---
title: Why did the church become persecuting in the fourth century?
description: >-
  In one generation, Christians in the Roman Empire went from officially
  persecuted to becoming imperially-backed persecutors themselves. It's
  important to understand why, to prevent the church from persecuting today.
pubDate: 2025-12-11
---

In the year 325, Constantine stood before an assembly of Christian bishops. He
had just the year before killed his last remaining rival in battle, leaving him
as the sole Augustus of the Roman Empire, from Brittania to Arabia. The bishops
must have assembled before him in reverent awe.

Many of them sported scars from torture they had endured in the reign of
Diocletian, Constantine's predecessor. Diocletian had sponsored an enormous and
brutal persecution of Christians. But that generation of bishops was witnessing
an epochal shift of power. Over his reign, Constantine would divert large chunks
of the wealth and influence of the Roman state into the safe-keeping of the
bishops. Under Constantine's leadership, the bishops would be transformed from
enemies of the state to the state's agents.

Official Roman persecution of Christians was decisively coming to an end. But
the tragedy of the fourth century is that rather than ushering in a new age of
religious tolerance, the bishops only continued the Roman habit of religious
persecution, directing the force of the Empire first against internal rivals,
'heretics', and then against pagans and Jews.

Why did Constantine bestow so much power on the bishops? Part of the answer may
be the creaking disfunction of the Roman state. The imperial systems for
protecting the poor were falling apart. The justice system was notoriously
corrupt, and was known to effectively be a means for the rich to get their way
by paying for the best lawyers and greasing the palms of the judges. The
poor-relief system, based on the magnanimity of local patrons, was stuttering as
an increasing proportion of the aristocracy's surplus wealth went to fund the
tottering military system, frequently consuming huge resources in ill-fated
expeditions against the Sassanids or fighting coups and civil wars between rival
emperors.

The bishops were already in control of an impressive poor-relief system within
Christian communities, and, unlike the Roman system, which rewarded rich
philanthropists with honours, the Christian system encouraged patrons to give
anonymously via their bishop, meaning the bishops were in control of how large
amounts of Christian money was spent. When Constantine ascended, they were ready
to go with their own bureaucratic systems independent of the imperial civil
service.

Constantine may have regarded the bishops, fresh out of persecution, as less
corrupt than imperial pen-pushers. However, in the long run, the effect of his
transfer of power was to transform the episcopate into an alternative civil
service, perhaps no less corrupt than the first. But how did this power turn
into persecution?

As the bishops became ever more powerful, Constantine and his successors became
increasingly dependent on their power. Bishops had huge moral influence over
their congregations, and their word had the power to stop -- or start -- riots.
Emperors also needed them to keep distributing poor relief, an important
foundation for the emperor's moral authority. When the hugely unpopular George
of Cappadocia was installed in Alexandria in 357, the local widows refused to
receive alms from him: as a result, they were physically beaten by George's
imperial goons.

Since the emperors needed the bishops' support, they became increasingly willing
to acquiesce to their demands. And one of the bishops' demands was that the
emperor use his authority to help them crush heresy.

The bishops of the fourth century inherited a dichotomy between orthodoxy and
heresy which had developed in the early church. Orthodoxy meant true belief,
defined and enforced by the bishop. Whoever promoted false beliefs, and together
with it insurrection against the bishop's authority, was defined as a heretic.

Orthodoxy was conceived of as the unchanging teaching of the apostles, who were
in turn taught directly by the Holy Spirit. Orthodoxy might have to be re-stated
as sneaky heretics sought to twist its language, but orthodoxy was never
supposed to be innovative: only heresy was innovative. Further, heresy was
always thought of as a combination teaching falsehoods, behaving immorally, and
refusing to take part in mainstream Christian community. It all came as a
package. Truth means right behaviour means loyalty.

It's difficult to explain exactly why this system emerged. It's true that faith
lies at the root of Christian religion, and that Christ taught that he is truth.
The Epistles are clear that false teachings can be dangerous, and Christians
have a duty to resist them. But that doesn't in itself explain why the bishop
gets to decide which teachings are true or false, nor why the myth of an
unchanging apostolic orthodox teaching should have prevailed over the idea that
Christian teaching can grow over time as it encounters new problems and
contexts.

This system may have been motivated by the need for a distinguishing feature to
ground Christian family identity in the absence of an identity based on
nationality, social class, sex, or religion. It may also have been some kind of
reaction or defence mechanism against persecution. In a world that was often
hunting for an excuse to persecute Christians, it was a matter of life and death
that Christian communities were tight-knit, loyal to one another, and visibly
living according to the highest moral standards.

Whatever the case may be, the result by the Constantinian turning point was that
bishops had significant influence over their local Christian communities, and an
ideological commitment to maintaining their communities' loyalty to the bishop
and his teachings.

And the bishops' desire to crush heretics only increased as the fourth century
wore on. With the wealth and power of the civil service increasingly transferred
to the episcopate, the aristocracy which had dominated the civil service
inevitably moved in to capture the episcopate. Those aristocrats guarded their
power jealously, and elections became increasingly marred by accusations of
corruption. When Athanasius was elected in 328, he was accused of being
underage, of bribing electors and of beating up his Meletian opponents once he
got in office. No doubt, the aristocratic bishops were more than happy to use
the church's concept of orthodoxy to keep out challengers, as Athanasius did
when he used the label 'Arian' to describe just about anyone who wanted him out
of power, no matter how distant their ideas were from those of Arius. As bishops
found the need to fight ever stiffer competition for their jobs, accusations of
heresy multiplied.

