From Persecution to Toleration

So, here we are in our penultimate study of the first 300 years of the Church, and we're looking at the place we left off now several weeks ago, where we left the 300s, or at least the late 200s, in the throes of persecution.

And as we saw, as has been recited a lot ever since Charlie Kirk's assassination, Tertullian has been mentioned just about hourly, at least for several days. As the flames of persecution spread, so did the flames of faith.

That was true in the mid -200s, especially in the northwest of Africa, but also that began to spread throughout the Roman Empire as succeeding emperors had various policies of either intensive persecution or relief.

So persecution in the third century is the context that we left off, and we're going to pick right back up from there. We left off with the figure of Decius. In 250, the middle of the third century, Decius organized the first universal persecution of Christians throughout the empire.

So, as wide as the Roman Empire was, is as wide as the persecution was. Decius believed that the Church was a deadly threat to the empire's unity and stability. We'll understand a little bit more about the rationale behind that when we look at later emperors related to Constantine.

The authorities executed the Bishop of Rome, the Bishop of Antioch, the Bishop of Jerusalem. Cyprian, who we mentioned last time, escaped only by going into hiding, something that he caught a lot of flack for as a result, but ultimately he was killed as a martyr.

Decius ordered that all inhabitants of the empire offer sacrifices to the gods and obtain an official certificate stating that they had done so. Christians who refused, like Origen, were imprisoned and tortured.

Not all martyrs, by the way, were killed. Many of them were tortured and released. Some were captured and released without torture. So there was various forms of understanding martyrdom, and that was something that the early Church sought to clarify as a result of some of the controversies we'll look at shortly.

But one was arguably a martyr, even if they had not been killed as a result of their faith. That came into question where some would say you were not a martyr until you made the ultimate sacrifice. Many died, of course, during the Decian persecutions.

However, large numbers of Christians gave in. The persecution was so intense, thinking about family members, thinking about betrothed, thinking about children, many Christians gave in. They either gave in by offering sacrifices to the Roman gods or by purchasing fake certificates, looking for bootleg certificates that they had done so.

So this was happening during the persecutions under Decian. The persecution of Christians under Decius was overwhelming. At Carthage in North Africa, many departed from their professed faith. In 251, a year later, Decius died in battle, leaving his persecution incomplete.

The succeeding Emperor Valerian renewed the persecution. In 257, he prohibited all meetings for Christian worship and systematically tried to kill all the Church's bishops and presbyters. Cyprian of Carthage was his most famous victim.

Many others, not just leaders, died for the faith. This lasted until 260, when his estranged son, who couldn't stand his father Valerian, Gallienus, ended the Christian persecution and inaugurated decades of freedom from official.

Sanctions.

Gallienus believed that the only effective weapon against the Church was education. In other words, he was no friend to the Christians. He just thought they were fools. And if he could educate them to the beauties of Hellenism, then they would depart from their faith.

He therefore made every effort to promote Hellenism throughout the empire. His subjects, however, failed to appreciate his eloquent Hellenistic fervor, and he was killed along with his whole family in AD 268.

But even though Gallienus was killed, the Christians were left largely untouched for the next 44 years, unless there were local or sporadic attempts by perhaps mobs or local magistrates. There wasn't an imperial persecution, again, until 44 years later.

This persecution came about under Emperor Diocletian. We're going to be spending a little bit of time looking at him. He was a soldier who rose to power in AD 284. He was a very savvy ruler, and as we'll see, almost single-handedly saved the Roman Empire in the midst of the crisis of the third century, and we're going to look at the factors of that crisis.

He was a very significant figure in terms of the history of the Roman Empire. And yet, in a sense, with all the persecution that had been endured over the 200s, the damage had already been done. Decius, Valerius had shaken the church so badly that many Christians had committed apostasy in order to save their lives.

So what happens, before I get there, what happens when the persecution ends and many Christians who had apostatized are now coming back to worship Christ? Yeah, well, this is one of the controversies that emerges.

What do you do with the lapsed Christians or the traditores, the traitors? We're going to look at that in a moment. There is a bright spot as we get to the year 300, and that's in the Armenia, the land of Armenia.

