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What did Constantine suppress?

2 Peter 1: 16 – 21

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 14 May, 2006 :: NOTE: This sermon uses Symbol font for three Greek expessions.

Can you really believe that the Emperor Constantine could manage exactly what people believed over such a vast territory as the Roman Empire?

Constantine’s headquarters were in Constantinople. That’s Istanbul now. His empire stretched from England in the West to Iraq, and from South Germany to The Sudan. It was vast! When we went to England a couple of years ago, it took us 6-8 hours to fly from the eastern end to the western end.

Of course, the Roman Empire had a tightly-integrated administrative system, but it takes more than that to coerce the human soul.

Yet Dan Brown says that Constantine suppressed some 80 alternative Gospels, and altered the ones we have to suit his purposes and the purposes of the Vatican.

That is just impossible.

Not only is it impossible, it is unhistorical.

We Australians are like the Americans in one way. We might not speak the same language. If you've ever used Word's spelling checker you'll know that. But most Europeans would tell you that Australians and Americans both lack a history.

Here we are excited if we find a ruin from 170 years ago. In the US, they are excited to find a ruin from 270 years ago. In England, I sat on a wall which was part of a building that was in use 1700 years ago. It’s in a Council carpark in the city of York, a small wall bearing a plaque which tells that the wall was part of the original Roman barracks on the site. In 306 AD, Constantine was declared Roman Emperor in that very building.

How do we know? Because the history was recorded.

And how do we know what happened in the Christian Church in 325AD? Because the history was recorded. And the history was not only recorded by the winners. It was also recorded by the losers and by the people who were not very happy, but accepted the results.

Dan Brown got it wrong again.

He has the Vatican doing all kinds of nasty things behind the scenes. Yet there was no Vatican in 325AD. Rome wasn’t the centre of the Christian world. The Pope didn’t even attend the Council of Nicea.

The whole problem in the church started in Egypt, in the city of Alexandria, and moved to Constantinople. Only later did Rome got involved.

Here’s what happened.

In 312AD, Bishop Alexander of the Alexandrian church in Egypt preached on the Trinity. He said that the Son was equal to the Father and of the same substance as the Father who begot him. One of the presbyters, a man named Arius, objected. Arius saw Jesus as a lesser being than God, separate from the Father, lower than He is. Alexander said that Jesus had to have always existed.

If the nature of God the Father is to exist eternally, then that is the nature of God the Son as well.

So Arius made trouble. He rounded up supporters. Soon the walls around Alexandria were smeared with slogans:

hn pwte ouk hn — there was a time when he did not exist.

Next morning the other Christians had gone around and added to the slogan. It no longer said, hn pwte ouk hn, but ouk hn pwte ouk hn — not, “There was a time when he didn’t exist,” but “There was no time when he didn’t exist.”

The battle was on. Was Jesus truly God, in the fullest sense, or was he some kind of created being, above the angels, but less than God?

We will go into this issue further next week, and see how the battle played out. But today we are looking at Constantine and his role in the theological earthquake which rocked the world in the early 4th Century.

Constantine did not consolidate his power without a fight. It’s one thing to be acclaimed by your fellow officers in a frontier camp on the borders of the Empire. It’s another to be sole ruler. And, to become sole ruler, he had to defeat his main opponent.

In the year 312AD, Constantine confronted his rival, Maxentius, at the Milvian Bridge across the Tiber River at Rome. It was not at all certain that he would win.

As he prepared for battle, he claims he saw a sign in the sky, a vision of the cross; and he heard the words, En toutw nika or maybe, In hoc signo vinces — “in this sign you shall win”. He painted the sign of the cross on his soldiers’ shields, and they went out and defeated the opposition.

From that day on, Constantine declared himself a Christian — except that he refused to be baptised.

But the church to which he claimed loyalty was bitterly divided. This was not good for the unity of the empire. He called on the bishops and told them to meet and sort out the issue. He made a venue available. He got provisions for the gathered church leaders. Around 300 Bishops came with their assistants. We know the facts, because the records are still available.

Constantine spoke to the Bishops and appealed for a speedy solution. He urged the Bishops to seek unity. But he could not participate. He might be the Emperor, but he was not even a full church member. He claimed to believe, but he wasn’t even baptised. He certainly wasn’t a leader of the church. But he pleaded and he certainly made suggestions. And the Bishops sometimes agreed and sometimes didn’t.

Now here’s the first great fact that undermines Dan Brown. The debate was not about the gnostic gospels which certainly circulated in the fourth century. The debate was about the Jesus revealed in the New Testament that we already have.

