Yoder’s challenge

Drake notes that Burckhardt sees Constantine’s reign “exclusively in terms of a power struggle between Constantine and the bishops,” and shrewdly recognizes that this is in turn rooted in “an even older premise that the church became ‘worldly’ as a result of Constantine’s conversion and lost its spiritual purity.” That is, the critique of Constantinianism from Burckhardt, and the many who follow him, is rooted in an “invisible church” ecclesiology.

This highlights the power of Yoder’s unique challenge to Constantinianism:

While others assume an invisible/spiritual church spoiled by Constantine, Yoder argues that Constantinism is responsible for the invention of the invisible/spiritual church. While other critiques of Constantinism are based on an anemic ecclesiology, Yoder’s is based on a robust, and robustly political, ecclesiology.

By Yoder’s lights, Burckhardt’s critique of Constantine is a critique that assumes a Constantinianism position, that is, assumes the very ecclesiastical “weightless” (RR Reno’s phrase) that Constantinianism encourages, a weightlessness that Constantinianism takes as a virtue.

This is what makes Yoder’s analysis far more intricate, intriguing, and fruitful, both theologically and historically, than others: He battles Constantinianism armed with an ecclesiology.