Meanwhile, in Armenia, in the eastern province of Cappadocia, that'll be important beyond our study with the Cappadocian fathers who are very important Trinitarian theologians. But here in Cappadocia, on the eastern fringe of the Roman Empire, there's an Armenian named Gregory, later known as Gregory the Illuminator.

So our brother's in good company as far as his namesake. And old Greg the Illuminator here, possibly of royal descent, became a Christian. And when he became a Christian, he went back to his native Armenia and he preached the gospel to the king of Armenia, Tiridates III, and the king and his whole family converted to Christ.

And so Armenia officially becomes the first Christian nation in history, the first nation from the throne all the way down to accept Christianity as its religion. Gregory the Illuminator ends up taking a position as bishop in Armenia, known as the Catholicos in Armenia.

And that's true to this day in the Armenian Orthodox Church, that particular location. I forget the name of it. In modern day, Armenia is still the Catholicos or the overseer of the Church of Armenia.

So there we have a nice picture. You can see St. Gregory the Illuminator and a little Kung Fu action or whatever he's doing in that image. Now, what's the crisis of the third century? Well, for a time, it seemed that in the late 200s, the Roman Empire had become so vast and was so pressurized that it was going to collapse.

Part of that pressure came from the invasions almost at every border of Roman territory. To the north, Ryan's ancestors were invading almost continually. In Asia Minor, the Balkans, Greece, France, the German tribes had begun to invade and.

Roman armies.

Germany had long been a thorn in Rome's side. Augustus famously lost his legion in the forests of Germany, the Teutoburg Massacre. And ever really since, the tribes of Germany became more and more organized and effective at dealing with a corroding and vastly outstretched empire.

They even penetrated, this is interesting, into Spain and even raided Northwest Africa. I can't imagine what the Northwest Africans thought when the German tribes were invading their land. So that's true of the north and in parts of the Northwestern Empire.

Meanwhile, to the east, the Sassanid Empire of the Persians attacked and they seized control of all the eastern provinces three different times. Toward the end of the 200s, two Roman emperors were able to push back these assaults, Claudius Gothicus and Aurelian.

And that brings us right to the helm of Diocletian, again, rising to power through military prowess in 284, leaving his reign in 305. This is a Aureus. So Diocletian had a number of reforms that stabilized the empire in the third century.

One of the things that he did, one of many things, was he introduced a golden Aureus and he, as it were, brought balance to the currency of the Roman Empire. It had a standardized currency and he was dealing with matters that we're dealing with today, inflation, reestablishing Roman dominance over trade.

Diocletian came to power, eventually dividing the Roman Empire into two spheres, the east and the west. Each sphere had two regions, sort of largely a northern-southern aspect to each sphere. So we're going to see in a moment, the Roman Empire officially was broken into quadrants and that's going to require a ruler in each quadrant of the empire.

The empire as a whole had 12 administrative districts. So these were called diocese. He changed the structure of the court. He changed the structure of the civil service. He made the army far more effective by breaking it down into mobilized units that could get to any area within those regions more effectively.

These reforms were so successful that beyond the crisis of the third century, they enabled the Roman Empire to survive for another 1 ,000 years in the east. So we tend to speak of the Byzantine Empire.

If you found a Byzantine in the 15th century, they would still be calling themselves a Roman. The Roman Empire in the east lasted all the way up until 1453, until it collapsed under the pressure of the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Turks.

Diocletian, he's here on this side, Diocletian introduced the tetrarchy, in other words, the rule of four in 8293, dividing the Roman Empire into four administrative regions. The two regions, east and west, were ruled by senior emperors.

He was one of them. These were called Augusti. So the Augustus, you remember that name, that means revered one. Octavian is given that title by the Roman Senate to become Augustus Caesar. So they basically make a distinction between Caesar and Augustus.

The more revered Caesar would be the Augusti. They would be the more senior emperor ruling over the east and the west. But within that division, you also have the junior emperor, which would be simply the Caesar.

Diocletian ruled as Augustus of the Eastern Empire. He was a native of Dalmatia, modern-day Croatia. While Maximian, this odd-looking duck, I'm wondering if that sculptor lost his head after he made that.

