Lactantius was an early church father who lived and wrote during the early fourth century AD, including the eras before Constantine and after Constantine. Last time, I posted a portion of his pre-Constantine writings:
When God forbids killing, He doesn't just ban murder, which is not permitted under the law [of men] even; He is also forbidding to us to do certain things which are treated as lawful among men. A just man may not be a soldier (since justice itself is his form of service), nor may he put anyone on a capital charge: whether you kill a man with a sword or a speech makes no difference, since killing itself is banned. In this commandment of God no exception at all should be made: killing a human being is always wrong because it is God's will for man to be a sacred creature.I want to provide a few more quotes from the pre-Constantine writings of Lactantius:
Let us see whether justice can have any bond with folly.... Why should a just man [Christian] go to sea, or what would he want from other people's lands when his own sufficed? Why go to war and tangle himself in other people's lunacies when his heart was full of peace with everyone eternally?And again,
[The world thinks it is] folly for a man to prefer to be in need or to die rather than cause hurt or seize another man's property.And again,
How can a man be just who does harm, who hates, who ravages, who kills? And all those are actions of people striving to do their country good. People who think that the only useful or advantageous thing is something you can grasp simply do not know what doing good is. But what you can grasp, another can grab.And again,
We must avoid [the gladiator shows] because they are a strong enticement to vice, and they have an immense capacity for corrupting souls. Rather than contributing something to a happy life they are, in fact, exceedingly harmful. For anybody who finds it pleasurable to watch a man being slain (however justly the person was condemned), has violated his own conscience as much as if he had been a spectator and participant in a clandestine murder.What might that mean about our present-day lifelike theatrical blood-lust?
Lactantius' opposition to Christians serving in the military reflected the broad and established consensus of the church from 30 AD to 312 AD. Contemporary American Christians would likely be astonished, and even highly offended, at the early church's insistence that military service was no more of a viable vocation for a Christian than was being a pimp. More on that in later posts.
On October 28, 312 AD, Constantine went into battle after having the sign of the Christogram inscribed on his soldiers' shields -- the first time in history Christian symbols led the way into war. We all know that Constantine won the battle.
After Constantine was converted (a good thing, if it was legitimate) and the persecutions of Christians had ceased (a good thing), Lactantius continued ministry and writing. Note how his later statements will contrast with his earlier statements of absolute opposition to taking human life and participating in war. He shifts from saying that a just man cannot participate in war, to saying that just men won their wars. This was just a subtle beginning. Lactantius recounts:
Constantine was advised in a dream to mark the heavenly sign of God on the shields of his soldiers and then engage in battle. He did as he was commanded and...marked Christ on their shields. Armed with this sign, the army took up its weapons. The enemy came to meet them without their emperor and crossed the bridge. The lines clashed, their fronts of equal length, and both sides fought with the most extreme ferocity.Long story short, Constantine won. An ally of his, Licinius, also fought a battle against an enemy of Rome. Lactantius tells us:
An angel of God appeared to Licinius in his sleep telling him to get up right away and, with his entire army, to offer prayers to the all high God. If he did that, the victory would be his.... The angel stood at his side and told him how to pray and what words to use. When he woke up, Licinius called for his secretary and dictated to him the words he had heard: "All High God, we beseech You; Holy God, we beseech You. To You we completely entrust our just cause; to You we entrust our safety; to You we entrust our empire. Through You we have life; through You we are victorious and blessed...".Licinius also won. A joint announcement was written by Constantine and Licinius after their victories. Lactantius quotes it, and I provide a snippet here:
...The [new] arrangements which above all needed to be made [as a rule for the Empire] were those which ensured reverence for Divinity, so that we might grant both to Christians and to all people freedom to follow whatever religion each one wished, in order that whatever divinity there is in the seat of heaven may be appeased and made propitious towards us and towards all who have been set under our power.This initial liberating decree was a call for freedom of religion for all, including (with particularity of intent) Christianity. For the first time, Christians would no longer be forced to perform acts of worship to Caesars. Their religion was now accepted among all of the others. A good thing.
Let's turn to a closing word from Lactantius about these victories:
With great rejoicing, then, let us celebrate the triumph of God; let us extol the victory of the Lord; day and night let us pour out our prayers in rejoicing. Let us pray that He establish forever the peace that has been granted to His people after ten years [of hard persecution prior to Constantine's victory].George Kalantzis summed it up this way:
Lactantius's rejoicing for the victories of Constantine and Licinius is unquestionably at odds with his earlier attitudes towards war and military service, from a time when it was not imaginable that the commander-in-chief could be obedient to the true God. Yet, as that last statement reveals, this rejoicing in the defeat of enemies was also the expression of jubilation by a generation that had lived through one of the most brutal and far-reaching persecutions.Who wouldn't feel a euphoria at the death of your persecutors at the hands of those who promise you liberty? I'm not even remotely suggesting that such feeling is inappropriate. What I am suggesting, however, is that with this new freedom, and with the power of the State's sword on their side, and with martyrdom fading as a real and present danger, the church (1) generally drifted into reliance upon physical power, (2) failed to maintain living a martyr's life, (3) increasingly dressed itself with self-empowerment, and (4) lost its grasp of enemy-love. Christ's inverted ordering of power and love was blindly being flipped back to its original state.
Before the 4th century was even over, Rome passed legislation establishing Christianity as the State religion; now all of those other religions were illegal! Standing behind the State's sword, the persecuted became persecutor -- after only a mere 70 years removed from her own sufferings.
Increasingly, Christians during that era were becoming detached from the voices of the suffering church fathers, and having no problems serving in Roman armies and marching into foreign lands to kill Rome's enemies instead of redeeming them. And today, our patriotic militaristic American Church carries on that tradition, as she probably sends more men and women overseas with guns, prepared to kill, than she sends overseas with Bibles, prepared to die.
Martyr cross racing is an attempt to address, and maybe begin to reverse, the self-empowerment mutation that has long been encoded within our religious DNA, endangering our integrity and embarrassing our witness.
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