Episode Description
By David Warren
The founder of worldly Christendom, by Christianizing the Roman Empire, and ending at least for a moment the persecution of Christians in his realm, was famously a pagan until he finally converted on his deathbed.
To the end, long after his victory under the Sign of the Cross in the Battle of Milvian Bridge, Constantine was careful to maintain the secular signs of his power.
In Eusebius of Caesarea, we read that the (self-appointed) Emperor of the West witnessed the Sign of the Cross, above the sun, on that battlefield, and the words τούτῳ νίκα – "By this, conquer" – radiating from it. That Christianity should spread by conquest was a (divine) paradox.
In our liberal, modern worldview, it appears even more of a paradox than it did to Constantine's contemporaries. It is in conflict with our abstract Christianity, which cannot confess anything as vulgar and physical as military conquest.
Balancing this, the modern is also unhappy with accounts of the physical persecution, which reached its peak under Diocletian.
In his later Vita Constantini, Eusebius reported that in the night after, Christ appeared to Constantine in a dream, and told him to make a copy of what he had seen in the sky; and that this Cross would protect him against very physical attacks.
Again, I look at this through eyes that are modern. The Church to which we belong owes its historical existence to events that are purported to have happened in the world.
But then, adding to our perplexity, the Church of the very First Century also formed from an event that happened in the real world. For we acknowledge that Christ came down from Heaven, and ascended to Heaven conspicuously AFTER His death in the world.
Mind touches matter in these matters, and is recorded in the annals of the world. And so long as we live in the world, we are compelled to acknowledge the acknowledgement, even if we deny or dispute the truth of what happened.
That I neither deny nor dispute is, like faith in general, unlikely to convince anybody, after the passage of so many centuries, though the fact it is still plausible to many millions may seem at least startling. But when it is considered that the same argument can be made for Islam, and several dozen other "belief systems," we satisfy by dissatisfying the modern mind.
I count "modern science" as one of those belief systems, or rather among them, for no two modern scientists will subscribe to exactly the same thing, even if what the propagandists say is true – that 97 percent of them subscribe to anthropogenic global warming. And men such as Richard Dawkins compare the Christian God to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and do this quite glibly.
For modern Disbelief does not feel the obligation to be serious, which Christians and other sincere believers were constrained by, through this vast interval of time.
It is the combination of a belief in casual, changeable things (like constantly updated "science"), with easy retreat into disbelief in anything, that characterizes our modern view.
Not belief or faith, but a settled attitude of radical cynicism and skepticism has brought about an era in which the very existence of a fact is ground for methodical rejection in the academy and elsewhere. Our children are taught that nothing can be true, except what they choose to believe, or "my truth" specifically.
Use the word "truth," and one is immediately at a disadvantage in most discussions I have had with moderns throughout my adult life, and, curiously, I quit high school when I realized that this was the attitude they were inculcating.
Only in classics, math, and physics was this ever relaxed. The ancient Sophists were not so settled in their own rejections of reality, and tended to accept what they could see and taste.
And so, the Constantinian miracle tends to be neglected, or actually mocked, when it must be confronted.
For we are not Christians by philosophical abstraction, but in an historical frame; just as Christ must also...
The founder of worldly Christendom, by Christianizing the Roman Empire, and ending at least for a moment the persecution of Christians in his realm, was famously a pagan until he finally converted on his deathbed.
To the end, long after his victory under the Sign of the Cross in the Battle of Milvian Bridge, Constantine was careful to maintain the secular signs of his power.
In Eusebius of Caesarea, we read that the (self-appointed) Emperor of the West witnessed the Sign of the Cross, above the sun, on that battlefield, and the words τούτῳ νίκα – "By this, conquer" – radiating from it. That Christianity should spread by conquest was a (divine) paradox.
In our liberal, modern worldview, it appears even more of a paradox than it did to Constantine's contemporaries. It is in conflict with our abstract Christianity, which cannot confess anything as vulgar and physical as military conquest.
Balancing this, the modern is also unhappy with accounts of the physical persecution, which reached its peak under Diocletian.
In his later Vita Constantini, Eusebius reported that in the night after, Christ appeared to Constantine in a dream, and told him to make a copy of what he had seen in the sky; and that this Cross would protect him against very physical attacks.
Again, I look at this through eyes that are modern. The Church to which we belong owes its historical existence to events that are purported to have happened in the world.
But then, adding to our perplexity, the Church of the very First Century also formed from an event that happened in the real world. For we acknowledge that Christ came down from Heaven, and ascended to Heaven conspicuously AFTER His death in the world.
Mind touches matter in these matters, and is recorded in the annals of the world. And so long as we live in the world, we are compelled to acknowledge the acknowledgement, even if we deny or dispute the truth of what happened.
That I neither deny nor dispute is, like faith in general, unlikely to convince anybody, after the passage of so many centuries, though the fact it is still plausible to many millions may seem at least startling. But when it is considered that the same argument can be made for Islam, and several dozen other "belief systems," we satisfy by dissatisfying the modern mind.
I count "modern science" as one of those belief systems, or rather among them, for no two modern scientists will subscribe to exactly the same thing, even if what the propagandists say is true – that 97 percent of them subscribe to anthropogenic global warming. And men such as Richard Dawkins compare the Christian God to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and do this quite glibly.
For modern Disbelief does not feel the obligation to be serious, which Christians and other sincere believers were constrained by, through this vast interval of time.
It is the combination of a belief in casual, changeable things (like constantly updated "science"), with easy retreat into disbelief in anything, that characterizes our modern view.
Not belief or faith, but a settled attitude of radical cynicism and skepticism has brought about an era in which the very existence of a fact is ground for methodical rejection in the academy and elsewhere. Our children are taught that nothing can be true, except what they choose to believe, or "my truth" specifically.
Use the word "truth," and one is immediately at a disadvantage in most discussions I have had with moderns throughout my adult life, and, curiously, I quit high school when I realized that this was the attitude they were inculcating.
Only in classics, math, and physics was this ever relaxed. The ancient Sophists were not so settled in their own rejections of reality, and tended to accept what they could see and taste.
And so, the Constantinian miracle tends to be neglected, or actually mocked, when it must be confronted.
For we are not Christians by philosophical abstraction, but in an historical frame; just as Christ must also...