It almost looks like Maximian got stung by a bunch of hornets. But Maximian ruled as Augustus of the Western Empire. And largely, this was a way of sharing power so they didn't go into civil war for the throne.

And this was all architectured by Diocletian. So you see, we have at the top here, our two Augusti. This is Maximian in the west and Diocletian in the east. Underneath them, the two Caesars. These would be the junior emperors, Constantius Chlorus, pay attention to that name, Constantius, and Galerius, also pay attention to that name.

Though they're under, as it were, the thumb of Diocletian and Maximian, these junior emperors are very powerful in their own right with loyal soldiers and vast control over their regions in both the east and the west.

So here's a sort of map, and you can see at this time, this is the tetrarchy under Diocletian and Maximian. So in the yellow, you have the area where Constantius, the father of Constantine, had his rule.

So you see up to the north in Britain, you see Gaul, you see down toward modern-day Austria. And then you see in the green, the place of Augustus Maximian, and that includes Spain. You can see in parts of Italy, as well as northwest Africa, Roman Africa.

So he has quite a spread of power there in the west. To the east, you see the district of Galerius as a junior emperor. It's a little bit hard to see in the color there, but that's the pink region immediately next to Maximian's region.

So you see Illyria there, you see the Balkans, Dalmatia. And then furthest east, you see the realm of Diocletian, down toward Pontus and Asia Minor, as well as swooping down toward the Gulf of Arabia and Egypt.

So this is the Roman Empire now divided into these four regions with these four rulers. That is a lot of territory to cover. Well, it doesn't take long under the influence of Galerian to bring about a persecution.

Galerius hated Christianity and sought to destroy it. Diocletian seemed to be relatively unbothered by it. He was just trying to stabilize his control and bring order to the empire. But under the influence of his co-Augusti, he said, maybe we do need to get rid of Christians.

Maybe this is part of the instability. And so we have the so-called Great Persecution or the Diocletianic Persecution that began in 303. Diocletian Caesar Galerius was extremely hostile to Christianity.

Toward the end of his reign under Galerius' influence, Diocletian became a less tolerant.

Ruler.

In 303, Galerius persuaded Diocletian to take action against the Christians. So began the last and most terrible persecution of the church by the Roman Empire. Diocletian dismissed all Christians from the government and from the army, issued three anti-Christian edicts in 303, and a fourth in 304.

This is the first edict, every church building is to be destroyed. Every Bible that can be found is to be burnt. All worship of Christ is forbidden. That's the first edict in 303. Second edict, all clergy are to be arrested and imprisoned.

Third edict, all clergy are to offer sacrifice to the gods or be tortured. Then the fourth edict in 304, all citizens throughout the empire are to sacrifice to the gods, and if they refuse, they are to be executed.

This is the great persecution of the church, 303 to 311. In 305, Diocletian and Maximian resigned their roles as Augusti. So think, this is still in the midst of the great persecution, but Diocletian and Maximian had agreed to serve a 20-year term as co-rulers of the Roman Empire.

So when the 20th year came, they both said, retirement, we're going to bow down now. And those junior Caesars can now be the senior Augusti. So Diocletian settled back to his native Croatia, modern-day Croatia, and sought a life of gardening and simplicity.

In fact, he was most enamored with growing cabbages. And there's a report that he had been recalled to the throne to deal with some crises that emerged after 305, and he refused, sending a letter saying, if you could see what great cabbages my hands have wrought, you would not recall me.

So maybe you get a green thumb, you don't need the throne after all. Constantius and Galerius became Augusti. Remember, Galerius is the one who hated Christianity, and so he turns the volume all the way up on the persecution when he now comes to power as an Augustus.

Meanwhile, two new emperors, Severus and Maximinus, become Caesars. So Severus and Maximinus now are sharing power as junior rulers. Now what happens when Galerius comes to power is the persecution stretches from 305 all the way to 311.

At the very end of his life, when he's on his deathbed, he decides to pass an edict to effectively end the persecution, at least in his realm in the east. This may have been because it had become so ineffective, or it may have been because he was now transitioning toward the power of another, and the other was influencing away from this imperial edict of persecution.

