Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom

by Peter J. Leithart

We know that Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in 313, outlawed paganism and made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire manipulated the Council of Nicea in 325, and exercised absolute authority over the church, co-opting it for the aims of empire. And if Constantine the emperor were not problem enough, we all know that Constantinianism has been very bad for the church. Or do we know these things? Peter Leithart weighs these claims and finds them wanting. And what's more, in focusing on these historical mirages we have failed to notice the true significance of Constantine and Rome baptized. For beneath the surface of this contested story there emerges a deeper narrative of the end of Roman sacrifice--a tectonic shift in the political theology of an empire--and with far-reaching implications. In this probing and informative book Peter Leithart examines the real Constantine, weighs the charges against Constantinianism, and sets the terms for a new conversation about this pivotal emperor and the Christendom that emerged.

Genres: History, Church History, Theology, Religion, Biography, Christianity, Nonfiction

373 pages, Paperback

First published September 7, 2010

About the author

Peter Leithart received an A.B. in English and History from Hillsdale College in 1981, and a Master of Arts in Religion and a Master of Theology from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in 1986 and 1987. In 1998 he received his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in England. He has served in two pastorates: He was pastor of Reformed Heritage Presbyterian Church (now Trinity Presbyterian Church), Birmingham, Alabama from 1989 to 1995, and was founding pastor of Trinity Reformed Church, Moscow, Idaho, and served on the pastoral staff at Trinity from 2003-2013. From 1998 to 2013 he taught theology and literature at New St. Andrews College, Moscow, Idaho, where he continues to teach as an adjunct Senior Fellow. He now serves as President of Trinity House in Alabama, where is also resident Church Teacher at the local CREC church. He and his wife, Noel, have ten children and five grandchildren.

Reviews

[Rosanne Lortz · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Emperor Constantine is one of those people who could very ably defend himself while alive, but now, having the misfortune of being dead, has become a whipping boy for church historians and theologians alike. In his book Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom, Peter Leithart attempts to wipe the rotten vegetables off Constantine’s face and scour the reputation that the centuries have sullied.

A common version of Constantine’s story, one that Leithart sets out to refute, is that Constantine (who may or may not have truly converted) took control of the Church and absorbed it into the empire in such a way that its distinctives became diluted and its witness ineffectual. He freed the Church from persecution but then neutered the Church and created an atmosphere where “real” Christians and “pretend” Christians could not be told one from the other.

Leithart’s first method of refutation is to provide a biographical study of Constantine, firmly seating the man in the context of late Roman antiquity, judging his actions as they would have been understood by his contemporaries instead of holding them up against a perfectionistic standard. Yes, Constantine often referred to God in ambiguous terms like “Providence” instead of with explicitly Christian ones, but the fact that he paid no sacrifice or acknowledgment to Jupiter was enough to make Romans sit up and take notice. Yes, Constantine meddled in Church affairs, but the Church had some serious problems that needed to be meddled with. Yes, Constantine “called” the Council of Nicea, but he did not “preside” over it or dictate its verdict. Yes, contemporary ecclesiastics like Eusebius flattered Constantine unduly and thought he was the greatest thing since pita bread, but wouldn’t you too if you had suffered the horrendous persecutions of Diocletian and Galerian?

In a section titled “The Emperor and the Queen,” Leithart explains how Constantine had the right motivations but sometimes went overboard in his execution:

" Kiss the Son,” Psalm 2 exhorts, addressing itself to kings of the earth. Constantine kissed the Son, publicly acknowledging the Christian God as the true God and confessing Jesus as “our Savior.”

"For Constantine and the emperors who followed him, after kissing the Son and Lord, it made sense to do homage to Jesus by supporting his Queen, the church–building and adorning cathedrals, distributing funds for poor relief and hospitals, assisting the bishops to resolve their differences by calling and providing for councils. Constantine did not always show restraint. Sometimes he took over business that belonged to the King and Queen alone. But if we want to judge Constantine fairly, we have to recognize that the Queen often had issues. A queen’s bodyguard ought to keep his hands off the queen, but what does he do when she turns harpy and starts scratching the face of her lady-in-waiting?"

In the latter half of the book, Leithart waxes theological and deals with complaints by the theologian John Howard Yoder about the “heresy” of Constantinianism. Yoder claims that during Constantine’s reign, the Church was knocked off its Biblical trajectory and “fell” in such a way that it has never recovered. His three main issues with Constantinianism are: (1) it identified the nation/empire with the purposes of God (instead of the Church) and thus distorted the mission of the Church; (2) it destroyed the non-imperialist stance that the early Church had adhered to; and (3) it destroyed the early Church’s commitment to pacifism.

Leithart decimates these arguments in reverse order, showing that the history underpinning Yoder’s arguments is shaky at best. A shift in emphasis did occur during Constantine’s rule, but it was not the open break with the past that Yoder postulates, and much of the change can be seen as the difference between the Church in exile and the Church come into the promise land.

To me, the most interesting section was where Leithart refuted the claim that the pre-Constantine Church was unreservedly pacifist:

"[T]he church was never united in an absolute opposition to Christian participation in war; the opposition that existed was in some measure circumstantial, based on the fact that the Roman army demanded sharing in religious liturgies that Christians refused; and once military service could be pursued without participating in idolatry, many Christians found military service a legitimate life for a Christian disciple."

Constantine did not seduce Christians into the military; he allowed them to become part of it by removing the ritual of pagan oaths and sacrifice that earlier emperors had demanded of their soldiers.

Leithart concludes his book by applying the analogy of infant baptism to what happened to Rome under the rule of Constantine:

"In the end it all comes round to baptism, specifically to infant baptism. Rome was baptized in the fourth century. Eusebian hopes notwithstanding, it was not instantly transformed into the kingdom of heaven. It did not immediately become the city of God on earth. Baptism never does that. It is not meant to. Baptism sets a new trajectory, initiates a new beginning, but every beginning is the beginning of something. Through Constantine, Rome was baptized into a world without animal sacrifice and officially recognized the true sacrificial city, the one community that does offer a foretaste of the final kingdom. Christian Rome was in its infancy, but that was hardly surprising…."

And what about John Howard Yoder and those other theologians that our long-dead Constantine needs defending against?

"For Yoder, Rome was not radically Christian, Rome’s adherence to the faith was infantile, and because of that, he reasons, it was not Christian at all but apostate. He failed, as Augustine said against Pelagius, to give due weight to “the interim, the interval between the remission of sins which takes place in baptism, and the permanently established sinless state in the kingdom that is to come, this middle time of prayer, while [we] must pray, ‘Forgive us our sins.’” He failed to acknowledge that all–Constantine, Rome, ourselves–stand in medial time, and yet are no less Christian for that."

[Felipe Sabino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantástico!

[Douglas Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book, and it is also wonderful that it is an important book. It is also important that it is a wonderful book, but that is another point, distinct from the first point.

