Chapter 24: How Christ's Teachings Disappeared. Three hundred years before, Christians had needed to make a radical paradigm shift in order to enter the Kingdom of God. But now, because they ignored Jesus' warning sign, Christians were convinced that it was time to make another paradigm shift. They thought God was ushering in a new golden age in which Christians would be free from persecution and could enjoy worldly power and luxuries. But did the New Testament say anything about such a golden age?
Ah, here was the problem: nothing in the New Testament fit the model of this new supposedly golden age. Therefore, the Church had to dig back to the Old Testament period to find a scriptural model that would work. So instead of going forward, the Church went backward to ancient Israel to find its role model. It was a retro paradigm shift. Wool referred to this new model as the "Constantinian Hybrid." It was an attempt to paste New Testament theology and ordinances onto Old Testament morals and lifestyle.
And it was an endeavor to combine the Kingdom of God with the kingdoms of the world. The secular government would comprise one half of this hybrid, and the Church would comprise the other half. The two halves would make up the whole: the new hybridized Kingdom of God. Just as the Old Testament Kingdom had been coextensive with the physical boundaries of Israel, so now this new hybridized Kingdom of God would be essentially coextensive with the vast boundaries of the Roman Empire.
The Kingdom of God would no longer be within someone. It would be a tangible, visible empire. Just as the Israelites had gone to war to defend their kingdom and to subdue God's enemies, now Christians were called on to do the same. Christians who wouldn't accept the Constantinian Hybrid were labeled as heretics. Israelite kings like David, Solomon, and Josiah had been intimately involved in the worship and spiritual life of Israel.
So likewise, the Roman emperors would now assume their rightful involvements in the worship and spiritual life of the Church. Eusebius wrote: "Constantine exercised special care over the Church of God anywhere in the various provinces where there were some who differed from each other in judgment. He, like some general bishop constituted by God, convened synods of the ministers, nor did he hesitate to be present and sit with them in their assembly.
Rather, he shared in their deliberations, ministering to everything pertaining to the peace of God." In the first part of this book, we looked at some of the laws of the Kingdom. What happened to these laws under the Constantinian Hybrid? Basically, the new hybrid explained away all of Christ's Kingdom teachings except where his teachings also fit the Old Testament model. Under the hybrid, if something had been lawful for the Jews, it now was considered lawful for Christians.
With that in mind, let's briefly review what the hybridized Church now taught about wealth, oaths, divorce, and non-resistance. Wealth. There is no Old Testament commandment that forbids someone from storing up treasures on earth. Therefore, under the hybrid, it was all right for Christians to store up earthly treasures. It was also acceptable for Christians to retain or reach out for positions of earthly power. In fact, the Church now began to teach that God had instituted class distinctions among humans.
A member of the nobility shouldn't live and dress as a peasant, and a peasant shouldn't seek to live and dress as a nobleman. Oaths. Since oaths were lawful in the Old Testament, they were lawful in the new hybrid. Furthermore, the Church realized that the mobs of people who had flocked into the Church were not truly regenerated. Their word was not trustworthy. So the Church felt obligated to reinstate oaths. In fact, oaths became a central pillar of late Roman and medieval government and society. Non-resistance.
The Old Testament didn't teach non-resistance or loving one's enemy, so now the Church didn't teach it either. In a matter of only a few decades, Christians went from being the meek and defenseless to being the cruel and powerful. As we've discussed, before the rise of Constantine, Christians wouldn't even take up swords to defend themselves against pagan barbarians. Now they didn't hesitate to slaughter fellow Romans and fellow Christians. Divorce. When it came to divorce, things were a bit different.
That's because the Old Testament had allowed divorce only to husbands and only if a husband had found some uncleanness in his wife. Although some Jewish rabbis had interpreted this law quite liberally, the Church interpreted it quite narrowly, allowing a man to divorce his wife only for porneia. In the West, the Church interpreted porneia to mean a violation of the Old Testament Levitical laws that forbade marriage within certain degrees of consanguinity or affinity.
For example, a man could not marry his sister or his widowed daughter-in-law. Since the Old Testament had now become the model for the Church, the Church brought most of these Levitical laws on marriage wholesale into the hybrid. If a man had somehow entered into a marriage that violated the Levitical laws, he was expected to divorce his wife. Today, we would refer to this as obtaining an annulment.
It was on this basis that centuries later, Henry VIII sought to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, for she was the widow of his older brother. So this new supposedly golden age ended up looking an awful lot like ancient Israel, but without the Jewish ceremonial and dietary laws. Oaths, the accumulation of wealth, the state-authorized violence were acceptable. However, sexual immorality, divination, and witchcraft were not allowed, for they are forbidden in the Old Testament.
Nearly 1,700 years later, this same tie to Old Testament morality typically marks churches that have descended from the Constantinian Hybrid. The people of the Kingdom had once turned the world upside down. Now the world was doing its best to turn the Kingdom right side up. So does this mean that God's purpose had been thwarted? Were things not working out the way he had planned? Not at all. The whole Constantinian Hybrid had happened just as God knew it would.
It was all foretold in Jesus' Kingdom teachings and parables. In two of his parables, Jesus foretold that his Kingdom would be quite expansive. "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds.
But when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches." And again, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened." At the same time, Jesus had made it clear: "Narrow is the gate, and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it." He also said, "Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom."
Previously, we discussed the fact that the majority of the persons in the Kingdom would be weeded out in the end.
Jesus knew the Constantinian Hybrid was coming, and he has used it as a test to call out those who do not truly love him and his ways.