It was Franz Overbeck who, in his attack on Harnack, referred to Eusebius's work as “[that] of a hairdresser for the emperor's theological periwig,” and the eminent historian Jacob Burckhardt who declared Eusebius to be “the most objectionable of all eulogists” and “first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity.”Footnote 1 The summary judgment of such luminaries has aided the tendency to write off the bishop of Caesarea as a hopeless ideologue. In recent decades, a shift has been underway to recalibrate the picture we have of Eusebius, with robust scholarship arguing in support of his work as an historian and biblical scholar.Footnote 2 The aim has been in part to distance Eusebius from Constantine, a proximity that is the source of much of the modern consternation with the bishop, given modernity's own genealogical unease with the relation between religion and politics.Footnote 3 Whatever Eusebius's actual relations with the emperor, however, his rhetoric of apparently unequivocal exaltation of Constantine endures. Yet this, too, requires reassessment.
A prominent characterization of this rhetorical logic, which this article seeks to contest, is the image of a simple correlation between God and Constantine in Eusebius's “political-theological” works. Particularly in his De laudibus Constantini (Laud. Const.) and Vita Constantini (Vit. Const.), works devoted to portrayals of the emperor, Eusebius is taken as providing straightforward imperial legitimation through this one-to-one mapping between God and ruler.Footnote 4 Such a “legend” stems in part from, and in turn reinforces, the view that Eusebius uncritically appropriates Hellenistic thought in his authorization of Constantine. Because Eusebius, upon first glance, repeats predominant pagan or Judaic monotheistic models of God's relationship to the world, and since he simply takes over Hellenistic ideals of kingship, he can apparently construe a parallelism between heavenly and earthly monarchies. Such direct correlation between God and emperor serves as linchpin for a system that erroneously, say the critics, employs a theological model to support particular political arrangements. Eusebius therefore ostensibly manifests an atheology, a perversion of “proper” dogmatic practices, and is reduced to an ideologue.Footnote 5
In what follows I consider such critiques and the Hellenistic and Eusebian material upon which they draw. As I argue, the textual evidence belies a swift and simplistic correlation between God and Constantine by Eusebius. This calls into question the thesis of a simple transmission of Hellenistic political thought and challenges condemnation of Eusebius as a political theologian based on such purported correspondences. My central task is thus to demonstrate the complexity of the God-Emperor relation. The tension and ambiguity in such relations stem in part from Eusebius's Christology and, in particular, the place of the Logos in his conception of God-world interactions. Rather than being due to a dimness of vision,Footnote 6 these are intricacies of which he was well aware, as he strove to articulate and defend his understanding of christological orthodoxy in the face of excessive Arian subordinationism and Marcellan modalism.Footnote 7
As a result of the important unity and distinctions that Eusebius maintains between God and the Logos, I demonstrate that for Eusebius, Constantine at times images God the Father, and at other times the Logos—already complicating (apparently) binary Hellenistic schemas. Furthermore, there are ways Constantine legitimates and materializes the authority of the Logos, potentially subverting typical top-down constructions. As we will see, the predominant construal of a chain of representation and singular ladder of authority from God to Logos to Emperor to World is not the only view that emerges in Eusebius's writings on Constantine. Eusebius is not merely relying on political thought from the broader culture, but attempting to integrate his reading of biblical material as well as an emerging orthodox consensus. The latter play as decisive a role in his political vision. The theological legitimation that Eusebius does offer the political sphere thus incorporates important novel claims about God, Logos, and emperor, and contributes its own unique set of tensions and ambiguities that merit fuller consideration.
My attempt to recast Eusebius is not a search for further avenues of theopolitical enforcement. Neither is it an effort to exonerate him from the claim of providing theological legitimation to the political sphere. Rather, I seek to intervene into the legend of Eusebius as political ideologue, complicating the picture by showing the additional layers requiring analysis in any claim to Eusebius's divine sanction of imperial reign. In considering the proverbial whipping boy of political theology, my wager is that his vision has been too simplistically assessed and dismissed, suppressing potential analysis of its impact. Counterintuitively, it may also be that his discourse contributes its own seeds of critique and management of the political sphere.Footnote 8
Hellenistic Political Thought and Eusebian Appropriation
The work of Norman Baynes bears some responsibility for introducing the assumption of Eusebius's uncritical transferral of Hellenistic material. Relying on a groundbreaking article by Erwin Goodenough on the philosophy of Hellenistic kingship, Baynes suggests that this context formed the backdrop to Eusebius's depiction of Constantine.Footnote 9 I say “suggests” because Baynes's five-page paper could not develop a robust argument along such lines, and in fairness represents some initial intuitions, which, to my knowledge, Baynes did not elsewhere develop in greater detail. Nevertheless, his brief reflections have been taken as something of an authoritative urtext in nearly all subsequent literature on Eusebian political thought.Footnote 10 After a brief review of the valuable material collected in Goodenough's study, Baynes makes the jump to Eusebius:
Enough has been said to suggest that in the Hellenistic philosophy of kingship material lay ready to the hand of Eusebius when he sought to fashion a theory of State for the new Christian Empire. Diotogenes, as we have seen, had written that the king had been transformed into a god among men; Eusebius had only to drop the godhead of the king and to put in its place the Vicegerent of God: Constantine rules 
[“as a prefect (or governor) of the great king”]. The State in its order and harmony, said Diotogenes again, is a mimesis of the divine creation, the kosmos: for the divine creation Eusebius had but to substitute the kingdom of heaven.Footnote 11
The problem, to my mind, is not the suggestion that such Hellenistic thought exerted a profound influence upon Eusebius, and in this respect Baynes's observations in this short piece are incisive. As indicated by my added emphases, my concern is the swiftness and simplicity with which Baynes moves from one discourse to the next, a simplicity he projects upon Eusebius. The claim can certainly be defended that Eusebius appropriated such material in his novel constructions of Christian empire. It appears more difficult to claim that such transition involved no substantive transformation. Either option requires a fuller argument. Yet, this breezy take on Eusebius is a tone reproduced in much of the literature relying upon Baynes's very preliminary and inconclusive remarks.Footnote 12
