Historical Contingency and Belief
It seems to me that the most critical historical moment for the religion we know as Christianity was an episode in Rome in 4th century CE. After the breakup of the dominate model of the empire created by Diocletian, the tetrarchy, there was a war among the generals in charge of the various Roman armies. The critical event was the invasion of Italy and attack on Rome by the emperor Constantine.
It is important to understand that Maxentius, the opponent of Constantine for the sole leadership of the empire, had already withstood two sieges inside Rome by other rivals for the control of the empire. He had a numerical advantage in troops and most observers believed Maxentius would stay within the walls of Rome and wait out his third siege. The decision to fight a pitched battle outside the walls of Rome decisively changed the equation and was riskier for Maxentius than choosing to withstand a siege.
What led him to mount an attack rather than wait is entirely speculative, but something did. The battle of the Milvian Bridge was decided decisively when a bridge created by Maxentius' engineers failed while his army was making a tactical retreat. Maxentius was on the bridge and was drowned.
With his drowning, Constantine won the control of the western empire. Constantine then issued the Edict of Milan along with the eastern leader, Licinius, ending all persecution of Christians. He then fought several wars with Licinius, until Licinus finally surrendered and was then executed.
If you believe Christianity is a divine religion, rather than focusing on the death of a poor man on a cross in Palestine in the first century -- you should be focusing instead on this sequence of events. For if God intervened to resurrect Jesus, it would have all been wasted if Maxentius hadn't drowned, or if Licinius had defeated Constantine. Thus, the Christian must believe that God is intimately involved in each action that takes place on earth. God must have planned for Constantine and his family to take over the Roman Empire. He must have chosen to have Maxentius' army lose and Constantine's to be victorious.
You must also believe that God caused the early demise of Julian the apostate, as he had re-instituted the various pagan cults as the favored religions of the empire. You must also believe that God kept the armies of the Moors from defeating the French. You must also believe that God kept the Turks and Mongols from defeating the Holy Roman Empire. You must believe that God has continuously kept Christianity in a special spot, but for 2000 years has yet to get more than a plurality of humans to accept his word.
This sets up a nearly infinite recursion that really seems to me to lead to either panentheism or atheism. I'm curious what both sides have to say about the problem of historical contingency. I believe that it is simply logically impossible to believe in a Christian God and not believe that he causes virtually every act on earth (panentheism), which would leave you with something like Spinoza's God. Yet of course the God of Christianity can't be such a God, since there are so many things on earth that are so awful, that Christians can't imagine a good God to have caused them.
To highlight this, look at the actions of Constantine's family.
Virtually all of them either were killed, or became emperor. To believe Christianity is divine you must believe that all of those executions were being ordained by God, for if they had not happened, Christianity might never have taken hold.
The alternative, I supposed, is to argue that God did NOT act to kill of rivals to the Roman dominate, and that Christianity triumphed because of its success in the marketplace of ideas. I leave that argument to be fleshed out by those who take it seriously. I do not.
It is important to understand that Maxentius, the opponent of Constantine for the sole leadership of the empire, had already withstood two sieges inside Rome by other rivals for the control of the empire. He had a numerical advantage in troops and most observers believed Maxentius would stay within the walls of Rome and wait out his third siege. The decision to fight a pitched battle outside the walls of Rome decisively changed the equation and was riskier for Maxentius than choosing to withstand a siege.
What led him to mount an attack rather than wait is entirely speculative, but something did. The battle of the Milvian Bridge was decided decisively when a bridge created by Maxentius' engineers failed while his army was making a tactical retreat. Maxentius was on the bridge and was drowned.
With his drowning, Constantine won the control of the western empire. Constantine then issued the Edict of Milan along with the eastern leader, Licinius, ending all persecution of Christians. He then fought several wars with Licinius, until Licinus finally surrendered and was then executed.
If you believe Christianity is a divine religion, rather than focusing on the death of a poor man on a cross in Palestine in the first century -- you should be focusing instead on this sequence of events. For if God intervened to resurrect Jesus, it would have all been wasted if Maxentius hadn't drowned, or if Licinius had defeated Constantine. Thus, the Christian must believe that God is intimately involved in each action that takes place on earth. God must have planned for Constantine and his family to take over the Roman Empire. He must have chosen to have Maxentius' army lose and Constantine's to be victorious.
