| Historian Henry Chadwick attests, "Constantine, like his father, worshipped the Unconquered Sun" (The Early Church, 1993, p. 122). As to the emperor\'s embrace of Christianity, Chadwick admits, "His conversion should not be interpreted as an inward experience of grace . . . It was a military matter. His comprehension of Christian doctrine was never very clear" (p. 125).
Chadwick does say that Constantine\'s deathbed baptism itself "implies no doubt about his Christian belief," it being common for rulers to put off baptism to avoid accountability for things like torture and executing criminals (p. 127). But this justification doesn\'t really help the case for the emperor\'s conversion being genuine.
Norbert Brox, a professor of church history, confirms that Constantine was never actually a converted Christian: "Constantine did not experience any conversion; there are no signs of a change of faith in him. He never said of himself that he had turned to another god . . . At the time when he turned to Christianity, for him this was Sol Invictus (the victorious sun god)" (A Concise History of the Early Church, 1996, p. 4 .
When it came to the Nicene Council, The Encyclopaedia Britannica states: "Constantine himself presided, actively guiding the discussions, and personally proposed . . . the crucial formula expressing the relation of Christ to God in the creed issued by the council . . . Overawed by the emperor, the bishops, with two exceptions only, signed the creed, many of them much against their inclination" (1971 edition, Vol. 6, "Constantine," p. 386).
With the emperor\'s approval, the Council rejected the minority view of Arius and, having nothing definitive with which to replace it, approved the view of Athanasius—also a minority view. The church was left in the odd position of officially supporting, from that point forward, the decision made at Nicaea to endorse a belief held by only a minority of those attending.
The groundwork for official acceptance of the Trinity was now laid—but it took more than three centuries after Jesus Christ\'s death and resurrection for this unbiblical teaching to emerge! |
.