We have the Edict of Certica, so-called. This is effectively the end of the persecution in the east. We're going to look at the Edict of Milan, so-called, in AD 313 in a moment. That is the official end of persecution throughout the Roman Empire.

But sometimes that gets all the limelight, and we forget that in the east it ended two years earlier under the Edict of Certica. Now Lactantius, who's a historian, recounts, at least allegedly, what that edict, what that cancellation read like.

And maybe I could have someone read for us. If you were a Christian struggling through the persecution in the early 300s, church being burnt, Bibles being burnt, all the leaders that you trusted imprisoned, tortured, you're out there hoping not to get caught and be brought to Roman sacrifice lest you be imprisoned and executed.

And so the idea is this edict is at play through all these years, and now finally, maybe you're passing through the forum and you notice these edicts being proclaimed. You notice them perhaps being published on one of the community walls.

And this is what the edict would have said, effectively ending the Christian persecution. But remember, this is the state, the persecuting state, not apologizing for anything that's happened, but almost blaming the Christians for it.

And then reasserting, we've always been very merciful at the Roman Empire. That's essentially what the edict said. So who has good sight and could read for us very slowly and clearly the Edict of Certica according to Lactantius?

Marie.

The Edict of Certica, AD 311, issued by Galerius and the Persecution of the East, among all the other arrangements that we are always made to the benefit and utility of the state, we have heretofore wished to repair all things in accordance with the laws and public discipline of the Romans, and to ensure that even Christians who abandon the practice of their ancestors should return to the good sense.

Indeed, for some reason or other, such self-indulgence assailed and idiocy possessed those Christians that they did not follow the practices of the ancients. They made laws for themselves that they observed and gathered various peoples in diverse areas.

Then, when a work was issued stating that they should return themselves to the practices of the ancients, many were subjected to peril and many were even killed. Many more persevered in their way of life.

And we saw that they neither offered proper worship and troth to their gods or their godly Christians, considering the observation of our own mild clemency and eternal justice, by which we are accustomed to grant clemency to all equally.

We have decided to extend our most speedy devotions to these people as well, so that Christians may once more establish their own meeting places, so long as they do not act in a disorderly way. Consequently, in accordance with our indulgence, they ought to pray to their god for our health and the safety of the state, so that the state may be kept safe on all sides, and they may be able to live safely and securely in their own homes.

I mean, toward the end, that almost sounds like something that could have been written with COVID policies from our own government, right? Safe and effective. We've always been a very merciful state. Haven't we always?

I love that they used this passive construction. Some of them were even killed somehow. Who knows how that happened? As you can see, the state has this vested interest to always present itself as doing the most reasonable thing for the sake of security, for the sake of blessedness, for the sake of providing for its own, for the sake of honoring its past, its legacy, its ancestors.

And the idea is the Christians assailed these things. The Christians were possessed by some idiocy, and they rejected their forebears, and they made laws to themselves. That's a very rogue thing to do, to be a law to yourself when you're part of our state.

And our state is so merciful. We show such clemency. We tried to convince you otherwise, but look how clement we are. Just get back. You can have your own places of worship. Keep praying for our state, and don't be disorderly.

We don't want to have to do that all over again. That's the Edict of Sertica, right? Apologizing for nothing. Although the persecution resulted in death, torture, imprisonment, or dislocation for many Christians, most of the empire's Christians avoided punishment.

The persecution did, however, cause many churches to split between those who had complied with the imperial authority, in other words, the traitors, the traditores, and those who had remained faithful through suffering.

Now, when peace emerged after 311, the return of these so-called traditores introduced a crisis to the church. All that peace brought about division, not just in places in the West, but even in Northwest Africa, even down toward Egypt.

So you have, earlier, toward the Decian persecutions, the crisis of novationism. It's essentially, again, what do we do with those that have lapsed, those that have compromised under pressure? Down in Egypt, you have the Militian Controversy.

That's, again, the same issue. What do we do with those that have compromised and betrayed their faith? And then the most famous, and the one that Needham gives the most detail on, is the Donatist Controversy.

