In its four-hundred-year tradition Protestantism has developed two different theological conceptions with whose help the Christian faith can clarify its historical situation and its political commission.
These two conceptions are the Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms and the Reformed doctrine of “the lordship of Christ.”
These two doctrines also characterize the attitude of the German Protestant churches toward the state during the church struggle under the National Socialist dictatorship. On the basis of the two kingdoms doctrine, the Lutheran state churches (Landeskirchen) maintained a “neutral” position as documented in the Ansbach Decree of 1935. On the basis of the doctrine of the lordship of Christ, which determines the whole of life, the Confessing Church took up the position of resistance, as can be seen in the Barmen Theological Declaration of 1934. Furthermore, the very strong differences in postwar Germany—to this day—over questions of politics and social ethics find their basis in the difference between these two conceptions.
Whether it has to do with questions of nuclear armament, the recognition of the Oder-Neisse border, the contracts of the social-liberal government with the Eastern Bloc, the ordering of private property, the question of abortion, the World Council of Churches’ Program to Combat Racism, or aid for development, division will appear along lines associated with these two doctrines again and again.
On the one side, the side of the two kingdoms doctrine, these questions are defined as nontheological and are pushed away into the “kingdom of the world” to be dealt with only from the point of view of political reason and expedience; the other side, however, seeks to place such fundamental political decisions within the meaning of obedient discipleship under the lordship of Christ. Jürgen Moltmann, On Human Dignity: Political Theology and Ethics, trans. M. Douglas Meeks (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), 61–62.
Therefore, the liberating power of Christ penetrates, redeems, and claims the whole of life, including its political and economic relationships.
Those who would restrict the lordship of Christ to a spiritual, churchly, or private area, thus declaring other areas of life to be autonomous, deny fundamentally the lordship of Christ.
With these theses of the Barmen Declaration, the Confessing Church at first freed the church from the claims of state ideology and “political religion”: “The church must remain the church.”
The first thesis rejected the German-Christian heresy that said: “Christ for the soul; Hitler for the people,” or “the gospel for faith; the law of the German nation for ethics.” In this area of church resistance to Hitler and his fascist religion the Confessing Church had success for a time, before it was worn down by its own battles of ecclesiastical disagreement.
The Confessing Church ran into difficulties, however, when the question of political resistance to Hitler became acute. After the war began, the second Barmen thesis led to conflicts of conscience. For then even confessing Christians marched into war for the divinely established authority, that is, for Hitler, although in faith they rejected him. One exception, among others, was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was driven by discipleship of Christ into political resistance and into conspiracy against Hitler.
There is still an unresolved discussion in German theology today as to whether resistance within the church is sufficient or if it must be broadened to political resistance.
Should Christians not react until the state reaches into the church itself and, for example, dismisses or arrests Jewish-Christian ministers or socialist priests? Or must they react as soon as socialists are persecuted, Jews murdered, and whole races or classes oppressed? How far does the liberating—and therefore also obligating—lordship of Christ reach? Jürgen Moltmann, On Human Dignity: Political Theology and Ethics, trans. M. Douglas Meeks (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), 82–83.
Luther was an Augustinian monk. His early writings show him as an
independent representative of the late medieval Augustinian renaissance.
When he speaks of the two kingdoms in this early period he takes up the
Augustinian tradition and means by this struggle of the civitas Dei (city
of God) against the civitas diaboli (city of the devil), a conflict which
rules world history until the end. The expressions civitas (city) and
regnum (kingdom) can be interchanged, but it is always the conflict
between Jerusalem and Babylon, between Cain and Abel, good and evil, God
and the devil which is meant when he speaks of the two
kingdoms.
Understood from a Christian perspective, the cause of the apocalyptic
conflict of the end time lies in the coming of Christ, the coming of the gospel and of faith. Through the proclamation of the gospel this
conflict is inflamed, and through faith it is recognized. For the sake of
the saving kingdom of Christ two kingdoms must be spoken of, for in
salvation corruption is simultaneously revealed, and with the coming of
Christ comes also the antichrist.
The preaching of the gospel occasions the decision of faith, the
simultaneous separation of the faithful from the unfaithful, Christ from
antichrist.
Bishops and church leaders are not the only ones who seek to clarify
the relationship to the state by means of the two kingdoms doctrine.
Politicians and governments also do it. The priests must not preach
“politically,” threatens the Polish government, which has forbidden the
union Solidarity. It is often claimed in dictatorships such as South
Korea, the Philippines, South Africa, and Argentina that “freedom of
religion” is a guarantee, but those who draw nonconformist consequences
from their religion are branded as enemies of the state.
One might
generalize and say that every dictatorship practices its own form of the
two kingdoms doctrine over against the church. The question is, Who erects
the border between the two kingdoms,
the church or the government? Who is the subject of the distinction
between the two kingdoms? Jürgen Moltmann, On Human Dignity: Political Theology and Ethics, trans.