[Adam Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is common in Christian circles today to find the fault of the Church’s many ills and problems today set squarely on the shoulders of Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor of Rome. He manipulated the support of the Church to his own advantage, to consolidate his own power. He controlled the outcome of the Nicene council the way he wanted; he set the stage for the Church’s subservience to secular government power in later periods.

Biblical scholar and Church historian Peter J. Leithart would like a moment to challenge everything we thought we knew about Constantine, about Church and Empire, and about the history of the Church. What if Constantine was a devout, but simple, Christian convert? What if the Edict of Milan – which legalized the Christian religion and outlawed its persecution – also granted tolerance of pagan religions? What if Constantine’s legislation was oriented around Christian ideals and principles, supporting the poor and oppressed, loosening the slavery laws, breaking the corruption of the courts that gave no justice to the poor, outlawed the gladitorial arenas and forbade the exposure of infants (the Roman equivalent of abortion)? What if Constantine did not control the council of Nicea or its outcome, but simply sponsored it because he believed in Church unity, and actually submitted to its rulings (and the rulings of the other councils of the period) once rendered? What if, at the very end of his life when he was finally baptized, after he had done all of this, he believed that his work had been only on the fringe of Christian obedience and swore “from thence onward” to actually live as a Christian?

In short, what if Constantine is precisely what many modern Christians want to be; missional, intentional, culture-building, forward-looking, protector of the poor and weak, oppressed and downtrodden, defender of the weak?

With all of the historical qualifications necessary to present a balanced sketch (yes, Constantine did persecute pagans occasionally; yes, he may have killed his wife and son-in-law for sleeping together; yes, he was a skilled politician), Leithart is able to present a balanced portrait of Christendom’s first Emperor. I have drawn certain emphases from Leithart’s book above in order to strongly contrast it with the common view to make a point. Leithart’s picture is far more nuanced, preferring not to present Constantine as either sinner or saint, but rather as the man he was. The job is well done, and you emerge from the book with a clearer picture of the sort of man Constantine really was. In Leithart’s words,

Constantine was a soldier, and a great one. He rarely lost a skirmish and never lost a war. He was not an ignorant grunt. Educated in Diocletian’s court, he retained an interest in theology, philosophy, and literature throughout his life, his dabbling that of a competent amateur. A man of high moral standards, of which he was somewhat vain, sometimes a bit of a prig, he expected everyone else to live up to his expectations. He liked to see the big picture and could be impatient with details. He had a strong sense of justice, and when aroused by what he believed unjust, he could be imperious, brutal, hectoring. He was aggressive and ambitious but was a stratagist with the self-restraint to wait out an opponent. When the situation called for it, he knew how to politick, compromise and build consensus. He had a sense of symbol and ceremony, knew the right gesture. He enjoyed the kitschy gaudiness of court and its adornments; the flowered robe rested easily on his shoulders, he liked his jeweled slippers, and he did not think a golden throne too much. But he also knew that he should treat it with disdain, and that disdain was sincere too. (p. 301)

At the same time, all the evidence points to Constantine being a genuine convert to the Christian faith. He meditated and lectured on theology, wrote letters to bishops on the fine points of doctrine, tried to reconcile the great heretic Arius with the rest of the Church, took both private and public opportunities to speak of the Christian religion. He supported its growth, submitted to its councils and its rulings, and above all desired its ecumenical unity – he desired universal agreement on the broad strokes of theology; hence the calling of the first council of Nicea, where the Christian Scriptures in use by the Church at the time were confirmed in the number and order of books as we have them today, and which defined forever more the “bounds of orthodoxy” with the famous (and glorious) Nicene Creed – which most churches over the whole world still recite with one voice in public worship.

On Constantine’s Christian faith, Leithart writes that after 312,

Constantine used his imperial power to protect and support the Christian church. He was a sincere if somewhat simple believer. He knew portions of the Old Testament and perhaps the basic outline of biblical history, and he could summarize the story of the Gospels. For Constantine, God was a providential Judge who supports the righteous and destroys the wicked, and he believed that the church had to be unified if it was going to offer pleasing worship to God. … He did not adopt a police of forced conversion, did not punish pagans for being pagans or Jews for being Jews. Pagans remained at his court and were given wealthy responsibilities in the empire. … Constantine expended an enormous amount of treasure on churches; it was used both on buildings and, with the emperor’s explicit encouragement, on establishing ministries of mercy to the poor, sick and widows. … He attended some of the councils and contributed to discussions but did not chair any council or determine the outcome. Once the bishops had arrived at a decision, Constantine accepted it a a divine word and backed up conciliar decisions with legal sanctions, mainly exile for those found guilty of heresy. … over the long run Constantine’s support of the church strengthened the church’s status as an alternative society and polity within the Roman Empire. Already during Constantine’s lifetime, and even more during the reign of his sons, church leaders became more aggressively confrontational toward the empire, fighting to protect the church’s independence from imperial intrusions. (pp. 302, 303, 304,)

Leithart’s scholarship is impeccable and staggeringly vast, assembling an expansive bibliography (pp. 343-366) which is oriented towards not simply Constantine and his life, but the lives of those around him, as well as the context and all avenues of Roman life to provide the fullest portrait possible. He begins the book with two large chapters of the bloody exploits of Constantine’s immediate predecessors to set the stage, chapters which are slow going but which prove necessary to what comes later.

Apart from the first two chapters, the book is never a dull read. The skill with which Leithart writes, the comprehensive nature of his knowledge of the period, does not detract from the story that he is telling. The truly remarkable thing is how ably he avoids sacrificing scholarship or storytelling. Part biography, part commentary, it walks a line few other historical works can. As unusual as it may sound, there were no drawbacks to the book that I could find, beyond the slogging nature of those two opening chapters. Leithart covers all the bases, checks all the sources, deals with all the objections. So I’ll simply finish by saying this is a fine book which will set the standard on Constantine and Christendom for a long time to come. Anyone interested in the Church, in history, in Constantine, anyone who thought they knew the story, needs to read it.

[Joe Rigney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leithart does a fantastic job placing Constantine in his own era and helping us understand the first Christian emperor. The final chapters have a great discussion of political theology, with Leithart dialoguing with Yoder.

[Leonardo Bruno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Confesso que antes de ler este livro eu dava muito pouca importância à figura do imperador Constantino. Agora, tal qual o garotinho lá de “O sexto sentido”, vejo-o em toda parte, e isso graças ao brilhante trabalho de Peter Leithart neste livro, uma verdadeira aula de história, teologia e política. O último capítulo é, por assim dizer, a cereja do bolo. Simplesmente fantástico!

[Rick Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Defending Constantine is a phenomenal new book by Peter Leithart that seeks to rehabilitate the reputation of the first Christian emperor of Rome. It seems that Constantine, by converting to the Christian faith, permanently securing Christians against persecution, financing new churches, appointing Christians to the highest levels of government, and allowing bishops to hear civil complaints, made himself one of the most debated characters in Church history. Starting with St. Francis of Assisi, who believed that it was wrong for Constantine to tempt the Church with worldly power, and continuing especially through the Reformers and into the modern era, Constantine has had a bad rap. The validity of his conversion has been questioned, and the results of his policies have been harshly criticized. In this book, partly biography and partly theology, Leithart specifically focuses on the challenge to “Constantinism” brought by John Howard Yoder and his current theological descendents.

