Midweek – The Life of the Church: 5, Emperor Constantine

Part 5 of our teaching on church history. This week we look at Emperor Constantine.

The Life of the Church – Learning our Church History is a teaching series from Annalong Presbyterian Church.

Transcript

The life of the church, what we learn from our church history is important to us. Whether you enjoyed history or not at school, if we handle the Bible at all, we have the confidence that we are handling something that happened in time and in space. That’s what the first words of Scripture tell us, in the beginning God created.

He created from eternity into present and therefore time, setting the sun in the sky so that it would rotate that we would know day and night. As we read the story of creation going into the patriarchs of Abraham and   Jacob and Isaac to the prophets, Moses going on into the kings. And the judges going right through to the very moment when the breakthrough happens of God himself coming into the world.

It’s all our history. And so to pick up after Acts 28 is simply to understand what has happened since. As what we call that the canon is closed. That there’s nothing more to be added to scripture and nothing more should be added to scripture. We still learn from those who trailblaze the faith. So that today we can live in that faith.

And as we’ve seen in previous weeks, people and places have played significant roles. And we mustn’t forget that we must embrace both of these. It’s not just historical figures, because we can too quickly then idolize. But there are places, as we saw last week with Caesarea by the sea,   that it has played a long history.

And tonight we’ll continue to play a part in the history that we look at as we turn to someone who’s called Constantine. Constantine changed the face of the world forever. And because of the position in which we see ourselves today, it all stems back to the early 300s, the early 4th century, and this gentleman, Constantine.

Constantine. And so as we learn from our church history, we are thinking about the Emperor Constantine. He was a man influential, but whenever we hear of his conversion we don’t term it in how we understand conversion today, because I’m going to tell you from the start, there is still much around Constantine that is debatable, including His conversion, and hopefully that’ll become   clear.

And it does raise the question, someone can say they’re converted and do good things, but actually have no transformation by Jesus Christ at all. And so that’ll come clear, and the jury is out by the way, still. Seventeen hundred years later as to what is the truth. of Constantine. But what we do know is, whatever Constantine’s spiritual state was and is, God worked through him for a purpose and for a reason, and that would be for the continuation of the gospel around the world.

As we think of everything’s blank there the Emperor Constantine, let’s begin by thinking about something that I’ve simply titled Persecution by Law. We’ve heard a lot of persecution, heard a lot about it, so far every week we’ve looked at it, it’s included something of persecution, and 300 years   after the coming of Christ, the church is still greatly persecuted.

But by the time we come to the Emperor Dian, whom we’ve heard of before last week, and we’ll recap a little bit of that in a moment. This gentleman, Dian, I’m sorry. There’s obviously no pictures of these people. So the best we can do are the busts that remain from different parts of the Roman empire.

Dian lived from 242 through to 311. He enacted law that forced persecution on the church. Laws of persecution are nothing new today. Diocletian, the emperor, what he was trying to do was he had a belief that everything that was going wrong with the Roman Empire was because of the Christians. They were diluting the worship of Roman gods.

So how do you solve a problem? You get rid of what you perceive that problem to be. And so he put in law that all Christians were to be persecuted. And so we touched on   this last week, but we looked at Caesarea, and Caesarea was firmly in his eyes because he looked at this gentleman whom we looked at last week, and it’s there at the bottom of the first paragraph for you.

Whenever we think of Caesarea Maritima the gentleman was called Pamphilus. He was the gentleman that built the library, not physically bricks and mortar, but he built the resources of the library in Caesarea that became a fantastic library for many to go and retreat and sabbatical and write and learn.

And it was a repository for what the church believed at that time. And so he became the target. And he was persecuted. Diocletian just wasn’t going after people, he was also going after institutions. And so wherever the church would meet, He would get rid of it. He would raise it to the ground, or he would put it off limits completely.

He would force the Christians to divide. He would force them away from each other, and places like the   library in Caesarea would become a target as well, although he wouldn’t succeed, but it would become a target of what he wanted. What he was trying to do was to get Roman people back to the worship of the pantheon of Roman gods, So that everything would go back to the way it was with the Roman Empire because really from Diocletian onwards, the Roman Empire’s hit its peak.

