James Carroll’s account of Constantine ( Constantine’s Sword ) is riddled with half-truths and distortions. He’s not nearly as bad as Dan Brown, but he’s bad.
But the howler (thus far) is this: Christians had tried to work out how Jesus is God without coming to a consensus, but what had “eluded . . . finely tuned, passionate minds as variously engaged with the question as Irenaeus, Origen, and Arius - would now be imposed by imperial fiat. Unity would henceforth be the note not only of the political order but of a revealed truth. With holiness and catholicity, ‘unity’ would henceforth be, in the argot, a ‘mark’ of the Church - at least in theory.”
“Henceforth”? Carroll used to be a Roman Catholic priest: Surely, at some point in that earlier career he stumbled across John 17 or Ephesians 2-4 or Paul’s regular exhortations to “be of one mind.”
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.
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