This book is probably not for everyone. It is closely reasoned and heavily footnoted, and thus requires time to digest and work through. It is very well-written and engaging, and I appreciate the fact that Leithart avoids any sort of sweeping generalizations. History is complicated, and he is determined to bring as many of the particular facts as possible to the table for discussion. There are at least two distinct groups of Christians that I believe need to read this book.

First of all, most Protestants who are thoughtful about their faith and interested in Church history ought to read this book. Protestants by and large, whether descended from Luther and Calvin or from the Anabaptists, have a “fall” view of Church history. The idea is that the apostolic and early Church was a “pure” Church, and at some point, the Church fell away from faithfulness and from the gospel only to be restored when this or that man came along more than a millennium later to call everyone back to the mythical golden age of the Church. Many will trace this “fall” of the Church to around the time of Constantine, when the Church absorbed pagan culture and religion, and became corrupted as part of the Roman state. Leithart does a great job of exploding this myth in his discussion of the Church prior to, during the time of, and after Constantine.

Secondly, Christians who are involved in politics or would like to be involved in politics ought to read this book. Many Christians today have bought into the idea that the political realm is atheological and that Jesus has nothing to say to power. Christian must be willing to take their place at the table and argue for policies that uphold a neutral “public space,” which is devoid of any specific theological content. Furthermore, Christians who reject this myth of neutrality are often seen as dangerous theonomists who would bring about a reign of terror and intolerance if they ever gained political power. However, in Constantine, Dr. Leithart finds a third way. Constantine effectively through his policies ended sacrifice in Rome and Christianized the public square. Leithart uses the term “concord” for this policy. Concord though disapproving of idolatry forbears to sanction against other religions or practices. This is not the same as our postmodern idea that all ideas are equal. Rather the disapproval of a certain view is assumed, but for specific convictions about the nature of man (namely that religion must be freely chosen) and the limits of the power of the state this disapproval does not manifest itself in violence or legal sanctions. Finally, this policy “expects that by treating its dissenters with forbearance it is creating conditions under which they will ultimately change their behavior to conform to what the state accepts.”

From beginning to end Defending Constantine is packed with insights about the fourth century Church and empire. My favorite chapters however, come near the end, and discuss the relationship of the early Church to the military and empire. I encourage those who fall into the two categories above or those who are simply interested in the history of God’s people to read Defending Constantine by Peter Leithart.

[W. Littlejohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, I know it's not out yet, but I got to index it! Mwuhahaha!

Vintage Leithart: brilliant stuff, extremely well-written, engaging and insightful on many different levels. Apparently there's nothing this man can't write on--literature, philosophy, hermeneutics, and now history. He manages to be a compelling storyteller while neither losing sight of the polemical point nor letting it overwhelm the narrative.

The final chapter, which is as it were an expanded and refined version of chapter 5 of Against Christianity, is worth the price of the book, and is as satisfying a perspective on political theology as I have yet found.

[Collin Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Historically insightful and theologically helpful. Many things I had trouble with but I must confess, I was not able to read this book as carefully as I would like for lack of time before the due date of my paper.

Liethart used primary sources well and included fair response from both sides of the Constantine discussion. It’s a tough thing to defend Constantine and his methodology as example since it was so back and forth and there is the ever increasing connotation that Constantine is using Christianity for power. I went back and forth on that a lot. I would probably lean more toward agreeing with most of Leitharts conclusions towards the end.

I am defending in my paper that Constantine’s union of church and state advances the cause of Christianity positively through governmental authority. Does that mean we return to something like this? I am left unsure. I am not quite ready to move to Moscow yet (IYKYK)

[Victor Falavinha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ótimo livro, com detalhes históricos profundos sobre a igreja no período de Diocleciano a Constantino, bem como sobre o imperador em si. Uma excelente leitura, que acresce em conhecimento. Uma boa visão de Constantino.

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 2 out of 5]

I used to be a fan of Leithart's writing. Even a few years ago when he openly attacked Reformed theology in *The Baptized Body,* his writing was cogent and impressive. Something happened between the writing of that book and the writing of this one. Admittedly, Leithart does accomplish a few useful ends in this book. I will list where he is strong and where is his is either wrong, misleading, of inadequate.

Pros:
1) Leithart does a good job handling the disciples of Yoder
2) Leithart does a good job dealing with the secular scholarship that downplays the obvious persecution of Christians. I like Gibbon a lot, but Leithart ably rebuts him.
3) There remains the fact of a Christian *polis,* and we see such in Constantine.
4) He does a good job dismissing the silly nonsense of Dan Brown.

Cons:
1) While I side with Leithart over Yoder, it cannot be denied that there was a seismic shift in the Church's praxis with the advent of Constantine.

2) Further, there was a seismic shift in the church's eschatology. While some have challenged the ubiquity of premillennialism in the pre-Nicene church, it was there and its eschatology was forward-looking to the reign of Yahweh-in-Christ upon the earth. With the advent of a Christian Emperor over the known world, an emperor who was known as "Equal-to-the-Apostles" (which can still be heard in Eastern Orthodox litanies today), in whose person Empire and Sacras were united (cf Runciman, *The Byzantine Theocracy*), there is little point for the church to retain its premillennialism. Yoder and Moltmann capably document this.

2a) This is a tangential note: In *Against Christianity* Leithart attacks Eusebius for his postmillennial ethics centered in the Advent of Constantine, saying we should have a more Augustinian eschatology centered in the tension of already-not yet. Now Leithart writes a book where he tacitly endorses Eusebius' eschatology. One of them has to give.

3) Constantine was a bad Christian, if I may not judge. I am willing to concede the point he was a Christian. I can even buy, for sake of argument, the miracle in the sky. But there are significant problems: 1) He put his family members to death (yes, I know it was realpolitik), 2) he postponed baptism based on very bad theology, and 3) He was not always friendly to Nicene Theology (yes, I realize he didn't understand it, which further underscores my point). These facts to not negate Leithart's thesis, but they remain tough pills to swallow.

Conclusion:

My criticisms notwithstanding, this probably is the best work on Constantine in modern times.

[Etienne OMNES · Rating 5 out of 5]

A la défense de Constantin est un livre de Peter Leithart destiné à corriger les attaques faites contre la théologie politique de Constantin et certaines faussetés sur sa vie et son oeuvre politiques. L'objectif ultime est de corriger la vision de John Yoder.