The Arians said something like, “In Hebrews we read,

5:5 So Christ also did not take upon himself the glory of becoming a high priest. But God said to him,

“You are my Son;

today I have become your Father.’”

They thought this meant that Jesus became God the Son at some particular point in history.

The Orthodox said, “In the same book we read,

^{HEB 1:8} But about the Son he says,

“Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever,

and righteousness will be the sceptre of your kingdom...”

To the Orthodox, this meant that Jesus is God the Son, enthroned at the side of the Father forever.

The Arians said, "In Colossians it says,

^{COL 1:15} He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.”

They said, “That makes him the first created being after the creation of the universe.”

The Orthodox replied, “Read the rest of the passage. where it says,

¹⁶ For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Doesn’t that make Jesus the co–creator?”

And the debate raged through the various books of the Bible that we have today.

There were no eighty gospels brought into the discussion and suppressed by the victors. The Council did not take up the issue of what should go into the Bible. That was much later.

I asked the question, what did Constantine suppress? The closest he got to touching the Bible was to commission 50 copies to be made and distributed to various churches around the Empire. He said nothing about what these copies were to contain.

What he did try to suppress was dissent in the church. When Arius lost, but refused to shut up, he had him banished. When Arius’ chief opponent, Athanasius, refused to be silent, he was banished. So it went on. But both sides respected the New Testament that we have today. They didn’t question it. As I showed last week, the gospels are historically reliable; today we see that the various players in the debates at the Council of Nicea accepted the New Testament as theologically reliable. They didn’t debate the Bible, but they debated what conclusions you could draw from reading the Bible.

In fact, soon after the Council ended, Wulfila, a Bishop of the Goths, translated the New Testament into the Gothic language. Part of his translation is still extant today. It is known as the Codex Argentius — the Silver Codex — because it was written in silver ink on purple vellum.

Today, students of Germanic Languages still read the Codex Argentius and fragments of other copies of the Gothic Bible, because it is such a valuable witness to the Gothic Language.

Bishop Wulfila was an Arian. He was on the side that lost in the Council of Nicea. But he remained a bishop, and the orthodox believers respected his piety if not his theology.

Here is a list of the books we know were in his New Testament, as far as we can tell. Of some, only a page still remains out of each chapter represented.

Matthew: at least 10 chapters

John: at least 15 chapters

Luke: at least 17 chapters

Mark: 16 chapters

Romans: at least 11 chapters

I Corinthians: at least 14 chapters

II Corinthians: 13 chapters

Ephesians: 6 chapters

Galatians: 6 chapters

Philippians: 4 chapters

Colossians: 4 chapters

I Thessalonians: at least 4 chapters

II Thessalonians: at least 3 chapters

I Timothy: 6 chapters

II Timothy: 4 chapters

Titus: 2 chapters

Philemon: 1 chapter

There’s no Acts, Revelation or Hebrews or letters of John, James, Peter or Jude. The same volume also contains parts of the Old Testament book of Nehemiah and parts of a commentary on St John’s Gospel, named Skeireins, or Explanations.

Look at this: there is not a trace of any so-called scripture from outside the New Testament as we know it. If there were only 40 gospels favourable to the Arians, why didn’t even one go into Wulfila’s New Testament? He ministered outside the Roman Empire among the Goths, under the blessing of the Arians. He could have translated any religious books he liked.

If the Council had altered the Bible in any way, or if Constantine had changed it, why did the Goths make this beautiful copy of the supposedly altered Bible for their own use? Why write in silver ink on the most expensive purple parchment? It would be the last thing they would want to do! This is a prized copy, this is a respected, a revered copy. It was worthy of the most valuable presentation. It was designed to be honoured. No one honours a false Bible; no one honours a religion that was imposed on them. Constantine banished people he thought were trouble makers, he cut off funds for pagan temples. He suppressed the extreme cults in Christianity — the ones both the Arians and the Orthodox agreed were wrong. But he allowed the church to debate the Person and Work of Christ, because that had to be worked out.

Last week we saw that the Gospels have excellent historical credentials.

Today we see a New Testament which is theologically reliable. Both Orthodox and Arians used the same Bible as they argued their way through the difficulties presented by Arius.

^{2PET 1:16} We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. ¹⁷ For he received honour and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” ¹⁸ We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.

¹⁹ And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. ²⁰ Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. ²¹ For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

The certainty of the gospel is confirmed by the prophecies fulfilled and by the testimonies, not only of apostles, but the testimonies of those through the ages who have read the word of God, met Jesus, the Living Word, and found in him both light and life.

Let’s read and discover for ourselves!

© Peter R. Green 2006. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)