Now here’s a wonder. In his recent The Contested Public Square (IVP), Greg Forster says that in the early centuries the church developed “a thoroughly - and irreversibly - apolitical understanding of its own existence and mission.”

Irreversible, that is, until it was reversed. Less that forty pages later, Forster is telling us about church and state in early Christian Rome:

“In the fourth century, with the Roman population having largely converted to Christianity, Roman Christians did what every other people in history had done up to that point: they sought to integrate the church and the state. No society had every drawn very sharp lines between the political life and the religious life of the community. There does not appear to have been any conscious decision about whether Christianity should behave any differently; this was just the way all societies had always been governed, and Christians naturally continued the same pattern.”

Forster is more historically astute than the Yoderites who think the first words out of Constantine’s Christian mouth should have been “Congress shall make no law . . . .” But Forster leaves us with a jarring contrast: What happened to the thoroughly apolitical church that he says existed right up to Constantine? Despite what Forster says elsewhere, there was no “intellectual crisis” in the fourth century, no raging debate about how Christians should relate to a converted empire. There were raging debates about traditores , about the nature of Christ, about other things. There was no debate about political theology. In the midst of his self-contradictions, Forster has stumbled on a genuine historical puzzle.

This leaves us with some options: Maybe is just slipped past them, and they didn’t think they needed to think or debate about it a lot. This is plausible in some respects, but if there really was (for example) a strong anti-imperial or anti-war consensus in the early church, the absence of debate on these issues in the fourth century is hard to account for.

Maybe the very same Christians who had stood firm through vicious persecution suddenly went soft, became “knaves” (Walter Ullmann’s term) as soon as the edict of persecution was revoked. That’s hard to believe. We’re talking about people who lost limbs and eyes and friends to sword and flame. Not the types to be useful idiots.

Maybe they were seduced by power. Some were, in some ways. But we shouldn’t take the breathlessgushing of a Eusebius as the standard. Many fourth-century bishops were tough and tough-minded men, and were not going to be overly impressed with power.

Or, maybe the early church wasn’t as apolitical as Forster thinks. That’s more like it. And, to go a step further, maybe there was no raging debate because everyone was expecting the empire to convert. Prayers pro salute imperatoris (Ullmann again) had been included in the liturgy for a long time. Maybe they believed God would answer; maybe they were grateful when He did.

Ullmann (in a 1976 article in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History ) further explains the silent acquiescence of bishops by showing that in taking responsibliity for the unity and orderliness of the church, Constantine was fulfilling a fundamentla imperial responsibility, the care of the public interest. According to Ulpian, Roman public law was divided in three: religion, priesthoods, and magistracies. The Christian church was clearly about sacra and sacerdotes , and thus came under the emperor’s jurisdiction. Christians in Constantine’s empire would no sooner challenge his “episcopacy” over Roman religion than American Christians would expect a Christian President to overturn the First Amendment.