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<\/a><\/p>\nModern Iznik (ancient Nicaea) is a beautiful little city on a lake.\u00a0 It is famous today for being the birthplace of Iznik tiles, a form of beautiful art which was co-opted by Europeans and relabeled Delft tiles.\u00a0\u00a0 But in 325 A.D. it was the locale Constantine chose to host the first \u2018ecumenical\u2019 council of the Christian church with bishops and others coming from all over the Empire, and indeed even from beyond the Empire\u00a0 (Armenia, Persia, even the Crimea).\u00a0\u00a0 For its day, it was remarkable and would still be if it happened today with all the advances of modern transportation. Most of those attending were pastors, not theologians, and unfortunately\u00a0 much mythology has arisen in regard to the role Constantine actually played in this assembly of clergy,\u00a0 recently exacerbated by Dan Brown\u2019s\u00a0 work of hysterical\u00a0 (as opposed to historical) fiction called The Da Vinci Code. <\/em> It appears that some 300 persons attended this meeting of the minds of Christianity.\u00a0 The locale for the meeting was chosen based on two\u00a0 considerations: 1) while Constantine had originally favored Ancrya the bishop of Ancrya was virulently anti-Arian, and Constantine thought another locale might be better conducive to a fair hearing on Arianism.\u00a0 We must remember that in fact Eusebius himself had Arian leanings. \u00a0 2) Nicea was closer to Nicomedia where Constantine had a palace, and he was hoping to invite those at the council to an after-party there\u2014 celebrating the 20th year of his reign.<\/p>\n It is clear enough from Eusebius\u2019 report about exactly what happened at Nicaea.\u00a0 First of all the clergy and bishops assembled and were seated.\u00a0\u00a0 Then Constantine came in with absolutely no body guard or any show of force.\u00a0 The clergy all rose and Constantine then moved to the very end of the row of seats.\u00a0 He did not immediately sit down.\u00a0 Indeed, he waited to be invited by the bishops to sit.\u00a0 Councils had been previously reserved for clergy only, and so of course there was some discussion about what chair the Emperor should occupy at such a meeting\u2014 for not only was he not a bishop, he was not even yet baptized!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What role would he play in the council?\u00a0 Was it the situation that the bishops would confer, but the Emperor would conclude?\u00a0\u00a0 This is actually the argument of both Burkhardt and Yoder who say Constantine had the decisive voice and vote on the matter, and they both appear to be historically wrong about this. \u00a0 Did Constantine himself come up with the word \u2018homousios\u2019 <\/em> to settle the debate about whether the Father and the Son shared one divine nature or merely had like divine natures? \u00a0\u00a0 Here is what Leithart says\u2014- these views are entirely arguments from silence!\u00a0\u00a0 He puts it this way:<\/p>\n \u201cBurkhardt\u2019s assessment of Constantine\u2019s role at Nicaea\u2013 \u2018insisting on homousios and cowing the majority into submission\u2013 is as unfounded as Carroll\u2019s claims. Both rest on the same evidence which is to say, on nothing!!! Eusebius left us an account of the council, which he attended, but he provided very little information about the course of the debates and motivation of the participants, and certainly no transcript. \u201d (p. 152).\u00a0 In fact\u00a0 Constantine\u2019s stated view was that \u201cwhatever is determined in the holy assemblies of bishops [and by those bishops] is to be regarded as indicative of the Divine Will.\u201d\u00a0 Had it been Constantine\u2019s\u00a0 desire to play a trump card or decide the matter or co-opt the church, what actually happened at Nicaea bears little hint of it. \u00a0 What happened was deep theological debates, which in various cases were surely above Constantine\u2019s\u00a0 pay grade or understanding.\u00a0 And furthermore, as\u00a0 Leithart keeps insisting,\u00a0 Constantine\u2019s goal by the council was the practical one of unifying the church in its belief and praxis,\u00a0 not subsuming the church and turning it into the religious department of the Empire. \u00a0 After all, the church was a separate entity from the State\u2014 it had its own officials, its own laws and sacred writings, its own traditions, its own worship life, its own religious instruction none of which was any part of Roman law or Greco-Roman pagan life\u2014 whether religious or political. <\/em>Nor did the church suddenly become a subheading or department of the Roman Empire.\u00a0 It had a life of its own.\u00a0\u00a0 To judge from what we know from the Donatist crisis,\u00a0 Constantine only intervened in that matter when various church councils had failed to solve the problem and there was still blood-letting going on.\u00a0 Peace and concord was within the provenance of the Emperor, and so he did intervene in that crisis.\u00a0\u00a0 But Nicaea was nothing like that crisis, and it did not involve blood being left on the lovely Izniks tiles. \u00a0\u00a0 In Nicaea the council was able to come to a proper conclusion and concordat,\u00a0 though of course a minority ended up being defined as outside of orthodoxy as a result. \u00a0 It would appear that if there was no actual bloodshed,\u00a0 Constantine limited himself to \u201cFacilitating the bishop\u2019s work by calling councils and providing venues and transport. Even his legal recognition of the conciliar decisions was unavoidable. After all, if he granted exemptions to Christian churches and clergy, he needed to know whom he was exempting.