Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (24 page)

In any case, the crucial innovation was the introduction of the term homoousios, "one substance," to describe the relationship of the Father and Son. Eusebius credits Constantine with offering the term,"
but Ossius and Alexander may have had a prior agreement to introduce it as a way of weeding out Arius's allies."
If Constantine indeed suggested this solution, he did it in collusion with the two bishops. When some of the bishops objected, Constantine offered an interpretation that satisfied all but two Libyan bishops, who may have acted in defense of Arius, a fellow Libyan. Arius was excommunicated and sent into exile. Not long after, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis extended hospitality to some Arians, and as a result they too were deposed and excommunicated, and Constantine even charged Euesbius with treachery in allying with Licinius.19

We should not underestimate Constantine's achievement. Of at least two hundred often irascible bishops, only two refused to sign off on the creed. Many had come to the council with sympathy for Arius, and it is implausible that they quietly accepted "an openly Sabellian creed." It is also unlikely that Origenists would have abandoned their belief in three hypostases. Somehow the formula worked for almost everyone, with homoousios "not a flag to be nailed to the masthead, a word around which self-conscious schools of theology could rally," but instead "an apotropaic formula for resisting Arianism
.1120 Constantine did not dominate the council. He did not formulate the final creed, nor did he sign off on it-being, again, an unbaptized nonbishop. It is difficult, however, to believe that the bishops could have come to such a thoroughgoing conclusion without his political skill and strength of personality.

At the same time, Nicaea was not what it is often said to be. Later legend treats the council at Nicaea-a city named "Victory"-as the decisive triumph of christological orthodoxy. In fact, it was only the first round of a theological, political and intensely personal controversy that consumed the Eastern Church through the middle decades of the fourth century. At first no one treated the Nicene Creed as exclusively definitive, and most churches continued to use their pre-Nicene confessions and creeds. Only with the formulation of the theory, late in the fourth century, that ecumenical creeds outranked local creeds did the Nicene formula take on its aura of final authority. Over the last decade of his life, Constantine was in the thick of the controversy, attempting reconciliations between Arius and the church at Alexandria, exiling a bishop here and restoring one there. Councils throughout that decade met without Constantine's initiative, and they often came to contradictory conclusions.

Constantine had given the Donatists several chances, and he did the same for Arius. In 327 he reconvened the Council of Nicaea, where Arius insisted that he could accept the Nicene Creed. Constantine invited him to court with hopes of ending his exile, and the following year he wrote to Alexander urging him to receive Arius back into communion. Arius proved intransigent, as did both Alexander and his successor Athanasius. Eusebius and Theognis claimed to accept homoousios, arguing that they objected only to the anathemas, which they did not think applied to Arius, and asked the bishops at the second convening of Nicaea to petition the emperor for an end to their exile. Constantine agreed, recalled the two excommunicated and exiled bishops, and reinstalled them into their sees, forcing out the bishops who had replaced them.21

When Arius, perhaps inadvertently, seemed to threaten schism by referring to the support he enjoyed in his native Libya, Constantine lost patience and sent him a railing letter. Condemning him for his similarity to the war god Aries, he asked, "Are you, then, really blameless, gallows rogue? Have you not, then, really perished, sorry fellow, surrounded by such great horror? We know, we know your undertaking; what kind of anxiety, what kind of fear troubles you, wretched and miserable person, has not escaped our notice. Oh, the dullness of your wits, you profane person, who do not restrain your soul's sickness and helplessness, who un
dermine the truth by varied discourses."22

Constantine was no longer of the opinion that the Arian conflict was over trivial matters:

Do you say that the "the Word of his essence is the Word without beginning and without end?" I acquiesce in this; believe so. If you add anything further, this I abrogate. If you join anything to an impious separation, I confess that I neither see nor perceive this.... If you say that "the spirit of eternity was born in the pre-eminent Word," I receive it. Who has known the Father, unless he who comes from the Father? Whom has the Father known, unless him whom he has begotten from himself eternally and without beginning? You think that you ought to substitute a "foreign hypostasis," believing doubtless badly; I know that the plentitude of the Father's and the Son's pre-eminent and all-pervading power is one substance
.21