Everywhere now it’s on a downward spiral. We’ll see that in a moment when Diocletian abdicates, the empire splits. He becomes a man who’s on well. He marches into Rome, he’s about to take up a particular seat in Rome, and he doesn’t even go to his inauguration. He rushes off because he’s unwell, and nobody knows what it is, but it turns out that in 1311 or 1312, he dies simply of a fever.

We don’t know if it was brought on by some   disease but of course, in those days, medicine, primitive, compared to now, and so a fever is what we know. has killed him. But the reason why I include this for this evening is because we have to remind ourselves that even though the church can be faced with what we perceive to be the greatest evil, that evil only lasts for a time.

Because what, whenever we even go back to the Old Testament, this is what Job says about God. In Job chapter 12, this is Job’s rebuttal against his

And it’s quite an encouraging little section if you look at the entirety of chapter 12. But in verses 23 to 25, he speaks of God by saying he makes nations great and he destroys them. He enlarges nations and leads them away. He takes away   understanding from the chiefs of the people of the earth and makes them wander in trackless waste.

They grew up in the dark without light, and he makes them stagger like a drunken man. And I wanted to put that verse in there to frame what we’re looking at this evening. Three hundred hard years of persecution, after one Roman emperor after another. It will come to an end, in terms of state organized persecution, at least for a time.

Because God has told us who he is. That he is the one who raises empires, and he is the one who brings them down. Track every empire in history. Whether they were for the church, or against the church, and where are they now? They’re not here.   There is no so called empire that exists today, that was in existence over hundreds of years.

And as we look at countries like Afghanistan, or Iraq, or indeed North Korea, those leaders will rise, those leaders will fall. I’m happy to say I was far too young for when communism began. I know that some of you can’t say that, because you saw communism start. Did you think it would ever collapse in 1989?

And yet it did. The greatest tyranny in your living memory rose And at four, because who’s in control? God is. And so let’s turn to what Jesus himself says about all of this. As we think of Diocletian, we’re going to turn to Matthew 16, verses 13 to 20, and we’re going to hear from Jesus familiar   words as he speaks to Peter.

So Matthew chapter 16, verses 13 to 20, do turn it up there as we, we have a wee look at this. And so we read there in verse 13, now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, now that’s not the Caesarea by the sea, he asked his disciples, who do people say that the son of man is? And they said, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah are one of the prophets.

He said to them, but who do you say that I am? Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus answered, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

I will give you the   keys of the kingdom of heaven, And whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. Amen. This is the Word of God. I’m hoping you’ll see why I’ve selected this passage for this evening.

It’s because of what Jesus says about the church. And we know, because of our history, there has been a wrong interpretation about this when it comes to keys of the kingdom and when it comes to all of that in terms of a literal sense of succession. And We can quickly jump to verse 20 and wonder why Christ didn’t want anyone to tell them of that, and the simple answer is, he was, it was not yet his time to be revealed, because remember, the whole purpose of Jesus coming is for Calvary’s cross, for salvation to be brought   about for all of humankind.

But what’s going to happen after, and this is the snapshot we get here, the disciples already know it’s difficult, They come face to face with the Jewish authorities and the Roman authorities. But they have a leader in Jesus Christ who, he is revealing himself more and more to them, but they don’t just get it yet.

Because look what he says. He says this has not been revealed to you on your own knowledge, it’s been revealed to you by my father in heaven. That’s almost blasphemy on the part of Jesus. You don’t call God Father. In fact, the Jews wouldn’t even call him by his proper title. They had to come up with another name for him so that they would not be irreverent or run the risk of being irreverent.

So the name of God, Yahweh, the covenant keeping God, was never to be mentioned. So Elohim came in so that it could be something that was more palatable. So here’s Jesus changing everything already. But it’s okay for Jesus because he’s the man in   front of us. But it’s gonna get tough for the disciples and what do they need to hear?

I’m sure Peter didn’t want to hear that on him was the responsibility of the church. But what he needed to hear is that the gates of hell will not prevail against it. There’s a chorus we used to sing in our youth fellowship. It was, the men started on one part and the ladies on another. I will build my church.

