Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. So far in the series, we have laid out what the Bible has to say about government, and we've discovered what government is, does, and how it's formed. The last episode took what some might consider a very cynical look at government, though I'd personally call it a realistic look. Governments are divisive. They break people up into us and them groups.

They diffuse responsibility, they monopolize violence, they have arbitrary claims to authority. And a lot of times, they're really just all about self interest. Governments promote self interest by protecting one group's economic interests often at the expense of others, either through preventing those in the out group from equal access to resources or by violently exploiting those in the out group that they think they can get resources from without repercussions. Governments run on violence and they monopolize it. Only the governments can use violence and they usually do and with great frequency and in great quantity.

And only the government can bequeath the ability to do violence on another individual or group. When you see what the Bible says about government, what the Bible says about how Christians are to be in the world, and then see what the government really is and how Jesus handled government and how Jesus' role was very governmental, very political, and leaves us wondering how Christian can be involved in the government at all. But digging into the specifics of that particular question is still a ways off into the future because we have to first answer some detractors. I know there are many out there who are going to say, Derek, of course governments do bad things sometimes and of course some Christians have been bad in government, but that's not the way it has to be. We, the ultra spiritual and ultra Christian Christians who really understand things now and like maybe Christians of the past, we can do better than that.

We can grab power and wield it for God. Now maybe that's true, but I really don't think it is. So in order to bolster my position, we are going to look at four moments in history when governments were run by ultra Christians, and we'll see how that played out. My hope is that when you glimpse what the most religious and most Christian Christians did with government, you'll recognize that wielding power in government, as the Gentiles do, is not compatible with the teaching of Jesus. For our first snapshot in history, I want to take a look at the time of Constantine.

Now this is a very contentious topic right here, so I'm going to try to be as fair as I know how to be in my telling of the story. In the non violent world, Constantine is despised as the individual who most contributed to the syncretistic dilution of Christianity. He's the reason we have Christendom and why, you know, we've got this sacral society and this Christianity that's just so mingled with the world and so messed up. If you think back to our previous episode on the early church, most of our quotes came from the Anti Nicene church, which is essentially the church prior to Constantine. And that's for good reason.

When Constantine came to power, he courted Christianity and ended up wielding it as a tool for the state. Whereas only a decade or two before Constantine, Christians were viciously persecuted. Lastly, I believe it was under Diocletian, that was the really bad one. Now under Constantine, Christians were not only free, but they started to actually get kickbacks and power from the state. Constantine essentially married the church and state together, whereas prior to him, the church was an alternative institution to the state.

When you dig into Constantine's life, there's a lot that makes one question whether or not he just co opted Christianity for his gain. While Christianity wasn't a majority religion by any stretch of the imagination when Constantine arrived at power, we have to wonder why someone who supposedly converted to Christianity didn't come under the discipleship of anyone like all the other catechumens had done before him, why he didn't comport with Christian moral standards, as Christians were required to do in churches before him, and why he waited until as late as possible to be baptized. Constantine essentially lived as a non Christian, apart from the Christian community and oversight for his whole life post conversion. He was able to speak into the community, the Christian community, and bring it under governmental control through his calling of councils, synods, etcetera, and he was able to control dissenters, but he himself wasn't reined in by the Christian community. And it seems that the Christians who had just come out of terrible persecution, they were willing to kind of put up with that because they didn't want to bite the hand that fed them.

Comfort, security and power were alluring And you even see this in some of the individuals, think Lactantius, I think that's the guy who ended up teaching Constantine's son but, you know, you read some of his earlier quotes and again, it might be somebody else besides Lactantius but I think it's him. And it's like his quotes just kind of flip flop to having this completely different perspective when, you know, when Constantine comes to power. So yeah, coming out of these Diocletian persecutions and the horror that that was, I mean you understand that this promise of power and security were luring and it's not a bad thing to want some rest, right? When Satan offered the kingdoms of the world to a weary Jesus in the desert, Jesus refused and Satan was smart because he offered him the kingdoms at a time when when he was most distraught and most weak. And it seems like Constantine offered the kingdom to weary Christians but rather than acting like Jesus and refusing those, they foamed at the mouth in acceptance.

Of course, it might not be possible to judge Constantine by the fruits of his life and labors just because he said he believes. I mean, if not executing your wife and children and friends means that you aren't a Christian, who then could be saved? Would murder and power mongering really indicate that one hasn't been transformed by Christ? Who can judge? And there are many, many diverse opinions on Constantine which fall on a spectrum.