Constantine knew how to insult, but what is most striking in his correspondence from the period is the pleading tone. Theoretically allpowerful within the empire, the emperor begs bishops to get along. Meanwhile, vocal pro-Nicene bishops were deposed and exiled. Marcellus of Ancyra was condemned at Constantinople for going overboard in his criticisms of Eusebius, and Eustathius of Antioch was condemned as a Sabellian and for insulting the queen mother, Helena.24
Not everyone accepted his deposition, and in Antioch a separate church was rapidly assembled with Eustathius as bishop. When riots broke out, Constantine had to send in troops to quell them and to oversee a new election, which ended with the selection of Eusebius of Caesarea, who, in conformity with the canons of Nicaea, refused.21

The church in Alexandria was also in turmoil. Alexander of Alexandria died on April 17, 328, and Athanasius was elected on May 9, in an election that was later challenged as shady and underhanded. If Constantine's relations with Alexander were strained, his spars with Athanasius threw off sparks. Both were domineering personalities. Athanasius, for all his repu
tation for piety and theological acumen, was a tough, skillful infighter, a community organizer and rabble rouser, willing to use intimidation or other tools in pursuit of his aims. Above all, the clash was one between an emperor whose main hope for the church was concord and a bishop who wanted no part of a consensus not based on truth.26

Once Athanasius was made bishop, Constantine renewed his efforts to get Arius readmitted to the church. When Athanasius refused, Constantine threatened to depose him. The situation was exacerbated by the side conflict between Athansius and the Meletians of Alexandria, who accused Athanasius of trying to impose a levy on Egyptian linen and of bribery and sacrilege. The latter charge rested on allegations about the actions of one of the bishop's agents, Macarius. The Meletians claimed that Macarius burst in on Ischyras, whose right to priestly office Athanasius contested, while Ischyras was celebrating Mass, overturned the altar, burned a book, and broke a Eucharistic chalice.27
Constantine summoned the bishops to Nicomedia in 332, where Athanasius produced a letter in which Ischyras admitted that the charge was false. Athanasius was exonerated, but the Meletian bishops were not satisfied with the outcome and appealed again to Constantine, repeating the charge that Athanasius was responsible for the chalice and adding a charge that Athanasius had murdered Arsenius. They brought a burned hand as evidence, the only surviving limb of Arsenius. At Antioch, the story goes, Athanasius produced Arse- nius, who had been hiding in a monastery, and the charges were again dropped.21

Arius was still eager to be vindicated, and he found allies in the Meletians who also wanted to remove Athanasius. In 334 Constantine called yet another council, this one at Caesarea, to resolve the dispute once and for all. Athanasius refused to attend, and Constantine backed down. The following year the bishops were assembled in Tyre, Athanasius among them, and he again had to answer the charge of breaking the sacred chalice. Ischyras had retracted his retraction in the meantime and added to the
charges the claim that Athanasius had imprisoned him on the false charge that he, Ischyras, had stoned a statue of the emperor. Five other Meletian bishops claimed they had been flogged on orders from the bishop of Alexandria. Recognizing that the council was set against him, Athanasius slipped away one night in disguise and was condemned by the council in absentia.29

Athanasius sailed to Constantinople, where he confronted the emperor in disguise in one of the most dramatic scenes in the series of dramatic events:

As I was making my entry into the city which bears our name, in this our most flourishing home, Constantinople,-and it happened that I was riding on horseback at the time,-suddenly the Bishop Athanasius, with certain ecclesiastics whom he had around him, presented himself so unexpectedly in our path, as to produce an occasion of consternation. For the Omniscient God is my witness that at first sight I did not recognize him until some of my attendants, in answer to my enquiry, informed me, as was very natural, both who he was, and what injustice he had suffered. At that time indeed I neither conversed, nor held any communication with him. But as he repeatedly entreated an audience, and I had not only refused it, but almost ordered that he should be removed from my presence, he said with greater boldness, that he petitioned for nothing more than that you might be summoned hither, in order that in our presence, he, driven by necessity to such a course, might have a fair opportunity afforded him of complaining of his wrongs.3o

