Was the Early Church Pacifist?

Lots of people recently have been convinced by John Howard Yoder that the pre-Constantinian church fathers were all pacifists and then, in the fourth century, like the French Communist Party receiving news of the new party line from Moscow in 1941, abruptly reversed themselves and suddenly people like Augustine became rabid theocrats. So the answer to the question in the title of this post would be "Yes!" First they were pacifists and then suddenly they did a 180 degree turn over night. Is this a convincing reading of early church history?

In this post at First Thoughts a while back, Matthew Lee Anderson tentatively suggested that J. Daryl Charles just might be right - and John Howard Yoder wrong - about the stance of the church fathers on pacifism. Yoder famously said that the fathers up to the end of the third century were pacifists (though he thought that their convictions unfortunately weakened a bit during the "long peace" in the second half of the third century between the 9th and 10th great waves of persecution). In opposition to this view, Anderson reports, Charles argues that there is a great deal of ambiguity in the teachings of the Fathers on the issue of serving in the Roman army and pacifism with no evident consensus.

Now, we also must remember that Yoder famously lumped Augustine in with Eusebius and Constantine as creators of what he called "Christendom," which according to Yoder means something like a totalitarian theocracy - kind of like contemporary Iran with bishops replacing the mullahs.

Anderson quotes me offering a rebuttal to Peter Leithart on the meaning of the term "Constantinianism" in Yoder's writings. I pointed out that for Yoder, Constantinianism is an eschatological heresy, not an historical conclusion about what happened in the fourth century. For Yoder, Constantinianism is an illegitimate attempt to reach forward into the future and pull the kingdom of God into the present as if the kingdom had already come in its fullness. This idea is wrong whenever it pops up in history and if it isn't in a particular century or place that does not affect its existence as a theological idea. Well, I still think that is true, but I think Yoder also did contend that the church from the fourth century onward did fall into Constantinianism and Leithart is right about that.

So is Yoder right about the pre-Constantinian Fathers? Is he right about Augustine? Is he right about the "Constantinian Shift"? Is he right about "Constantinianism" being an eschatological heresy? Let's go one at a time.

1. Is Yoder right about the pre-Constantinian Fathers being pacifists? I now think that Charles and those who see more ambiguity in the first three centuries have the better of the argument. It is difficult to be categorical but the most I think we can say is that some early Christians took a pacifist position. But there is nothing decisive like the inclusion of the homoousion in the Nicene Creed to prove that it was an agreed upon doctrine of the ecumenical church. Yoder's view is not supportable by the facts.

2. Is Yoder right about Augustine? I have now read Augustine for myself and I am a bit embarrassed to report that Yoder is spectacularly wrong to lump Augustine in with Eusebius. Yes, the young Augustine got caught up in the excitement of the Theodosian settlement after his conversion in 386. But from about the middle of the 390s onward he gradually worked his way free of these assumptions through his biblical studies and by 410 was in a position to articulate his mature eschatology in The City of God. He renounced Eusebian postmillennialism and adopted his amillennial eschatology of the two cities, in which the State becomes part of the secular - that which belongs to this age - and is thoroughly desacralized. The doctrine of the separation of church and state is rooted in Augustine's thought and there is no basis for theocracy in The City of God.

3. Is Yoder right about the "Constantinian Shift"? I have to say that I think it is overblown by Yoder for one very good reason. Although there is a shift in that the church embraces the state to a considerable extent, the pacifist impulse continues in the form of monasticism while the impulse of the church to partner with the state has more precedents in pre-third century thought that Yoder would have us believe. So there is evolution but not a sudden, wrenching, 180 degree about face.

4. Is Yoder right about "Constantinianism"? I think he is both right and wrong about what he calls "Constantinianism." I think that the term is unfortunate, as is the tendency to equate "Christendom" with "Theocracy." More is obscured by this terminology than is illumined. First, the theologically illegitimate reaching forward and pulling the kingdom back into the present is a perennial temptation of both liberal and conservative, or, better, Romantic Utopian and Coercive Theocratic theologies.

Liberal Pacifism is an example of the former tendency and it is heretical because it envisions the perfection of human nature by the reform of political institutions, which is impossible. The Spanish conquest of the Americas and forced conversion of native peoples is an example of Coercive Theocracy.