The last great persecution under Diocletian had left the church in Northwest Africa bitterly divided. Large numbers of Christians refused to recognize the new Bishop of Carthage, Kycilion, who was appointed in 311, because one of the bishops who ordained him had allegedly handed over the Bible to be burnt during Diocletian's persecution.

So the Donatist Controversy is essentially, how can we trust legitimacy, the order of apostolic succession, or even the acts of one who was authorized or brought into appointment by one who was a traitor, one who has lapsed, one who betrayed the faith and wasn't willing to suffer, right?

So you end up having followers of Kycilion, who was seen as compromised, and followers of Donatist, who was seen to be more rigid. And so this split, two rival churches, came into being there in Northwest Africa.

One church was led by Kycilion, the other by a rival bishop called Donatist. And this is where you get the Donatist Controversy, which, by the way, stretches out long after.

This period.

Here's a painting by Charles-André Vanloo of Augustine, toward the very end of the 300s, arguing with the Donatists. Constantine, and we're not going to get into his relationship with the Donatist Controversy tonight, but he tries to weigh in and straighten all these things out, and almost makes it.

Worse.

And so even by the middle of the fourth century, Donatism still has a lot of momentum and sway. And largely, it's Augustine who ends up putting that controversy to rest by arguing that the failures of a priest have no bearing upon the functional legitimacy of the priestly act.

After Maximian, remember our hornet-stung friend, after Maximian's retirement, Constantius went from being a Caesar to an Augustus in the West. When Constantius died in 8306, his troops made his son Constantine, roughly 280 to 337, into the new Caesar at the British city of York.

This is actually a statue outside of the Cathedral of York. Some of us were there some years ago on a horn tour. A glorious statue. I have like a hundred pictures of that on my iPhone. A magnificent statue.

And here you get the sense of this unopposed ruler of the Roman Empire. By 324, there's no subdivision, there's no tetrarchy, there's not even two rulers, there's just Constantine the Great. So he becomes the new Caesar at York.

The West was now divided between Constantine, who had controlled Britain, France, and Spain under his father, and Maxentius, who controlled Italy and Northwest Africa. Like his father, Constantine was tolerant toward Christianity.

He himself was not a Christian at this point, but he was tolerant toward Christianity in the same way his father had largely been tolerant toward Christianity. Although Diocletian's persecution was empire-wide, there was some levity depending on that particular tetrarch's policy.

For Constantius, he only burnt down a few church buildings. As far as we know, he never martyred anyone or put anyone to death. Maxentius, on the other hand, the rival to the East, was rigidly anti-Christian.

So the uneasy peace in the West between the tolerant Constantine and Maxentius came to an end in 312. War broke out. Constantine, with a smaller army than Maxentius, invaded Italy, and the two armies faced each other across the Milvian Bridge on the River Tiber outside of Rome.

Up to this point, Constantine had been a sun worshiper. However, on the night before the battle, he had a dream in which the first two Greek letters of Christ's name, the kyro that we saw, appeared in the shape of a cross.

Remember that baptismal font that we looked at. Constantine also saw or heard the words, by this sign, you will conquer. Remember that for the kids' sheet next week with that cross. You have the language for Christos, and then you have the language for nika, or conquered.

The following day, Constantine had the kyro sign painted on the shields of his troops, and then Constantine prayed to the God of the Christians for victory. And he won a crushing triumph over Maxentius, who was killed in the battle.

So at the age of 32, Constantine was now master in the West. He believed that the Christian God had granted him victory, and from then on, Constantine acted as the champion and defender of Christians under his realm.

So here you have a kyro. That one not quite in the shape of the cross, but that's the more standardized symbol of the kyro, which was already in full swing as a symbol used by Christians throughout the third century.

Now, what this led to as a result of the battle of the Milvian Bridge is the so-called Edict of Milan, which was neither an edict, nor did it occur at Milan, but it's known as the Edict of Milan to historians.

This occurred in 313, and this put an effective end to the Great Persecution. Again, in the East, 311, empire-wide, and 313. Constantine and Augustus Licinius now shared the empire as the two Augusti.