I'll link a compilation of those opinions in the resources. It's a response to Leithart and you get Leithart basically wrote a book about Constantine and he's pro Constantine and kind of defending him and there's this good compilation of essays which basically responds to Leithart and some people are like, No, he's way off, Constantine was terrible, and other people kind of go all the way up to, Yeah, Leithart has some good points, Constantine's a complex figure and I could see him being a Christian and trying to do some good things. Not at all trying to deny here that there is a complexity to the issue of Constantine. Nevertheless, we're talking about a very different significant change that occurs, a change of scenery that occurs with Constantine and the things that the Church is willing to accept and not call out and the different life that they begin to live. But even though there's a complexity perhaps to Constantine and his conversion or fake conversion or whatever you want to call it.

What is plain to see is that whereas the Anti Nicene fathers taught non violence and alien living, a complete 180 occurred after Constantine. Within his lifetime, prominent thinkers in the church began courting violence, coercion of religious dissenters, forced baptisms, and seeking power through the state. Augustine is one of the earliest and most famous of these individuals who ended up justifying violence so long as it was done by the state because Christians killing in the name of the state could love so long as they killed their enemies dispassionately. And you couldn't kill an enemy dispassionately if he was trying to attack you or your family, but you could kill dispassionately if somebody in the state with authority just said, Hey, go kill them. Alright, just doing a job, I guess.

So Augustine took us miles away from original Christianity in terms of non violence and later theologians, and especially modern American Christians, have taken us the last few inches to a place where self defense and even defensive property legitimates violence. Augustine also brought us things like persecution of heretics and the use of force in regard to those who disagree with us. Actually, let me, because I'm not fully up to speed on church history, I won't necessarily say that Augustine brought us those things, I'll say that he made those things more mainstream. He was one of the biggest influencers who was who began persecution of heretics. So he wasn't the only one to do these things but he's definitely the foundation that many others have used to build their case for violence.

Suffice it to say that the post Constantine church with power looked significantly different than the pre Constantinian church with suffering and sacrificial love. The fruits of the one were sweet and transformative and the fruits of the other were rotten and sacralistically stale. Speaking of sacralism, this would be an ideal time to explain this term because it's gonna be something that comes up with some frequency. So sacralism is essentially the blending together of church and state so that those in a particular region are not only considered citizens of a nation, but adherents to a religion. So with Constantine and the establishment of Christendom or the church married to the state, this meant that more and more Romans began to be born into the Church rather than reborn into it.

Infant baptism eventually began to be required of all people and the further we get into Christendom, the more divergence from Christianity and Christian practices were punished. Since the state and the church were married, to throw off the church and its teachings or the rituals which showed one adhered to the institution, it meant that one was basically being treasonous. To throw off the church was to throw off the state because the two were intermingled. Treason against God was treason against the emperor. The biggest takeaway I'd like you to have with Constantine here is the recognition of how the church mutated with Constantine's marriage of the Church and State.

Whatever you conclude about Constantine's motives or sincerity, the Church after his reign looked significantly different. I don't have time to talk about as much as I'd like to here, so I will recommend extending your knowledge on this topic by exploring some of the resources in the show notes. I especially recommend Verduin's work, first his Anatomy of a Hybrid, and second, the reformers and their stepchildren. Verduin lays out a beautiful depiction of what sacralism looks like and how it impacts Christianity. Now, he's extremely knowledgeable about both the Anabaptists and their roots, as well as the Protestant reformers, and I think that's in part because he grew up reformed, and then he ended up becoming a Menno Simons expert.

The point is, he knows his stuff and maybe he has some different opinions that you could push back on, but he knows his stuff. He might get a little too praiseworthy of the Donatists. Well, I was talking to one of my friends who's kind of an expert on Augustine and he was saying that the Donatists were kind of jerks on their own right, so I think Verduin might might maybe be a little bit too praiseworthy and bent that direction. Nevertheless, I think he provides a good different perspective than you're going to hear otherwise. So Verdun lays out that we've basically got this this sacralism thing going on where the church and state are intermingled and people are are basically born into both at the same time, into the church and the state.