Le livre aborde, dans une logique relativement chronologique:
1. Le contexte des persécutions dioclétiennes qui explique beaucoup les conceptions et réactions de chacun.
2. La théologie politique de Dioclétien, que Constantin renversera.
3. L'avènement de Constantin
4. La sincérité de sa conversion
5 et 6. Sa politique de tolérance religieuse
7. Le degré d'intervention de Constantin dans les querelles qui ont précédé Nicée (donatistes)
8. Son degré d'implication dans le concile de Nicée, et le degré de liberté qu'avaient les évêques face à lui.
9.L'effet de son christianisme sur le contenu des lois qu'il a promulgué.
10.L'effet du christianisme sur son gouvernement et son administration. (ainsi que le meurtre de son fils et son épouse).
11. La transformation du statut de l'empereur sous l'effet de son christianisme.
12.Le mythe de l'église prénicéenne pacifiste.
13. Le degré d'intégration de l'église dans les institutions romaines, montrant que la chrétienté n'a pas été confondue avec l'empire romain à l'époque.
14. Tout à part, la théologie politique de Leithart qui a conduit l'écriture de ce livre.

J'ai beaucoup aimé ce livre, surtout pour son contenu historique. Il répond efficacement aux charges lancées contre Constantin, même si l'on se demande parfois quel est l'argument. Je recommande à ceux qui s'intéressent au sujet de Constantin ou du concept de chrétienté.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Constantine has a bad reputation in the West, as an emperor who expropriated church authority in an effort to augment his power, and later became the model for church/state relations that has tempted the church to seek greater earthly authority than Christ authorized.

Leithart examines the record and defends Constantine's place in history, and places Constantine well within orthodox Christianity. He acknowledges Constantine stumbled, but it seems clear that Constantine was a genuine Christian, who experienced a genuine conversion, and all things considered, did a very good job in de-paganizing Rome and establishing good precedents for church/state relationships that, had they been consistently applied, made a much better historical impression, than they did in being abandoned.

He spends a great deal of time arguing against John Howard Yoder's highly critical evaluation of Constantine. I highly recommend this one!

[David Withun · Rating 4 out of 5]

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[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well this is probably a book that all Mennonites should read or anyone else that likes to decry the fall of the pure early church into "Christendom". I'll let you know.
Ok. This book was really fantastic. Not because Leithart is correct on all accounts but because he is so close to being right on many accounts. He truly calls those who have major issues with Constantine and that chimera "Constantinianism" to do history. Theories on the fall of the church must reckon with the very messy and different concrete realities of the first few centuries after Christ. He writes passionately to see Constantine as a complex and very fallible human character in the drama of the fourth century. That in itself is enough to reccomend the book. However, for those of Anabaptist heritage who seek to conform their lives to the person of Jesus and his church, than the most important thing that Leithart does in this book is to spur us on the deeper understanding of our confessed pacifism and of our patron saint John Howard Yoder. For it is Yoder that Leithart truly has his sights set on in this book. it is a measure of how important Yoder's writings are that a Reformed scholar such as Leithart has taken such great pains to interact and disagree with. For someone like me who has read little of Yoder himself, but much by those influenced by him, reading this book is an impetus to go back to the original sources and read Yoder himself. For those of us that seek to shape our lives around the person and cross of Christ this book is I think essential to point us back to the concreteness of the past, to a non idealized conception of the "pure" early church and the "fall" of the church. This book may prove to be invaluable for us. I urge you all to read it. Be patient, the first 250 odd pages are a deep historical portrait of what we can learn of Constantine. There is a substantial pay off if you persevere to the end. I would deeply like to discuss this book with others. Let me know.
I would also point you to these online sources for some discussion that has already taken place: http://erb.kingdomnow.org/featured-a-..., and http://www.faqs.org/periodicals/20101....
Thanks everyone.

Eric

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really enjoy reading Leithart. His Against Christianity is a terrific read, and demonstrates that (like Chesterton) he's really right when he's aphoristic and really wrong when he's systematic.

Anybody interested in this stuff needs to read him (and will be happy doing it). He gives a much-needed push-back to Yoder and Hauerwas and their fellow-traveller, the Reformed view of Church history ("Christianity disappeared at Constantine and reappeared at the Reformation"), and that's a debate that's interesting and needs to happen for Western Christians.

Unfortunately, I don't find Leithart very persuasive, or adding anything particularly interesting to the discussion in this book. It seems to me idle to deny that Christianity itself underwent a tectonic shift with Constantine, and Leithart's a little too interested in presenting what we all know about the history of Constantine and not really answering the substantive charge: that this meant something radical and transformative for Christianity. Whatever it was after Constantine, often for good, it wasn't remotely the same thing. One needn't buy the whole Mennonite / Yoderian vision of history to see that.

That Constantine was good for culture, I can accept. But it's undeniable that he utterly rewrote the rules by which one reads Paul or Jesus; and Leithart's refusal to grapple seriously with that says a lot about what he values. Therefore this book captures an anxiety that partially explains why I am not a Christian: I like Constantine as much as Leithart, but I think Leithart is wrong about Constantine (and consequently about Christianity). Jesus is a lot harder on his disciples than Constantine is. I find it a lot easier to bow the knee to the latter than the former. Leithart's desire to minimize the differences strikes me the same way as people who try to tell me that I can make thousands from the comfort of my own home, using a computer.

I'm also not entirely comfortable with his historical "method." Whether or not Constantine had his "vision" we cannot of course know. But we can most certainly know that it served a serious political purpose, and I'd like to see a little less credulity in one who does history.

[Jeremy]

I read the final chapter for a discussion a week before Peter Leithart spoke at Baylor. Started reading on Feb. 19, 2014.

Video of a talk at Wheaton College in 2011. First Things video here. For a related essay by Robert Louis Wilken, see a pair of book reviews here. WORLD review here.

[Joshua Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is how you do history as a Christian. Excellent.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the Kindle version of this book. I am sold out to using Kindle, or some other e-book format for reading and writing book reviews, for the ease of referencing, and being able to highlight, and make notes that then become immediately searchable, and can easily cut and paste into book reviews and blog articles. So my references are Kindle locations, and not page numbers (my apologies to those with the Picard syndrome; those who must have a book in paper form).

An defense of Constantine the Great. Leithart takes on many historical misrepresentations of the man, stemmed by "classical" enlightenment thinkers, as well as other historic Constantine bashers I was not even aware of, such as John Wycliffe.

Leithart pays particular attention to a modern Mennonite (Ana-baptist) scholar, Howard Yoder. I am familiar with the Ana-baptist view of Constantine, and how they have argued that the true Church went into hiding when Constantine rose to power (or more properly, "converted"), and I have always felt that the Ana-baptist version of what happened was easily refutable. Thanks to writers like Lord Acton, Jean Gimpel, Otto Scott, R.J. Rushdoony, Gary North, and a short paper Leithart had written over 20 years ago (I can't remember the title of the paper), I began to see that the Middle Ages had been seriously neglected in our modern age; dismissed as irrelevant.

Still, my view on Constantine prior to reading this book, is that he probably was not a Christian until he agreed to be baptized just before his death. He, and Eusebius, in my previous view, were Arian, and Arianism was compatible with the old Roman cult (Jesus, just a man, ascends to godhood, if he can, so can Caesar). So, although I am intensely interested in redeeming the Middle Ages, I had, up till now, been disinterested in Constantine.