Baynes begins his short essay with a disconcerting question, asking in regard to Eusebius's theological legitimation of Constantine, “is this theory the outcome of the thought of Eusebius himself or is it derived from other sources?”Footnote 13 This is truly an unacceptable dichotomy. One wonders what would satisfy Baynes's quest for originality here besides unmediated, divine revelation or mystical, hermetic inspiration. For when does one originate ideas without interface with preceding thought? This view colors his presentation such that the parallels between Eusebius and Hellenistic thought—which certainly do exist and are without a doubt significant—are interpreted as a type of reportage with minimal translation.Footnote 14 It is as if the terms and vocabulary are emended but the structuring principles remain unchanged. Yet, given the lack of Christian precedent to Eusebian political writings, the image of mere reportage is tenuous. Compilation and transference seem less applicable in the case of novel creations, for, as even Baynes acknowledges, “here for the first time is clearly stated the political philosophy of the Christian Empire.”Footnote 15
This idea of a conveyance of preceding pagan thought was decisively radicalized by Erik Peterson. Eusebius functions as Peterson's Kronzeuge (chief witness) in a broader argument about the impossibilities of Christian political theology.Footnote 16 Peterson (who admits the partial influence of Baynes's essay)Footnote 17 claims that Eusebius constructs essentially a parallel and direct correlation between God and Constantine: “The one monarch on earth—and for Eusebius that can only be Constantine—corresponds to the one divine monarch in heaven.”Footnote 18 Peterson appropriates intuitions about the influence of pagan political thought to use in conjunction with a denigration of Eusebius's theology, which is taken as insufficiently Trinitarian. These two purported shortcomings in Eusebius combine in a potent synthesis that has forever plagued Christendom. The close mapping of God and Constantine, buttressed by monotheism—itself deemed a piece of Reichspolitik (imperial policy)Footnote 19 —evinces the dangerous, divine legitimation of political rulers and regimes and is ultimately unchristian. In fact, both monotheism and monarchy are false ideas appropriated from Hellenism, stemming from both pagan and Jewish influence, and are at odds with Christian orthodoxy.
Baynesian accounts of reportage on the political front thus coincide with a persistent critique of Eusebius as an unoriginal theologian. As a kind of transition point between more instrumental Logos-sarx Christologies and eventual Nicene synthesis, the story goes, Eusebius is beholden to cosmological models of God-world mediation. As such, he reproduces and christianizes primarily Middle Platonic schemas, never developing a fully soteriological account.Footnote 20 This view is being challenged through more recent work taking into consideration Eusebius's full corpus. Christopher Beeley argues that Eusebius stands firmly within Alexandrian Trinitarian and christological tradition, and both evinces and conveys all the categories necessary for the eventual orthodox claims about the Godhead.Footnote 21 An additional important refrain in J. Rebecca Lyman's study is that Eusebius is as much wrestling with biblical material as he is with pagan cosmology, that his “Christology rests on a profound and original, if not always coherent, synthesis of biblical and philosophical models of mediation.”Footnote 22 The parallel claim can be made about his political thought, which is everywhere tied to such Christology. Thus Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe has asserted recently that “Eusebius’ idea of kingship is not merely a Christianization of Hellenistic philosophy, but builds on powerful scriptural language of God as king.”Footnote 23 There is much more going on in Eusebius than “simply” repetition, with “suitable modifications,”Footnote 24 of a Hellenistic theory of the king's mimesis of God.
Hellenistic schemas, while speaking of the logos or law, assume a dualism when it comes to mimesis: it is really only about God and the king.Footnote 25 Particularly in the literature engaged by Baynes and Peterson, the logos appears as an abstract principle that can be reduced to God or cosmos. One prominent theme is that the Hellenistic king enjoys a special relationship to the law, often represented as in close proximity to it. The relationship might be elaborated by the theory of divine comes, a force or principle that accompanies, protects, and guides the leader.Footnote 26 Equally as prominent is the view that the king not only exhibits proximity to but actually embodies divine or universal law. As such the king is animate law (
). Because of this, the king is in a superior position to positive or legislated law, such as the legal codes of the city-state or empire. The king, in personifying the higher law, exerts authority over and in a sense personally legislates such positive law.Footnote 27
In Stoicism the logos is at times construed as a generative principle, working upon inert matter to bring forth life and activity. In Platonized Stoicism such a force arises from the first God and works as intermediary upon creation, ordering and animating it. Significantly, this notion of the 
is now transferred to kings. “From [the king] the logos goes forth, as the logos in eclectic Platonizing Stoicism went forth from God, to work in men as the other works in matter, and to infuse life into them.”Footnote 28 With this are combined Pythagorean sentiments of mimesis and harmony, such that “those who copy the king may have a share, until they themselves become copies of his model, and are indeed made virtuous by his virtuous logos.”Footnote 29
An emerging dynamic, emphasized by Peterson, is the correlation between divine and earthly monarchy. In the writings of the Middle Platonists, the pseudo-Aristotelian De mundo (Mund.), as well as a variety of Philo's works, the singularity of the ruler is tied to the unity of God.Footnote 30 Just as a single divine principle and ground means harmony and stability in the cosmos, so the rule of one staves off chaos and civil war in the political realm. The singular ruler (whether divine or earthly) can either function as the origin of power and activity or be its ground and principle. The distinction means a ruler will either directly engage in acts of creation and governance or function as their basis and guarantee, the actual activity of which is carried out by intermediaries. To the latter correlate ideas of a second God or principle, a δημιουργός (craftsman creator), which undertakes the work of creation, interacting directly with matter. So, for instance, Numenius can claim that “the First God is free from work of all kinds and is king.”Footnote 31 According to Peterson, Mund., which draws on Aristotelian ideas of divine monarchy, takes up a dialog with the Stoic worldview of impersonal deity permeating all things, and argues that an objective God does exist but remains hidden and detached, governing from the shadows through subordinates.Footnote 32 In stricter versions of monotheism, such as Philo's, angels act as intermediaries and governing principles, while the actual act of creation belongs directly to God.
