Chapter 12: What Happened When the Theologians Wrangled. As I mentioned earlier, the last voice of the early Christians was the admonition from Bishop Hosius to drop the whole matter. Christians today have a hard time understanding that advice, yet the wisdom of that advice becomes clear when we look at what happened because everyone decided to continue the dispute. I stated that the Council of Nicaea ended up being the great turning point in Christian history, and it was a turning point for evil, not for good.
Ironically, the Nicene Council didn't even accomplish what it was convened to do; that is, it didn't end the Arian controversy. Rather, it widened it. The conflict raged on for over a century more. While the church leaders were so absorbed with the Arian issue, they allowed all sorts of serious corruptions to enter the church. Here are just a few of them: Union of Church and State.
The delegates to the Nicene Council were so wrapped up in the theological issues before them that not one of them questioned the propriety of an unbaptized Roman convening a council of Christian bishops, nor did they question the secular rulers presiding at the council. They even accepted the creed he proposed, although it went beyond Scripture. Although Constantine had involved himself in church affairs before Nicaea, it was the Nicene Council that effectively united church and state.
Yet the church leaders were so caught up in the Arian dispute that none of them took any notice of this momentous change. They imagined they had the insight to solve divine questions, yet they couldn't even manage earthly ones. And none of them saw the impossibility of uniting the kingdom of God with the kingdoms of this world. They thought they could turn the Roman Empire into the kingdom of God. They somehow couldn't grasp one of the rudimentary facts about the kingdom, that it is not of this world (John 18:36).
Persecution. Hand in hand with church and state union came persecution of those whom the church opposed. Somehow, the various bishops in Nicaea took no note that the punishment meted out to Arius was not censure or excommunication. It was exile to the remote regions of the Roman Empire. Actually, the bishops accepted this state-enforced punishment with glee in persecuting someone who held to theological errors that their actions did more to dishonor Christ than did the theological errors of Arius.
But somehow, this never occurred to them. However, exile was only the beginning. Immediately after Nicaea, Constantine issued an edict ordering all copies of Arius' writings to be burned, and he pronounced the death penalty for anyone caught harboring Arius' writings thereafter. Yet there was not so much as one whimper of protest from the leaders of the church. Before the fourth century was over, the Spanish Christian Priscillian and six of his followers were put to death for promoting ascetic disciplines.
Persecution of the Priscillianists was soon followed by persecution of the Donatists. Interestingly, blasphemy became one of the favorite words of the new theologians, just as it had been a pet word of the Jewish theologians of old. However, in their blindness, the theologians didn't see that their murdering others in the name of God was far more blasphemous than the errors of the various heretics, real or imagined, they persecuted. As in them.
Please note that Jesus didn't tell his disciples that some of you will put your fellow Christians to death thinking you're doing God an act of service. Rather, he said, "The time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service." John 16:2. So it is never the disciples of Christ who do the killing. They are the ones being killed. The ones doing the killing are always a third party, someone outside the kingdom.
On the same note, Jesus said, "When they persecute you in this city, flee to another." Matthew 10:23. Real Christians are the ones who are persecuted. They're never the ones who do the persecuting. Accordingly, when professing Christians kill and persecute others, they've taken themselves out of God's kingdom, if they were ever there to start with, and have included themselves among them.
They have become outsiders, people who no longer belong to Christ, and that is precisely what the Christian theologians did from the fourth century on. Just like the Jewish theologians, the Christian theologians murdered not only genuine heretics but also some true children of the kingdom, and they imagined they had done an act of service in the process. They dreamed they were honoring God.
To persecute and murder fellow Christians because of their beliefs was an utter denial of Christ and everything his kingdom stands for. In the parable of the faithful and evil servant, Jesus stated quite emphatically how he felt about Christians persecuting their brethren.
If that evil servant says in his heart, "My master is delaying his coming," and begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with the drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him, and at an hour that he is not aware of, and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Matthew 24:48-51.
In short, Jesus is not going to put up with professing Christians who beat, let alone kill, their fellow Christians. Yet, despite the introduction of this ghastly practice under their watch, the theologians of the fourth century turned a blind eye to it. They were much too busy sniffing out any vestiges of Arianism. War and violence. From the very beginning, Christians had always renounced war, violence, and killing of every sort. The writings of the early Christians made this clear.
Even the Council of Nicaea ruled that ex-soldiers who went back into the military were to be excommunicated. However, within a few years after Nicaea, Christians began joining the army. At first, Christians only warred against pagans, but before the century was over, Christians were slaughtering fellow Christians. It wasn't just Catholics against Arians, but also Catholics against Catholics and Arians against Arians.
Once professing Christians decided that violence was a justifiable means to settle issues, they didn't limit it to war. Mobs of Christians fought and killed each other over the election of bishops and other issues. They murdered a pagan philosopher in Alexandria, and they burned down a Jewish synagogue in the remote Roman city Callinicum. Yet once again, the theologians were too busy worrying about the Arians to take any notice of this.
When they did finally take notice, the theologians such as Augustine tried to argue that war is compatible with Christ's teachings. For example, Augustine wrote, "It may be supposed that God could not authorize warfare, because in latter times it was said by the Lord Jesus Christ, 'I say unto you that you resist not evil, but if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the left also.'" However, the answer is that what is required here is not a bodily action but an inward disposition.
So according to Augustine, so long as you love the people you are killing, there is no objection to killing others in war. He continues, "What is the evil in war? It is the death of some who will soon die in any case that others may live in peaceful subjection. This is mere cowardly dislike, not any religious feeling. The real evils in war are love of violence, revengeful cruelty, implacable enmity, wild resistance, the lust of power, and such things.
And in obedience to God or some lawful authority, good men generally undertake wars to punish these things." That is, what force is required to inflict the punishment. The early church had completely forbidden Christians to go to war, but according to Augustine, it is really an act of obedience to God to go to war. But what if a Christian serves under a wicked ruler who is in the wrong? Augustine even had an answer for that. There is no power but of God who either orders or permits.
Therefore, a righteous man may be serving under an ungodly king, yet he may perform the duty belonging to his position in the state by fighting under the order of his ruler. For in some cases, it is plainly the will of God that he should fight. But in others, this may not be so plain, for it may be an unrighteous command on the part of the king. Nevertheless, the soldier is innocent because his position makes obedience a duty.
In other words, it's not only right for Christians to war, but it's even right to war on behalf of evil rulers for a wicked cause. The sum total of Augustine's teaching and the theologians who followed after him is that there really is no kingdom of God, at least not in this life. The end result of such teachings is that Christians are to behave no differently than the pagan Romans. They will war against and kill one another just as the pagans had.
They will persecute those they believe to be teaching error just as the Romans had. And like the pagans, they will return evil for evil. The only difference is that instead of imagining that they are doing these things in honor of the Roman gods, they imagine that they are doing them in love, out of honor for the real God.