'In Hoc Signo Vinces'

Or, Part 2 of Christian Worship and the Cross

Nov 09, 2024

"In hoc signo vinces"

“In this sign you will conquer”

Picking Up Where We Left Off

Over 2,000 years later the cross still captivates our imagination. Christians still see it as a sign of hope, a testament to the great subverting of the cross’s original meaning in the Roman world. In many ways the the cross means the same thing today as it did for the first Christians, but in some ways its meaning has changed.

The cross in the first century symbolized cultural marginalization and oppression by the Romans yet, because of the way it was used by the early church, became a symbol of a radically egalitarian life for the first Christians.

I argued in a previous article that this subversion of the cross informed the practices of Christian worship.1 Concluding that piece I asked, what would happen to the practices of early christian worship if the cultural symbol of the cross changed its meaning?

Here in Part 2, I will try to answer this question through a historical lens by looking at the beginnings of Christendom.

Welcome to Christendom

Christendom, can be described as a society and culture in which the established church and the State (i.e. government, kingdom, empire) have a mutually aligned and shared vision for society. Christendom has existed in one form or another throughout Western civilization for approximately 1,700 years, though it is largely disappearing in the Western world.

Christianity, until approximately 300 AD, was illegal or persecuted throughout the Roman Empire. Before the Edict of Toleration in 311 AD, Christian leaders were not part of the fabric of recognized civic life. Though the Christian community continued to grow and had become a sizable portion of the population, it was always a minority.

All of this began to change however when Constantine became emperor. During and after Constantine’s reign, the bishops began to be given places of honor and were even encouraged to organize their parishes to align with the political boundary markers of the ancient empire. This physical alignment brought along with it policy alignment as Constantine invited the bishops to meet with him to settle their church related disputes. Some of these meetings led to the formation of the Nicaean Creed.

While there was much to celebrate in this period of church history such as public worship, support for church work etc. there were some significant problems. Alignment with political power would quickly encourage the bishops to request Imperial assistance to deal with church related conflicts, put down rival church leaders or force conversion on the far edges of the empire. Secular power would slowly come to be seen as a necessary apparatus for the church to conduct its mission in the world.

In the early church, the cross had been a symbol that informed Christians to identify themselves with the marginalized and oppressed as humble servants and to live in radically egalitarian community. Now breathing this new Christendom “air” however, how might it have affected their view of the cross as a cultural symbol? And if the symbol’s meaning changed, how did that form Christian worship?

Before answering this question. I think it is important to acknowledge what I am assuming: cultural symbols can change their meaning. (Again, read the first piece in this series to understand symbols a bit more.) They are not static signifiers that remain unchanging through history. These symbols help us interpret culture, but the culture also reinterprets the symbol throughout history based on our context.

A quick, and hopefully helpful, example might be the use of a tunic or toga in the ancient Greco-Roman world. This dress-like clothing was unisex and not seen as connected to a specific biological sex. However this type of clothing in our culture tends to be symbolic of the female sex as typically gets displayed on bathroom doors. This helps illustrate the point that, if a symbol gets used in a new way, it can fundamentally change how we understand ourselves and our world in relation to that symbol. This, we shall see now, is what happened with the cross.

Shifting Symbols

When Constantine was seeking to unify the Roman Empire in the 4th Century after a difficult period of unrest, he famously saw the cross in the sky as he was seeking wisdom for battle. As the story goes, he heard the words, “In hoc signo vinces,” meaning, “In this sign you will conquer.”

According to Constantine’s historians, he had his army paint a cross onto their shields and weapons as a way of “sanctifying” themselves for battle. Depending on which version of the story you read, the eventual victory led to Constantine’s favorable disposition toward Christianity and, either at that point or at the end of his life, his conversion.

What Just Happened?

The cross had been, up to this point, a repulsive and embarrassing symbol in the Mediterranean world, a sign of the violent execution of thousands if not millions of people throughout the Roman Empire. Jesus was just one of many that were executed using this method. As I mentioned in Part One, it was reserved only for those the Romans considered to be sub-human and was often used to terrorize local populations into subservience. It was a subject most Romans would not even talk about, better left unsaid and swept under the rug.

Now suddenly, this cultural symbol had been imbued with new meaning by one of Rome’s own emperors!

Stuart Murray’s, “Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World,” tracks the significant changes that started under Constantine and continued during the reign of subsequent emperors. According to Murray, one of the most radical effects of Constantine embracing Christianity, was the symbol of the cross being used in a new ways across the empire.

