Freeman again: He claims that Constantine employed the image of the sun, used in both Christianity and paganism, to maintain “his neutral position between opposing faiths.”
In part, his interpretation is based on HA Drake. But the neutrality that Drake talks about is a neutrality in “public space” that enabled the development of “a stable coalition of both Christians and non-Christians in support of this program of ‘peaceful co-existence,’” a coalition that Drake says was more successful “than has generally been recognized” (this is a section of Constantine and the Bishops quoted by Freeman).
Constantine’s intention to create a cooperative public space implied nothing about his own personal neutrality between Christianity and paganism. It doesn’t even mean that public policy was neutral between paganism and Christianity. If you had the chance to ask any informed pagan of the 320s if Constantine was religiously “neutral,” the answer (following imprecations and curses) would not have been affirmative.
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
More from History
Continue reading related articles
Realness of Things Past
Greg Anderson began thinking about the thesis of his Realness of Things Past while working on a book on the “state” in classical Greece. He discovered there was no such thing as an Athenian “state,” and that conclusion led him to question the way historians do history. Instead of running…
The Power of the Margins
David Martin (1929-2019) was a secularization skeptic. He acknowledged that modern societies typically undergo a process of "differentiation," in which various sectors of social and political life free themselves from the oversight of religious authority. He acknowledged that in many modern societies religious institutions and values are "marginalized." But he…
Zwinglian Symbolism
Nathan Mitchell (writing in the Oxford History of Christian Worship , 324) denies that Zwingli taught a "mere symbolist" according to which the Supper "simply served to remind believers of the great benefits bestowed on them through Christ's passion and death." Zwingli wasn't a symbolist "in any modern sense." Mitchell…
In Medias Res
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.