In his exploration, Peterson introduces a phrase from nineteenth-century French political thought to describe a dynamic in Middle Platonism, as adapted by Jewish and later Christian thought: “le Roi règne, mais il ne gouverne pas” (the king reigns but does not govern).Footnote 33 By this he means the separation between the supreme deity and the administration of creation by intermediaries. This invokes a widespread Hellenistic notion of regality and honor due to the sovereign, that the Great King does not get his hands dirty in managing daily affairs, that grandeur is actually augmented by layers of subordinate officials.Footnote 34 A correlation is made between the first or supreme God and the king, with the implication being that (semi-)divine intermediaries correspond to earthly administrative apparatuses and secondary governors.
Peterson observes in passing that “from the thesis that God reigns as king but does not actually rule may be drawn the Gnostic conclusion that the sovereignty of God is truly good, but the regime of the Demiurge (or demiurgic ‘Powers,’ usually seen as officials) is bad: in other words the regime is always wrong.”Footnote 35 To anticipate an ambiguity that will be evident in Eusebius, the Christian claim that the Logos is a divine person of the same or similar being as the first God complicates such a schema. The eventual orthodox response to gnostic denigrations of demiurgic activity is to declare the unity of God who creates and redeems the world, and to assert as coeval the secondary divine principle, understood eventually as a distinct ὑπόστασις (person) within a unified Godhead. Rather than the demiurge there is only the first God, now depicted as Father and Son, to which eventually the Spirit would be added. Yet the Father retains the sense of origin and reign, as grounding principle (the Father is 
[without origin], while being the Son's 
[origin]). To the Father is ascribed the monarchy. The Son manifests elements of worldly engagement, most notably in the incarnation, as the generated divine element or person that communicates the Father to creation. The Son is the site of divine administration and governance of redemption. Arguably, then, the Christian innovation is to synthesize the distinction between reign and governance within a single divine being, preserving the differentiation in the discourse of 
(economy).Footnote 36 In other words, the difference is not at the level of being (
), but is one among persons as revealed in the economy of redemption. From the standpoint of imperial imitation, we must now ask whom, precisely, the king is imaging. Is it the Father or the Logos-Son, or both? What implications does this have for the regime, given the differentiation in reign and governance that remains in Trinitarian economy?
If Eusebius merely transferred preceding Hellenistic thought, the binary correlation between God and emperor will also turn up. That Peterson sees such a one-to-one correspondence in Eusebius serves his argument that Eusebius is beholden to such pagan and Jewish concepts. In this way Peterson seeks to discredit Eusebius, since, for Peterson and his implied readers, an uncritical transfer of Hellenistic thought renders his theology and politics suspect.Footnote 37 Both his apparently narrow, monistic monotheism and direct correspondence between such a solitary God and the monarch are of non-Christian provenance.
Yet, as intimated, the Christian insertion of the Logos as divine person disrupts this binary correlation.Footnote 38 The Logos cannot recede as a generalized principle, but is now an agentive center of will, judgment, decision, and activity.Footnote 39 Neither can it now be incarnated in the king, since Christ is the Logos manifest in the flesh. The Logos thus emerges as a distinct third element. Its presence in Eusebius may serve as a clue both to his incorporation of Christian material and consequent original innovations in Christian political thought.
Significantly, this tension is already present in Peterson but is glanced over. Of Eusebius's model he writes, “To the one king on earth corresponds the one God, the one King in heaven and the one royal Nomos and Logos.”Footnote 40 It is striking that in an effort to critique Eusebius on the basis of a one-to-one correspondence theory, no mention is made of the fact that we have here three principles elaborated: king, God, and Logos. Ambiguity is therefore already present in Peterson's critique. If one responds that here, for Peterson, the Logos is simply identical with God, this would be incorrect, for to substantiate his claim that Eusebius exhibits a narrow monotheism with Arian tendencies, God and Logos on Peterson's reading must denote two separate principles. They should then be accounted for separately. A defensive rebuttal on Peterson's behalf might claim that he sees a singular line of authority from God to Logos to emperor such that the unity can be maintained and we can still speak loosely, if imprecisely, of a one-to-one correspondence. The next section troubles such assumptions.