“Taking up the cross,” he says, “now implied readiness not to die but to kill.” He goes on to say that while, “the New Testament interprets the cross as the means by which Jesus disarmed the powers…in Christendom crosses adorned the weapons of the powers.”2

This new imagination surrounding the cross as a symbol of conquest and personal victory quickly became commonplace. It was not uncommon in the early centuries of Christendom for missionaries to “sell” the idea of Christianity to kings and tribal rulers by equating the gospel with personal and military victory similar to that of Constantine.3

While before Constantine, Christians rarely if ever served in the military, after Constantine, you had to be a Christian to serve in the military. The crusades saw the establishment of monastic military orders (i.e. monks who fought instead of prayed). Many kings in the dark ages and Middle Ages of Europe would adorn their kingdom and armies with signs of the cross, holding it high as a sign of victory over their political enemies.

Constantine The Great - By Merulana - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,

The Cross as Christendom Cultural Symbol

This new connection between military and imperial power with the cross surely had an effect on how the cross worked as a symbol within the church. Returning to the cultural analysis provided by Gerald Arbuckle4 that we looked at in Part One, we will again consider how the cross might have been understood in this time period.

The Cross as Public Symbol
- Where the cross was a sign of Jesus’ humbly victory of spiritual powers, the cross was now a sign of Jesus blessing the victory of State powers.
- The cross was a sign of protection and favor for military campaigns.
The Cross as Order and Disorder Symbol
- In pre-Christendom the cross was a reminder of what would literally happen to one who went against the imperial order. Up to and including killing God in Jesus. Now the cross signified God was on the side of imperial order and could be offered to other kings and lords as their sign of order as well. Killing under the sign of the cross was now sanctified.
- In this sense, the cross lost its previous Christian meaning as a sign of disorder as all meaning was subsumed as part and parcel of an increasingly “Christian” empire.
The Cross as Structural and Anti-Structural Symbol
- The cross was no longer a repulsive symbol of subhuman punishment ignored by the powerful, hidden from the “wise of this world.” Now the elite’s and the Imperial order itself lifted up the cross as part of the State’s divine protection.
- The cross no longer drew together all socio-economic classes in an egalitarian way, but was used by the powerful to enforce obedience to the State that was helping the church.

Notice that the cross had now lost its “social edge.” It became increasingly associated with the powerful and mighty as we see it emblazoned upon military equipment of the day. In this environment the symbol that once reminded Christians to serve the lowliest in humility, now reminded them to raise a triumphalistic banner. How would this reframed cultural symbol inform Christian worship in this time?

The Shape of Worship in Christendom

Because the cross was no longer “foolishness” to the world and now symbolized power, many looking to climb the social ladder of society found there way into the church. This influx of people, along with the re-envisioning of an emperor-like Jesus reshaped worship in terms of domination rather than subservience. Here are three changes that occurred:

1. The Language of Song and Prayer

Language shifted in Christendom from praying to a God depicted as Father to praying to one much more akin to an all-powerful emperor. The cross is now lifted up in worship over-against enemies like Constantine.

2. The liturgy they practiced

With many more people, the liturgy required priests and other professionals to “perform” the liturgy while the people became observes instead of partakers in a great meal and social reordering.

There was even a brief time when it became so specialized that the church made a ruling that the people were not allowed to sing, leaving it only to the professional choirs to be observed.

3. The people included

Jesus is enthroned at a distance above people and the church leaders now speak on Jesus’ behalf instead of the community all receiving the Holy Spirit to discern together. The poor slowly move to the margins again.

Conclusion

The church in the West is in many ways still living in the fog of Christendom. While many urban centers in Europe and North America are thoroughly secularized, hints of Christendom still dot the landscape. President Biden’s call to “heal the soul of America” has a distinctly spiritual quality to it. President-Elect Trump has often called on American Evangelicals to “take back their country” which is in many ways a nod to a belief that Christendom, where church and state are intertwined and influencing each other, should still be the order of the day.

The reality is, as much as culture is increasingly moving into Christendom, the journey is slow. There are many “hangovers” of the Christendom culture still in effect. None perhaps more obvious than that of the cross. The cross is seen, unquestioningly as a triumphant symbol. I agree with this. It is Jesus’ victory over sin, death, and the powers. But the reality of that symbol in Jesus’ time was also loaded with meaning that helped Christians recognize their place at the fringe of the culture, not at the center of it.

Being triumphant from the margins is a far different posture than being triumphant from the center. The Black Theological Tradition in America has something to teach us about that posture. We will look to learn from their wisdom in the next installment of this series.