As a result of their dependence on episcopal power, Constantine and his
successors supported the bishops in their attempts to crush heresy. The bishops
appealed to the emperor to adjudicate on disputes, and the emperor responded by
calling councils such as Nicaea (325), Antioch (341), Constantinople (360) and
Constantinople again (381). Under the emperor's authority, bishops were exiled
from their sees, and some theological views were condemned as heresy while
others affirmed as orthodoxy, to justify the empowerment of some and the
dethronement of others. The particular orthodoxies implied by succeeding
emperors was not consistent, leading to some emperors and councils being known
to history as 'Nicene' and others as 'Arian'.

Apart from simply doing a favour for the bishops, the emperors had their own
reasons for wanting to defend the bishops from challengers. The bishops now had
the keys to the welfare system and the justice system. The emperor therefore
could not tolerate rival bishops fighting for authority. That would only
undermine those systems, which underpinned imperial power and moral authority.

The emperors may also have been motivated by the need to uphold true religion
and keep peace in the Empire. It was a universal consensus that, if the Empire
was to flourish, it would only be with God's blessing, and that would only
happen in turn if the people were united in acceptable worship. Before the Edict
of Milan in 313, which finally ended official persecution of Christians in the
Roman Empire, there had been a long debate about whether Christian worship
counted. It was controversial because Christian worship didn't look much like
worship at all to pagan eyes, in particular because Christians didn't make
sacrifices. When Constantine settled the issue in favour of Christians, it must
have signalled a step change, where acceptable worship became less about proper
rites and more about proper belief. This trend may have led emperors to regard
heresy as a threat to the Empire's security. Further, where there were schisms,
there was no peace, and the Emperor's mission, to unite the world under one
government in perpetual peace, was incomplete.

These forces amplified one another in a terrible feedback loop. As bishops
increasingly were empowered to define and enforce orthodoxy, they increasingly
monopolised local church leadership, which made them more desirable as imperial
bureaucrats, which meant they got more power, which meant they were more able
still to define and enforce orthodoxy. It was a spiral which led to the
definition of orthodoxy being continually sharpened (even as the myth persisted,
ever less plausibly, that they were defending pristine, unaltered apostolic
teachings). Eventually, it pushed bishops to support persecution not only of
Christians who disagreed with them, but also pagans and Jews.

Orthodoxy may also have become more important in the fourth century because of
the large number of new converts. With so much influx, insiders may have felt
that their core belief-identity was being threatened, and so will have enforced
orthodoxy more strictly, while outsiders may have felt the need to prove their
authenticity by strongly committing to orthodoxy. Committing violence against
heretics, pagans, and Jews may also have functioned as a way to prove that
you're an authentic Christian. This drive towards violence was pushed especially
strongly from the monastic sector, which exploded in scale in the fourth
century.

When orthodoxy gets sharp enough, it eventually gets sharp enough to cut the
church in half. To put it another way, bishops competed to get imperial backing
for their thinking, and therefore their right to power. Since this imperial
backing must have some consistency to remain legitimate, this means orthodoxy
gets standardised across the Empire, and that means that local differences of
opinion become international schisms. Although the Arian controversy never
resulted in a schism within the Empire, there were numerous schisms in the
fourth and fifth centuries, culminating in the epic Nestorian schism, which
split the imperial church three ways along Chalcedonian, Antiochene and
Alexandrian fault lines.

My main reaction to this period of church history is dismay. It seems to me that
the church was captured by the Empire and the aristocracy. The church became in
large part a way for powerful people to grab, hold onto and accumulate power.
When that happens today, the Gospel is suppressed, and the church loses moral
authority.

To avoid this happening again, we ought to protect the right of Christians and
others to believe and gather free from persecution. True belief is important,
but that doesn't mean we should attempt to compel agreement. Christian leaders
cannot enforce their teachings if dissatisfied Christians can just go to the
church next door.

Opening communion also disempowers those forces which seek to enforce orthodoxy.
If the bishop can't bar you from taking communion, they can't force you to
accept what they teach or to support their political programme.

Finally, established churches are vulnerable to the perverse incentive
structures of the state, and must be disestablished. The Church of England
should not have seats in the Lords and should not crown British monarchs.

I believe in one holy, catholic and apostolic church -- but I do not believe in
one opinion or one authority. My realistic ideal of church unity now involves a
plurality of disestablished denominations which robustly disagree with one
another on important points of belief, but which admit one another to communion
and are willing to work together for the sake of the Gospel.

I have to caveat my pessimism about the fourth century. As much as I regret the
imperialisation of the church, I remain attached to the particular orthodoxies
which it produced at Nicaea, Constantinople and Chalcedon. I've been convinced
that they are important ground truths for theology, and have stood the test of
time because they are intellectually robust. Other creeds and councils
(including creeds from fourth-century councils) have been forgotten, but these
stand tall. I suppose that Nicaea, Constantinople and Chalcedon give good
guardrails for theology, and, whatever the political forces which gave rise to
them, have been subsequently vindicated by their theological fruits and by the
enduring testimony of the church.

In summary, the church became increasingly persecuting in the fourth century as
a result of the entangled interests of, on the one hand, an increasingly landed,
aristocratic episcopate which needed to protect its influence amidst stiff
competition, and, on the other hand, of embattled emperors who regarded the
bishops as a better way of exerting the Empire's power and achieving the
Empire's mission amidst the failure of the old imperial systems: provided they
could be kept happy and kept in unchallenged power. This persecuting force
produced the church's foundational ecumenical creeds, but was just as effective
at producing disharmony as enforcing harmony, and ultimately led to the massive
and ongoing Nestorian schism. This is a sober lesson for today's church, and
should move us to protect freedom of belief and gathering for all, to
disestablish the church and to open the communion.