Surely, I thought, from reading Rushdoony, the spread of Christianity had been pervasive enough, that Constantine only did what any other pagan emperor, in his right mind, would do to save the empire. And admit defeat to Christianity, which up until this point, had spread into every institution within Rome. Not that Rushdoony had ever stated that (did he?), but it seemed to be implied from his argumentation. Yet Leithart states:

"Constantine's reasoning here was less sociological than many of the modern accounts suggest. When he rebuked Christians for their quarrels, he was not arguing that the church should remain unified so it could serve as the glue of imperial power. Such a claim would be nonsensical, since at the time of Constantine's conversion the Christian population-cohesive and well organized to be sure-amounted to about 10-15 percent of the population. The church did not provide enough glue to stick the empire together. Constantine's argument was directly theological." (Kindle Location:825-28).

I found this astonishing! 10 - 15% of the population? Well then, that puts just about everything I thought I knew about Constantine and this time of history on its head. Leithart continues:

"In a letter of 332 urging the people of Antioch to desist from their efforts to call Eusebius as their bishop, he referred to "our Savior's words and precepts as a model, as it were, of what our life should be."71 He rebuked the Arians for "declaring and confessing that they believe things contrary to the divinely inspired Scriptures."72 He was acting on this faith when he provided fifty copies of the Bible to the churches under Eusebius' care." (Location: 902-5)

So then, so much for Constantine being Arian.

Leithart touches on the treatment of the Jews under Constantine, and in defending where the Church landed on the issue (against persecuting Jews), points out:

"Yet it was one of Yoder's main "Constantinian" theologians, Augustine, who stemmed the tide. Augustine's sermons are nearly as full of the themes of adversus Iudaeos as those of any church father, but after working through his "literal" commentary on Genesis and formulating a response to Faustus, he came to a quite different position. Crucially, he affirmed that the sacrifices and rites of the Old Testament were commanded by God and, moreover, that precisely by putting the law into bodily practice, the Jews became fitting types of the coming Lord. Their dignity in salvation history depended on obedience to what earlier Christians had dismissed as "carnal" law. God told them to sacrifice, and when they did, they foreshadowed the passion of the incarnate Son. It was a brilliant maneuver, striking down the anti-incarnational and anti-Jewish elements of Faustus's theology at a single blow while simultaneously correcting the soft Marcionism of Catholics by binding Old and New unbreakably together." (Location:1396-1401)

He references Paula Fredriksen's book Augustine and the Jews. Which I may add to my 'to-read list'. This is a crucial development in the history of the Church, and also, an excellent counter-view to our wide-spread Marcionism in today's Church.

Another point that Leithart gives to my utter instruction is that the concept of the "liberty of conscience" had its origin in the Church father, Lanctantius (Location:1455-58). And here I figured it was an idea that had been worked out much later, either in the Middle Ages or during the Reformation. I am most definitely adding Lanctantius' book Divine Institutions to my reading list.

Yoder's Ana-Baptism, according to Leithart, gets in his way of assessing Constantine rightly. Constantine would appear more in agreement with Yoder than Yoder had realized. Leithart points out:

"Eusebius's account is revealing for our purposes, particularly in the contrast that Eusebius draws between Constantine the emperor and Constantine the baptized Christian. Baptism was the moment of his "regeneration and perfection," the moment when the emperor was received into the people of God. Constantine had the same view. Not only did he discard the imperial purple when he took on the baptismal white, but in his final speech to Eusebius and the other bishops he expressed his wish that, should his life continue, he would be "associate[d] with the people of God, and unite with them in prayer as a member of his church" and devote himself to "such a course of life as befits his service." This comes in the closing chapters of a biography that has described Constantine's vision before the battle with Maxentius, his support for the church and suppression of paganism, his Christian legislation, his devotion to prayer and study, his victories in wars often presented as holy wars, his missionary zeal. At the end of all this, Eusebius quoted Constantine saying that in the future he would devote himself to the service of the God whose salvation was sealed to him in his baptism. As Eusebius recounted the story, Constantine seemed to believe there was a basic incompatibility between being an emperor and being a Christian, between court and church, warfare and prayer, the purple and the white. It would be an ironic conclusion: Constantine, the first anti-Constantinian. Constantine the Yoderian." (Location:3248-56)

I have not read Yoder, so cannot fairly say he has dealt with Yoder fairly, but I can say that Leithart points out Yoder's fine qualities. For instance:

As noted above, unlike earlier modern forms of anti-Constantinianism, Yoder's critique is not premised on a dichotomy of power and religion, or politics and religion. Yoder says the opposite. The dualism he prefers is church-world, rather than church-state or religion-politics, and that is because the church is a polity, the only true polity, because it is the only polity that does justice in worshiping God. Precisely because it is already political, it is a betrayal for the church to attach itself to and find its identity in an existing worldly power structure. Precisely because the church is always a political power in itself, it does not need to find the stockpile of worldly weapons before it carries out its mission. On all this Yoder is correct. (Location:3621-25)

He is also correct in refusing the nature-grace dichotomy on which so much traditional political theology has been based. (Location: 3625-26)

The church is a polity, and thus any ethical or political system that minimizes or marginalizes Jesus and his teaching hardly counts as Christian. Here again I think Yoder is correct. (Location: 3630-31)

Leithart does, in my opinion, an excellent job in re-telling the story of Constantine using primary resources, stripped of all the Roman Catholic, anti-papal rhetoric, and anti-Christian sentiments of the enlightenment thinkers. The crux for this book to me is this:

"That, I think, is a fair historical portrait of the man, his career, his times and his effect on the church. In my judgment, it is a history that John Howard Yoder and other theological and historical critics get wrong on many particulars and in the general outline. Yoder cannot know as much as he claims about the pacifist consensus of the early church, badly misreads major figures like Eusebius and especially Augustine, oversimplifies the history of "mainstream Christianity" to the point of caricature, and tries to convince us that the orthodox church handed missionary activity to heretics for a millennium after Constantine. His rhetoric of anti-Constantinianism discourages Christians from a serious and sympathetic engagement with more than a millennium of Christian theological, and political theological, reflection." (Location: 3314-18)

That's why I am very interested in reading clear, well documented history of the Middle Ages. It all begins with this subject, and this book I will be recommending to others for years to come.

[Daniel Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before reading: I've always lived in a Protestant, half-Anabaptist milieu in which Constantine is basically a dirty word, both a symptom and a cause of everything that's wrong with the Church, and thank goodness for the Reformation and Enlightenment secularism putting us back on the right track of following Jesus. Perhaps Leithart can cure me of my delusions, or perhaps he will confirm me in my views. I hope, at any rate, that he will challenge me. (Also, Constantine is so unpopular these days that he must have done something right...)