So then comes Augustine. And Augustine, now resided in Christendom, he was faced with a threat to sacralism, and he had to figure out how to respond. And and this threat was, in part, coming from the Donatists who were saying, Hey, look, don't have a mingling of church and state, that doesn't work because we need to hold people inside the church accountable, and if everybody is basically now the church, that doesn't work out, like you can't have everybody just be a part of the church, that doesn't make any sense, that's not how the church works. And so to resolve this problem, one thing that Augustine did was he began to distinguish between the visible and invisible church. Something which hadn't been done before, you know, by their fruit you should know them and you can tell who's inside and who's outside the church.

And of course, some there's gray area but we are to judge those inside the church. We don't want wolves inside the church, false teachers. First Corinthians five, you see somebody getting excommunicated because of their sexual practices and refusal to repent. So yeah, it should be at least sometimes very clear, some people who should not be in the church. But Augustine started to do this visible and invisible thing.

Now prior to Christendom and Sacralism, if you were in the church, the fruit of your life was judged by the church and there was accountability. But when everyone's a Christian and expected to go through the motions, then you have a problem with accountability and church discipline because that's going to start to push people out. You can't have a reasonable expectation that most in the church are true invisible believers. Now Verdun expounds on this and I'm gonna quote him at length here. Quote, It is a fact that church discipline was in a hopeless mess ever since the Constantinian change was affected.

In the first place, there is no discipline for aberrations in conduct. Men could live in sin and debauchery, dissipate to the full extent of their physical powers, and never come to know that the Church of Christ has keys with which it is supposed to lock out such rough necks. The Church stirred not a finger, unless and until someone challenged the sacralist formula. This was the one sin which made the fallen church reach for her keys. In her catalog, this was the unpardonable sin.

This was the sin of the heretic, the sectory, the schismatic, the Carther, all of them names that hark back to this quarrel when the fallen church saw or heard of anyone who was rending Christ's robes then, and only then, did the wheels of discipline begin to turn. With a fury that reminds one of that of the twentieth century communistic world when it hears of revisionism, and no wonder for it was similarly inspired, the Church bared its claws when men challenged the sacralist formula, When the fallen church did discipline, it went much too far, for it then expelled not only from the company of the redeemed, but from the company of men as such. End quote. So essentially, with sacralism came debauchery. You had the priestly class or the pastors, priests, whatever, who were held to pretty high standards prior to this and all of a sudden, like in dress, in actions, in everything, things start to go down.

I mean, they start to get kickbacks from The States, you start to get more and more ornate clothing and less concern with poverty and those sorts of things and you really just get a different sort of look for the leaders. And leadership also started to come with power, opportunities for power for the different priests. So all of this debauchery was kind of overlooked a lot of times and there wasn't the accountability that there used to be. But what did rise to the top as a severe offense, it wasn't this wicked living, but it was rather doing things which threatened the appearance of unity. And it really does remind me of communism, as Ruddon says.

If you remember back to our discussion of Sultanizen, it's really a lot like that fruit vendor. If the vendor refuses to put out the sign All Workers Unite which is given him by the government, then he can get severely punished. Why severe punishment for something tiny like not putting out a sign? Because breaking the sacralistic unity in a sacralistic society can bring down the whole house of cards and subvert the power structures. So in Christendom, we see a huge shift in what is valued and what is disciplined, and how that discipline moves from church discipline to violence.

We also see how we move from only a visible church to one which is absolutely, almost absolutely indistinguishable from the world. And we see how rather than have a dichotomy between church and world, the government now severely punishes those who dissent. And really, harshest punishments are for those who dissent, not for those who commit debauchery. Now, we've touched on Augustine a lot in this podcast, particularly when it comes to lying and also when it comes to violence. So part of the reason that we talk about Augustine so much is because he was brilliant, but also because he was kind of a bridge to modern Christianity.

He had his foot in the Anti Nicene world, so he was kind of trying to bridge explaining the how the old beliefs really aren't gone away. And I'm sure this I'm sure people who know Augustine would would maybe cringe at me saying it like this because I don't think you can you can look at Augustine and say, Oh, he was just a puppet for the state. But he is he is growing up a generation after Constantine has kind of made the main changes that he did and Augustine is is really trying to sift through everything and figure out how do we explain all of this stuff? Like how can I how can I defend these things that are going on? What's right and what's not right?

And essentially, Augustine becomes an apologist for the new wave of what's going on. You know, the Anti Nicene Church was against violence. Well, Augustine is now trying to explain how do we justify the violence that we do? The main issue that we looked at with Augustine was was the way that he justified violence and the change from the Anti Nicene Church. Augustine essentially was like, yeah, you know what, the the Anti Nicene Church, they were right about not killing people because we do have to love and all that we do, we have to love.