Eusebius, Constantine, and Correspondence
The Eusebian structure of the relationship between God and emperor, implied in both Baynes and Peterson, which has widespread acceptance, is summarized by Daniel Stringer: “Constantine is the third in a progression of royal figures, the first being God the Father and the second being the Logos-Christ. This Logos-Christ himself is the archetypal image of the Father while the emperor in the third position is the image of the Logos-Christ.”Footnote 41 This reading of Eusebius is justified, but it is not the only one. Stringer himself, while almost completely beholden to Baynes, also remarks that “Constantine was for Eusebius a kind of second savior.”Footnote 42 George Hunston Williams, although following Peterson, notes that “Christ and the Christian emperor are in the thought of Eusebius almost coordinate in honor, each under the Supreme God, each in his special way leading men to the knowledge and worship of God, each complementing the other in bringing order and peace to mankind.”Footnote 43 Such parallelism and coordinate complementarity present difficulties for a single chain of authority and representation.
This alternative is outlined in more detail by Harold Drake after his in-depth study of Laud. Const. In both contemporaneous pagan panegyrics and Laud. Const.:
Constantine is conceded a special relationship to the supreme God. According to the pagan speakers, [this supreme God] leaves the care of others to lesser gods but deigns to associate directly with Constantine; according to the LC, [God] rules the world through His Logos, but uses no intermediary when dealing with Constantine. Indeed, the hierarchy of the LC is not so much God-Logos-Emperor as God working through two coordinate powers in Heaven and on earth, each identified by the title of His “Prefect” (
).Footnote 44
Thus, in Drake's view, we need to account for the special relationship the emperor enjoys with God that is unparalleled in creation. While the Logos apparently mediates the Father to the world, there are ways such mediation is bypassed in the case of Constantine. Hans Eger noted this dynamic in an early article following soon after Peterson's treatise, observing that “Christ is now and again skipped over in this gradation of God—(Logos=)Christ—Emperor, and the Emperor is called the unmediated likeness of God.”Footnote 45 Eger claims that we can understand this in two ways: Eusebius either did not overcome the pagan conception of the king as image of God (since the emperor directly images God), or he sees God and Logos as one, such that any reference to God includes both.Footnote 46 Eger favors the latter but admits the tension is unresolved. Indeed, this take is insufficient, for Eusebius frequently differentiates God and Logos in his political rhetoric and throughout his corpus.Footnote 47
Aloys Grillmeier also recognizes the difficulty that this double relation poses for the Hellenistic understanding of imitation: “According to the Laus, ch. I, the emperor is the image (
) of the ruler of the world. At the same time he imitates the Logos-Christ. Thus we have a twofold mimesis: first between the emperor and God, and second in the imitation of the mimesis which is to be found between Father and Son.”Footnote 48 In this multifaceted schema, Constantine does not only imitate God the Father; neither does he simply imitate the Logos-Son. Rather, he imitates the Logos's very imitation of the supreme God, imaging a relation of image to prototype.Footnote 49 This complicates the place of authority and power in Constantine, who imitates the supreme sovereign, the delegated heavenly governor, and, somehow, the relation between them and what it conveys. How are we to understand the imperial mimesis?
At this juncture it will be helpful to observe the differentiation in reign and governance (as introduced by Peterson) in Eusebius, which will help us grasp the significance of the God-Logos distinction. Eusebius begins the Laud. Const. by invoking the “supreme sovereign” who dwells in an inapproachable realm above the highest heavens. Between this highest God and creation is drawn a darkness “shutting off those outside from those within the royal halls. And about this like torchbearers at the palace doors circle the sun and moon and heavenly lamps, glorifying the Sovereign who is above the universe and by His will and word hanging out for those allotted the darkness beyond the land of heaven inextinguishable lamps of light.”Footnote 50 Royal imagery establishes the boundaries between God as king and all that is ruled. God is like an emperor hidden behind the walls of his castle. “Man is separate from God as a city rabble is separate from the inner chambers of the king.”Footnote 51 Middle Platonic thought, as well as Philo and the sentiments of Mund. here make themselves felt, as the highest God is explicitly demarcated and hidden from all else, reigning supreme in complete transcendence. This God stands “the farthest apart” as the “Ungenerated and Highest Power.”Footnote 52 Nevertheless, in disposition, “the Ruler of All Himself is, like a good Father, delighted with His good and reverent sons.”Footnote 53
“Who has seen the Invisible Sovereign and beheld these powers in Him?”Footnote 54 The only one, says Eusebius, is the Logos, who with regard to the universe is “first rank,” but within the Father's kingdom is “second to rule.”Footnote 55 Enclosed within the darkness of the royal palace, the King of all “gushes forth” a light that dwells with him, and this light “mediates and separates the eternal and ungenerated Form from created existence.”Footnote 56 The Supreme God has created the world, and handed the reins over to the Logos-Son, who “received the estate as from a Good Father.”Footnote 57 The Logos is compared to a pilot as well as charioteer, both common tropes of governance. “And this selfsame one would be the Governor of this entire cosmos, the One who is over all, through all, and in all, visible and invisible, the all-pervasive Logos of God.”Footnote 58 To the Logos then falls the clear task of governance and administration. The Father is first and supreme God, as ultimate creator and origin of all. The Logos aids in creation, not as its source but as its ordering principle and the one who superintends it.