I will build my church. And the gates of hell and the gates of hell shall not prevail. Did you ever sing that here? Yeah? Oh I’ve got a few years, so maybe we’ll try it next week. You never know. I did think of it for tonight, but we were all booked up. But it’s that truth. Cause sometimes we forget it.

Diocletian was completely ignorant of it. But yet what did God prove he would do that he would build his church even under persecution and the gates of hell? The schemes of the devil would not prevail against it. And so a moment is now coming in the history of the Church that will shape the Church forever.

And so we come to this person that is called Constantine. He is the ruler of the West. So as Diocletian dies his son takes over and it, it splits into two. In fact, his two sons take over. His son Galerius is the ruler of the East. So that’s everything East on the world map across from Israel over to the East.

And then his other son, Constantinus, leads in the West. The Roman world as we know it in our history. And so it is torn in two, and after the ruler Constantinus he dies, then his son Constantine takes over. And so Constantine becomes the ruler of the West, and eventually he will take over the whole empire again.

He will defeat Ptolemy. Those who are ruling the East in due course, and he will be the ruler of the Roman Empire. And it’s actually Constantinus, who makes it to Britain and gets as   far up to Britain as he can get, and he dies in York. And it is in York that Constantine is declared by the Roman legions there to be the Augustus.

The new emperor of the empire in the east, or sorry, in the west. So Constantine is thrown onto the stage, onto the world stage in a very dramatic way. He’s a young man in his 30s, he’s serving in the imperial army, he’s following in the family trait, And that’s where he is when he finds out that he is now the ruler of the he’s ruler of the West.

And actually, sorry, I told you wrong. It’s not Diocletian who died of a fever. It was his father, Diocletian, we believe, killed himself. It was Constantius who died of a fever in Rome that we don’t know why. It certainly wasn’t malaria, there was no malaria in York. But that’s how significant York has played a part as well in this, because it’s there that Constantine is faced.

with what is a   struggle for the empire that’s torn in two, but it’s also in that moment that he decides this is an empire that’s going to be united. And so he goes and he starts to make preparations for a battle that will happen in Rome where he will overcome those who will challenge him and eventually lead to a united Roman Empire.

Now, there’s one person who is very significant in the life of Constantine and that is his mother Helena. Helena is a huge influence. She’s very religious. But she has dabbled in a little bit of Christianity. And so there’s something weaving into the whole family about that. And there’s a battle that’s called the Battle of Milvian Bridge, which is there the pont in the center of Rome there.

I can’t remember the name of it now, but it’s the famous bridge in Rome. That’s where that battle is happens. And while that happens, something goes on in Constantine’s life. After the battle, he sees an image. And if you look at the bottom of page 2, it’ll come up on the screen in due course. There’s a picture there by Rubens, that’s the Flemish artist, of this moment in history, at this battle in Rome, where after the battle, Constantine sees something.

And what he sees is what we call the Cairo. This is, these are the Greek letters for Cairo. And it’s the first letters of Jesus Christ. And he sees this in a vision in the sky. And as he sees this from whatever his mother has taught him, Constantine immediately says that the only reason for my success was Jesus Christ.

And this proves it. And if you actually look at that picture there it’s not very clear, but where Constantine is looking to in the cloud, just almost touching the the frame there, if you look on your printout, you’ll see just a small etching, and that’s the Cairo as Rubens imprints it there for us to be convinced.

That symbol should be familiar to you. We see it still today in different places on hymn books. I think the Anglican Church have it printed on some of their liturgy and some of their hymn books. So it’s something that we know, but this is where it comes from, this battle that Constantine undertook in Rome there in 324, 325, so that he would be declared the leader of certainly the West, and in due course, the East.

And so just as Diocletian, in his time made it a law that Christianity was to be persecuted, within years, It is now Constantine and the ruler of the East who declare that they will make Christianity free. A known religion, an accepted religion within the empire. And so the ruler of the east at that time is Licinius, and 11 years after Constantine’s conversion, then that’s when he defeats Licinius, because Licinius actually wants to retract that.