I do believe there are examples of tendencies toward theocracy in Western history, although one hates to say so just because the Left unfairly blows them all out of proportion and defines theocracy as Christian morality having any influence on public affairs whatsoever. But where theocratic tendencies do pop up, they are betrayals of Augustinian theology, not implementations of it.

The Bottom Line
The really important point to see is that both Romantic-Utopian and Coercive-Theocratic theologies are both rooted in the same postmillennialist attempt to bring about the kingdom of God here and now within history and without the spectacular Divine intervention the NT refers to as the Return of Christ.

One of the implications of this insight is that Romantic-Utopian and Coercive-Theocratic theologies are not as different from each other as proponents of both might think. Certainly, all attempts to impose Utopian schemes in history tend to degenerate quickly into coercion and violence. This is true of medieval millennial movements, the 16th century peasants revolts and various kinds of Marxist revolutions in the 20th century.

In contrast to all these stands the Augustinian amillennialist, two cities doctrine in which the state and church are kept separate and the state is seen as potentially good and potentially evil in this age. Christians are encouraged to work within the state, but not to sacralize it. Between pacifism and revolution lies the just war doctrine to guide moral decision-making on issues of defending good and repelling evil while realizing that the final defeat of evil will not occur within this age of history as we know it.

The bottom line is that the Church Fathers were neither Utopian pacifist nor warmongering theocrats and we ought to follow their example.

Yoder, Augustine and Christendom: What is the Real Politics of Jesus?

I continue to ponder the implications of Peter Leithart's brilliant answer to John Howard Yoder in his Defending Constantine: The Twilight of Empire and the End of Sacrifice. I am trying to think through the question of why Yoder advocates a minority church and pacifism for all disciples as the core of that minority church and why he rejects all of Christendom as "Constantinian" and thus heretical.

The problem I have with Yoder at this point is that as Yoder's influence grows and spreads among left-wing Evangelicals and liberal Protestants alike, the theology that emerges from those who are influenced by him is, all too often, individualistic and privatized. For example, many (most) of those influenced by Yoder are acquiescing in the redefinition of marriage by the State.

Now, the Evangelical Left, which is influenced by Yoder, will jump all over me at this point and angrily deny my charge on the basis that they have embraced a socialist ideology which they see as communal. In their account, it is the conservative Evangelicals who are buying into modernity by accepting the marginalized place the church is afforded in late modernity. They are different because they proclaim peace and justice and concern for the poor expressed in welfare statism or democratic socialism.

But what if socialism and the liberal democratic state are simply parodies of true community? What if, as Alasdair MacIntrye recognized, they mask a deep individualism at their roots which is more modern than Christian? Suppose we apply an Augustinian analysis to the modern welfare state. Should we not conclude that the modern state is - precisely to the extent that it privatizes Christianity - deeply idolatrous and pagan?

In the light of these musings, listen to Stanley Hauerwas' comments on Defending Constantine.

Leithart does not think his disavowal of pacifism means he has to reject Yoder's contention that Jesus has a politics. In order to defend his own understanding of the politics of Jesus, he introduces a theme I can only hope he will develop in the future: his defense of Constantine turns on his claim that as a Christian, Constantine ended the Roman sacrificial system. Accordingly Constantine "desacrificed" the Roman political order because he understood that Jesus was the end of sacrifice. The church, for Augustine, is the embodiment of Christ's sacrifice, and this creates a new political reality necessary to keep the state appropriately modest.

It seems to me that what Leithart sometimes calls the "desacrificing" of the Empire, and other times the "baptism" of the Empire, could also be called the "conversion of the Empire." But misunderstanding lurks at every turn here. This "conversion" is the renouncing of idolatry by the Empire, not the turning of the Roman State into the Church. When the State becomes a Church we have a deformation of Christendom. Rather, what happens when the Roman State ceases sacrificing to the gods is that it becomes secular (i.e. belonging to this age between the two comings of Christ, destined to pass away at the end of the age).

Implicit in the ceasing of sacrifice is the recognition of the Church as an alternative polity, a community which proclaims the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ as the call to worship the True God alone through the sacrifice of Christ and therefore to cease from sacrificing to the gods. Yet, in recognizing the Lordship of Christ, the State does not become a Christian State in the sense of the Church taking over the State; instead the State recognizes the existence and legitimacy of an alien polity within its territory - the Church. The Church is the embodiment of true religion so the State no longer has to be religion in and of itself. It is Christian precisely by being secular.

