Neutral

Freeman again: He claims that Constantine employed the image of the sun, used in both Christianity and paganism, to maintain “his neutral position between opposing faiths.”

In part, his interpretation is based on HA Drake. But the neutrality that Drake talks about is a neutrality in “public space” that enabled the development of “a stable coalition of both Christians and non-Christians in support of this program of ‘peaceful co-existence,’” a coalition that Drake says was more successful “than has generally been recognized” (this is a section of Constantine and the Bishops quoted by Freeman).

Constantine’s intention to create a cooperative public space implied nothing about his own personal neutrality between Christianity and paganism. It doesn’t even mean that public policy was neutral between paganism and Christianity. If you had the chance to ask any informed pagan of the 320s if Constantine was religiously “neutral,” the answer (following imprecations and curses) would not have been affirmative.