He continues to want persecution against the church, but it’s Constantine who takes the stand. And what’s interesting then about his mother Helena, she goes on a pilgrimage to Palestine, and it’s there that she discovers the original cross of Jesus Christ. And it’s there that she builds the church of the Holy Sepulchre.

It’s there that she goes down to Egypt and wants to build other churches. And so her influence was not only great in Constantine, but on the historic sites that we have today, still in the Holy Land, that we would visit. They all come from Constantine’s mother. And it’s Eusebius, who we met last week, the historian from Caesarea.

He is the one who documented that trip that she took, or I say a trip, makes it sound like two or three weeks, that she went to for years, round the Holy Land to all of these sites and finding these relics. But what we see here is the problem that the church will now face. Because what happens when you have state sponsored religion?

The state starts to tell you how to do your religion. And over the course of time, the leaders that come after Constantine are not as credible as he is. And so where we entered the 4th century in our history with great persecution, we end the 4th century, heading into the 400s, coming closer to the time of Patrick here in Ireland that we look at next week.

But we end that, that century where the church is very firmly established, where the Bishop of Jerusalem gets a brand new church, but he also gets other things. This is at the end of the 4th century is the first time the church gets vestments. A uniform where the priesthood is developed into a job where there’s set things that a priest has to do.

The sacraments become higher and higher to the, and we wouldn’t disagree with that being Presbyterians, but they come so high. That it is understood that the sacraments are the only way of salvation, rather than a demonstration of the covenant promises of God. And so as the church gets higher and higher, as it is influenced by the society, and the richness of society, so things become more ornate.

Things start to go in the way that society is going, rather than in the way the church started within the early church. And so as we finish this part this evening, it, we could celebrate. What’s going on here? We could celebrate that the church has known freedom as it reached the end, or the middle of the fourth century.

Persecution’s gone. The church can worship, the church can meet, because what Constantine did was he gave them back the churches. He gave them back their buildings so that they could meet. And it’s recorded for us by Jerome, another church historian, that by the end of the fourth century, all form of idol worship was gone.

The pagan temples were empty, and the churches were flourishing. You But the churches became more and more ornate just as the pagan temples had been ornate before them. So even though there’s great celebration that there’s peace, there’s no persecution, there’s trouble ahead for the church in how it will go through into the middle ages and what it becomes.

Monasticism will grow and monasticism has good points and it has bad points but monasticism creates a, an exclusive community in that the church was never and is never to be exclusive. And so there are troubled waters ahead yet it is through Constantine that the church knew peace. That the church knew growth.

No matter what the troubled waters may be ahead that we’ll come to look at. In this moment, God changed the shape of history through this one Roman Emperor. So that today, we can know the freedom of worship that was granted at that moment. And that’s why we go back to what Jesus said in his words in Matthew 16 and verse 18.

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. What do we understand by this? What we understand is that within history there is a line, there popes,

There’s a succession, as we saw right at the very start of all of this. The disciples of John, who go on to disciple, and we get this line of people who pass the gospel from one generation to the next, even under persecution and even when persecution disappears for a time. Because throughout human history, God does exactly what he says, that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

And we can look at the church today. We can look at the church on this island. We can look at the church across the water. We can look at the church in Scotland, alone. And we can wonder what’s going on, because we can say they’re closing, and we’re shrinking. So how is this verse still true?

Yes, God is. Meeting houses might be closing because the numbers aren’t there like they used to be, but there are people day and daily coming to know Jesus Christ in this land and right around the world. God is still fulfilling what he said he would do. He would build his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

The jury is out. It honestly is. Was Constantine good or bad? If you know anything of Constantine, you’ll have your own opinion on that. Constantine formalized religion. He tied religion to the state. He made it a Christian empire. Does that mean everyone in the empire was Christian? Of course not. Did it mean that people would abuse that position?

Yes it did. And so the jury is still out on was that good for the church or was it bad for the church? 1, 700 years later we’re still debating it and you’ll have your opportunity in a moment to debate it. Because whenever we look at Northern Ireland we see ourselves in a privileged position. We may not be the state church but we’ve always had a favour within the institutions.