The Son follows the pattern given to him so closely, and governs so faithfully in the stead of the Great King, that they are completely one. “There is one Sovereign, and his Logos and royal law is one. . . the living and actual God the Logos, who directs his Father's kingdom for all those under and beneath him.”Footnote 59 Here it is important to note that, in addition to being not merely a legal principle, the Logos has agency and governs actively. While we might hypothetically posit in some limited, figurative way that abstract law provides direction to a ruled territory, the image here is of a conscious governor, overseeing and steering—as a wise pilot—a course toward salvation. This delegated authority is protective and responsive, leading a vast heavenly army “as a kind of prefect (
) of the Supreme Sovereign (
).”Footnote 60 A notion of divinity is also granted the Logos in this verse, indicating its origins in and identity with the supreme God. The Logos is the light that dwells around and proceeds from the highest God.
Yet the distinction between reign and governance is everywhere apparent. Such political overtones lead Pierre Maraval, in his own recent study of the Laud. Const., to note that “all of chapter 1 is dedicated to the universal kingship of this supreme God, whom Eusebius also designates many times as the Father. But if the Father reigns, he does not govern: his kingship is carried out by his son, the Logos.”Footnote 61 Apparently invoking the division perceived by Peterson, Maraval concludes that a clear distinction generally exists in Eusebius between responsibilities of reigning as supreme sovereign and governing as delegated authority. Such are transposed onto God and the Logos, respectively. Incorporating his understanding of the salvific acts of God through Christ, as attested to in scripture and his theological forbears, Eusebius makes the Logos a distinct aspect of divine rule in a way departing from preceding political thought. While the Father is also oriented toward the world, the Logos signifies that element—indeed, person—of the Godhead that is engaged directly with it. How, then, does Constantine figure into this schema?
We begin with Eusebius's own list of apparent parallels between Constantine and the Logos.Footnote 62 1) As the Logos co-rules eternally with the Father, Constantine has been granted a reign for an extended period of time. It is not clear at this point with whom Constantine in turn co-rules. Yet, he is called the friend of the Logos, and thus we can assume that just as the Logos co-rules in subordinate fashion with the Father, Constantine co-rules in subordinate fashion with the Logos.Footnote 63 Constantine assumes the position of a delegated governor, drawing legitimacy from those above. 2) The Logos leads the world to, and prepares it for, the Father's kingdom. Constantine in turn leads and prepares all for the Logos and his kingdom. Again, we have imitation in submission, with Constantine carrying out activities parallel to the Logos, but done in a ladder of succession. 3) While the Logos combats invisible demonic powers of unrighteousness, Constantine subdues enemies of God in very real combat. Here activities are carried out in parallel and complement one another. No clear subordination exists unless one inserts the supremacy of the spiritual over the material. 4) The Logos provides all with rationality and the capacity for divine knowledge, and it is Constantine who proclaims this to them, leading them to the Logos. Here a complementarity is suggested, with Constantine crucially completing a task begun by the Logos. 5) Finally, the Logos welcomes the righteous into his Father's kingdom, and Constantine invites pious subjects into his royal chambers. Here Constantine is both Logos and Father, at once doing the welcoming and signifying the one into whose presence such guests are brought. Thus, even in this short introductory pericope, multiple representational dynamics present themselves, requiring further clarification.
The first possible way to understand the correspondence between God and Constantine, noted above as the most popular reading, might be diagrammed as such:
In this model Constantine is subordinate to the Logos who is subordinate to the Father. Constantine is accordingly a representative of the Logos who represents God. Whatever knowledge Constantine gleans about ruling and governing—and whatever legitimation he gains from the divine realm—are mediated through the Logos. This is evinced in Eusebius's claim that it is from and through “the all-pervasive Logos of God. . . [that,] bearing the image of the higher kingdom (
), the sovereign dear to God, in imitation (
) of the Higher Power, directs the helm (
) and sets straight all things on earth.”Footnote 64 Here the emperor looks to the example of the Logos. Just as the Logos pilots or governs the universe, so Constantine directs his kingdom. Such a dynamic is repeated in what is taken as a central passage in the oration: Constantine “pilots affairs below with an upward gaze, to steer by the archetypal form.” We are told shortly thereafter that it is the Logos “who directs His Father's kingdom for all those under and beneath Him.”Footnote 65 This presumably indicates Constantine most centrally.
It is while discussing such dynamics that Eusebius (in)famously extols monarchy as being the best form of government, the one legislated from above, paralleling God's monarchical rule. While the Logos is also here referred to as God, no difficulty is presented in construing God's sole reign.Footnote 66 This could either indicate a strong subordination in which the Logos as delegated governor is outside the divine center of rule, or a unitive tendency in which the albeit distinct Logos is taken as so close to the Father that the reign is one. Both possibilities can be extracted from the Laud. Const. when taken on its own. In either case, however, a sense of subordinate, delegated role is attributed to the Logos, whether or not we construe this as decidedly ontological or mainly functional. A singular chain of command appears to exist, in which Constantine is a key extension.