So you have Constantine and Licinius, and they're going to have some civil wars heading into the 320s. This is an illuminated page from a book of homilies by Gregory of Nazianzus, who was a very important church father.

And here you actually have a scene of Constantine with a vision of the cross heading into battle over the Milvian Bridge outside of Rome. In the Eastern Church, Constantine is regarded as a saint. He was the one who brought the end to Christian persecution, and the church was never to be systematically persecuted in the empire again after Constantine.

However, his legacy is debated to this day. Constantine's acceptance of the Christian faith was the most important conversion in history. This is Needham, apart from that of the apostle Paul. That is a huge claim.

He was the most important convert to Christ in the history. Paul, the apostle, who's second? Constantine. That's the argument of Needham. Now, why would that be the case? Because it altered the destiny of the church in the Roman Empire and forever shaped the relationship of the church and state in the West, as well as in the East when he became emperor over Rome.

Because of his historic influence, Constantine certainly deserved the title that was given to him, Constantine the Great. Yet Christians and historians have often debated what really happened that faithful night at the Milvian Bridge.

Some have concluded that Constantine did not sincerely embrace Christianity at all and point to some distinctly unchristian acts in Constantine's later life. Most of that has to do with certain family members going MIA.

I would liken this to, you know, a mafia godfather becoming a convert. Somehow you're still wading through all the bloody politics of your position, but you're doing so as a convert to Christ. We should keep in mind that some of these family members, as Roman courts were prone to do, were often jockeying for position, were willing to bribe and poison their way to the top.

And so sometimes these were actions of self-defense. Though, again, historians debate Constantine's legitimacy as a Christian convert. It should be noted that Constantine was not baptized by the church, but by his own desire until his deathbed.

He faithfully prayed to Christ. He attended the part of the service that he was allowed to attend. At this point in time, again, the preaching of the Word and the prayers of the saints was something that could be attended by anyone.

The partaking of the Eucharist and anything that came with that afterward was something that was only allowed for those that had been baptized. And so though he was a Christian emperor in one form or another, he himself was never able to stay for a whole worship service until he had been baptized toward the end of his life.

Again, that gives a little wrinkle into the relationship of church and state. The bishops loved having a Christian emperor, a Christian that was a patron to the church, but they also didn't treat him with undue adulation.

They said, well, you're not baptized now, so you may go. And that says something about the integrity of the church at this point in history. Some of it have concluded that Constantine did not sincerely embrace Christianity at all and point to some distinctly unchristian acts in Constantine's later life.

But on the other side, we can point to strong evidence of a Christian conscience at work in many of Constantine's laws and policies. We must also recognize that Constantine had nothing, literally nothing, to gain either in the political or military sphere by professing the Christian faith.

That's a really important point. There was almost nothing but loss to coming out as a Christian if you were a Roman emperor at this point in time. And though there's a few subsequent Christian emperors that perhaps saw this as a pathway to power, it quickly reverts back toward paganism because the vast majority of subjects in the Roman Empire were pagans still in the 4th century.

So by professing the Christian faith, Constantine identified himself with Christ, with the Christian church. The Roman ruling classes, those that he would have to rub shoulders with and play political chess with, were almost entirely pagan in their religious loyalties.

And by far, the most popular religion in the army was the Eastern mystery cult of Mithraism, the cult of Mithras, who was largely a Persian import. So whatever Constantine's motives were, his conversion cannot have been the product of a desire to win political or military favor.

Wrong God if that was his desire. But after his victory at the Milvian Bridge, he certainly conformed at least outwardly to Christianity. He regularly attended Christian worship, listened to the longest sermons without murmuring.

That gets a thumbs up from me. And observed Easter with great solemnity. Now something else, I know we're saving everything Trinitarian for the next study, but I can't bypass this little reading that Needham included, just to show that in the midst of all this turmoil, of the great persecution of Decius and then later Diocletian, and all the controversies that come out of that between Novatianism and the Donatist controversy, all these things that are at work, you also have theology being actively developed, Scripture being sought out, things being worked through, heresies putting as much pressure on the biblical text as the biblical text puts pressure toward the truth.