The Church is the node at which Christendom connects to Divine Revelation and therefore its preaching of God's will has authority for all within Christendom including rulers. But rulers still rule according to prudence and are justified in making space within Christendom for dissenters (Jews, pagans, Muslims, atheists). This is where tolerance came from historically. The Church proclaims moral truth; rulers practice statecraft. We have two sources of authority in society, not just one. Neither the Church leaders or the political leaders are all-powerful.

The problem with Yoder is that his view of conversion is all or nothing. For him, either Constantine becomes a pacifist or he remains pagan. The conversion of the state, for Yoder, can only mean a theocracy and he, quite understandably, cannot imagine a violent theocracy being a proper witness to Jesus Christ in this world. (It is significant that separated Anabaptist communities have quite often become Constantinian mini-Christendoms.).

Yoder failed to recognize that for a state to be converted might look different from what it would mean for an individual to be converted. We as individuals are not converted to secularism, but to Christian discipleship. For you or me, to become a Christian means to worship God through Christ. But for the state to be converted means for it to cease sacrifice and not presume to worship at all. Why? Because it recognizes that worship happens in the Church and that the State is not the Church.

Yoder has to dismiss all Christendom as Constantinian and evil because he does not recognize that there are three, rather than two, ways for the State to be the State. The State can either be a pagan idolatrous State or a Theocratic, Church-dominated State, but it can also be a modest, limited government that recognizes that it is not ultimate or Divinely sanctioned in and of itself. It can recognize its limits precisely by doing what Constantine did: that is, by ending sacrifice and recognizing the truth of the Gospel and the role of the Church as a polity distinct from the State with its own proper role to play in Christendom.

Such a State will not presume to re-define marriage by fiat, nor will it authorize the killing of the pre-born, the young, the sick, the elderly or the handicapped. It will not require its citizens to be practicing Christians, but it will encourage them to be such. It will give many advantages to the Church, make holidays conform to the Christian calendar and seek to promote marriage and the family as the foundations of a healthy society. It will be open to civil society and avoid totalitarian tendencies to meddle in the lives of individuals to the extent compatible with law and order. It is appropriate to call such a State "Christian" so long as you know what that means. You know what it means if you can give an account of why a "Christian" State must be secular and give individuals the freedom to believe or not.

It is my conviction that Yoder's theology plays into the hands of late modern, Statism by not calling the State to the conversion that is proper to the state. Because of this error, Yoder can only imagine a minority Church ever existing and thus he equates Christendom with unfaithfulness. Meanwhile, the State is left free to proceed on the path to its own divinization. Just as the Roman Emperors gradually began to accept worship, so the late modern State gradually assumes Divine prerogatives.

To hold, as Yoder does, that the State cannot be converted without becoming pacifist and thus committing suicide, is to determine ahead of time what God's Spirit is allowed and not allowed to do in history. If Kenya, for example, goes from being 9% Christian in 1900 to being 91% Christian in 2000, (which it did), then we have Christendom like it or not. A true Christian political theology must allow for such a possibility and have something constructive to say to Christian politicians in Kenya. What is has to say is the true politics of Jesus, but ironically we need to look to the Augustinian tradition rather than the Anabaptist tradition for help in spelling out that politics.

Defending Constantine by Peter Leithart: A Brief Review

The title "Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom" should have been "Defending Constantine from John Howard Yoder." This is not meant, I hasten to add, as a put-down. This is a splendid book and by far the most substantial response to Yoder's The Politics of Jesus to date.

Yoder's theology is interwoven with history in intriguing and rich ways and Leithart's work displays a similar inter-weaving of history with theology that take both seriously while recognizing that, in the end, it is the theology that matters crucially.

Some may have been surprised by Stanley Hauerwas' extremely positive review of this book recently in The Christian Century, but Hauerwas is right to discern in Leithart a worthy opponent and a very attentive reader of Yoder. I want to offer three points on which I think Leithart is right in this book and Yoder is wrong and then ask the question of whether Leithart's critique of Yoder is fatal to Yoder's version of the politics of Jesus, and in particular to Yoder's call for all Christians in all times and all places to embrace pacifism. In conclusion, I will return to the issue with which Hauerwas ends his review: the question of contemporary liberal democracies as sacrificial states due to their lack of openness to the Church as a "model city."

