It was said in the recent CNN special “After Jesus” that if
not for the conversion of Constantine, Christianity would never have become the
force that it is, essentially that Christianity like all religious movements is
an historical accident that could have been stopped at any number of points had
this or that chance event not occurred—and any number of intellectual
Christians will be suspicious of the claim that God helped Constantine win the
battle; we simply don’t see good evidence for such a God. But perhaps history
does not work this way after all. Christianity was a growing force in the
empire at the time of Constantine, though many emperors and others had tried
hard to get rid of it. Like a bubble rising or a stream falling this force was
looking for a place to emerge. It happened to emerge here. Had Constantine
lost, it would have emerged elsewhere. But it was going to happen because it
was a swelling force in history—a force which the church, for all we know,
prevents like a dam as much as it channels like a dredge.
