The Anatomy of a Hybrid

This is a great study guide for those interested in how the State historically has impacted the Church. Leonard Verduin writes with great insight and detail, making this book highly valuable for those trying to understand how the Church drifted so far from the teachings of Christ. Below is an excerpt describing the major transition that happened under Constantine.

The movement toward “Christian sacralism” began in A.D. 313 with the promulgation of the Edict of Toleration (also known as the Edict of Milan because it was first published in that city). This edict declared the Christian religion to be religio licita (a permitted cult), a status it had not had before. The immediate effect was the cessation of persecution, for the edict made the old charge of sacrilege-treason no longer possible. This change of climate allowed the Christians to come out of hiding, and it became apparent that the followers of Jesus were far more numerous than anyone had surmised. Through the Edict of Toleration the God of the Christians received space in the yellow pages. It could have been foreseen, however, that it would not sit right with the Christians to let him become one of many: their God was a God that ends all gods. The Christians continued to urge people to renounce the ancestral faith and its gods, embrace the one and only, and come to baptism.

As a result of either this intransigence on the part of the Christians or their unexpected numerical strength, soon after the Edict of Toleration a second edict was enacted that made Christianity the one and only legitimate faith. Christianity became the “right” religion, and all the rest were by implication “wrong.”  This sudden change of fortune for the Christian cause was largely the work of the emperor Constantine. For the part he had played in that mighty change he has been known ever since as Constantine the Great by all who think the Constantinian change was a benefaction for the cause of Christ. We must take a close look at that change to see whether such a high appraisal of it is warranted.

There is no evidence that Constantine had the faintest conception of progressive grace or the remotest understanding of authentic Christianity’s unique structuring of human society. All that happened was that the roles were reversed: the Christian faith now occupied the place from which the ancestral
faith had been expelled. Whereas Christianity had been persecuted hitherto, it now found itself in position to do some persecuting of its own-which it began at once to do. 

Elegant church structures, forerunners of the medieval cathedrals, were built at public expense, frequently on the ruins of an earlier shrine to some pagan deity.  Sunday, the first day of the week, which had been known to the early church as the “Lord’s Day,” was now proclaimed a legal holiday with the pagan name “day of the sun.” This return to the pre-Christian name for the Christian day of rest was no doubt due to the emperor’s continued reverence for the sun as a deity.

Constantine began at once to subsidize the Christian church with lavish money payments, and functionaries of the church were paid out of the public treasury. This led to an unholy scramble for appointment, often by persons who had neither theoretical nor experiential knowledge of the new faith. This scramble was accelerated by a decree that freed all clerics of public burdens, such as the paying of taxes.

It is quite clear that Constantine promoted the new faith mainly for its “immeasurable benefit to the commonwealth.” He has left no evidence that he placed any high value on Christianity’s doctrine of sin and grace, divine forgiveness, pardon and renewal, or love and mercy. It speaks for itself that Constantine, like Plato before him, would see in the private cult of religion a frightful threat to the sacral ideal. Thus, before the Constantinian change had come full circle, the death sentence had been prescribed for either holding or attending a conventicle.

The kingdom of Christ, which the Savior in his hour of trial had declared to be “not of this world,” was now as much a kingdom of the world as any that had ever existed. The sword that Jesus had told Peter to put away was again drawn from its sheath – by men who wanted to be known as vicars of this Peter. And these self-styled vicars began at once to instruct the regnum to hack and to hew with it in the very domain from which Jesus had banished it. The kingdom of Christ now pitted army against army, sword power against sword power, and from this point on warfare was under the water of baptism, a very “Christian” enterprise. By the year 416 the army was declared closed to all but Christians. Calling down fire from heaven to destroy those who stood in the way (behavior which Jesus had rebuked in unmistakable terms) was now under the benediction of that same Christ. Not only did the church now pronounce its blessing on wars fought for political aggrandizement, as a tool for “causing the empire to wax greater and greater,” but it also began to give its support to acts of violence perpetrated in the name of religion. 

Leonard Verduin, Anatomy of a Hybrid