First, it should be recognized that Leithart has demonstrated the failure of Yoder's historical argument for the "fall of the Church" in the fourth century from a pacifist community to a chaplaincy status vis a vis the Roman state. Clearly, the Church got in bed with Rome and no one can deny that abuses, failures and shameful incidents followed in due course. Leithart has no interest in denying such facts of history. But Leithart raises two questions: (1) has Yoder demonstrated that the early church (pre-fourth century) was pacifist and (2) was the influence of pagan society on the Church a one-way street or did the Church actually change Rome as well as being partially corrupted herself?

I do not think that any fair-minded reader of Liethart's scholarly, historical research interspersed with his close reading of Yoder's writings will fail to conclude that Yoder did not prove that the early Church had a pristine, pre-Constantinian, purely pacifist character which it then was able to lose in its rush to embrace Constantine's offer of Imperial wealth, prestiege and power. It could not fall from a height it had never attained.

The evidence for Christian participation in war and violence is mixed all through the first three centuries and Yoder's method, upon encountering evidence of Christian's serving in the army or other evidence of Christian non-pacifism, is simply to interpret it as "creeping Constantinianism," that is, as Constantinianism before Constantine. This is an exceedingly weak rationalization, trading as it does on the assumption that where the sources are silent they would all, if known, reveal a pacifist church from which the examples of Christians serving in the army in the known sources are deviations.

Now, Leithart recognizes that the historical argument cannot be decisive. Even if the early Christians were not pacifist, perhaps they should have been. But to the extent that Yoder delegitimizes the post-Constantinian Church so easily and thoroughly, this means that his argument from history is not valid. We will see how easily the fall of the Church narrative leads Yoder to dismiss Augustine in due course.

Secondly, Leithart easily demonstrates how horribly unfair Yoder was toward Augustine and how Yoder's failure to wrestle with Augustine's philosophy of history undermines much of the force of Yoder's criticism of Christendom. Yoder makes no distinction between Eusebius and Augustine, even though it was Augustine, more than anyone else, who enabled the Church to extricate itself from the shallow, over-realized political theology of Eusebius. Leithart even makes the point that Eusebius himself was more nuanced than he is often given credit for being.

But Yoder's failure to come to grips with Augustine, combined with the failed "fall of the Church narrative," is what sinks his understanding of Constantinianism. Yoder simply did not have Augustine's robust and differentiated eschatology and so fell into the same trap as Eusebius. Just as Eusebius viewed the conversion of Constantine and the Christianization of the Roman Empire as the dawning of the kingdom of God, Yoder viewed the same events as the fall of the Church. Both overstated what was happening. The one who kept his head and worked out a view of history in which both state and Church are necessary and neither can do without the other during this time between the first and second comings of Christ was Augustine. In so doing, Augustine laid the foundation for Christendom - not the unmitigated disaster of racism, violence, persecution, colonialization, exploitation, greed etc. imagined by so many - but the attempt to fashion a society in which the vast majority of people, including the rulers, confess Christ as Lord. For Augustine, the Church contains both true believers and hypocrites and the State can be either demonic or restrained and sometimes fluctuates wildly between the extremes. This sounds like Western history.

Thirdly, Leithart's explanation of in what sense Constantine "Christianized" the Roman Empire is suggestive and insightful. He says that Rome was "baptized" by Constantine's initiative in halting pagan sacrifice; in so doing Constantine "desacrificed" the Roman empire (pp. 326ff). The death of Christ means the end of sacrifice and Constantine implemented that in the Roman world. Hauerwas appreciates this insight and writes:

Leithart seems to be of two minds about the implications of this for understanding our current political alternatives. He observes that America is not a sacrificial polity and that "we have Constantine to thank for that," but he also claims that because the modern state, now shaped by the nihilism of modern politics, refuses to welcome the church as the model city necessary for judgment, it has again become a sacrificial state. Yoder could not have said it better. In fact, in some of Yoder's last work he sounded very much like Leithart on sacrifice as he sought to remind us that one of the realities that sacrifice names is war.