And so Augustine was actually against killing intruders, like somebody who's coming to harm you. Because how do you kill somebody who's coming to harm you without having fear or selfishness and wanting to to protect, you know, your property? You you can't do that in love, but you can kill for the state. And so, Augustine talked about, you know, the ordering of loves and and all this kind of thing, and intent of a heart. So, Augustine is really good at at explaining away things that he thinks he needs to preserve.

And and maybe that's unfair because, you know, Augustine's motives may have been may have been all good and or he might have thought that they were good, but it just seems it seems kind of suspect to me. It seems like he's he's forcing some things here. So I think we're going to see a similar sort of thing here with the Donatis. I want you to listen to Verduin ex describe how Augustine handled the the Donatis situation. Quote, The Donatess pointed out that this would be to deviate from the policies of the master who had not raised a finger, much less a sword to restrain people from going away.

More than that, when a sizable group walked out, he had confronted his disciples with the wistful question, do you not also want to go? To this line of thought, the cogency of which had not escaped him, Augustine replied, I hear that you are quoting that which is recorded in the gospel, that when the 70 followers went back from the Lord, they were left to their own choice in this wicked and impious desertion, and that He said to the 12 remaining, do you not also want to go? But what you failed to say is that at that time the church was only just beginning to burst forth from the newly planted seed and that the saying had not as yet been fulfilled in her, All kings shall fall down before Him, all nations shall serve Him. It is in proportion to the more enlarged fulfillment of this prophecy that the church now wields greater power, that she may now not only invite, but also compel men to embrace that which is good. End quote.

So apparently, Jesus' command to Peter to sheathe his sword wasn't for all time. Jesus' way wasn't the way, but a pragmatic way that he used for the moment. Jesus didn't really show us what God was like, He showed us what God was like until He grasped power. Now that God had the power of the state, a power Jesus could have had three hundred years ago when it was offered to Him by Satan, Now, God could really start to work in history through Christian Rome. So Augustine is essentially saying, hey, look, we're gonna persecute heretics and people who try to leave the church or mess with the church because now we have power and we can start to compel people.

Jesus didn't do that because He didn't have the power as the Son of God, I guess. For as smart as Augustine was, how insane is it that he thought the state should compel people now that it wielded power like the Gentiles? You know, the thing that Jesus said, In my kingdom, we don't word power like the Gentiles. Now, we're back to first Samuel eight here. Israel wanted a king like the Gentiles.

Now, in this time in Rome, Christians wanted to rule like the Gentiles. But this time it's worse because as Hebrews says, we had now seen the Father and seeing Jesus and we don't see dimly like they did in the Old Testament. We had clearer revelation of what God was like and what He wanted. Jesus even told us not to rule as the Gentiles do and that's exactly what happened when Constantine offered Jesus' bride the nations of the earth and when Augustine tried to justify those things. Where Jesus held out in the face of the great deceiver, the church capitulated to a severely immoral man who claimed to have seen a vision from heaven.

I wanna make sure that I'm not saying, I'm not heard as saying that Constantine and his predecessors were the worst humans in history. Much of American Christianity seeks the same power that that Constantine did, And Christians have struggled with the same temptation throughout the ages. In fact, this is the same temptation we talked about in our Politics of Jesus series. Jesus was tempted to rule by power and force, to take the reigns of history into his own hands, to be like God, just as Adam tried to be like God. What I am saying is that the picture of the kingdom Jesus and the early church gave us stand in stark contrast to what was begun or catalyzed by Constantine.

Only a generation or two before, despite persecution, the church stood in the face of evil as a church which had grown in leaps and bounds, and which saw the fulfillment of prophecies as being fulfilled. Swords in the kingdom had turned into plowshares, a fulfillment of the IsaiahMicah prophecies as declared by the early church. Likewise, Acts four declared that the early church saw no needy among them, a fulfillment of Deuteronomy fifteen:four. Jesus had brought the kingdom, but Constantine showed the church the kingdoms of the world and enticed it to conquer in the way of power and force. In this sign, the sign of violence and coercion, conquer.

But that wasn't the sign Jesus showed us in Revelation. Yes, Christians are to conquer but we do so by the testimony of our mouths and the sign of the lamb who was slain. That's all for now. So peace and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it. This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost Network.

Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to non violence and Kingdom Living.