After reading:

Why does Constantine matter? Because what your attitudes are (as a Christian; if you're not a Christian, this is purely academic) to what he did will likely inform your attitudes to political power today. The subtitle of this book contains the phrase 'the Dawn of Christendom', which is entirely appropriate, but the word 'Christendom' almost never appears as far as I noticed, despite running large as a them throughout. The question that we must ask is, was Christendom a Good Thing? The answer is, of course, Yes and No, but how we express that answer is revealing. It is certainly a debate worth having, though I see no reason to come off any fences after reading a book which is consciously and openly polemical. The main target of the polemic is John Howard Yoder, a twentieth century defender of pacifism whom Leithart correctly describes as 'probably the most influential Mennonite theologian who ever lived.' As one might imagine, he was not a fan of Constantine.

A chapter-by-chapter summary of the arguments will follow shortly. First, some thoughts from me. It seems to me that theologians who defend the idea of Christendom sometimes slightly miss the point. Christendom may well have been a good thing, even in worldly terms; it may even have been a divinely inspired thing. It is undoubtedly worth pointing out to the modern, secular West how many of its institutions and cultural values come from Christendom. But this is all failing to acknowledge the elephant in the room, which is that it is no longer a Thing. Whatever it may have been and done, it is no longer being and doing it, and though it may be lamented, there is no use pretending that it is still operative when it isn't. It was a worldly domain, and, like all worldly domains, when God had finished his purposes for it, it passed away. And like the passing of a dear (or not so dear) friend, we must come to terms with it, not deny it and complain to everyone else that they are not denying it. No-one said it was going to be easy.

Chapter 1 - Sanguinary Edicts: Arguing against Gibbon and his disciples who have attempted to downplay the extent, importance, cruelty, and gratuity of pagan persecution of Christians in late antiquity.

Chapter 2 - Jupiter on the Throne: About Diocletian. The anarchic empire he came to control, the order he established (the 'tetrarchy').

Chapter 3 - Instinctu Divinitatis: The beginning of Constantine's reign, up to the Milvian bridge. A few hints of things to come, chiefly Constantine's refusal to offer pagan sacrifice.

Chapter 4 - By This Sign: Leithart argues that Constantine experience a genuine religious vision before the Milvian bridge, and that this was responsible for a very personal shift in his beliefs towards Christianity. Further, that his Christian faith continued to grow throughout his life, and was both well-informed and fee from cynicism. In short, that he was a sincere, if flawed, believer in Christ.

Chapter 5 - Liberator Ecclesiae: Firstly, about the 'Edict of Milan', which was not exactly an edict, and not exactly from Milan; Leithart argues that Constantine's religious policy was one of toleration, not persecution. His rise to power over Licinius; then, his building projects of churches to outshine the pagan temples. Leithart makes a solid defence of early Christian art against its detractors.

Chapter 6 - End of Sacrifice: Constantine's reign marked the beginning of the end of the practice of pagan sacrifice. Of that there is little doubt, but there is a question of how directly and personally responsible he was. Certainly he regarded sacrifice with a degree of revulsion, and he seems to have instituted decrees against it, but it also seems that he went to no great effort to enforce those decrees.

Chapter 7 - Common Bishop: A common charge against Constantine (indeed, against orthodox Christianity) is that he arbitrarily forced particular doctrines on the church against the will of actual Christians. It is certainly true that he pleaded very passionately for unity, and sometimes enforced it at the point of a sword. It is impossible not to criticize him for his persecution of the Donatists, but it must be noted that he eventually gave up on trying to stamp them out, and eventually they faded away of their own accord. As for his supposed rigging of proceedings at Nicaea, more will follow on that in the next chapter.

Chapter 8 - Nicaea and After: Constantine originally took little interest in the Arian controversy, demanding only concord and unity. We actually know very little about what happened at the Council itself, though we have no evidence of Constantine forcing anything on anyone. But one cannot help admiring his powers of persuasion in getting two hundred bickering bishops to agree on anything. In this chapter, Leithart lays into Yoder's views on the relationship between church and state with every argument he can muster.

Chapter 9 - Seeds of Evangelical Law: Leithart argues that Rome's martial culture of sending its young men to conquer on its behalf amounted to a cult of human sacrifice to the goddess Roma. Likewise its practice of watching gladiatorial combat was aimed at the same purpose. Thus, Constantine's use of both pagan and Christian arguments against them in his lawmaking were nothing less than a fundamental attack on Rome's culture. Leithart also defends Constantine against critics who accuse him of being obsessed with regulating sex, noting that that did not appear so absurdly prurient even to pagans at the time, additionally claiming (dubiously) that those laws were simply expressions of his own personal disgust, and were never seriously enforced or obeyed.

Chapter 10 - Justice for All: Leithart argues that Constantine began many reforms of a system that was not so much friendly to corruption as defined by it, reforms that were aimed at helping the poor and weak, widows and orphans, and slaves. Moreover, he deserves praise of for inroads into the ancient practice of exposing infants to die, and for his reluctance to use capital punishment - although the various murders of his own family members are distinctly less praiseworthy. this is all part of a broader first attempt at what Leithart calls 'the evangelization of law'.

Chapter 11 - One God, One Emperor: This chapter mainly serves as an introduction to the rest of the book, but Leithart does note a shift from the traditional Roman emperor-as-God to emperor-under-God, which seems to be a precursor of medieval/Renaissance ideas of kingship.

Chapter 12 - Pacifist Church?: Yoder believed that the church was originally entirely pacifist, but the Constantinian 'apostasy' was the culmination of a move towards unacceptable accommodation. Working through various historical and textual details, Leithart disputes this, asserting that the picture is highly ambiguous both before and after Constantine.

Chapter 13 - Christian Empire, Christian Mission: Leithart refutes Yoder's idea that the early church was universally anti-imperialist, arguing that the Christians were happy to work with the empire and pray for its security, while also refusing to sell out to its ideology. (There is a whole lot of theology in this chapter which is beyond my powers of summary.)

Chapter 14 - Rome Baptized: Essentially just a summary of the rest of the book. Leithart acknowledges that Yoder's main target was not so much Constantine as a person as it is what he calls 'Constantinianism', which is a general tendency that can be seen at all times within Christianity. The result is a long complicated discussion of the relationship between the church and political power, which can only be grasped by reading it in full.

[Joel Wentz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank God (literally) for Peter Leithart. He brings much-needed clarity, balance, historically-informed perspective, and fantastic writing to overly simplistic, back-and-forth arguments that plague the church today. This is an outstanding corrective/balance to the general framework put forward by the likes of Yoder and Hauerwas (which, by the way, I'm very sympathetic to - Yoder's 'Politics of Jesus' had a tremendous impact on me during college).

Leithart's writing is just as sharp and enjoyable as ever, but this particular book does slow down in the gritty, crunchy layers of history that he brings to ground his argument. The first several hundred pages are a dense, detailed overview of the before-and-after of Constantine's rule in Rome, and while it does add value to his overall argument, it can simply drag as a reading experience.