But the problem is now, institutions in Westminster, and even institutions in Belfast, no longer recognize the Christian faith as something to be taken seriously. We may still have bishops in the House of Lords. We may still have an Archbishop of Canterbury who crowns a monarch. We may have MPs who will still want to pledge on the Bible, an oath.

to serve the people of these realms well. And we may even at Stormont have prayers before sessions begin, but we’re not living in a time where the government is for us. It will support the work that it sees benefits, but it will not listen to us when we disagree. And so we have to weigh up today, how do we still view this?

But in it all, we take the comfort and the truth. That as God says, the gates of hell will not prevail against the church because it is the bride of Christ. And one of the things whenever we will get to look at Revelation which I’m thinking will start in September 2025. I’m already building myself up for it.

But we’ll come to a part of it that talks about the the blood under the altar of the martyrs. And that’s a fascinating passage because it’s a passage that again is rooted in history. Because the blood of the martyrs that we’re talking about here is the blood that’s been spoken about in Revelation.

Because as much as we’re talking about time and history now, we’re talking about eternity to come as well. Because what is the consummation of the church? As the hymn, The Church’s One Foundation, tells us? It is the church in glory. It is the church in the presence of God. And so with sure and certain hope, we know that Satan will not prevail.

And so as we go in to think and indeed pray about this evening, there’s three questions there for you. It has often been said that the UK and maybe in particular Northern Ireland. is a Christian country. Whether we’ve said it about ourselves or others have said it, how would we evaluate that today?

How do we evaluate the church’s position? And maybe you feel I’ve been too negative. There are good aspects. As Trevor keeps reminding us, we get gifted. 25, 22 percent comes back to us from the government. We’re very thankful for that. But it’s not because they see us as a church. It’s because they see us as a charity.

What about abortion? What about redefinitions of marriage? How does even our Christian parties and Christian politicians view those things? And the opportunities they have to make a difference in that. Are they? Are they not? So how do we evaluate today what it means for people to say that the UK is a Christian country or nation?

Secondly, what influence should the church have in society? What does it mean for the gates of hell not to prevail against the church? We have to ask ourselves, what is the purpose of the church? And in asking that question then we come to what is the influence that then the church should have?

And thirdly then, is there a danger that like the church of the end of the 4th century, we become too, I didn’t know how to spell it, churchy? Should it be churchy with an I E or churchy with a Y? I don’t know. But do we risk becoming too churchy? Do we risk becoming too settled in tradition and the culture we create   that we become so far removed from what real life is?

that we have nothing to offer. And that’s the accusation against the church here on this island in the 1960s. If any of you were at the mission rally last night, that’s exactly what was said about the Republic of Ireland, that the church died in the church. Not that the church died, but the church’s influence died in the Republic of Ireland in the sixties and the seventies because of liberalism and liberal teaching.

Are we at risk of looking so much inside that we become the same? Even though we’d still be evangelical in preaching and teaching, are we missing what we’re supposed to be? Are we in danger of becoming too churchy? Let me pray. And maybe we need to pray for how we’ll discuss this. But we need to get to grips of learning from the past, ever mindful of what Jesus says, that the gates of hell will not prevail, so that we will know how to be the church   today.

And So let me pray. Our Father God, we thank you that as we look at your word, it teaches us, it instructs us, it benefits us in our church history to understand what has gone before all on the foundation of scripture. And so as we talk and think about the realities of this today, it will be difficult for us because we have lived in a privileged position and that privilege is no longer there because of the shifts in demographics.

The shifts in society. So help us to be real and honest with where we’re at. So that we will know how to take the step forward tomorrow, ever confident in the truth of Christ, that the gates of hell shall not prevail against your glorious church. And Father, we also want to think back to Job, and be mindful of who you are.

That even if we do go away tonight thinking that we’re not who we used to be, we are still mindful that you never change. You are the God who raises up, and you are the God who brings down. And we thank you that you will keep a remnant for yourself. However large or however small that may be. So bless our time and our conversation tonight in Jesus name.

Amen