You must also believe that God caused the early demise of Julian the apostate, as he had re-instituted the various pagan cults as the favored religions of the empire. You must also believe that God kept the armies of the Moors from defeating the French. You must also believe that God kept the Turks and Mongols from defeating the Holy Roman Empire. You must believe that God has continuously kept Christianity in a special spot, but for 2000 years has yet to get more than a plurality of humans to accept his word.
This sets up a nearly infinite recursion that really seems to me to lead to either panentheism or atheism. I'm curious what both sides have to say about the problem of historical contingency. I believe that it is simply logically impossible to believe in a Christian God and not believe that he causes virtually every act on earth (panentheism), which would leave you with something like Spinoza's God. Yet of course the God of Christianity can't be such a God, since there are so many things on earth that are so awful, that Christians can't imagine a good God to have caused them.
To highlight this, look at the actions of Constantine's family.
Virtually all of them either were killed, or became emperor. To believe Christianity is divine you must believe that all of those executions were being ordained by God, for if they had not happened, Christianity might never have taken hold.
The alternative, I supposed, is to argue that God did NOT act to kill of rivals to the Roman dominate, and that Christianity triumphed because of its success in the marketplace of ideas. I leave that argument to be fleshed out by those who take it seriously. I do not.
10 comments:
I agree with you that the events of Constantine's victory are critical for the triumph of Christianity in the West. I would add that it guaranteed the triumph of a particular version of Christianity. The Roman version which forms the genetic source for virtually all versions of Christianity we see today was but one of the varieties of Christianity which existed at that time.
Without Constantine's success and patronage, it is unlikely that any version of Christianity would have lasted very long. But imagine for a moment if one of the non-Constintinian (catholic) versions of Christianity had prevailed. What would Chriatianity look like if a different canon had eventually been adopted. Remember, texts like the Shepherd of Hermas, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, the Didache and many others were widely accepted as having canonical authority in many areas of the empire prior to Nicea. And texts like the Revelation of John, the Epistles of Peter, the Epistle of James, and the Gospel of John may not have been included in that canon. They barely made the cut at Nicea. Some of our fundamentalist friends should be a bit uncomfortable knowing that but for a bit of battlefield luck, the Bible they idolize could have looked much different.
Bart Willruth
If I remember correctly, and you guys stop me if I get this wrong; there is a doctrine called "Confluence". This doctrine speaks of the flowing together of two streams; the sovereignty of god and the free will of man. Perhaps another way to say it is, primary and secondary causality, where god at certain points in redemptive history, intervenes to accomplish certain "redemptive moments." This doctrine goes hand in hand with the doctrine of concurrence.
One analogy would be Peter in Act 2 where is states that in "Gods determined time and foreknowledge Jesus was delivered up, and you by the hands of wicked men have crucified and put to death." Or another one would be Joseph after he is reunited with his brothers when he says, and this is a very loose paraphrase, " what you meant for evil, (selling him into slavery) god meant for good.
These doctrinal distinctions sound like something that a theologian would postulate because he had to solve a conflict within the scriptures.
Lee, I think that is the standard orthodox reply but a simple gedankenexperiment seems to cause it to disappear into panentheism or pantheism as far as I can tell. Here's how I see it.
For Orthodox Roman Christianity to become the dominant faith in Western Europe and thus inherit the biological, geographical, intellectual, and scientific/technical prowess of Western Civilization it was necessary that Maxentius be defeated.
But to make sure Maxentius was defeated, he had to first be in a position to be defeated (e.g. he had to decide to attack).
So even if God's own finger pulled a stick that removed the linchpin from the bridge at the Tiber that day, he still had to have created the situation as it was structured previously.
In addition, he had to maintain the succession of events point by point along the way. History has many contingencies and contingency is most important at the beginning of a historical epoch (in this case the triumph of Christians over paganism).
So all counterfactuals could have conceivably fundamentally altered things today. For instance, what if Athanasius had been struck ill on the way to the Council of Nicea? Would we have the same doctrine of the trinity as we do today? To make such an argument is difficult. So God must have been monitoring the cellular physiology of Athanasius moment to moment.
Again -- panentheism or pantheism is the only logical end to such beliefs if you disallow atheism.
And to me this removes free will entirely from human affairs far more effectively than atheism ever could.