Hauerwas nicely captures Liethart's ambivalence at this point. Quite rightly, Leithart wants to say something positive about modern Western society. Insofar as it remains Christendom - or, at least, what comes after Christendom - it is "desacrificed" and this is a good thing. However, Leithart's cryptic comments about "the nihilism of modern politics" point to a reality that we have to consider. (One hopes Leithart will spell out his political theology in more detail in future writings.) Hauerwas is right to name war as one of the sacrifices made in the modern state and as one of its pagan features.

But, to say "war" is too abstract. Here I suspect Leithart would push back and remind us, in an Augustinian fashion, of the ambiguities of why people fight. For a Christian to participate in war is not always to participate in pagan sacrifice. This is the heart of the disagreement between Leithart and Augustine, on the one side, and Yoder and Hauerwas, on the other.

I suggest that if we really want to point to a clear and unambiguous example of the "resacrificing" of modern, Western, liberal democracies, we should point to the clearly sacrificial practice of abortion in the name of the sexual revolution. Our daily sacrifices to the god Pleasure condemn our societies as pagan and unbelieving. Maybe another Constantine would not be such a bad thing.

Does this book constitute a comprehensive and final answer to Yoder's call for the Church to embrace pacifism as its essential posture in this world? My reading of Augustine over the past five years has convinced me that it is time to move on from Yoder's version of the politics of Jesus and be much less hasty in dismissing Christendom as I, like many others, have been. In truth, the only reason Leithart's book did not convince me of the absoluteness of pacifism as the essence of the Church's witness is that I had already been convinced by Augustine. But I predict that Leithart's book will lead many to re-consider their "Yoderian" position and ponder the possibility of a politics of Jesus that moves beyond doctrinaire pacifism.

It's Time to Ban Use of the Words "Constantinian" and "Christendom"

I would like to propose a ban on the use of the words "Christendom" and "Constantinian" for the foreseeable future, since they are so generally mis-used and abused.

The word "Christendom" had a generally positive or at least neutral connotation up until the last few years. Now "Christendom" has a uniformly bad connotation in most theological discourse. When I spoke of a "Post-Christendom" approach to Christ and Culture in the title of my 2005 book, I retained something of the double sense of gain and loss that inheres in the decline of Christendom. My point was not so much that we are better off now that we are in the post-Christendom period, as it was that we need to recognize that we are in a post-Christendom period.

The problem with not recognizing that fact is that, whereas participating in the cultural establishment used to be a way of engaging in Christian action, now participating in the cultural establishment is to engage in post-Christian pagan action. So there needs to be a lot more intentionality about how we relate to the majority culture around us. We need to develop minority sensitivities and learn from the Jews how to survive in a generally hostile environment rather than lumbering along lazily assuming that we are the minority. The spectacle of the liberal Protestant denominations having adapted themselves to the polite paganism of the upper middle classes in Europe and North America and still quaintly thinking of themselves as Christian is a ridiculous one that we should try to avoid for many reasons, the least of which is so that we do not make fools of ourselves.

Christendom was a period of Western culture that peaked in the 13th century in which a serious attempt was made to create a Christian culture on earth. To dismiss it all as insincere or a complete failure is a form of Philistinism that is insupportable and irresponsible. Our ancestors were far from perfect, as was the culture they built, but the attempt was sincere and the results, compared to the moral and spiritual wasteland of the 20th century, were impressive. To say that we live in a post-Christendom period indicates both gains and losses that probably can never be finally tallied up.

"Constantinianism" is a term, which was invented by John Howard Yoder and which has been corrupted and debased in just a single generation by those who claim to follow his thought. For Yoder, the term refers to an eschatological heresy in which the future kingdom of God, which lies on the other side of the Parousia, is captured and dragged backward into our own plane of history and becomes a human political project instead of a Divine gift. Constantine became the symbol, for Yoder, of the attempt to build the Kingdom of God on earth here and now in our own human strength. The result of such activity is a violent regime that uses Christianity as its legitimating ideology.

The way the term is used in much contemporary theological discourse is as a handy way of attacking all forms of conservatism by those with a left-wing bias. Christendom has left the West with a rich legacy of laws that protect human life, uphold human dignity, and limit the libido dominandi. Modern progressivism has systematically attacked and undermined these laws one by one in order to remove restrictions on the will to power that are perceived in modernity as oppressive because they prevent the self-creation of individuals through the exercise of will. Whenever anyone dares to defend laws against, say abortion or adultery, or laws that mandate one day of rest in seven or which place limits on technological manipulation of human life, they are hit with the label of "Constantinian." To be Constantinian is to refuse to be caught up in the fanatical, blind faith that change must inevitably equal progress since man is inherently good and we have such good intentions.

