We're going into our third period of church
history here.
The first period we called the Apostolic Period,
and that was basically 33 AD to, what
was the round number we threw out?
100.
The next period we talked about was the
period of the Early Church, and that was
100 to about 313, 312, you could say.
Okay, so we talked about those.
Now, third, we're going to consider, this is
a big chunk, I know, we're going to
consider what I'm going to call the Christian
Empire, and we're going to date that from
312 to 1500, believe it or not, which
is a pretty big chunk of time, right?
We're talking about 1,200 years.
And of course, how Christianity was in 1500
was very different than how it was in
312.
We're not talking about one period of time
where it was uniform, not by any means.
But there are some very important themes that
take place during this time and things we
want to investigate together.
And so we're calling this period the Christian
Empire.
I suppose we'll spend two or three weeks
talking about the period of the Christian Empire,
then it's on to the time period of
the Reformation.
Now, one of the great things that we
want to talk about during this time, one
of the most important trends or characteristics takes
place at the beginning part of this period.
At the end of the 3rd century, by
the way, when I say 3rd century, raise
your hand if this is true, when I
say 3rd century, how many of you think
of the 300s?
Am I just funny on that?
I usually think of that, okay?
It's not.
The 3rd century is the 200s.
I have to always struggle to keep this
clear in my mind.
The 3rd century is the 200s, okay?
The 4th century is the 300s.
So, at the end of the 3rd century
and the beginning of the 4th century, it
looked like Christianity might be doomed.
I mean, you had had basically 300 years
of Christian growth and expansion.
During the end of this period, there were
starting to be Christian churches built and buildings
built.
After about 250 in the early 200s, 250
or so, Christians started being able to build
their own churches, build their own places of
worship.
The gospel was spreading.
What was it that happened at the end
of the 200s and the beginning of the
300s that made this difference and sort of
imperiled Christianity altogether?
Well, basically, it was a new outbreak of
vicious persecution.
Vicious persecution.
This is a name that should live in
infamy among Christians.
Diocletian conducted some of the worst persecutions against
the church ever.
Now, in fact, I've got something from an
edict he made from the Edicts of Diocletian
from Eusebius' history.
Basically, what they did was they divided the
Roman Empire between east and west.
And so, they would have two different emperors,
a western emperor and an eastern emperor.
So, when it says here at the beginning,
Diocletian and Maximum, that's talking about east and
west.
They declared that the meetings of the Christians
should be abolished.
What does that mean?
You can't go to church, right?
Christians can't meet.
It was in the 19th year of the
reign of Diocletian that imperial edicts were published
everywhere commanding that the churches be leveled to
the ground and that the scriptures be destroyed
by fire and ordering that those who held
places of honor be degraded and that they
of Caesar's household, if they persisted in the
profession of Christianity, be deprived of freedom.
Then it goes on to say, such was
the first edict against us, but not long
after, other decrees were issued commanding that all
the rulers of the churches in every place
be thrown into prison and afterwards, by every
means, be compelled to sacrifice to the pagan
gods.
This was a severe persecution.
I'll tell you what else really began in
this.
One of the great things that they did
in this was they took everybody, every Christian
who had a government job.
And again, the Roman government was huge.
I mean, think about it on the scale
today of the United States government.
Let's say they passed a law tomorrow that
said, if you're a Christian, you've got to
get out of the army and you've got
to get out of the civil service.
That's what this was like.
I mean, a huge blow against Christians everywhere.
And it looked like, not that Christianity would
be stamped out, but that Christianity would just
be made irrelevant.
At this time, you had a very steady
progression of Christian growth and influence.
And there was a substantial number of Christians.
Now, it looked like Christianity might be put
into this place.
But then, two very remarkable things happened in
the early part of the 4th century.
The second thing a lot of you probably
know about.
How many of you have ever heard the
name of Constantine?
The first one is almost more important, but
hardly anybody knows about it.
The first one happened, I can give you
the exact date, April 30th, 311.
This was the Edict of Toleration.
This had to do with the Roman Emperor
Galerius.
Now, Galerius had been a great persecutor of
the Church.
And what he...
I mean, this was one of the guys
who implemented and carried out the Diocletian Edicts.