\u201d\u00a0 (p. 162).<\/p>\n Did Constantine run the council of Nicaea?\u00a0 In fact the answer is no. \u00a0 Bishop Ossius of Cordoba from the western end of the church ran it. \u00a0 Constantine did give the opening address in Latin, even though he knew Greek and the council was largely Greek speaking.\u00a0 When he spoke in the council his comments seem to be entirely predictable for a ruler\u2014 he was urging peace and moderation and resolution of difference, on whatever terms the bishops decided. \u00a0 As for the creed itself,\u00a0 Eusebius credits himself with the first draft of it,\u00a0 but he credits Constantine with the compromise term \u2018homousios\u2019.\u00a0 If in fact he suggested such a term, he must have consulted first with Bishops Ossius and Alexander (from the East).\u00a0 And in any case only two bishops out of the 2-300 refused to sign the concordat that involved this creed, and it was only the hard line Arians that found themselves on the outside looking in thereafter. \u00a0 Here, Ramsay MacMullen\u2019s book Voting on God, <\/em>while fascinating, is at various places unfair and flawed to what was accomplished at Nicaea. \u00a0 Here is where I stress\u00a0 that the notion that Constantine dreamed up or imposed orthodoxy on the church is not supported by the historical evidence, and we need to keep especially clearly in view that it was not until 30 years after Constantine\u2019s death that the church east, west and African agreed that \u2018these 27 books and no others\u2019\u00a0 would be in the NT. \u00a0 Christological orthodoxy\u00a0 Constantine had something to do with. \u00a0 Canonical closing, he did not.\u00a0\u00a0 In general Constantine was willing to work with team players,\u00a0 and ready to marginalize zealots like Arian that the majority clearly disagreed with.<\/p>\n The real burr under the Yoderian saddle is the wedding of piety to political power.\u00a0 On this model Christians commit the heresy of thinking that the real determiners and bearers of the meaning of history are politicians and governments, not churches, so if the church wants to make a historical difference, it must give the Emperor deference. \u00a0 To the following questions raised by Yoder (and answered yes),\u00a0 Leithart decisively answers no!\u2014- \u201c\u201dDid the church of the 4th century allow itself to be absorbed into the machinery of power? \u00a0 Did the bishops of the 4th century who accomodated themselves to Constantine [in some ways] lose their critical prophetic edge? Did they become yes-men to a brute and tyrant\/ Did the church become weightless and invisible?\u2026Yoder to the contrary Constantine did not call himself \u2018bishop to bishops\u2019. That was a concept his son Constantius II promoted, and it was roundly condemned by the real bishops.\u201d (pp. 177-78). \u00a0 What Yoder and others seem not to have grasped is that Constantine is not the watershed figure that reveals how Christianity capitulates to Empire.\u00a0 To the contrary,\u00a0 \u201cFor many Christians, such as Eusebius, the task of the hour was not to integrate the church into the empire. The empire had lost the battle with the church, and it was the empire that should [and did] make concessions. The church was not incorporated but victorious; the martyr\u2019s faith had been vindicated, and the task now was to integrate the emperor into the church.\u201d <\/em>(p. 183). \u00a0 In short, Leithart stands Yoder\u2019s argument on its head,\u00a0 shakes it and discovers it has no tangible coins in its pockets.\u00a0 Perhaps one could make some Yoderian complaints about later Christian rulers such as Theodosius II, \u00a0 but not against Constantine. \u00a0 And as for Constantius,\u00a0 Bishop Ossius who advised Constantine himself warned him\u2014 \u201cDo not intrude into the affairs of the church, and do not give us advice about these, matters, but rather receive instruction on them from us. God has given you kinship, but has entrusted us with what belongs to the Church\u201d\u00a0 Based on Jesus\u2019 \u2018Render unto Caesar\u2019 saying\u00a0 Ossius concludes \u201cneither do we bishops have the right to rule over the world, nor do you emperor, have the right to officiate the church\u201d\u00a0 (p. 186). \u00a0 This hardly sounds like the church clergy becoming mere chaplains and subheadings under the Emperor. \u00a0\u00a0 The church did not lose its capacity to offer prophetic critique. \u00a0 It simply became more like the situation between a King David and a prophet Nathan\u00a0 or say\u00a0 a King Uzziah and a prophet Isaiah. \u00a0 No one, I suspect would accuse Isaiah of being co-opted by the king just because he was a priest and a court prophet.\u00a0 And nor should the church of the 4th century be accused of being the Emperor\u2019s lap dog.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Modern Iznik (ancient Nicaea) is a beautiful little city on a lake.\u00a0 It is famous today for being the birthplace of Iznik tiles, a form of beautiful art which was co-opted by Europeans and relabeled Delft tiles.\u00a0\u00a0 But in 325 A.D. it was the locale Constantine chose to host the first \u2018ecumenical\u2019 council of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n