Constantine Revisited
Subtitle: Leithart, Yoder, and the Constantinian Debate
By: edited by John D. Roth
Publisher: Pickwick Publications; Wipf & Stock Pub
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Eugene, Oregon
Language: eng
Number of pages: 199
ISBN-13: 9781610978194
Subjects: Religion; Political and social views; Influence; Church history; History; Church and state; Church and the world
Description: This collection of essays continues a long and venerable debate in the history of the Christian church regarding the legacy of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great. For some, Constantine's conversion to Christianity early in the fourth century set in motion a process that made the church subservient to the civil authority of the state, brought a definitive end to pacifism as a central teaching of the early church, and redefined the character of Christian catechesis and missions. In 2010, Peter J. Leithart published a widely read polemic, Defending Constantine, that vigorously refuted this interpretation. In its place, Leithart offered a thoroughgoing rehabilitation of Constantine and his legacy, while directing a rhetorical fusillade against the pacifist theology and ethics of the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder. The essays gathered here in response to Leithart reflect the insights of eleven leading theologians, historians, and ethicists from a wide range of theological traditions. They engage one of the most contentious issues in Christian church history in irenic fashion and at the highest level of scholarship. In so doing, they help ensure that the "Constantinian Debate" will continue to be lively, substantive, and consequential.
Notes: Includes bibliography (pages 189-199).
Table of contents: title: Foreword / -- Stanley Hauerwas -- Preface / -- John D. Roth; title: A Yoderian rejoinder to Peter J. Leithart's Defending Constantine  -- John C. Nugent; title: "Converted" but not baptized: Peter Leithart's Constantine project  -- Alan Kreider; title: Against Christianity and for Constantine: one heresy or two?  -- Mark Thiessen Nation; title: What Constantine has to teach us  -- William T. Cavanaugh; title: Yoderian Constantinianism?  -- D. Stephen Long; title: Defending Constantine taken seriously  -- Jonathan Tran; title: The emperor's new clothes  -- Branson Parler; title: History and figural reading: another response to Leithart  -- Timothy J. Furry; title: Leithart's Defending Constantine: a review  -- Charles M. Collier; title: Is there a Christian ethic for emperors?  -- Craig Hovey; title: Constantine and myths of the fall of the church: an Anabaptist view -- J. Alexander Sider-- Afterword /-- Peter J. Leithart.