Defending Constantine

Author: Peter J. Leithart
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830827226
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 374

Book Description
Peter Leithart weighs what we've been taught about Constantine and claims that in focusing on these historical mirages we have failed to notice the true significance of Constantine and Rome baptized. He reveals how beneath the surface of this contested story there lies a deeper narrative--a tectonic shift in the political theology of an empire--with far-reaching implications.

Defending Constantine

Author: Peter J. Leithart
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 083086816X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 373

Constantine Revisited

Author: John D. Roth
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1621897540
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Book Description
This collection of essays continues a long and venerable debate in the history of the Christian church regarding the legacy of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great. For some, Constantine's conversion to Christianity early in the fourth century set in motion a process that made the church subservient to the civil authority of the state, brought a definitive end to pacifism as a central teaching of the early church, and redefined the character of Christian catechesis and missions. In 2010, Peter J. Leithart published a widely read polemic, Defending Constantine, that vigorously refuted this interpretation. In its place, Leithart offered a thoroughgoing rehabilitation of Constantine and his legacy, while directing a rhetorical fusillade against the pacifist theology and ethics of the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder. The essays gathered here in response to Leithart reflect the insights of eleven leading theologians, historians, and ethicists from a wide range of theological traditions. They engage one of the most contentious issues in Christian church history in irenic fashion and at the highest level of scholarship. In so doing, they help ensure that the "Constantinian Debate" will continue to be lively, substantive, and consequential.

Constantine, Divine Emperor of the Christian Golden Age

Author: Jonathan Bardill
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521764238
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 471

Book Description
"Constantine was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. The book explores the emperor's image as conveyed through literature, art, and architecture, and shows how Constantine reconciled the tradition of imperial divinity with his monotheistic faith. It demonstrates how the traditional themes and imagery of kingship were exploited to portray the emperor as the saviour of his people and to assimilate him to Christ. This is the first book to study simultaneously both archaeological and historical information to build a picture of the emperor's image and propaganda. It is extensively illustrated" --Provided by publisher.

Constantine Versus Christ

Author: Alistair Kee
Publisher: Wipf and Stock
ISBN: 9781498295734
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The subject of this book is politics and religion, the relationship between Constantine and Christianity. Something happened in the reign of the Emperor Constantine that transformed both politics and religion in Europe, and anyone who seeks to understand modern Christianity must analyze this transformation and its consequences. The reign of Constantine is remembered as the victory of Christianity over the Roman Empire; the subtitle of the book indicates a more ominous assessment: ""the triumph of ideology."" Through a careful analysis of the sources, Dr. Kee argues that Constantine was not in fact a Christian and that the sign in which he conquered was not the cross of Christ but a political symbol of his own making. However, that is only the beginning of the story. For Constantine, religion was part of an imperial strategy, and the second part of this book shows just what that strategy was. Here is the development which marks a transition to a further stage, the way in which by using Christianity for his own ends, Constantine transformed it into something completely different. Constantine, Dr. Kee argues, along with his biographer and panegyrist Eusebius, succeeded in replacing the norms of Christ and the early church with the norms of imperial ideology. Why it has been previously thought that Constantine was a Christian is not because what he believed was Christian, but because what he believed came to be called Christian. And that represents ""the triumph of ideology."""

Constantine

Author: Paul Stephenson
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1468303007
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

Book Description
This “knowledgeable account” of the emperor who brought Christianity to Rome “provides valuable insight into Constantine’s era” (Kirkus Reviews). “By this sign conquer.” So began the reign of Constantine. In 312 A.D. a cross appeared in the sky above his army as he marched on Rome. In answer, Constantine bade his soldiers to inscribe the cross on their shield, and so fortified, they drove their rivals into the Tiber and claimed Rome for themselves. Constantine led Christianity and its adherents out of the shadow of persecution. He united the western and eastern halves of the Roman Empire, raising a new city center in the east. When barbarian hordes consumed Rome itself, Constantinople remained as a beacon of Roman Christianity. Constantine is a fascinating survey of the life and enduring legacy of perhaps the greatest and most unjustly ignored of the Roman emperors—written by a richly gifted historian. Paul Stephenson offers a nuanced and deeply satisfying account of a man whose cultural and spiritual renewal of the Roman Empire gave birth to the idea of a unified Christian Europe underpinned by a commitment to religious tolerance. “Successfully combines historical documents, examples of Roman art, sculpture, and coinage with the lessons of geopolitics to produce a complex biography of the Emperor Constantine.” —Publishers Weekly

Constantine and Eusebius

Author: Timothy David Barnes
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674165311
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Book Description
Here is the fullest available narrative history of the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine, and a new assessment of the part Christianity played in the Roman world of the third and fourth centuries.

Between Babel and Beast

Author: Peter J. Leithart
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725245809
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 169

Book Description
The United States is one of history's great Christian nations, but our unique history, success, and global impact have seduced us into believing we are something more--God's New Israel, the new order of the ages, the last best hope of mankind, a redeemer nation. Using the subtle categories that arise from biblical narrative, Between Babel and Beast analyzes how the heresy of Americanism inspired America's rise to hegemony while blinding American Christians to our failures and abuses of power. The book demonstrates that the church best serves the genuine good of the United States by training witnesses--martyr-citizens of God's Abrahamic empire.

Against Christianity

Author: Peter J. Leithart
Publisher: Canon Press & Book Service
ISBN: 1591280060
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Book Description
How could a conservative Christian-an ordained minister with a beard, no less-be against not only Christianity, but theology, sacraments, and ethics as well? Yet that is the stance Peter Leithart takes in this provocative "theological bricolage." Seeking to rethink evangelical notions of culture, church, and state, Leithart offers a series of short essays, aphorisms, and parables that challenge the current dichotomies that govern both Christian and non- Christian thinking about church and state, the secular and the religious. But his argument isn't limited to being merely "against." Leithart reveals a much larger vision of Christian society, defined by the stories, symbols, rituals, and rules of a renewed community-the city of God.

Constantine's Bible

Author: David L. Dungan
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 9781451406122
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
Most college and seminary courses on the New Testament include discussions of the process that gave shape to the New Testament. David Dungan re-examines the primary source for the history, the Ecclesiastical History of the fourth-century Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, in the light of Hellenistic political thought. He reaches new conclusions: that we usually use the term "canon" incorrectly; that the legal imposition of a "canon" or "rule" upon scripture was a fourth- and fifth-century phenomenon enforced with the power of the Roman imperial government; that the forces shaping the New Testament canon are much earlier than the second-century crisis occasioned by Marcion, and that they are political forces. Dungan discusses how the scripture selection process worked, book-by-book, as he examines the criteria used-and not used-to make these decisions. He describes the consequences of the emperor Constantine's tremendous achievement in transforming orthodox, Catholic Christianity into imperial Christianity. --From publisher's description.