This guy was a dedicated, aggressive persecutor of
the Church.
Surprisingly, he issued the Edict of Toleration on
his deathbed.
Now, he never admitted that he had been
wrong before, but he declared that he admired
the determination and the tenacity of Christians in
the face of persecution.
And he decided that for the good of
the Empire, he would allow them to meet
as long as they were orderly about it.
He also asked Christians to pray to their
God for the good of the Empire.
Now, this established the significant official toleration of
Christianity in the Roman Empire.
It's called the Edict of Toleration.
Now, there were times, many seasons in the
first 300 years of the Church, when Christians
were tolerated, but not officially.
They were tolerated just because the officials decided
that they weren't going to persecute them, right?
So, it was one of these things where
the officials could say, well, we decide we're
not going to persecute you, but we could
always change our mind.
Now, they passed a law that said Christians
can practice their religion.
Let's take a look at this Edict of
Toleration.
It's on this thing.
It's very interesting.
This is a rough translation of what Galerius
wrote.
He said, Among our other regulations, for the
permanent advantage of the public good, we have
so far attempted to bring all things into
conformity with the ancient laws and the public
discipline of the Romans.
Now, ancient law and public discipline, you know
what that means?
That means, give me that old time religion.
But when Galerius speaks of that old time
religion, what's he talking about?
Zeus, Apollos, you know, all the ancient Roman
gods.
He says at the end of that paragraph,
It has especially been our goal that the
Christians who had abandoned the religion of their
forefathers should return to right opinions.
Isn't it interesting to hear a pagan emperor
speak about this in this way?
Those Christians, they're abandoning that old time religion.
The faith of their forefathers.
They need to get back to the basics
here.
And so we did the best we could,
is what he's saying.
Then he goes on.
We don't know why such stubbornness and foolishness
took hold of the Christians.
So that instead of honoring these ancient institutions,
which perhaps their own ancestors established.
You see, this is what Galerius is saying.
Man, your great great great grandpa probably established
these religions and now you're abandoning them.
Romans, in their pagan religions, were very big
on ancestor worship.
So this is an important point to him.
We don't know why such stubbornness and foolishness
took hold of the Christians.
So that instead of honoring those ancient institutions,
which perhaps their own ancestors had established, they,
through caprice, made laws to themselves and drew
together into different societies, many men from widely
different backgrounds.
Can somebody translate for me?
What is offensive to Galerius there?
It's that whole principle in Galatians.
That in the church there's neither Jew, nor
Greek, nor slave, nor free, nor barbarian, or
civil, or whatever.
It just doesn't matter.
He goes, you know what they're doing among
those Christians?
They get together all these different people from
all these different backgrounds and they bring them
together in one society, in one club.
Why, it's an outrage.
It's a scandal.
Okay, he goes on.
Paragraph three.
After the publication of our edict, now he
means edicts of persecution, commanding Christians to observe
the ancient institutions, many of them were persuaded
through the fear of danger and many were
exposed to punishment.
You know what he's saying?
He's saying, some abandoned Christianity and came our
way, some didn't and were punished.
Now he says, apparently not very many of
them did, otherwise paragraph four would be unnecessary.
Nevertheless, because great numbers still persist in their
opinions, and because we have understood that at
the present day they neither pay reverence and
do adoration to the gods, nor yet worship
their own god, therefore we from our desired
generosity in giving pardon to all, have judged
fit to extend our generosity to those men
and to permit them again to be Christians
and to establish the places of their religious
assemblies so that they, yet so as they
offend not against good order.
Now, isn't it interesting how he says, we
haven't been able to, basically what he's saying
is, we haven't been able to make them
pagans and we haven't allowed them to be
Christians.
So now, because we're so generous, because we're
so nice, we're going to allow them to
be Christians just so as long as they
don't get out of hand in their orders,
in their assemblies.
And of course that was a big problem,
right?
There was always a riot breaking out whenever
a church service got together, right?
No, I'm being sarcastic.
It's almost funny that he says against the
public order, but you know, Christians were the
best friends the empire ever had.
And then he mentions that, kind of here
at the end, he goes, wherefore, it will
be the duty of Christians in return for
our toleration, in other words, because we're being
so nice to you, to pray to God
for our benefit and for the public good
and for their own good, that the public
good may continue safe in every place and
that they may, they themselves may live securely
in their homes.
