was designed to subserve, by the general consequences of the emperor’s conversion on the Christian church within the Roman Empire, it might be questioned whether these consequences were really so benign in their influence on the progress of the kingdom of God, as they were imagined to be by those persons who, dazzled by outward show, saw in the external power and splendor of the Christian church a triumph of Christianity.”

And in this connection he gives an additional fact which is of great importance, namely, that the story was varied to suit the different tastes of the different classes in his army:—

“Pagans saw, in this case, the gods of the eternal city engaged to deliver them from the disgraceful yoke. Among them, accordingly, was circulated the legend of a heavenly army, seen in the air, and sent by the gods to the succor of Constantine. Among the Christians, on the other hand, the story was propagated of an appearance of the cross.”—Neander, vol. ii, p. 9.

This proves that it was not an appearance which the soldiers professed to see, but merely the story of an appearance, varied to suit the various superstitions of the parties and to give them confidence in their leader in battle.

Waddington gives a view of the question as comprehensive as it is concise:—

“In the first place, the story which we have shortly given is related by no contemporary author except Eusebius; next, it is related in his Life of Constantine, and not in his Ecclesiastical History; it is related in the year 338, or six-and-twenty years after the supposed appearance; it is related on the authority of Constantine alone, though it must have been witnessed by his whole army, and been notorious throughout his whole empire; and lastly, it was published after the death of Constantine. In an age, wherein pious frauds had already acquired some honor; by a writer, who, respectable as he undoubtedly is, and faithful in most of his historical records, does not even profess those rigid rules of veracity which command universal credit; in a book, which rather wears the character of a partial panegyric than of exact and scrupulous history—a flattering fable might be published and believed; but it can claim no place among the authentic records of history, and, by writers whose only object is truth, it may very safely be consigned to contempt and oblivion.”—Church History, pp. 82, 83.

It should be noted that the influence of “Eusebius, the great church historian,” is brought to bear in favor of the story, but it is not related by Eusebius in his history, but only in his eulogy of Constantine, which is generally regarded as not worthy of credit.

Dr. Dowling, whose subject led him to a careful examination of this and other events in connection with Constantine’s career, says:—

“For my part I have no hesitation in regarding the whole as a fable. It was not till many years after it was said to have occurred that Constantine related the story to Eusebius, and in all probability he did it then by the instigation of his superstitious mother, Helena, the celebrated discoverer of the wood of the true cross (?) at Jerusalem, some 250 years after the destruction of that city and all that it contained, and the disappearance of the identity of its very foundations, under the plowshare of the Roman conqueror Vespasian. The subsequent life of Constantine furnished no evidence that he was a peculiar favorite of Heaven; and the results of his patronage of the church, eventually so disastrous to its purity and spirituality, are sufficient to prove that God would never work a miracle to accomplish such a purpose.”—History of Romanism, p. 31.