What is arguably most significant is that in the fourth century, when these disputes had come to a head, the Roman emperor Constantine had converted to the faith. That changed everything. Having a Christian emperor on the throne—one who believed and propagated the belief that Christ was God—had radical implications for the various interactions between orthodox Christians and others. In what remains of this epilogue I briefly consider the implications for three realms of dispute that Christians engaged in: disputes with pagans, disputes with Jews, and disputes with one another.
The God Christ and the Pagan World
SINCE THE DAYS OF Caesar Augustus, three hundred years earlier, inhabitants of the Roman world had understood and worshiped the emperor as a god. Moreover, from the time the earliest followers of Jesus came to believe that he was raised from the dead, Christians had understood and worshiped Christ as God. As we have seen, these two—the emperor and Jesus—were the only two figures that we know of from antiquity who were actually called “the Son of God.” And in the Christian mind, at least, this meant that the two figures were in competition. In the early fourth century, one of the competitors caved in and lost the struggle. With Constantine, the emperor changed from being a rival god to Jesus to be being a servant of Jesus.
One of the most interesting works by the church historian Eusebius is his previously mentioned Life of the Blessed Emperor Constantine, a biographical account of the emperor that is, to say the least, effusive in its praise. Arguably the most valuable parts of the Life are those in which Eusebius quotes the actual words of the emperor. In a letter Constantine wrote to the Christians of Palestine, it becomes clear that Constantine does not see himself as a competitor with Christ and God the Father, but rather stands in awe of God’s power and recognizes his need to serve him as his servant on earth. At one point Constantine declares that the Christian God “alone really exists and holds power continuously through all time,” and he says that God “examined my service and approved it as fit for his purposes” (Life 2.28). Or as he says later in the letter, “Indeed my whole soul and whatever breath I draw, and whatever goes on in the depths of the mind, that, I am firmly convinced, is owed by us wholly to the greatest God” (Life 2.24). Clearly there is no competition here!
As a result of Constantine’s devotion, Eusebius writes, “by law he forbade images of himself to be set up in idol-shrines.” Moreover, he “had his portrait so depicted on the gold coinage that he appeared to look upwards in the manner of one reaching out to God in prayer” (Life 4.15, 16). In other words, Constantine reversed the three-centuries-old procedures of his predecessors. Rather than allowing himself to be depicted as a god and worshiped as a god, he insisted that he be shown worshiping the true God.
Somewhat more striking, Constantine required the soldiers in his army not to worship him, but to worship the Christian God. This applied even to the soldiers who remained pagan. Eusebius indicates that Constantine required the non-Christian soldiers in the army to gather on a plain every Sunday and recite the following prayer to the Christian God:
You alone we know as God,
You are the King we acknowledge,
You are the Help we summon,
By you we have won our victories,
Through you we have overcome our enemies . . .
To you we all come to supplicate for our Emperor Constantine and for his beloved Sons:
That they may be kept safe and victorious for us in long life (Life 4.20)
Once the emperor became Christian, it is fair to say that everything changed with respect to Christian relationships with pagans and with the Roman government. Rather than being a persecuted minority who refused to worship the divine emperor, the Christians were on the path to becoming the persecuting majority, with the emperor as the servant of the true God who encouraged, directly or indirectly, the citizens of the state to join in his Christian worship. By the end of the fourth century something like half of the entire empire was converted to orthodox Christianity; the emperor enforced laws promoting the Christian religion and outlawing pagan sacrifice and worship; and Christianity triumphed once and for all over the pagan religions that had previously accepted the emperor as divine.
The God Christ and the Jewish World
THE CHRISTIAN BELIEF THAT Jesus was God had serious ramifications for Jewish-Christian relations in antiquity, because it was widely thought that the Jews were responsible for Jesus’s death. If the Jews killed Jesus, and Jesus was God, does it not follow that the Jews had killed their own God?1
This was in fact a view held in orthodox circles long before the conversion of Constantine. Nowhere does it come in a more chilling rhetorical package than in a sermon preached by a bishop of the city of Sardis in Asia Minor near the end of the second Christian century, a man named Melito. This is the first instance we have on record of a Christian charging Jews with the crime of deicide—the murder of God. Melito delivers the charge in powerful and highly effective language. I quote here only a small portion of his long sermon. The occasion was the Jewish Passover, when Jews annually commemorated the great act of God when he delivered the children of Israel from their slavery in Egypt during the days of Moses. The Passover lamb that was slain on that occasion was, for Melito, an image of Christ himself, slain by the Jews. And rather than being an occasion for joyous celebration, the death of the true lamb was an occasion for hostile accusation. The Jews killed the one who had come to save them; they killed their own messiah; and since the messiah was himself divine, the Jews killed their own God:
This one was murdered
And where was he murdered?
In the very center of Jerusalem!
Why?
Because he had healed their lame,
And had cleansed their lepers,
And had guided their blind with light,
And had raised up their dead.
For this reason he suffered. . . .
Why O Israel, did you do this strange injustice?
You dishonored the one who had honored you.
You held in contempt the one who held you in esteem.
You denied the one who publicly acknowledged you.
You renounced the one who proclaimed you his own.
You killed the one who made you to live,
Why did you do this, O Israel? . . .
It was necessary for him to suffer, yes, but not by you;
It was necessary for him to be dishonored, but not by you;
It was necessary for him to be judged, but not by you;
It was necessary for him to be crucified, but not by you, nor by your right hand,
O Israel!
The rhetoric then moves to a climax as Melito delivers his ultimate charge against his enemies, the Jews:
Pay attention, all families of the nations, and observe!
An extraordinary murder has taken place
In the center of Jerusalem,
In the city devoted to God’s law,