Did this guy become a Christian?
No.
An absolute shock and surprise that this guy
on his deathbed issues, this man who had
been a lifelong, aggressive persecutor of the church,
now changes his mind.
And you know what basically changed his mind?
The Christians wouldn't quit.
He couldn't change him.
I mean, he tried the best he could.
But when they kept being thrown to the
lions, when they kept being burned at the
stake, when they kept being beheaded at the
chopping block and more and more people became
Christians and the Christians weren't being scared away
and they were strong in their faith, you
know what?
He said, I can't win.
Most of these Roman emperors, Galerius is probably
a good example.
The reason he persecuted Christians was he thought
it was politically important for him to do
it.
Now, this is what's kind of interesting about
this, is that at the end of his
life, when he saw that Christians weren't backing
down, he realized, this is doing more harm
than good.
So, it was politically smart for him to
issue this edict of toleration.
So, that's the first very big thing that
happened.
I mean, now, Christians are officially tolerated to
practice their faith in the Roman Empire.
A huge change.
Huge change.
Let's say you're a Christian in those days
and you have never been thrown in jail
for being a Christian.
No one in your family ever has.
But you know some people who have had.
And your pastor has served some jail time.
And so there's this climate of fear around
everything.
All the time.
You have to meet secretly.
You are very, very careful about who you
share the gospel with.
Right?
You know, I mean, that could get you
into a lot of trouble.
And so here you are doing your thing,
and all of a sudden, you read this
edict.
This emperor who has been persecuting you issues
this edict of toleration.
What are you thinking?
God has answered our prayers.
I mean, is there anything that any Christian
would think would be negative in that edict
of toleration?
No, not a thing.
All right, well, what's the next thing?
Number two, the conversion of Constantine.
Now, the whole dynamic of political structure in
the ancient Roman Empire is really complex.
I mean, really complex.
Let me just kind of make it too
simple.
I mean, I'm sacrificing some accuracy for the
sake of simplicity.
But in October of 312, so what are
we talking about?
We're talking about a year and a half
after the edict of toleration.
In October of 312, the imperial throne of
Rome was up for grabs.
And a young Roman general named Constantine commanded
all the armies of Britain and Gaul.
What do we call Gaul today?
France.
There were substantial Roman armies in Britain and
in France.
Constantine was the commander, was the general over
all those armies.
His armies supported him to be the next
emperor of Rome.
You know how in these Latin American countries
where, you know, a ruler dies and it's
basically the army that decides who's going to
be the next president or whatever?
That's how it was in the Roman Empire,
right?
You had the army, you had the power,
you had the right to be the next
emperor of Rome.
Whenever it wasn't clear already who was going
to be.
So it was up for grabs, Constantine's armies
said, this is our man, he's going to
be the next guy.
Now, obviously this was contested.
There was another guy named Maxentius who was
another claimant to the throne.
And Constantine marched with his armies from the
north and really right outside of Rome he
met up with the armies of his opponent.
A couple days before the battle, he's there
meeting up with his opponent and he saw
a cross of light in the sky.
And he either read it written in the
sky or he heard it.
But he heard this in Latin.
In hoc signus vincis.
Which means, in this sign conquer.
He was already beginning to reject the Roman
idea of multiple gods in favor of one
god.
And when he saw this in the sky,
he regarded it as a very important sign.
Now, a little bit later, still before he
was going to meet this other army in
battle, he had a dream.
And in his dream, Jesus appeared to him
and showed him the cross sign again.
Except this time, the cross looked a little
different.
The cross is bent over like that.
Now, what this kind of looks like is
it kind of looks like the Greek letters
chi and rho.
Which are the first two letters of Christos.
Those are the first two letters of the
name for Christ.
And so he regarded this as a sign.
By the way, does that look familiar?
That is a very prominent Roman Catholic symbol.
In a real sense, this is the beginning
of the Roman Catholic Church.
This is Constantine's cross.
He felt Jesus was telling him to put
this sign on his soldier's shield and to
go out and fight the battle.
Well, he did that, he went out, they
fought the battle, and he won.
And so Constantine came into power.
When he came into power, he moved to
grant freedom and official status to Christians.
And in the year 313, he granted the
Edict of Milan.
That granted official religious freedom in the Roman
Empire.
The Edict declared, our purpose is to grant
both to the Christians and to all others
full authority to follow whatever worship each man
has desired.
Matter of fact, let's take a look at
that.
We'll read that.
Now, what's interesting about this is religious toleration
is different than religious freedom.
Right?
And this is what this was granting, religious
freedom.
This is interesting to read, these old documents.
Again, this is from the Edict of Milan.
This isn't the entire thing, but it's from
it.
It says, It seemed to us that among
those things that are good for mankind in
general, the reverence paid to the divinity deserved
our first and chief attention and that it
was proper that the Christians and all others
should have liberty to follow that mode of
religion which to each of them appeared best.
So that that God who is seated in
heaven might be kind and helpful to us
and to everyone under our government.
And therefore, we judged it a good measure
and one consistent with good judgment that no
man should be denied the right to practice
the rights of the Christians or whatever other
religion his mind has directed him.
That thus the supreme divinity to whose worship
we freely devote ourselves might continue to extend
his favor and goodness to us.
And accordingly, we give you to know that
without regard to any provisos in our former
order concerning the Christians, what was the former
order?
To persecute.
Now, when he says our, he's not talking
about himself personally, he's talking about the Roman
emperors.
All who chose that religion are to be
permitted freely and absolutely to remain in it
and not to be disturbed in any way
or molested.
And we thought it fit to be thus
special in the things committed to your charge.
That you might understand that the indulgence which
you've granted in matters of religion to the
Christians is ample and unconditional.
And perceive at the same time that the
open and free exercise of their respective religions
is granted to all others as well as
to the Christians for it befits the well
-ordered state and tranquility of our times that
each individual be allowed according to his own
choice to worship the divinity and we mean
not to take away from the honor due
to any religion or those it honors.
Moreover, with respect to the Christians, we formerly
gave certain orders concerning the place appropriated for
the religious assemblies.
In other words, burn them down.
That was the former order.
But now we declare that all persons who
have purchased some places either from our treasury
or from anyone else must restore them to
the Christians without demanding repayment of kind and
that this be performed immediately and without dispute.
And that the spirit of our gracious order
may be known unto you all we declare
that you cause it by your authority to
be published everywhere.
Pretty impressive, right?
This isn't just saying we're going to tolerate
the Christians.
What this says is hey, whatever we've done
in persecution we're going to try to make
it right.
That's right.
We're going to restore it.
We're going to give it back.
And so this was very, very big.
Constantine did what he could do to help
the church.
He sought to restore well, first of all,
I would say the idea of religious liberty
did not begin in America.
This is a very modern idea that Constantine
brings forth.
The idea that hey, every man should be
able to practice his own religion according to
his own conscience.
Go ahead, he says.
That's a very modern idea.
Now what's sad is that after Constantine it
fell back pretty quickly from there.
The idea of religious liberty, religious freedom.
But Constantine declared this hey, let every man
worship his own God according to the dictates
of his own conscience.
That's fine, he says.
Because now, we realize we did a wrong
thing against the Christians.
We're going to restore that the best we
can.
The next thing that he did was he
goes out and he says that we're going
to start paying government salaries to bishops and
to preachers.
Pastors, basically.
Now again, remember how this worked.
Here's a city.
Let's say this is the city of Rome.
Rome is a big, big city, isn't it?
How many Christian congregations are there in Rome?
A bunch.
Where do they meet?
Well, by this time there are some churches.
But they also meet in houses.
Right?
So there's a lot of Christian congregations.
Every congregation has a pastor or a leader
or a preacher who leads it.
But then there's one bishop who has oversight
over the whole enchilada.
Now, what Constantine said is we're going to
start paying the salary for some of these
bishops and some of these preachers.
The government was.
And then he says, also, that we're going
to recognize Sunday as a governmental day of
rest.
And then finally, what he said was, Constantine
said, look, whenever there's a problem in the
church and I can help out, let me
help.
You've got a controversy, you've got a problem,
you've got something that's going to divide the
church, let me help out.
I'll do what I can to help.
Good thing or bad thing?
Put yourself in the place of a Christian.
You've been persecuted.
People you know have died for their faith.
You have seen people die for their faith
in Jesus Christ.
Your own family, nobody ever was killed or
hurt, but your dad lost his job and
your whole family was thrown into poverty.
You wanted to get into a good school,
but they wouldn't let you because you were
a Christian.
I mean, all this kind of persecution, and
then now, first, you were ecstatic when the
edict of toleration came out.
Yes.
Now, the emperor himself is a Christian.
Thank you, Lord.
If you put yourself in the shoes of
somebody back then, it is impossible to see
this as anything other than just thank you,
Jesus.
This is the best.
Lord, you are so good.
I can't believe how you did this, Lord.
All of this is the best.
Now, you see how they're picturing that?
Was Constantine a true Christian?
This is one of the real controversies of
church history.
It's warmly debated.
The effect of the official recognition and the
support of the church by the Roman Empire,
it ended up being a negative influence.
This is what one writer says, a guy
named Houghton.
He says, It is very doubtful whether Constantine
was ever a true convert.
His predecessors had persecuted the Christians for political
reasons.
He favored them on similar grounds and showed
himself willing to continue the policy of toleration,
which had, in fact, been introduced about a
year before he won his victory.
This guy says, Look, he's just a politician
playing the Christian card.
He's just carrying on what Galerius started on
his deathbed, right?
But you know what?
I don't agree with that.
I have to say, I believe that Constantine
was a genuine Christian.
I don't think he would have done many
of the things that he did unless he
was a genuine Christian.
Especially getting involved in church controversies.
Now, let me point out a couple of
this.
There were two pretty important church controversies that
Constantine got involved in.
One of them was the Donatus Controversy.
The Donatus Controversy started in North Africa where
there was a big population of Romans and
Christians, of course.
The Donatus were a strict group of Christians
in North Africa who refused to recognize a
man as a bishop.
A man was appointed as bishop.
They refused to recognize the man as bishop
because he was ordained by somebody who faltered
under persecution.
Now, remember I talked about it last week,
the laid hands on, who laid hands on,
who laid hands on, who laid hands on
whole theory?
Well, what the Donatus said was, no, there's
a break in that chain.
And this man who ordained this man fell
away, so we don't recognize this guy's ordination.
And this was a big split in the
church.
Constantine said, let's call a conference, let's get
together, let's do this.
I'll call together a great big convention where
we'll get together and decide this issue and
we'll go through it that way.
Constantine did that.
Constantine, let me help.
I don't think Constantine would have done that
unless he was a real Christian.
I mean, he really wanted to help.
The other big thing that he got involved
in was the Arian Controversy.
This was interesting and we're going to get
into that a little bit more.
The Arian Controversy started in the silly city
of Alexandria.
In Alexandria there was a bishop known as
Alexander.
Alexander was fine.
He believed biblical doctrine, no problem.
But he had an elder in his church
whose name was Arius.
And Arius had a problem.
Arius believed that Jesus was not equal to
God the Father.
That Jesus himself was a created being and
therefore he was inferior to God the Father.
That's what Arius believed.
Well, what do you think Alexander did with
him?
He booted him.
You can't have a guy like that.
I mean, this was a guy who was
an influential guy.
I mean, it would be like in our
church if one of the elders in our
church started teaching something like this.
I mean, obviously he didn't boot him at
the first thing.
He sat down, tried to persuade him, work
with him, all this stuff.
But when all of a sudden, at the
end of the thing, this elder says, No,
Jesus Christ is not God.
Then we say, Mister, there's the door.
You're no longer part of this church.
We're not having anybody in leadership or who's
going to be vocal and going around and
promoting this false doctrine.
Period.
You're gone.
The problem was Arius started a movement and
got a lot of people to follow him.
Constantine dealt with this issue that was really
spreading around the empire.
And he said, Let's have a convention.
Let's get a convention together and discuss this
issue.
I don't think Constantine would have done those
things if he wasn't a Christian.
Now, let me tell you why else I
think Constantine was a Christian.
He said he was.
Number two, other Christians in his day thought
he was.
And you know one of the big reasons
people think that he probably wasn't a Christian?
Was because he died in the year 337.
He did not receive baptism until he was
on his deathbed.
A lot of people would say that shows
a man who's an insincere convert, right?
If he was really sold out to Jesus
Christ he would have received baptism a long
time before.
You know what?
No, not necessarily.
You've got to understand the way people thought
in that day.
Remember I was talking about last week or
the week before how they had this thinking
where once you were saved if you sinned
significantly after that you're out.
Forget it.
There's no possibility to repent.
I mean this is what they thought.
A lot of people believed this.
Well, for a lot of people the whole
idea was after you were baptized if you
committed a mortal sin after baptism there was
no hope for salvation.
None at all.
None.
You're going to hell.
Straight to hell.
Forget it.
There's no point in even asking for forgiveness.
Little sins, fine.
A mortal sin, forget it.
After you're baptized.
So, if you believe that wouldn't it make
sense for you to be baptized on your
deathbed?
Right?
I mean, and that's how people thought.
A lot of people were baptized on their
deathbed.
So, I believe that Constantine was a Christian.
I believe that all in all Constantine was
a here's our word all in all Constantine
was a good man.
But I talked about this last week Some
of the greatest damage in the church has
been done by good men.
Not because they did good things.
But because when a good man goes off
on a wrong course it's all the more
dangerous.
All the more dangerous.
Because people will follow him and respect him
because he's a good man.
That's what happened with Constantine.
I believe that every intention of Constantine's heart
was good.
But the guy was misguided.
And he set in motion something in the
church that lasted not until 1500 beyond 1500
it lasted.
But Constantine forever forever changed the church.
And it's important to understand that for the
Christians who saw this rapid change it seemed
to be nothing but positive.
Nothing but positive.
Are you trying to say that it's a
negative thing that the Roman emperor is now
a Christian?
And that he wants to help Christians?
And that they're not killing us anymore?
And that they want to help us instead?
How can anybody say that that's a bad
thing?
You know, it's easy for us now we
stand back, well, you know, they shouldn't have
gone off on that way.
You need to understand that if you were
living in the times this would have been
a very difficult thing to see the dangers
of this.
So, they would have seen it as nothing
but positive.
They would have believed that God had changed
the hearts of not one, but two Roman
emperors.
One to grant the issue of the Edict
of Toleration and the other one to grant
the Edict of Milan.
In an amazingly short time the church was
in a completely different environment.
From persecuted to privileged.
Persecuted to privileged.
Now look, let's get the idea here.
Who took care of the persecution?
This was Galerius, right?
The Edict of Toleration wiped out persecution.
But it was Constantine who made the church
privileged.
So, man, this is really something.
To go in such a short time from
terribly persecuted to privileged made all the difference.
For centuries the church had been a counterculture
movement.
Now it had to deal with the problems
of power in a completely different way.
The people who wanted to get along with
society, to go along with the flow, to
go along with how things were, to get
ahead in this world, the people who wanted
to do that before they didn't want anything
to do with Christianity, right?
Now they did.
Because now Christianity is privileged.
Now, when Constantine is looking to promote a
man in the army, who does he look
for?
A Christian.
When Constantine is looking for a new governor
or sub-governor or prelate or some kind
of magistrate who does he look for?
He looks for a Christian.
It doesn't take people very long to figure
that stuff out, do they?
And so how do you think people talk
around Constantine?
They use all their foul language outside.
As soon as they walk in it's, Oh,
blessed Constantine!
Praise Jesus!
Isn't God good?
And so many people became Christians just because
that was the way to get along.
But also something else changed.
When you go from persecuted to privileged, all
of a sudden now you have a lot
of prestige and pomp and money and status
that you didn't have before.
Now you start seeing the elaborate costumes for
the church people.
The elaborate churches.
The elaborate crosses and processions and the gold
and the silver and all this stuff.
Because now they can do it.
Does a persecuted church do things like that?
No way!
That's the last thing on their mind.
Oh, we have to have a gold mantelpiece
for the altar.
You know what?
A persecuted church thinking about that?
That's just another thing for the soldiers to
rip off when they come here and case
the joint.
But now everything changes.
Now, Constantine's help in doctrinal matters also complicated
things tremendously.
Because I talked about these things, the Donatists
and the Arians.
Probably some of you have heard of the
Arian controversy before.
In some ways, the Donatist controversy is a
lot more interesting in its fundamental principle with
what it deals with.
I mean, what makes ordination and the things
of God powerful?
Is it the person doing it or is
it the spirit of God behind it?
And it's a very interesting controversy.
You ever turn on the television and see
these guys who are just wackos and yet
in some way it seems God uses them?
You say, what's going on with that?
Well, you know what?
That deals with issues all around the Donatist
controversy.
Constantine comes in and says, let me help
you settle these issues, okay?
Let me help out.
I want to help.
Great.
Thank you, Constantine.
You want to help.
You know what the problem is then?
An official government position on the Donatist controversy.
An official government position on the Arian controversy.
And you know what?
For the most part, Constantine had the right
opinions on these things.
Praise God.
But it's not long until you don't have
the right opinion on those things, is it?
The church started to become much more like
a corporation.
And the emperor of Rome was the CEO
of the corporation.
Suddenly, who is the most notable Christian?
Constantine.
An emperor.
You know?
Not the bishop of your city.
Not, you know, the Billy Graham of that
day.
Not, you know, whatever you want to say.
Suddenly it's Constantine.
Tricky, tricky issues.
One other thing here.
The Roman emperors were always recognized as religious
leaders.
And they were given a title in the
pagan days.
This was a title relating to their religious
leadership.
The Roman emperors.
Pontifex Maximus.
Anybody know what that means?
Maximus, you can figure out what it means,
right?
Great.
Big, right?
Pontifex is literally a bridge builder.
You know how it was used in thinking?
Priest.
Basically, it's a way of saying great priest
or high priest.
By the way, this is a title that
the Roman popes carry to this day.
You ever hear the pope referred to as
the pontiff?
The pontiff.
That comes from Pontifex Maximus.
Let me just go on the Arian controversy
for a minute here.
In the Arian controversy, Constantine seemed to go
on the right side.
He seemed to, you know, he called together
a very important church council that we'll talk
about in a week or two, the Council
of Nicaea.
You know, Constantine did the right things.
But when Constantine died, his empire was divided
among his sons.
And one of his sons turned out basically
to be an Arian.
And he supported the Arians in the next
controversy.
So now suddenly the official government position is
unbiblical.
And he forced an unbiblical creed upon many
of the bishops.
And when the bishops appealed to the longstanding
teachings of the church, which are known as
canons, basically when the bishops said, listen, dude,
Mr. Emperor, that's not what the Bible teaches.
I'm sorry, we can't teach.
You know what he said?
He said, whatever I want shall be regarded
as the canons.
Either obey or go into exile.
Now, just one generation after Constantine, his sons
are now promoting heresy as the official government
position.
And you know what's interesting about this?
Even in this whole business with Constantine's son,
church leaders at first did not challenge the
right of the Roman Emperor to weigh in
on this doctrinally.
You know how annoying it is today when
movie stars come up and declare political positions?
Who cares?
I can't think of a more worthless piece
of information in the world.
That's how it should be when politicians start
talking about religion in that sense, right?
When they start giving their decisions, when they
want to take sides in a controversy, it's
like, dude, who cares?
You're free to have your opinion.
Great, God bless you.
Let's leave this up to the people to
whom this is their business, right?
You do your thing and leave this up
to the people who have a business doing
it.
Well, that's how it should have been with
the Emperor, right?
Shouldn't somebody have been standing up to Constantine's
son and saying, look, not only are you
wrong, but far more than being wrong, we
don't care.
You have no right to even speak on
this matter.
So just get out of here.
Even if you were right, you don't have
a right to speak on this matter.
Now, this is the problem.
When the governmental power was right, when it
was correct, they gave it the right to
speak on these matters.
Now, when it's incorrect, they still have the
right to speak on it.
Dangerous, dangerous thing.
Well, one guy that we'll probably talk about
next week named Athanasius, he sort of woke
up and smelled the coffee and said, wait
a minute, we got to let these Emperors
know they don't even have a place speaking
to us about this.
And so we'll talk about that a little
bit.
Okay, two more interesting things.
First of all, Constantine's mother.
Her name was Helena.
And I don't know if she became a
Christian before or after Constantine, to tell you
the truth.
But Helena has a very kind of important
place in Christian history.
Because she felt that God wanted her to
go back to the Holy Land and find
all the places where things happened.
So today when you go to the Holy
Land and see the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher, all the traditional sites, Bethlehem, Helena, Constantine's
mother, was the one who went back and
said, this is the place, this is the
place.
Sometimes she had good reason to believe that
it was there, sometimes not.
Sometimes she just declared it.
For example, she found Jesus' tomb.
When she went to Jerusalem, this is what
she found.
I mean, pretty amazing, right?
She found Jesus' tomb, she found the three
crosses, and she found Pilate's inscription written where
it had been.
Anybody believe that?
No.
She didn't find it.
This is 300 years after the fact.
400 years.
No.
300 years after the fact.
She didn't find any of those things.
And so what did they do?
They had three...
You know what it was.
The locals heard that she was coming and
she's looking for the cross.
You want a cross?
We'll give you a cross.
Here's three of them.
Here's three.
So which one was the true one?
They said that they had a sick woman
touch each one of the crosses, and the
one that she touched and got healed from,
that was the true cross.
So what did Helena do with the cross?
Well, part of it was set in silver
and was supposed to be kept in Jerusalem.
The nails were still in the cross, and
so she...
The nails were still in the cross.
So she pulled the nails out of the
cross, and one of them was attached to
the emperor's battle helmet, right?
Good place to have something of such important
significance there.
The other was attached to the bridle of
his horse.
And then over the years, thousands of little
slivers of wood set in churches and monasteries
all over were said to be pieces of
the true cross recovered from Helena.
Actually, it says that the true cross was
buried and Helena supposedly elevated it out of
the ground, you know, through prayer or whatever.
Martin Luther said that by his day in
1500, he said that in his day, if
you were to get together and assemble all
the pieces of the true cross that were
around in Europe, you'd have enough to build
a ship, he said.
Because it's just superstition.
So Helena was important.
What's interesting is the legacy after Constantine.
As is so often the case, you know,
Constantine was largely a good man with bad
ideas.
I think his sons you couldn't be so
charitable about.
Galerius said the church isn't going to be
persecuted anymore, right?
Constantine said the church was going to be
privileged.
Constantine's sons said the church was going to
be exclusive.
They started shutting down the pagan temples and
executing people who sacrificed to the pagan gods.
Big step, right?
Now, all of a sudden, we're not in
a place of toleration of religions anymore, right?
How many think people got saved after that?
Saved after that, right?
Yeah, sure, I'm a Christian.
Of course I'm a Christian.
I don't want to get my head chopped
off.
They started using the sword to promote Christianity.
And what's interesting about this is first they
had Constantine's sons, and then when they passed
from the scene, Constantine had a nephew named
Julian.
Julian was interesting because he barely escaped a
family massacre that was meant to wipe out
all of his brothers and such.
And he went off to school, and then
eventually he was able to come up and
be emperor.
When he came up and became emperor, he
showed his true colors.
He said, I'm not a Christian at all.
I'm a pagan.
And we're going to go back to that
old time religion is what he basically said.
And he tried to do what he could
to beat back down Christianity and to exalt
again the pagan religions.
He didn't get very far because he didn't
reign very long.
He went out in battle and was killed
just about two years into his reign.
And it's said that this man who was
so hostile to Christianity, this is like the
last gasp of paganism in the empire.
It's said that he was dead, lying on
the field of battle and bleeding to death.
He dipped his hand in his own blood
and flung his blood up to heaven and
cried out, You have conquered, O Galilean.
Saying, Jesus, you beat me.
Here I am, dead, lying on the field
of battle.
Because even though he intended to restore paganism,
he didn't reign long enough to really do
anything.
The emperors who followed Julian were sympathetic to
Christianity and generally followed the trend of opposing
the pagan religions and involving themselves in the
disputes of the church.
We'll pick it up with more next time.
Very interesting period in church history.
We'll talk more about what it was like
to be a Christian during this era and
some notable Christian writers and thinkers.
And we'll also get into some great councils
and events.
Interesting stuff for next week.