Overall, his is a remarkably balanced perspective, giving much credit to Yoder where it is due, but refusing any easy answers. Any thoughtful Christian, who wants to have a nuanced approach to politics in our world today, owes it to themselves to be familiar with Leithart's arguments. The church was never 'pristine' or perfect in the first few centuries after Jesus, and it certainly didn't get irreversibly corrupted by Constantine, only be to magically 'recovered' in the wake of the Anabaptist movement during the reformation. Don't get bamboozled by shallow, reductionistic arguments that excise vast swaths of church history. Read Leithart instead.

[Rafael Salazar · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent historical study of the life and times of the infamous Emperor Constantine. Leithart clarifies several aspects of this monumentally influential figure in both Western civilization and church history. The book is framed within Leithart's polemic against Yoder and delivers a powerful critique of classic and Yoderian anti-c0nstantinianism. Properly grasping the life of Constantine is crucial to envision the public theology of Augustine, as well as to sift through the manifold junk passing as "common good public theology" these days.

[Grace Achord · Rating 5 out of 5]

His arguments don't make Constantine a saint, but they do make him at least a Christian. Constantine initiated a Christian Rome; he baptized it, though it was indeed an infant baptism.

The scholarship is incredibly thorough, and Leithart provides ample historical context to help modern readers approach Constantine in his own time.

An enriching read.

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought provoking. Helped me understand how the Roman Catholic Church came to be what it was before the Reformation. Mostly a rebuttal of Yoder's work on Constantine, which I am not familiar with, however Leithart includes enough detail to make it readable.

[Ben Thurley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leithart's aims for this relatively slim volume are ambitious. First, he writes a fairly brisk biography of Constantine and history of the Roman Empire in the 3rd and 4th Centuries. Second, as he lays out this historical account, he draws on recent scholarship to rebut popular caricatures about Constantine, forcefully dispelling the notions, for example, that Constantine embarked on violent suppression of paganism, or somehow 'controlled' the church or dictated Christian theology. Third, he mounts a polemic against the anabaptist critique of "Constantinianism" as exemplified by John Howard Yoder and students such as Stanley Hauerwas. Finally, he sketches, very briefly, some of the contributions his assessment of Constantine's legacy might have for contemporary political-theological reflection.

In these aims, he largely succeeds. The Constantine that emerges from Leithart's account is a shrewd politician, an effective military leader and, in the complex ways that any of us are, a committed Christian – who ruled with tolerance for the pagan majority of the Empire but did indeed apply imperial power to support the church, influence aspects of law protecting poor and vulnerable people, and undermining sacrifice and spectacle. While not shying away from Constantine's faults or willingness to act brutally when required, Leithart's position is that these all are, by and large, good things, setting in motion a process whereby the Empire was baptised into an alternative politics, implicit in Jesus' call to discipleship.

As that last sentence indicates, disagreement with Yoder is probably the most contentious of Letihart's aims in Defending Constantine. Where Yoder regards the conversion of the Empire as a "Fall" narrative, namely the seduction or capitulation of the church to the temptations of worldly power and privilege, Leithart regards it rather, as the "baptism" of Rome in which an understanding of Jesus and Spirit moves people, indeed an Empire, from the world of "sacrifice, purity, temples and sacred space" into a new religio-socio-political world.

Through Constantine, Rome was baptized into a world without animal sacrifice and officially recognized the true sacrificial city, the one community that does offer a foretaste of the final kingdom. Christian Rome was in its infancy, but that was hardly surprising. All baptisms are infant baptisms.

As historical analysis, this is clearly correct even if one might construe its underlying theology differently. Something momentous occurred which shaped the emergence of Christian Europe and the contemporary post-Christian West.

Leithart, though, wants to take it further and argue that to "avoid apocalypse" will require a movement of "re-evangelisation" and a renewed baptism of nations and cultures today, and the formation of a "Christically centred politics" analogous to that Constantinian moment. I'm not sure that is either possible, or desirable. Where Rome had Constantine, we have Trump. The politicians, pastors and theologians today most likely to see themselves in Constantinian mode as "defenders of the faith", or most adept at using the symbols and structures of Christian faith to urge their own vision for the remaking of society, are the last people we should trust with such a task.

[Jesse Broussard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This is the first time I've decided to intentionally wait over two months before reviewing a book.

To get all the boring yet essential stuff out of the way: Leithart is brilliant. This is not really news to any of my classmates; it's like saying "Obama is president." Yeah. We know that. But to those of you who haven't had the privilege of taking Theology from the guy who was being published in theological journals before I was born and would still manage to smoke me in basketball, allow me to inform you: Leithart is brilliant. Secondly, he's not lazy, and not only has he written about as many books as I've read, but he reads a few thousand per week and never forgets a word of them. This is the only explanation. I think he's a vampire. Or at least the Count of Monte Cristo.

I distinctly remember one all-night study group that I had in which we, foolish delinquents that we were, walked past Leithart's office to go get coffee at midnight. He was sitting there instructing his computer on the finer points of supra vs. infralapsarianism and its effects upon the reconciliation of the soteriological and ecclesiological disparities in Augustin's De Trinitate and City of God (or playing minesweeper; it's really hard to say), and, when our study group finally realized that we had no hope of remembering which route was taken by Darius and which by Xerxes and had settled for the somewhat less productive task of drawing a fleet of planes bombing the very accurately detailed (hail Everardus) British Isles, we decided to go for a walk to clear our heads. This was about two am, and Leithart was still in his office, either in the running for the theological equivalent of the nobel prize or setting a new record for the "experienced" category. When we walked by his office again at four, he was still there, apparently unmoved, but wearing a different shirt and tie. He then led morning prayer at six-thirty, which was when I decided to give up on life and start taking my computer games more seriously.

Anyway, this book is by Leithart, which is a very good thing. However, even his tremendous ethos (think reputation) may not manage to drive so much as the title through the emotional antagonism that the vast majority of the church has toward Constantine. I had no such hesitation, as, on the one hand, I don't believe that Shakespeare is Shakespeare, or that AIDS is caused by an STD, or that our last president was stupid, or (no stoning me allowed) that our current one is evil, and on the other hand, I could easily believe that Leithart and Constantine were good friends back in the day, when Leithart was young and foolish, so I was eager to believe the best of Constantine. Plus he has an awesome name. However, I and my kiddie-pool enthusiasm weren't quite prepared for the tsunami of Leithart's nearly exhaustive knowledge of the subject. In some ways, this book reminded me of his Brazos commentary on 1 & 2 Kings, in which half of the book is spent interacting with other authors of differing opinions. There is no shortage of authors antagonistic toward Constantine, charging him with everything from brilliant and cynical statesmanship to being a rather dense tool of the devil to having extremely poor penmanship, and Leithart has to spend almost the entire book exhuming him so as to exonerate him before he got to the dessert: the last chapter: the baptism of the world.