It seems that in much theological discussion today, "Constantinian" simply means "conservative" and "Christendom" simply means a barrier to progress. To be anti-Constantinian and anti-Christendom has come to mean simply being "progressive." The use of these buzz words allows one to apporpriate the Enlightenment-inspired faith of modernity without appearing to be simply modernist. But my point to those who use these words is: why not just be honest and call yourselves what you are, that is, modernist progressives?

Modernity as a Heresy Revisited: A Clarification of Terms

A few weeks ago I posted a brief article on Michael Allen Gillespie's excellent book, The Theological Origins of Modernity, entitled: "Descartes' Understanding of Man." This post generated two posts of condemnation by Halden Doerge, the second of which generated 78 comments including some very interesting ones from Doug Harink and D. Stephen Long. The posts are entitled: "Why Modernity is not the Problem" and "Why Modernity is not a Christian Heresy" and can be found here.

One of the comments near the end tried to summarize what Halden's problem is with my post and said the following.

"Clearly Halden is concerned, at least on some key level, with the politics effected (or perhaps at the heart of) a certain discursive strategy: whereby an opposition to modernity functions to present Christendom (as what is prior to modernity) and modernity as the only two games in town.”

Halden then quoted this statement and said: "Thanks, Dan. This is quite well put."

So we have a starting point for discussion here. Halden's problem is that he thinks that by calling Modernity a Christian heresy, I am setting up a choice between Chrisendom and Modernity: Choose One! This is so far off from what I was intending to say that it means that clearly there has been a breakdown in communication. Halden and I are not using words to meant the same things. We may well disagree dramatically about Jesus and the Gospel, (or maybe agree), but it would take a lot of terminological clarification to be sure one way or the other.

Christendom - Halden uses this word pejoratively exclusively. He apparently thinks there should never have been a Christendom. The fact that Christendom arose at all is proof positive that the Church had fallen into compromise and true discipleship had been overshadowed by worldliness. I would now use "Christendom" in a more neutral way that I did in my book, Rethinking Christ and Culture, to mean the geographical location where most people are Christian. Christendom need not necessarily imply Constantinianism. (Se below.)

Constantinianism - Halden does not use this word. He does not need to because it for him appears to be synonomous with Christendom. I disagree. I understand "Constantinianism" to be an eschatological heresy first identified by Yoder. (See my: The Politics of the Cross, ch. 6.) Constantinianism is the false doctrine that Christ's future kingdom can be brought into existence here and now by human effort and does not need to await the Second Coming. This heresy allows the Church to over-identify itself with a particular human government or ideology and sanctify it. This leads to utopianism, totalitarianism and ecclesial compromise with violence. I would not say that Christendom necessarily needs to be Constantinian, although it is a constant temptation.

Orthodoxy - I never mentioned either Constantinianism or Christendom in my post, but Halden seems to hear "Christendom" when I say "Orthodoxy." This is deeply concerning to me. Tolstoy took this approach to the limit when he says that one must choose between the Nicene Creed and the Sermon on the Mount: one have one or the other but not both. Is that true? Or is it exactly the opposite of the truth? I contend that one can never have the Sermon on the Mount without the Nicene Creed. One can have a bland form of liberal tolerance, yes, but not the radical discipleship of the Sermon on the Mount without orthodoxy. (If Jesus was just a man and he said what Matt. 5-7 says he said - then he was insane.)

I would not deny that the concept of orthodoxy was misused in Christendom as a tool of oppression. The Church should have stuck to excommunication and not become complicit in killing heretics. There should have been religious freedom. But the abuse does not negate the proper use (Aquinas). Orthodox doctrine is still essential to the Church, its abuse in Christiandom notwithstanding. Christians too are sinners and will abuse everything holy: sacraments, church office, canon law, tithes, music - you name it! We cannot drop everything that has been abused or there would be no Christianity left.

