Session 4
Constantine, Byzantium and Monasticism
Constantine
“In 312 an event occurred which utterly transformed the outward situation of the church. As he was riding with his army through France, the Emperor Constantine looked up into the sky and saw a cross of light in front of the sun. With the cross there was an inscription: In this sign conquer.” (The Orthodox Church, Timothy Ware)
Christianity became legal and eventually became the state religion. This in part led to the advent of monasticism, a sort of self-imposed martyrdom by individuals fleeing to the desert to wage spiritual warfare against the powers of darkness.
For the next several centuries the church which formerly had to struggle with exterior enemies, found itself continually facing enemies from within in the form of heresy and apostasy.
The first major heresy was that of Arianism. The priest Arius taught that Jesus was not fully God, that he was a created being higher than humans but less than God. It ws this heresy which brought about the First ecumenical council of Nicea.
This council in 325AD was attended by many bishops and priests who had survived the age of persecution. Many of them were confessors, that is Christians who had been tortured but not killed for their faith in Christ. These were men whose limbs had been cut off, their faces disfigured, eyes gouged out, and tongues cut off.
St Athanasius, a hero of the council stated, “God became man, that we might become god (small G).” God became a human that we might become as St. Peter states, “partakers of the divine nature.” Another father states, “We become by Grace what God is by nature.”
The first council of Nicea affirmed that Jesus Christ is one person existing in two natures. He is true God and true man.
Subsequent councils dealt with other heresies concerning Jesus Christ such as:
- Nestorianism: two persons instead of one
- Monophysism: one nature not two
- Monothelism: one will not two.
The councils also established the five major patriarchal centers of the church: Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria and, established rules and guidelines for governing the church and dealing with contemporary issues.
This period of church history is often called the golden age. The harmony of church and state which took place in the Byzantine empire has never been repeated and it is considered by many to be the best example of “heaven on earth” in terms of expressing the kingdom of God in earthly form.
This harmony would be disrupted and injured by historical and political events toward the end of the first millennium but the church would not be destroyed. In the next lesson we will conclude with a discussion of the Great Schism, the Protestant Reformation, and the Orthodox Church today.
Freely Ye Have Received Freely GiveTags: educational, history