I'll not even attempt to summarize in a book review what took a man such as Leithart an entire book to lay a foundation for, and forty pages to expound. Allow me to simply say this: I'm not actually as twitterpated about Leithart as I make myself out to be. I believe him to be tremendously brilliant, but there are actually several points upon which, I flatter myself, I disagree with him. Probably I don't even understand the issues that I disagree about, and lack the intelligence to comprehend, let alone defend my position, but so be it; I can only do what I can with what I was given, though I'm usually too busy eating kettle chips and reading Dilbert to do even that, so I operate on a different plane than men such as Leithart. However, this book was a sledgehammer. Had I loathed Leithart's very existence (which is impossible to do once you've met Smith, or at least heard him play piano), I still would have been thoroughly shaken. Had I ignored every argument that he made to lay the foundation for his final argument, I still would have been stunned by the breadth and the implications of it.

All of this to say that Leithart's Defending Constantine had a greater impact upon me than any other book I've read this year, and opened an entirely new way for me to view the world. It is a tremendous book, and very well worth the read.

[Leandro Dutra · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating book. One of these I think merits actually half a star less, but I cannot bring myself to give it only four — please do not hold that against me, as I find my use itself of stars shifts with time and humour.

Essentially it is a probing critique of John Howard Yoder’s anti-Constantinanism. While I myself am a critic of what one could call Constantinianism, this book would seem to challenge me, and it did, but not as I expected. Which is an index of a good book, when it actually surprises one positively.

He has to spend quite some effort delineating what Yoder understood — yes, the man is dead, so it is a pity Leithart wasn’t quite around at the time to initiate a public debate — by Constantinism, which is not quite my concept. So Leithart’s critique of Yoder’s anti-Constantinianism did not constitute a direct challenge to my own convictions; yet the book retained my interest because it mainly exhonerates Constantine, or at least enables us to understand him better, by a very balanced picture of Constantine himself and his times, correcting Yoder’s partisan & partial reading, while leaving open the door for better, more focused criticism.

Where it really lost the fifth star was only in the last pages of the final chapter, tellingly called ‘Rome baptized’, where Leithart’s ‘Federal vision’ leanings appear as given, which may make sense for adepts of the new perspective on Paul, for Iconodulics and the so, but will be baffling for the Evangelical reader, even the Reformed one that happens to have had no interest in the Federal vision.

In a series of baffling references:

He never explains what he means by ‘every baptism is a infant baptism’, which while probably meaning that all neophytes are babies in the faith, just waves away the very serious Radical Reformation (Anabaptist &, later, Baptist) challenge to the late Antiquity innovation of baby sprinkling;

He seems to say we should avert apocalypse, which may be related to some version of Postmillenniarism (I don’t know his position actually) but on the face of it sounds quite anti-Biblical, as we are to expect Jesus’ return, the sooner the better;

He seems to endorse Augustine’s baptismal regeneration convictions, which is a really big red flag for Biblical Christians, being the most radical, even heretical, extreme of the wide range of ideas broadly identified as Federal vision.

A very minor quibble is when he never explains why, in modernity, ‘there is blood, more… than ever… than any ancient tyranny would… and all of it human.’ I assume it is a reference to abortion, but I am baffled none the less.

Finally, he avoids the elephant in the room: Yoder’s having being posthumely discredited for having been a molester. But that is another issue. Barth was also discredit for bigamy, yet we still need probing critiques of his work.

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is more a 3-1/2 stars, but I think it is well written and he makes his points and offers good evidence to back up his claims. Constantine was influenced by Christianity and he certainly allows Christianity to influence the empire. The book is a major refutation of the many writings of John Howard Yoder (whom I have not read) who following his Anabaptist tradition basically sees all of church history from the immediate post-apostolic period to the time of the Anabaptists as fallen and corrupt. Leithart makes well reasoned claims with good supporting evidence that this type of reading of Church history is possible only if one ignores the known facts and follows one's ideology. The time of Contstantine was not an abrupt and sudden departure from the Gospel, but was an organic continuation of Christianity spreading its message in the world. Constantine represented a real change for Christianity - for the movement was no longer being persecuted but now had reached into the halls of secular power. This was a natural continuation of Christian missionary success. What happens when an absolute monarchical ruler encourages the teachings of the the Crucified Lord to be adopted throughout his empire? What unfolded was inspired by the Holy Spirit, but was also a test of how Christianity can be lived at all levels of society and throughout one society. Where I might part company with Leithart is what lessons should be learned in America where many want to say this is a Christian society. Constantine had no separation of church and state, and so gets judged harshly for ways in which Christianity may have failed to influence power. In America there is clear separation of church and state, and our leaders do not answer to any one vision of Christianity. Thus our leaders can with self stated "clear consciences" make all kinds of choices that include doing what cannot be defended in the Gospels and feel they don't have to be "Christian" consistently but can pick and choose when and how to apply the Gospel and defend themselves when they violate Christ's commandments completely.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Constantine is the object of a great deal of criticism - and it has a long unjustified history. Not only are crank novelists like Dan Brown inwardly terrorized by the thought of a Christian emperor (as are former Catholics like popular historian James Carroll), but influential Protestant theologians whose thought and work are - regardless - very important. Leithart goes after one of the most influential in our day, John Howard Yoder, whom he believes does a profound disservice to the true history of Christianity and Christian thought for the sake of a narrative that rises and falls on a deeply flawed claim of "Constantinianism": the accommodation of the Church to political power rooted in a shift from pacifism to justifying and even sanctifying war.

Yoder's emphasis is on theology, particularly the doctrine of the church, but rests on historical interpretation. Stanley Hauerwas and Darrell Guder, for example, are important thinkers influenced by Yoder in this regard. Leithart is not unsympathetic to them, but insists on getting the story right through preserving the facts about Constantine and what he calls a "Constantinian moment" in church history (Eusebius of Caesarea and other bishops' enthusiastic support of Constantine), rather than a "Constantinian shift."

Leithart's challenge to Yoder, he insists, is theological but he spends the vast majority of the book doing just what his title says, "defending Constantine." It is only in the final two chapters that Leithart's theological critique is revealed after attacking Yoder's historical understanding.

For students of theology and history, I highly recommend this book for providing a more complete and perhaps more accurate view of Constantine and Constantinianism than you might expect.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A colossal book. Dr. Leithart has done his homework and succeeds brilliantly in making Constantine and his conversion, despite several failures, as a fitting expression of Roman Imperial Christianity given his context and predecessors.

Having built a grand foundation on extensive research, Leithart battles Yoder's Anabaptistic reading of church history, pacifism, and anti-Imperial issues. The last chapter is a brilliant culmination of a lot that Leithart's been trying to say.

Postscript:
Good still, and one of Leithart's better forays into history, though I'm told that the early church was actually more pacifistic than Leithart wanted to imply and his moves against Yoder were more or less pulling at straws. The simpler solution is to point out that someone like Yoder himself, as an Anabaptist, would not like a lot of what the early, early church did and thus he should theoretically have no methodological problem with the Reformers appealing to Scripture and natural law in opposition to the early church. Still, solid and needed in a day when Evangelical Christians don't really know how important Christian magistrates are.