A second option for demarcating correspondence and authority might be schematized as such:
Here Logos and emperor undertake assigned roles in parallel manner, and each draws authority and legitimation from the Father, while each carries out its own mode of representation. As both are called “prefects” (
) of God, each secures victory and obedient righteousness in its respective realm, whether against demons or barbarians. Each leads subjects into the heavenly kingdom. Both serve as delegates and governors on behalf of God. Yet each can be called sovereign in this derived sense, after the image and pattern of the first God.Footnote 67 Thus Constantine is christened
(sole ruler), having “modeled himself after the archetypal form of the Supreme Sovereign.”Footnote 68 The impression is of a direct imitation of the first God, although elsewhere, as we have seen, it is the Logos that conveys this form to the emperor. Constantine, like the Father, in turn delegates his reign and shares his rule with his sons, empowered by God to do so “with great relief from the burden of sole rule.”Footnote 69 Just as God assigns authority to the Logos-Son, Constantine “enlarges his Imperial power by ungrudging association of his relatives.”Footnote 70
This immediate relation to the Father is also implied with talk of the direct revelations and visions the emperor has received from God, as well as his role in passing on godly knowledge to his subjects. Eusebius reports that Constantine “himself—incredible as it sounds—[became] the teacher of rules of worship to his army, and he transmitted pious prayers in accordance with divine ordinances.”Footnote 71 Here he serves as a priest and mediator between his military (and presumably other subjects) and God, taking on and helping to fulfill a function of the Logos. Finally, Eusebius also speaks of the Supreme God's direct affirmation and legitimation of Constantine's reign. The tricentennial celebration marks God's faithfulness to Constantine, for “the Ruler of All Himself. . . like a good Father has rewarded the leader and cause of this excellence with such long-lasting honors.”Footnote 72 In his reign, Constantine is secure, for “God himself, the Supreme Sovereign, stretches out his right hand to him from above and confirms him victor over every pretender and aggressor.”Footnote 73 In this sense a direct legitimation from the Father to Constantine grounds the latter's reign. Constantine needs no mediated blessing from the Logos, although such certainly augments his rule.
Attempting to merge these two arrangements (
) of God-Emperor relations, and capture a sense of the plurivocity in Eusebius's presentation, we can depict the structure as such:
Here both a singular ladder of authority and a parallelism are accounted for in a way that, albeit complex and ambiguous, need not be contradictory. In such a schema, Constantine at once receives directly from the Supreme God as well as by mediation of the Logos, and passes on dual aspects of this structure in his reign. The Logos, in turn, mediates aspects of divine reign to Constantine, and carries out elements of its governorship through the emperor, while also directly interfacing with the rest of creation. In such a schema, Constantine receives from both Father and Logos, and Constantine and Logos each have spheres of primary influence and rule in the world. This preserves a sense of the parallelism between the two agents, while also maintaining a notion of priority and authority to the Logos, to whom Constantine submits.
This helps explain a potentially confusing dynamic seen, for instance, where Constantine is first introduced and described as the “beloved sovereign” who reigns by imitating the Logos, a delegated governor.Footnote 74 In a curious juxtaposition, Constantine is seen as a sovereign (like the Father) imitating a governor (the Son). That this duality can coexist stems from the dual sourcing of Constantine's authority. He receives direct installment by and legitimation from the Supreme God, and yet also receives guidance from the Logos, who is a superior governor, and who shows him how to respond to the task he has been given by God.
This also accounts for ways in which Constantine seems to complement and not simply parallel the work of the Logos, completing it, or bringing it to fruition in the material realm. In such conceptualizations Constantine is vital and embodies something like the ongoing incarnation of the Logos, with a decidedly theopolitical edge. For instance, Eusebius describes the work of the Logos in a manner strikingly reminiscent of his descriptions of Constantine: “He has modeled the kingdom on earth into a likeness of the one in heaven, toward which He urges all mankind to strive, holding forth to them this fair hope.”Footnote 75 Whereas we might have relegated the Logos to a parallel spiritual realm, seen for instance in his defeat of demons as the emperor defeats flesh and blood opponents, here the Logos undertakes earthly, historical tasks. We are reminded of the importance of the incarnation and historicity in Eusebian thought. The Logos is incarnate in Christ and enacts God's salvation in history. Beyond simply a parallel, there is a sense in which here the overlap is one of roles, as Constantine is another Christ, carrying out the same task in the same sphere, just later in time. It appears as a passing of the mantle.
This is confirmed immediately in the next lines: “And in this [i.e., the acts of the (incarnate) Logos,] God's friend henceforth shall participate, having been furnished by God with natural virtues and having received in his soul the emanations from that place.”Footnote 76 Constantine is singled out from among the human race as having a special connection to and calling from God, continuing the specific work of the Logos. Eusebius describes Constantine here as receiving guidance and power from God, for “from sharing in the Highest Power he has courage,” while at the same time being taught wisdom and reason from the Logos.Footnote 77 The duality of influence and legitimation here comes through, as both supreme God and Logos work to forge in Constantine the rationality and virtue necessary to continue the work of the Logos.Footnote 78
Constantine is described as “an invincible warrior” and “attendant” of the Supreme Sovereign. He is a victor over barbarians and is “from One Sovereign, the image of the One Ruler of All.”Footnote 79 Here there is no mention of the Logos, and Constantine is described as imaging the One Sovereign, and hence the Father.Footnote 80 This is complicated by the following verses, which show the emperor completing in the material realm what the Savior accomplished long ago spiritually and invisibly: “For while the Common Savior of the universe punished the invisible beings invisibly, he as the prefect of the Supreme Sovereign proceeded against those so vanquished, stripping their long and utterly dead corpses and distributing the spoils freely among the soldiers of the victor.”Footnote 81 Constantine is required for fuller manifestation of the Savior's victory. And while there may be an implicit hierarchy of spiritual over material such that the Logos's victory is given priority and greater importance, Eusebius does not invoke it here. Instead he follows the emphasis he places on history and historical revelation throughout his works to give Constantine pride of place as agent of the kingdom. Here Constantine is described as “prefect” (
) of the Father, in juxtaposition to the Savior, also a prefect.Footnote 82 Constantine exhibits direct relation to the Father, accomplishing a task parallel and complementary to the Word. He picks up the baton, so to speak, in submissive complementarity, being commissioned by both Logos and Father.
