A Thought Experiment about Constantine

The Roman Emperor Constantine became a Christian in 312 A.D. and legalized Christian worship the next year. His endorsement of Christianity set the stage for the Council of Nicea in 325, which declared Jesus to be divine and co-eternal with God. Emperor Theodosius issued a decree in 380 making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire and the Council of Rome approved the books of the Old and New Testament in 382.

There is nothing like the power of the state (an emperor no less) to grow your organization. From a fringe religion, subject to persecution by Roman emperors, Christianity became the dominant religion of Europe within a span of 70 years. The Great Schism that broke apart Catholicism, the Reformation, and the proliferation of Protestant denominations meant that Christianity would no longer be a unified movement under a European Pope. However, the basic elements of Christianity had fallen into place by the end of the fourth century and remain with us today.

Let’s do a thought experiment and imagine that Constantine had decided he didn’t want to become a Christian after all. Reportedly, he had a dramatic experience in 312 at the Battle of Milvian Bridge when he looked at the sun and saw a Christian cross. If the battle had gone badly, things might have been different. Imagine that, without the endorsement of Constantine, Christianity continued to exist but was only one of hundreds of other religious movements. Consequently, the Catholic Church never became the powerful source of Christian doctrine with the power of the state behind it. As a result, imagine that we in the twenty-first century feel free to study many religious traditions, both in Europe and in other parts of the world, and develop our own ideas about God. What would we decide?

We would probably maintain the core idea of monotheism, inherited from Judaism. We might study the life of Jesus and conclude that he was remarkably progressive and insightful for his time. Although he never disavowed Judaism, he stressed that the most important principles of life have nothing to do with dietary laws or rituals. Instead, these highest principles are to love God and love our neighbor. Perhaps we would be attracted to ideas of the Buddha, which focus on finding meaning by overcoming the desire for material pleasures. We might choose to borrow from Mohammed and passages in the Quran about social justice. We might be interested in the beliefs of indigenous peoples in the Americas regarding the sanctity of nature.

Above all, I think we would conclude that there should be a central unifying idea that conveys the highest purpose in life. I believe we would say that this highest purpose is reflected in Jesus’ statement about the importance of loving God and our neighbors. Out of a desire to continue the historical tradition of those who have gone before us, we could choose to call this central unifying idea God. Yet, we would not be bound by the images of God portrayed in the Bible by our pre-scientific ancestors. We would be free to take into account our vastly increased knowledge about science and the nature of the universe and think of God in a very different way.

This is more than an idle thought experiment, of course. It is the spiritual challenge we actually face. The number of Americans who say they have no religion is now 15%, up from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. While some regions, such as the northern New England and the Pacific Northwest, have higher percentages of persons with no religion, the number of Americans with no religion rose in every state. Fewer Americans want a religious marriage or funeral. These percentages in Europe are already much higher. The numbers of persons abandoning religion will to continue to increase unless we move beyond doctrines that were developed in the fourth century and reconcile our beliefs about God with the science of the twenty-first century.