George Weigel comments on the anniversary of the Edict of Milan (313). I agree with this (though leveling the dangers of coercion to Protestants and Roman Catholics when Inquisitions were a Roman Catholic reality until 1870 is a bit much):
The immediate effects of the Constantinian settlement, both good and ill, were limned with customary wit and literary skill by Evelyn Waugh in the novel Helena. After 313, the tombs of the martyrs were publicly honored; so were the martyr-confessors, often disfigured by torture, who emerged from the Christian underground to kiss each other’s wounds at the first ecumenical council. Before those heroes met at Nicaea in 325, though, grave theological questions had gotten ensnared up in imperial court intrigues and ecclesiastical politics. Later unions of altar and throne led to a general cultural forgetting of Lactantius’ wisdom, as the Church employed the “civil arm” to enforce orthodoxy. Protestantism proved no less vulnerable to the temptation to coercion than Catholicism and Orthodoxy; one might even argue that the seventeenth-century Peace of Westphalia, which ended the European wars of religion by establishing the principle of cuius regio eius religio (the prince’s religion is the people’s religion), reversed the accomplishments of the “Edict of Milan”—and was, in fact, the West’s first modern experiment in the totalitarian coercion of consciences.
But then he shows the addling effects of preoccupation with the political outcomes of faith:
Very few twenty-first-century Christians would welcome a return to state establishments of religion as the accepted norm. So however much the Constantinian settlement led Christianity into what some regard as a lengthy Babylonian captivity to state power, the “Edict of Milan” also affirmed truths that have proven stronger over time than the temptation to use Caesar for God’s work. Today’s challenge is quite different: it’s the temptation to let Caesar, in his various forms, reduce religious conviction to a privacy right of lifestyle choice.
What about when Christ’s followers reduce religious conviction to a privacy right? What Weigel doesn’t see is that the churches are as complicit in privatizing religion as the Obama administration. When Manhattan Declarationists, including Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox, defend religious freedom in the name of the gospel, when the Gospel Coalition understands its union of Presbyterians, Baptists, and independents as defending the gospel, or when participants at Vatican II recognize Muslims, Jews, and Protestants as on the way to salvation, the particularities of Christianity like baptism and the Lord’s supper fall into irrelevance almost as quickly as it takes to say the Pledge of Allegiance.
Now lest I fall prey to the same error of leveling George Weigel to President Obama’s status, I will grant that the Manhattan Declaration, the Gospel Coalition, and Vatican II mean/meant well. Then again, so does the president. And in both cases the means of grace, word, sacrament, and prayer, that I spend so much time defending (as part of my private responsibilities) make as much difference to the Declarationists, the Allies, and the Cardinals (and their ecumenical observers) as the Seventy-Sixers do to professional sports.
Old Life 
DGH: when the Gospel Coalition understands its union of Presbyterians, Baptists, and independents as defending the gospel,…. the particularities of Christianity like baptism and the Lord’s supper fall into irrelevance
mark: Hart writes a post with the words “constantinian” and “infant baptism” in it, and I don’t respond? What kind of a world would that be to live in? While I am not a defender of the Gospel Coaltion, my reason is their compromise with evangelical Arminianism. They do so because their leaders understand themselves as being both Arminians and Calvinists.
As Piper explains it, he believes everything Arminians believe, AND MORE. As Carson explains it, of course he is for evangelism and so of course he tells everybody that God loves them and that Jesus died for them. As Keller explains it, the mere Christianity of CS Lewis is the basic gospel (though the Reformed ornaments of the Confession are good also….)
To get to my disagreement with DGH on this, I don’t think the problem here is the GC unwillingness to “be public” in the way Hart wants them to be on water baptism and “sacraments”. Of course there are many related questions concerning the nature of “parachurches”–as in, your denomination is not a true church, but my denominational structure (which is not a congregation) is not a parachurch and etc….
But is it true that the way to be “public” is to divide over water baptism? I think that is an open question, and not to be decided apriori with the idea that accepting “unbaptized” people (be they infants from one side of the equation, or paedobaptists from the other side) makes you “privatized”.
Certainly I agree with DGH that what we do with water “makes a difference”. At least Hart is not assuming that the traditional connection of Constantinianism with infant baptism is merely what everybody has always done, and that therefore it’s only the credobaptists who are making an unnecessary fuss about water. Hart is rightly seeing that both sides of the debate correctly see the debate as making a real important difference.
But if you have a coalition of people who don’t believe the gospel in the first place, it doesn’t matter much what they do or don’t do about water. It doesn’t even matter that they are (or are not) in “the true public church”. Why complain about Billy Graham being parachurch or about Graham’s alliances with Roman Catholics, when the more basis problem is his false Arminian gospel?
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McMark, historically, punting on baptism was a way to form the Evangelical Alliance and then the Federal Council of Churches. Then you begin to notice things like public morality is more relevant that mode of baptism. I believe TGC may already be there.
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Between being given a duty (vocation) to work for the profane good, and fighting over water and true church, if I have to choose between those two, I woul talk about Christ’s positive commands to wash feet, to baptize, and to be baptized, to take eat, to remember, etc. Since the “sacraments” are supposed to be about the gospel (seen), perhaps we can even talk some about the meaning of the gospel. Was circumcision about conditionality or unconditionality, or both?
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Inquisitions were a Roman Catholic reality until 1870 is a bit much
You can call what they did to J. Gresham Machen in 1935 something else, but it’s not.
or this
http://www.asa3.org/gray/evolution_trial/
I don’t get you sometimes.
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Gospel Coalitioner – The integration of faith and work.
The good news of the Bible is not only individual forgiveness but the renewal of the whole creation. God put humanity in the garden to cultivate the material world for his own glory and for the flourishing of nature and the human community. The Spirit of God not only converts individuals (e.g., John 16:8) but also renews and cultivates the face of the earth (e.g., Gen 1:2; Psalm 104:30).
Erik – Boy, that’s some heavy-duty exegesis for such grand claims. Two verses?
And Gen. 1.2? We’re supposed to just overlook the fall?
And the second paragraph is perhaps an element of the law (“Gratitude” section of the Heidelberg), but is not the gospel (maybe the social gospel).
And these guys think they have invented something new? Have they heard of Walter Rauschenbusch?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Rauschenbusch
I also noticed they seriously listed plumbing as one of the activities that the gospel has implications for.
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My son was playing with a neighborhood kid the other day who has had a tough life. He was given up for adoption by his single mom and his older brother hung himself a few years ago (probably accidentally). He has a good adoptive family now, but they have their hands full with several other adopted kids. I was going to take my son to hit baseballs so I asked him if he wanted to come along. He said he did. I asked him if he had played baseball before and he said he only had a few times. We went and my son (only 6) hit first and the other boy shagged balls. Then the other boy (who is 9 or 10) hit and did really well. He has a lot of potential as a baseball player and all-around athlete. He had fun, my son had fun, and I had fun. We’ll all do it again. The great thing was that it flowed naturally out of our daily lives. I needed no great pep talk or grand theological framework to do it. No pastor had to guide me. I didn’t have to join some team at church. It was no big deal, but it’s the kind of simple thing that we do as Christians.
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