Finally, it is important to note that, if one extracts a particular couplet of levels from any of the above schemas, additional sub-layers of role and authority emerge. Just as we saw that the Logos with regard to the universe is first, while with regard to the Father it is second, Constantine is first with regard to the world, and third (or a second second) with regard to the divine hierarchy. From the Emperor à World relation, in which Constantine is first, can be extracted the mediatorial role of governors and delegates, as in the case of Constantine's sons. This sub-layer might be depicted then as Emperor à Governors/Administration à World. Eusebius illustrates this dynamic poignantly in Vit. Const., describing a scene where Constantine admonishes and exhorts his administrators:
Striking them, and as if actually flogging them, with his argument, he made some of his courtiers bow their heads as their conscience was smitten. Testifying in plain words he announced to them that he would give an account to God of their activities; for the God over all had given him sovereignty over things on earth, and he in imitation of the Supreme had committed particular administrative regions of the Empire to them; all however would in due course be subject to scrutiny of their actions by the Great King.Footnote 83
Just as the Sovereign God has delegated to the Logos the governance of the universe, as well as delegated to Constantine his particular royal duties, so Constantine passes on responsibility. Such acts are defined in relation to God and given divine sanction, effectively grounding in heaven the division between reign and governance in Constantinian administration. Note that in such a schema implicit parallels emerge between the delegated representatives and administrators, on one hand, and the divine Logos, on the other. They too are blessed and legitimated in this structure of power, imitating, under father Constantine, the delegated governance of the Logos. In this extended sense, then, it is not only Constantine's imperial person that receives divine legitimation, but his entire state administrative edifice.
Let me summarize the various dynamics of authority and legitimation glimpsed in this third possible structure of representation. God delegates supreme reign to Constantine, showing him how to reign as a sovereign (as the Father reigns). God also demonstrates how to delegate as a sovereign (just as the Sovereign Father delegates to the Logos and to him). The Logos models and delegates reign and governance to Constantine, showing him how to receive the delegation from the Father (as the Logos receives it in submission), showing him how to govern as a delegate (as the delegated Logos governs), and how to delegate as a governor (as the Logos delegates to him). This is how Constantine can both reign supreme and accept the judgment from Eusebius that his reign is “not much greater than the rule exercised by goatherds or shepherds or cowherds” and is in a sense more troublesome.Footnote 84 He can embody the highest authority in the world, indeed almost transcendent to it, and exist in humble submission to God. In this way the christological pattern of discipleship gets conveyed to the imperial realm, such that Constantine is not merely an imitation of God, ruling in one-to-one correspondence as an echo of divine authority, but himself models humility after the form of Christ.
Furthermore, Constantine mediates this divine rule to the world primarily in the political realm, exhibiting to his subjects a reign like the Father and governance like the Logos. He also delegates and empowers his administrators under the model of delegation exercised by the Father. Such administration then enjoys correlation to the Logos. Yet, Constantine mediates in the spiritual or religious realm as well, teaching and modeling submission to God. He demonstrates submission to the Logos and leads his kingdom back to the Logos, as they follow his pattern of submission. He also works to support the church financially and through legislation. This is all part of his complementary submission, as subjects look to him for guidance in how to submit to God.
The Logos, on the other hand, primarily mediates to the world in the spiritual realm, conveying knowledge of the Father to a humanity that has been preformed with logocentric rationality so as to be able to receive such knowledge. The Logos shows the world how to submit to the Father. Yet, the Logos also mediates implicitly to the political realm, showing it how to submit to Constantine, for Christian faithfulness includes submission to the Christian emperor. The controversial hidden implication here, then, is that somehow the Logos is submissive to Constantine. For, how else does the Logos model/mediate/convey submission to this authority? There is a sense in which the Logos recognizes and honors the Father's election of Constantine. The Logos supports Constantine's direct authorization by the Father and his parallelism with and complementarity to the Logos. As we saw, Constantine can model submission to the Logos because he himself is submissive. In a move of mutual submission, then, the Logos submits to Constantine and models submission to him. In this sense Constantine receives a double legitimation, being installed and authorized by the Supreme God and enjoying a type of submission from the Logos.Footnote 85
There certainly is everywhere in these Eusebian texts a correlation between God and Constantine. But it is neither simply one-to-one nor direct; nor is it a stable configuration. The place of the Logos continually disrupts such attempts.Footnote 86 Whether or not he was fully aware of the scope of the issues involved, the ambiguity and multiplicity in Eusebius's schema stem, in part, from the perceived need to correlate the dual emphases of reign and governance to the person of the emperor. In the interplay of Supreme God and governing Logos, Eusebius discerns elements necessary for the administration of empire.Footnote 87 There must be unity and agreement between these poles. The king cannot be disengaged or isolated in a way that renders his auctoritas (authority) ineffectual.Footnote 88 The supreme God is not an idle god but the creator God, who cares about the state and destiny of creation. If the reins of the kingdom are to be handed over, this delegated authority must be consistently correlated to the pattern of rule established by the sovereign, whether earthly or divine. Politically, the close connection could certainly engender a type of rigid absolutism, as delegated administration is bound to the person of the ruler, functioning as an arm and extension of his will. Yet it could just as well facilitate the empowerment and proliferation of such governing mechanisms, here given authority by their association with the Emperor, as well as by having as their heavenly correlate the Logos, which provides a divine sanction. As such they are forms of delegation undergirded with esteem and authority in their vicarious representation of the ultimate sovereign, that is, God.Footnote 89 History has borne out both such possibilities, and many varieties in between, in the wake of Eusebius.Footnote 90
In light of these complexities, introduced primarily because of the divine person of the Logos, Baynesian-inspired accounts of a “simple” transmittal of Hellenistic political theory into Christian language should be called into question. The Logos-Son is not one among many possible senses of intermediary, as in Hellenistic accounts.Footnote 91 For Eusebius, the Logos is absolutely unique, divine, alone generated (
) directly and immediately from the Father, and so must always be accounted for in the relation of God to emperor inherited from prevailing Greco-Roman models and the Scriptures. The Logos is not merely a go-between or synapse connecting the two, nor is it an abstract principle or simply law. Rather, the Logos as active divine person uniquely and distinctively shapes emerging imperial dynamics of authority and governance. Eusebius simply does not offer a model of clear-cut pagan or Judaic monotheism that inevitably leads to monarchy. He contributes an original albeit ambiguous legacy to the developing discourse of Christian political thought. Attending to such nuances and ambiguities, rather than recoiling from his presentation because of its problematic implications, can only aid in analysis of its enduring impact.
