This week, my class was reading the Gospel of John, and we made a site visit to St. John Lateran. St. John Lateran is actually the official cathedral of the Diocese of Rome. In fact, the official name of the place is the Archbasilica of the Most Holy Savior and Sts. John the Baptist and the Evangelist at the Lateran. As an archbasilica, it actually ranks ahead of, and is older than, all of the other basilicas. It is also dedicated principally to Christ, and only secondarily to the good saints John, the Baptist and the Evangelist. The name "Lateran" refers to the family of Plautius Lateranus, who owned this property up until the time of Nero, whom he conspired against, for which crime he was deprived of this property and executed. The property came into the hands of Constantine through his wife Fausta, and he gave it to Pope Melchiades just after his victory at the Milvian Bridge, in order for the pope to build a church.
We actually started our visit at the baptistry. Although there is a tradition that Constantine built this baptistry AND was baptized there, the former seems to be true, but the latter is not. In both the church and the baptistry, there is quite a bit of art celebrating Constantine and his conversion story. The picture above is one of five frescoes that ring the baptistry. It celebrates the famous story of Constantine's vision of the cross ("in this sign, you will conquer") before the Battle at the Milvian Bridge.
The class and I stood in front of this picture for a while. Let me remind you that, at this point in the class, not only have we read all four gospels but we've also read Craig Hovey's book To Share in the Body: A Theology of Martyrdom for Today's Church. We're primed to see the victory of the cross much more in terms of Jesus than in terms of Constantine. Although the idea is not a new one for me, I've never been so struck by how powerfully this story in particular turns the power of the cross from a power that we might name in terms like "self-sacrificial love" or "faithfulness even to the point of death" to something much more akin to military might. Constantine's vision really reappropriates the cross; the God who once suffered violence unto death on this instrument now uses it as a sign to bless certain forms of violence with victory.
As we stood there, one of the students pointed out (I'm paraphrasing, of course, but the gist was), "But God wanted Constantine to win, and to convert, so that He could use the Roman Empire to spread the Gospel. The Church wouldn't have survived without that." Now, that's a very powerful claim (I might have worded it a little more strongly than she actually did), but I think most of us think something a little like that, that the Church needs the cooperation of the powers of the world in order to survive. But I think that if we really think about that claim, we will begin to see how false it is. I'm not saying that God (and the Church) can't or doesn't use the powers of the world in such a way, but if we really believe that the Church and the Gospel would not have survived without the Roman Empire, shouldn't we put our faith in the Empire rather than the Gospel?
I told my students at the beginning of the semester that Rome is a place unlike any other to confront time and time again the question of whether the alliance forged between God and Caesar was the perfect synthesis, or whether it was a compromise of the Gospel, or (more strongly) even a betrayal of the Gospel. This week's visit really brought that home, I think. We took some time to appreciate both the baptistry and the main church as among the most ancient sites built explicitly by Christians for Christian worship in public. There is something very powerful about that. But it also raises a lot of questions about the costs and benefits that "going public" had for Christianity.
I think the whole 'alliance with Caesar' frames the question in a misleading way (a way that many anti-Catholic Protestants favor). The Church did not make any grand bargain or alliance or compromise with the Empire...rather, as the Empire waned, Christianity blossomed. Many pagans converted, including Constantine (and his mother). While many of the powerful sought to misappropriate the Faith for their own ends ("in this sign conquer"), do we do that any less so today? (Iraq? 'gospel of prosperity'?) It is very easy to armchair quarterback from the retrospect of millenia...even more so when we set up overly simplistic scenarios like so many paper tigers. Constantine was a politician who used and served the Church. His mother Helena certainly seemed to be fervent in the Faith. Were they perfect? Certainly not. And neither are we. Yet the Church endures and triumphs with us and sometimes despite us! God uses us all - saints and sinners, politicians and peasants, worshippers and warriors, protesters and pacifists. It is part of the genius of the Church that in Christ she does not try to separate the wheat from the chaff too early. We should follow her wise example.
ReplyDeleteMichael, the bargains are never grand, but that doesn't mean that they are not made, nor that they are not compromises. But I certainly didn't mean to imply that there is less messiness today (yes to Iraq, yes to prosperity gospel) than yesterday. And yes to God using all the messiness--saints, sinners, etc. Though you are right that there is wisdom in refusing to separate wheat from chaff too early, there is also a very live danger with 20 year olds (like one in my office the day after this class) who are tempted to see it all as chaff. Or, as she put in (more or less): so isn't the whole history of the church not so much about what is right or true but about protecting the power of the Church? I think it is imperative to help them see the difference between the wheat and the chaff (so to speak) and to help them embrace the Church for its wheat, even while they bristle a bit at the chaff. And, of course, it's helpful to try to teach them a bit of humility about whether we can know the difference.
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