Chapter 3 – Growth vs. purity in the 3rd-5th centuries

During this time a lot of Christians’ fondest wishes came true – and they found this was not all good.
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AD 247-251 persecutions under Decius in retaliation for Christians not celebrating Rome’s 1000th birthday. Remember Origen from last class – he died during this persecution.
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The persecutions ended but this brought up the question of how to deal with Christians who had sacrificed to the Roman gods to avoid persecution but wanted back in the Christian church later?

• Cyprian’s position – Let them back in when they show signs of contrition (prayer and fasting) (p28)
  Donatus’ position – Any elder who'd sacrificed to a Roman god would invalidate all of the sacriments he'd given - so you can't let them back in (p28)
• Your position – What would you want to do with a really bad ‘backslider’ whose misdeeds were really bad for the church and other Christians?
• The Presbyterian position...

They, whom God hath accepted… can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace ... This perseverance of the saints depends not upon their own free will, but upon …the free and unchangeable love of God ... Nevertheless, they may … fall into grievous sins…whereby they incur God's displeasure, and grieve His Holy Spirit, come to be deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts, have their hearts hardened, and their consciences wounded; hurt and scandalize others, and bring temporal judgments upon themselves. (Westminster COF 17.1-17.3)

Church censures are necessary…
the officers of the church are to proceed by admonition, suspension from the sacrament of the Lord's Supper for a season; and by excommunication from the Church, according to the nature of the crime, and demerit of the person. (Westminster COF 30.3-30.4)

In 284, Diocletian divided the Roman Empire in half, East and West, ruled by co-emperors. Later, Emperor Galerius, realizing the persecutions were ineffective, made Christianity legal, “so long as they didn’t disturb the peace.”In 312, Constantine and Maxentius were fighting for the position of Emperor. The truly remarkable thing about this was that Constantine claimed to have had a vision from God the day before the battle. He claimed to see the Greek letters Chi-Rho (a monogram for Christ) in the sun and he said he heard a voice saying, “By this sign, you will win.” So Constantine had the Chi-Rho (p29, sidebar) painted on his army’s shields. Constantine routed Maxentius’ army and drove them into a river.
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Constantine made Christ his personal patron, and in the Edict of Milan (313 AD) declared Christianity to be not only legal, but effectively the state religion of the Empire and himself an overseer in the Church.
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• Constantine called the Council of Nicaea in 325 to rule on a theological squabble.
• Arius’ position: Jesus was not coexistant with God from the beginning, but was god's first creation (p30)
• The conservative position (p30,2nd full ¶) resulted in the creation of the Gloria Patria, which we sing every week.
• We call the Council’s position statement the Nicene Creed (p30, sidebar) - though this creed would be revised at other councils in subsequent years.
• Constantine’s enforcement included excommunicating and banishing anyone who refused to sign the creed. But to preserve the peace, he overturned Arius' censure. One of Arius' followers baptized Constantine on his deathbead years later. (p30-31)

Constantine vs. Athanasius:

• The Black Dwarf’s position: I will not reinstate Arius because he is a heretic. (p31)
• Constantine’s response: banished Athanasius and hunted him for years (p31)

Possibly the greatest tragedy in the whole chapter is the story of Constantine’s successor, Julian. Which of the Ten Commandments did Constantine break in this particular case (Ex 20:7)? He painted Christ's name on his shields, made himself a representative of Christ, then lived such a secular life that he made his successor hate Christianity. had it not have been for Constantine's actions, Julian might have been Christian. See the sidebar at the top of p32. Pray for God to save us from Constantine’s mistake.

Discussion: purity vs. growth and security (Acts 2:41-42, 1John2:19)