Katana VentraIP

Constantinian shift

Constantinian shift is used by some theologians and historians of antiquity to describe the political and theological changes that took place during the 4th-century under the leadership of Emperor Constantine the Great. Rodney Clapp claims that the shift or change started in the year 200.[1] The term was popularized by the Mennonite theologian John H. Yoder.[2] He claims that the change was not just freedom from persecution but an alliance between the State and the Church that led to a kind of Caesaropapism. The claim that there ever was a Constantinian shift has been disputed; Peter Leithart argues that there was a "brief, ambiguous 'Constantinian moment' in the fourth century", but that there was "no permanent, epochal 'Constantinian shift'".[3]

Constantine and Eusebius, 1981

Timothy Barnes

Theodosian Code, , ed., Documents of the Christian Church, (London: Oxford University Press, 1943), p. 31. see: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/theodcodeXVI.html Archived 2007-02-27 at the Wayback Machine

Henry Bettenson

The Rise of Western Christendom (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003),60.

Peter Brown

James Bulloch, From Pilate to Constantine, 1981

Life of Constantine, Library of Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, 2nd series (New York: Christian Literature Co., 1990), Vol I, 489–91. see: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/conv-const.html

Eusebius of Caesarea

Alistair Kee, Constantine Versus Christ, 1982

Lactantius, Lucius Caecilius Firmianus, On the manner in which the persecutors died (English translation of De Mortibus Persecutorum) see:

http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0296/_P18.HTM

Christianising the Roman Empire, 1984

Ramsay MacMullen

The Story of Christian Theology, 1999

Roger E. Olson

- an Evangelical perspective on the Constantinian shift

Social Constantinianism

Basil's Struggle with Arianism after Constantine.

Timeline of Fourth-Century Roman Imperial Laws showing the Constantinian shift