Very important point that in dealing with Scripture, there's a certain pressure to come to understand a Trinitarian faith. And these things are happening well on the way toward Nicaea, heading into the 320s.

So Gregory Thaumaturgus, which is a Greek term meaning wonder worker, Gregory is working out Trinitarian theology toward the latter end of the 3rd century. Could I have someone read for us, notice all the Gregories we have floating around, Gregory the Illuminator, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory Thaumaturgus.

Maybe Gregory you should read for us these words of Gregory Thaumaturgus.

There is one God, the father of the living Logos, who is the father's personal wisdom, power, and eternal image. God is the one who perfectly begets the perfect begotten. He is the father of his only begotten son.

There is one Lord, the only one from the only one, God from God, the image and likeness of the deity, the all-accomplished Logos, the wisdom who embraces the fashioning of all things, the power who forms the whole creation, the true son of the true father, the invisible from the invisible, the incorruptible from the incorruptible, the immortal from the immortal, the eternal from the eternal.

And there is one Holy Spirit who has his personal existence from God and is manifested by the Son to man. He is the image of the Son, the perfect image of the perfect. He is the life, the cause of all living things.

He is the holy fountain. He is sanctity, the source and leader of sanctification. In him is manifested God the Father who is above all and in all, and God the Son who is through all. There is a perfect Trinity existing in glory and eternity and sovereignty.

Without division or separation, there is nothing created or in bondage in the Trinity. There is nothing added, as if it did not previously exist but was introduced later on. Thus the Father never lacked the Son, and the Son never lacked the Spirit.

But without alteration or change, the same Trinity exists forever.

Isn't that amazing? You'd almost think this is on the other side of the Nicene Creed, not preceding it by decades. And you can pick up elements of biblical language. You can see 1 Corinthians 8, Colossians 1, John 1.

You can see this working out if the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are all to be worshipped and regarded as God, there are certain entailments to that. A creature is never to be worshipped. And so the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit were never created.

They must always have been. He's working out theologically a lot of the same phrases that even 2 ,000 years later are still bedrock to Trinitarianism. And you'll notice that even this framework sounds like the Nicene Creed.

There is one Lord. There is one Holy Spirit. That articulation, that assertion, these are the things that we hold. These are the things that we see. One God, one true Son, the image of the invisible, one Holy Spirit, eternally existing, uncreated, enduring eternally.

It's glorious. Well, Constantine's conversion did not lead to Christianity becoming the official religion of the empire in his lifetime, as many people often think it did. It became a tolerated religion.

It became a religio licita, illicit religion or legal religion. But it didn't become the official religion. That takes place under Theodosius. But it did change the relationship between government and religion.

We'll see that in the next study as we look at the Council of Nicaea. For the first time, the empire had a ruler who did not look favorably on paganism. For example, he made Christian bishops into part of the empire's legal structure by decreeing that in a civil law dispute, two parties could take their case to the local bishop if they so desired, and the bishop's decision would have all the force of law.

Many of Constantine's other laws reveal an enlightened conscience at work. For example, he introduced a system of state welfare in the form of child maintenance grants for the poor, which helped to discourage the common Roman custom of exposing unwanted children at birth.

That was true well up into the 200s, where if you didn't want a mouth to feed, you'd just leave them on the hillside to die. A lot of what Christians were doing at that point in time were railing against abortion and rescuing the exposed infants.

He forbade crucifixion as a method of punishment, banned the practice of branding criminals on the forehead with a hot iron because the human face created to reflect heavenly beauty should never be disfigured.

Constantine also tried to outlaw the bloodthirsty games of the gladiators, but old social habits die hard, and it was not until the reign of the emperor Honorius, when Christianity was widely accepted as the Roman faith, that the games finally ceased.

One of Constantine's most historic decisions was to build a new capital city for the Eastern Empire at Byzantium, just across the sea from Asia Minor. It was finished in 330. Constantine called it New Rome, but it became known as Constantinople, Greek for the city of Constantine.

This is Istanbul. You can go and see the Hagia Sophia there, one of its most famous buildings. Constantine ordered two magnificent churches to be built in the city, but no pagan temples. The empire's new eastern capital was from the outset to be a Christian city.