Conclusion
Peterson was therefore correct to highlight the distinction between reign and governance in the Greco-Roman and patristic literature he examines, for such proves critical to understanding the nuance operative in Eusebius's model, a complexity Peterson apparently missed. His critique falls on its own sword, for one cannot maintain, as he does, both that Eusebius is a type of semi-Arian subordinationist and that he presents a one-to-one correspondence between God and Constantine. If Eusebius is such a subordinationist, the Logos is not identified with God, is extracted from the God-Emperor relation as a third subject, and requires explication for the ways it too is everywhere in Eusebius distinctively coordinated to both. A binary theory of correspondence collapses. If Eusebius is not a subordinationist and exhibits something verging upon an orthodox model of the Godhead, Peterson needs to account for how Eusebius can present a correspondence between God and emperor, something Peterson claims orthodox theology resists.
Given the developing conversation that appears to be vindicating Eusebian theological orthodoxy, the burden for scholarship falls to the latter problematic, that is, whether and how correlations between the Trinity and political rulers and regimes are possible.Footnote 92 The force of Peterson's critique of Eusebius, then, is not toward his model of God—since, apparently, both strict monotheisms and Trinitarian doctrine can be and have been brought into a legitimating role for the political realm. Rather, the issue is one of how to relate such an idea of a transcendent God to the immanent sphere of creation, and thus invokes questions of the role of analogy, difference, and apophasis in construing or rejecting potential parallelisms. Theologians analyzing political theology, particularly in its more authoritarian and repressive forms, cannot skirt the issue by assigning its provenance to “false” or “unorthodox” theology, but must reckon with “orthodoxy's” own primary contribution to such traditions.
If Eusebius does provide a strong legitimation of monarchy and subsequent Christian empire, he does not appear to be led there ineluctably by his model of God. The precise motivations for Eusebius's exaltation of Constantine remain the subject of debate. Needed are further analyses of his rhetoric, the offence of which is its apparent lack of apophatic reserve, its seemingly bold and blatant movements from the theological to the political.Footnote 93 Eusebius appears too quickly to translate an idea of God to emperor (or vice versa), although, as I have tried to show, this move is not so swift and simple as many have claimed, given the necessity of accounting for the Logos. And while he is generally written off as ideologue or propagandist, as Peterson does, there may be more at work in his praise of the emperor. For example, the Vit. Const. quite possibly functioned as a Fürstenspiegel, a “mirror for princes” for Constantine's sons, training them in Christian principles of leadership.Footnote 94 In such case the ideal portrait of the emperor serves less as flattery than as a standard to which his sons are called and displays understandable distance from reality.
As an avenue for future research, work must be done to determine whether a similar dynamic might be discerned in the Laud. Const. In this case, Eusebius, the savvy and well-trained rhetorician, seeks to make the most of this opportunity to address the emperor. Commissioned to deliver a panegyric, he fulfills his task in excess, mounting up praise for the emperor's conformity to the reign and governance of God and Logos. In repeatedly emphasizing a faithfulness that emperor and hearers know to be overblown, Eusebius subtly holds Constantine to account, enforcing, with his words, the need to live up to the values and virtues expected. The correlations between God, Logos, and Constantine are continually unmaking themselves, serving as the horizon of possibility toward which his rhetoric gestures, a horizon that is ever receding. Such correspondences are thus implicitly apophatic. The emperor perpetually falls short, and so must continually strive to conform to the strictures established by this ecclesial leader. While certainly providing a problematic type of imperial legitimation, it could be that Eusebius also demonstrates an alternative way of speaking truth to power, that of praise as immanent critique. Rather than openly condemning Constantine's failures, Eusebius works with the givenness of the situation and, in a display of rhetorical 
, choosing and arranging his words strategically, enforces the same standards through the establishment of an ideal. This would take seriously the picture of Eusebius as “a bishop scholarly and retiring, apparently more willing to compromise with secular authority than his more militant colleagues but possibly, just possibly, playing a shrewder game than any of the rest of them.”Footnote 95