Heresy - I used the term "heresy" in its precise, technical, theological sense. A heresy is a twisting of a true doctrine either by over-emphasizing one aspect of the truth at the expense of other aspects or by over rationalizing the mystery. Contrary to Halden's concerns, "heresy" can never be completely "the other." On the other hand, he goes too far in implying (without actually saying so) that true doctrine "generates" heresy. No: sinners generate heresy, not by faithfully handing on true doctrine (orthodoxy), but by twisting and distorting it.

So Orthodoxy can be used under the guidence of the Holy Spirit to discern truth from error, to correct false teaching and to guard the purity of the Gospel the Church is charged to preach. Orthodoxy can be radical! It can take us back to the roots of our faith. Orthodoxy can condemn deviations from tradition that distort the biblical narrative centering on Jesus Christ.

Of course nominalism arose out of the Medieval Church and of course many orthodox ideas were in the mix of concepts used by Occam and others. It didn't drop out of the sky. It wasn't imported from India. But heresy is always a twisting of truth. Strictly speaking, that which is completely "other" (such as Hinduism or pre-Christian paganism) can never be heretical. Only a Christian doctrine twisted or over-rationalized can be heresy. And that is what the nominalist view of God turned out to be. As one commentator noted, nominalism is not itself a heresy (which is not to say it could not be wrong) but applied to certain doctrines (God and man in this case) it can lead to heresy. And it did.

Halden is too quick to reduce everthing to politics when he says that Orthodoxy conjurs up images of coercive, violent Christendom for him. This is as reductionistic as what he opposes.

One last point: Halden tries to play off "Jesus" against "Orthodoxy" in his post and is rightly criticized for it by Harink and Long. I don't mean to pile on, but there is perhaps one more point to be mentioned here. The question that is begged in using "Jesus" to critique Christendom or Orthodoxy or whatever is "Which Jesus?" There are many concepts of Jesus floating around out there. Which Jesus is the basis for critique? I'm reading Harnak's History of Dogma right now. If Halden does not mean Harnack's Jesus, then what terminology (other than the terminology of the creeds, i.e. orthodoxy) can Halden turn to in order to clarify what he means by "Jesus?" Surely Harink is correct to say that my call "Back to Orthodoxy" in the end is the same as Halden's call "Back to Jesus." But if so, then why cannot Halden admit that Orthodoxy may function as a way of critiquing Christian unfaithfulness today?

I did not have the pure pagan or total non-Christian in my sights, but rather liberal Christianity as in The Episcopal Church. Now they are heretics and also as Constantinian as they come. They are so intertwined with the dominant culture of Modernity that they cannot even conceive of the Church standing against the destruction of marriage and the abandonment of the virtue of chastity. I would go further and say that their heresy even arises out of their Constantinianism because it is their desperate lust for "relevance" that drives their abandoment of communion with orthodox Christians.

Peter Leithart on Yoder and the Constantinian Shift

Peter Leithart is on a roll with finding flaws in Yoder, except this time he isn't careful enough. He notes the Yoder admits that the Constantinian Shift started before Constantine and concludes that this undermines Yoder's thesis:

"If, as Yoder claims, the “Constantinian” compromise of the church with the world begins in the second and third centuries; if it begins when Christianity is still an illicit religion, persecuted periodically but savagely; if it begins when the church is still populated by martyrs - is it still a Constantinian shift? That is, is the shift attributable to the church becoming legal, official, the majority religion, the religion of the empire?

Evidently not. Whatever shift there was in the second and third centuries, it has other sources and is evidence (as Gerald Schlabach has suggested) of more general problems of Christian faithfulness rather of the mainstreaming of the church.

Yoder’s acknowledgement that the church was becoming Constantinian before Constantine is not a qualification of his thesis. It undermines his thesis."

Nice try, Peter, but you don't understand what Yoder meant by the Constantinian Shift. Your mistake is actually a common one. This is not for Yoder an historical thesis as in: "Constantine caused the Church to become unfaithful by co-0pting it."

Constantinianism for Yoder is an eschatological heresy which tries to reach forward and pull the future kingdom of God back into the present sphere of history with no regard for the necessity of a still-future Second Coming of the Messiah, thus turning the Kingdom into a human political project. Yoder names the shift after Constantine to give it a handy label, but he is talking about a lack of faithfulness in the Church caused by bad eschatology, rather than trying to give an historical explanation of where this bad eschatology and resulting unfaithfulness came from.