When the Empire Bowed — Constantine

Today's Reading

In AD 312, on the eve of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, the Roman general Constantine reportedly saw a vision — a cross of light in the sky with the words "In this sign, conquer." He ordered his soldiers to paint the Chi-Rho symbol on their shields. He won the battle. And the history of Christianity changed forever.

Within a year, Constantine and his co-emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan (AD 313), granting religious toleration throughout the empire. Church property was restored. Clergy received tax exemptions. Christian bishops gained access to the imperial court. The faith that had survived three centuries of persecution was suddenly fashionable.

The transformation was staggering. Churches that had been demolished under Diocletian were rebuilt at imperial expense. The great basilicas of Rome — St. Peter's, St. John Lateran — date to this era. Christianity moved from the catacombs to the cathedrals, from the margins to the center of power.

Biblical Connection

Paul had written to the Romans, during Nero's reign, that "there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God" (Romans 13:1). This did not mean every emperor was godly. It meant that God was sovereign over all political arrangements — even hostile ones.

Isaiah had made a similar point centuries earlier, calling the Persian emperor Cyrus God's "anointed" (Isaiah 45:1) — a pagan king used for divine purposes. The early Christians saw in Constantine a similar paradox: an imperfect ruler whose actions nonetheless served God's providential plan.

Why It Matters

Yet the Constantinian shift was profoundly ambiguous. N.T. Wright observes: "The Constantinian settlement was at once the church's greatest opportunity and its greatest temptation" (The New Testament and the People of God, Chapter 12). The opportunity was obvious: freedom to worship, to teach, to build. The temptation was subtler: to confuse the kingdom of God with the kingdoms of this world, to trade prophetic independence for political privilege.

Augustine, writing a century later as Rome itself was falling, saw the danger clearly: "Two loves built two cities: the love of self, carried even to the contempt of God, built the earthly city; the love of God, carried even to the contempt of self, built the heavenly city" (The City of God, Book 14, Chapter 28). The church, Augustine warned, must never mistake the earthly city for its true home — no matter how favorable the emperor.

The question Constantine raises has never gone away: How does the church remain faithful when the world stops persecuting it and starts embracing it? The martyrs knew how to die for their faith. The harder question, it turns out, is how to live with power.