Constantine was persuaded and issued a blistering condemnation of the proceedings at Tyre. Within a few days a delegation of Athanasius's enemies arrived in Constantinople to see the emperor, including Eusebius of Caesarea and Eusebius of Nicomedia, and they persuaded the emperor to reverse himself. The bishop of Alexandria was not deposed, but he was exiled-not for the last time-to Trier.31

Arius meanwhile continued his appeals to the emperor. He professed to accept the orthodox faith in a letter to Constantine, and Constantine, ever eager to reunite the church, accepted his profession. It was not to be. Reputedly on his way to church to be readmitted, he suffered a bizarre death, perhaps by poisoning, in what James Joyce called a "Greek watercloset" where "with beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a widowed see, with uplifted omophorion," he died "with clotted hinderparts."32
Legend has it that no one used the seat again for some time, and other legends say that Theodosius set up statues of Arius in Alexandria so that people could amuse themselves by spattering it with shit and piss.33

This confusing and convoluted history is not the history of a Constantine with absolute control of the church. If anything, he was too easily persuaded by whatever powerful episcopal personality happened to be speaking to him, too ready to change course when he saw a chance for reconciliation. Now Athanasius, now Arius, now Eusebius had his ear, and imperial policy changed accordingly. One may interpret this as cynical and calculating. It is more likely uncynical politics: Constantine was willing to work with team players but marginalized divisive zealots.34
Whatever policy and calculation were involved, we ought not discount the role of sincere but blundering clemency.

WHAT HAS BISHOP TO Do WITH PALACE?

As used by John Howard Yoder, "Constantinianism" is a "heresy" and represents the "fourth-century shift" that created a gap between biblical Christianity and us, a "disavowal and apostasy."35
For Yoder, "Constantinianism" is not identical with the work and achievements of Constantine. Nor is it confined to a particular period of Western history, or necessarily linked with any particular form of church-state settlement. In his most complete discussion, an essay in Priestly Kingdom, he multiplies neo- prefixes to show that even after the Reformation, even after disestablishment, even in liberation theologies, some form of the protean heresy of Constantinianism still dominates.

Instead of a particular man, a particular set of policies, or a particular era, Constantine has a "code function": "the first emperor to tolerate, then to favor, and then to participate in the administration of the Christian churches is the symbol of a shift in relationships which had begun before he came on the scene and was not completed until nearly a century after his death." Yoder believes "his thoughts and his deeds are eminently representative of the nature of the shift."36
"Constantinianism" refers to a theology and ecclesial practice that took form when the church assumed a dominant position in Roman society. Constantinianism is the wedding of piety to power
'37 the notion that the empire or state, the ruler of civil government rather than the church, is the primary bearer of meaning in history. When the church succumbs to Constantinianism, Christians think they need to link themselves to the "real powers" in the palace or White House in order to get things done, in order to take some control of history.

Stanley Hauerwas has taken up and popularized Yoder's critique, though he has not treated it as systematically as Yoder. In a penetrating summary of Hauerwas's work, R. R. Reno suggests that Hauerwas uses the word to describe "the ways in which Christian truth becomes innocuous and weightless." Constantinianism is a "rhetorical device for sharpening contrasts."38
Christianity can become weightless in different ways. Cultural accommodation is the most obvious form of Constantinianism; when the culture gets sufficiently "Christianized" that everyone behaves in a roughly Christian fashion, it is hard to see how to be a disciple, what difference it makes. On the other hand, appeals to transcendence can also be Constantinian if they contribute to the invisibility of the faith. Thus "Hauerwas rages against a mistaken view that the church gains weight through alliances to `real' forces (regnant regimes of political, cultural, and intellectual power), and at the same time he attacks modern theological attempts to make Christian invisibility into a
spiritual virtue."39
In sum, Reno sees the coherence of Hauerwas's position as a rhetorical coherence: