There are manuscripts of large portions of the New Testament that date before Constantine and those of all of it shortly after him. Also, these books were quoted and mentioned as authoritative even earlier. Ireneaus identified the four gospels as unquestionable. He also gives a detailed description of the contents of the gospels, along with the books of Acts and Romans, and mentions others of Paul's epistles. This was well over 100 years before the time of Constantine. Papias mentions the four gospels even earlier, but his works are lost, and he is only known through quotes in other sources. But that someone could simply invent Papias and his writings without it being questioned is dubious. Also, there is the Muratorian fragment, which gives a list of New Testament books. It does leave out a few books and consider a few books not currently accepted, but the substance is the same. Now after the time of Constantine, there were church councils that made official decrees as to what was in the New Testament. But it is clear they were not working in a vacuum but making official what was generally believed, while ruling on the few books that were in doubt. There is no evidence Constantine had anything to do with this.
The idea that Jesus is God is found not only in the New Testament, but in Christian writings that immediately followed it. Even the pagan observers (Pliny the Younger and Lucian of Samosata) noticed that Christians worshiped Jesus rather than the other gods. The term "Trinity" was coined to describe the deity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by Tertullian about 100 years before Constantine. The Council of Nicaea, called by Constantine, may have clarified some of the details, but it was not introducing something new. Further, Constantine wanted both sides just to drop the whole thing and get along. He later sent Athanasius, the chief advocate of Trintarianism, into exile because he was unwilling to go along with this program.
But it could be maintained that it was someone before Constantine who did these things. However, before Constantine the Christian church was decentralized and persecuted, and no one had the power to impose these things on the whole church. This does not prove Christianity is true. But it does mean we cannot avoid the Christian claims by saying it is not what Christianity originally taught. We are left to deal with the basic questions of who Jesus Christ is and what He did. But claiming someone later distorted it does not fit the facts.
I think that he probably did invent the religious institution of Christianity.
ReplyDeleteInstitution is a slippery word. I try to deal with it just a couple of posts above, though how successfully may be argued. Constantine made Christianity the accepted belief that in the long run resulted in its being conformed to the world. But I am not sure if that is what you mean.
DeleteWonder what Christianity would look like today if he had not made it the official religion of Rome?
DeleteThat is an interesting question, As Aslan says we are never told what would have happened. But I expect at some time we would have still been confronted with the issue of whether we would conform to the world and seek power in it or not. Whether there would have been a different decision or even different decisions by different groups, is hard to tell.
DeleteI do sometimes wonder if Constantine saved the faith from extinction or made it something unrecognizable. And then there are the reformers (new and old) that reinvented and are still reinventing Christianity.
ReplyDeleteI suspect it was the other way around, that Constantine saw Christianity as a force to be reckoned with and decided to adopt it. His predecessors tried to destroy it and failed. If he had not tried it I think sooner or later someone else would have.
DeleteWhether any reform is a good or a bad thing, a return to the original or a distortion or a little of both, has to be looked at on a case by case basis. Every case is often a set of complicated issues that need to be unraveled.
I wonder if folks took Constantine's idea to places he did not imagine that it would go? Doubtful that anyone bac then would have envisioned a chanting of the Rosary?
ReplyDeleteAnd I guess the same might be said of Wesley, Luther and Knox. The modern day versions of their movements might be a bit surprising for them?
I expect that great deal of the results of Constantine's actions were unforeseen and unintended by him. I expect Wesley, Luther and Knox seem more intentional but certainly they also had unintended results. Certainly it was more than they started out to do. I do not think any of them started out to create a new division in the organizational church.
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