Panentheism is a fairly new term for me, but I'm not making a connection as to how this would be in opposition to Christianity. In fact, I think Augustine clearly supports it.
Pantheism is a totally different idea. Pantheism says god is all; Panentheism says God is in all but not all. God is still distinctly Creator in a paradigm of panentheism.
I guess if you are only considering fundamentalism it would not be compatible, but otherwise, why do you think panentheism would not be a biblical or Christian concept?
what a fascinating post.
Far be it from me to tell Christians what they can or can't believe, Jennifer. It seems you can believe the Bible and believe almost anything.
I have no sustained critique of panentheism per se, but it certainly isn't consistent with the God described in the Bible, and it makes a mockery of the concept of atonement for sin or free will.
The panentheist believes that God moves through ALL THINGS. That is everything that has ever existed.
So the problem of theodicy seems to me to magnify massively. God doesn't just let the tsunami happen. God is *IN* the tsunami making it happen. He's the demiurge acting behind everything!
Beyond that, remember that this means *all* actions are working together to instantiate the divine goals. To the panentheist, the choice of what color socks to wear or whether to get prix fixe or a la carte is controlled by the deity working within all things and again -- whence free will?
So the standard argument by moderns made in response to the problem of evil is dissolved by panentheism.
If you make the additional move to pantheism -- IMO you are already an atheist. A God who is redefined to actually being all things is indistinguishable from a God who doesn't exist.
I disagree with your survey of panentheism, but it would take more time than I have to go through explaining the why of it.
Good post, even if I disagree. :)
In the early 80’s I bought Glenn Bowerstock’s “Julia the Apostate” (Harvard Press 1978) and was impressed and sympathetic (even as a Christian) with his portrayal of Julia’s re-conversion to the religion that made the Roman Empire great over against the Christian “atheist” who attacked and denied the great Roman gods. Bowerstock goes in to detail about the murderous plot and power killings with this first Christian family.
Christianity is where it is today, not by God, but by lucky breaks of history.
curious if anyone's come across a view of God's participation in the world called "Open Theism"? You can read a brief description about it here. i found it an interesting alternative to the one expressed above; that being that God must have manipulated all of human history in order for Constantine to win the crucial battle and therefore, for christianity to survive as it has.
from my (very limited) understanding of it, it seems to allow for Constantine to either win or lose and also doesn't leave God as the one as the ultimate cause for all the crap Constantine was involved in. that is, it keeps free will intact.
there is something that isn't really clear from the original post or the comments: why do you think that christianity wouldn't have survived had Constantine not won? who's to say that it wouldn't have continued on by some other course of events? wouldn't making such a strong statement have to mean that you know every possible outcome of every event that's ever happened and every choice ever made?
finally, Evan, if we are being fair your comment above ("It seems you can believe the Bible and believe almost anything") could also be said for a hindu, muslim, atheist, agnostic, etc., could it not?
(perhaps i am exposing my ignorance here...)
i've just discovered this website and am really enjoying the challenges you are all putting. very good post!
there is something that isn't really clear from the original post or the comments: why do you think that christianity wouldn't have survived had Constantine not won?
Constantine laid down a bet prior to the battle. He had a vision that showed the chi-ro and a statement "In hoc signe vinces" which meant "under this sign you triumph."
He then had all his soldiers paint this symbol on their shields. I can't imagine that the soldiers under Maxentius weren't making sport of this prior to the battle, and had they been victorious, the amount of opprobrium heaped on the defeated would have been all the greater due to their allegiance to a persecuted religion.
So you have to think that eventually the whole Roman world was made aware that Constantine had put his army under the protection of the Christian God, and instead of winning a battle, they were defeated.
I believe that Christianity (already persecuted by Diocletian) would likely have been wiped out.
Again, if you believe otherwise, you may be correct, but most historians believe that Constantine's martial successes and his unification of the empire were the linchpin of the success of Christianity.
If you can come up with a credible theory of events under which Constantine proudly proclaims his conversion to Christianity, fights and loses a battle, is killed and then the empire converts to Christianity, I'd be happy to hear it.
You're right that historical counterfactuals are difficult to prove. But I ask you to find any religion that dominated a region after its primary army was dealt a crushing defeat in its first military campaign.
And yes, to be fair, you can believe just about any book is the divine word and still believe just about anything it seems. We are all containers of the Whitmanesque multitudes.
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