M. Douglas Meeks (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), 63–65.
Luther’s distinction according to which both regiments mutually limit and complement each other appears to be the description of ideal conditions, but it was in fact critically directed toward his religious and political situation.
Politics is constantly carried out by means of religion. This seduces and corrupts the soul. Religion is constantly practiced by means of politics. That corrupts worldly order and peace.
Luther’s two kingdoms doctrine is in its truth a critical-polemical separation between God and Caesar. It permits neither a Caesaro-papalism nor a clerical theocracy. It intended to teach that the world and politics may not be deified, nor may they be religiously administered. One should give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar—no more and no less—and give to God that which is God’s. One should turn the self-deified world into the world, and let God be God.
One should deal rationally with the world, with the law, and with force. The world is not and it never will become the kingdom of God; rather it is a good earthly order against evil chaos. One should deal spiritually—which means with faith—with God and his gospel. The gospel does not create a new world but saves people through faith. Jürgen Moltmann, On Human Dignity: Political Theology and Ethics, trans. M. Douglas Meeks (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), 70–71.
Luther set limitations on temporal government. Although princes hold offices ordained by God for the sake of political order, they have no power over conscience. Neither faith nor heresy can be imposed or deposed by force. “Faith is a free act to which no one can be forced” and “heresy is a spiritual matter which you cannot hack to pieces with iron, consume with fire, or drown in water.”
Eric W. Gritsch and Robert W. Jenson, Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and Its Confessional Writings (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), 143.
But take heed and first fill the world with real Christians before you attempt to rule it in a Christian and evangelical manner. This you will never accomplish; for the world and the masses are and always will be un-Christian, even if they are all baptized and Christian in name. Christians are few and far between (as the saying is).
Therefore, it is out of the question that there should be a common Christian government over the whole world or indeed over a single country or any considerable body of people—because the wicked always outnumber the good.
Hence, a man who would venture to govern an entire country or the world with the gospel would be like a shepherd who should put together in one fold wolves, lions, eagles, and sheep, and let them mingle freely with one another, saying, “Help yourselves and be good and peaceful toward one another. The fold is open, there is plenty of food. You need have no fear of dogs and clubs.” The sheep would doubtless keep the peace and allow themselves to be fed and governed peacefully, but they would not live long, nor would one beast survive another.
For this reason one must carefully distinguish between these two governments. Both must be permitted to remain; the one to produce righteousness, the other to bring about external peace and prevent evil deeds. Neither one is sufficient in the world without the other. No one can become righteous in the sight of God by means of the temporal government, without Christ’s spiritual government. Christ’s government does not extend over all men; rather, Christians are always a minority in the midst of non-Christians.
Now where temporal government or law alone prevails, there sheer hypocrisy is inevitable, even though the commandments be God’s very own. For without the Holy Spirit in the heart no one becomes truly righteous, no matter how fine the works he does. On the other hand, where the spiritual government alone prevails over land and people, there wickedness is given free rein and the door is open for all manner of rascality, for the world as a whole cannot receive or comprehend it.
This is also why Christ did not wield the sword, or give it a place in his kingdom. (Matt. 26:52–53; John 18:36) He is a king over Christians and rules by his Holy Spirit alone, without law. Although he sanctions the sword, he did not make use of it, for it serves no purpose in his kingdom, in which there are none but the upright.
Hence, David of old was not permitted to build the temple [2 Sam. 7:4–13], because he had wielded the sword and had shed much blood. Not that he had done wrong thereby, but because he could not be a type of Christ, who without the sword was to have a kingdom of peace. It had to be built instead by Solomon, whose name in German means “Friedrich” or “peaceful”; (“Solomon” is derived from the Hebrew word for “peace,” shalom. The equivalent German “Friedrich” means literally “one who is rich in peace.”) he had a peaceful kingdom, by which the truly peaceful kingdom of Christ, the real Friedrich and Solomon, could be represented. Martin Luther, Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. William R. Russell and Timothy F. Lull, Third Edition (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012), 434–435.
The church as the community of Christ’s kingdom on earth is a theo-political order. While all things are under the rule of Christ, it is his saving rule that constitutes his kingdom (Col. 1:13).
The church is the heavenly polis on earth, the new humanity whose hearts are circumcised by his Spirit.
Its breadth reaches out to all peoples; its depth renews the heart (Jer. 32:39; Ezk. 11:19). The ‘ethnicity’ of the church as the new Israel of God underscores its communal reality, which is not diminished but enhanced because it is spiritual.
We have no abiding city here; the church cannot be identified with the kingdoms of this world (Heb. 13:14). But we do have a city with foundations, whose builder and maker is God; the church exercises heavenly citizenship in the fellowship of the saints (Heb. 11:10, 16; 12:28; Phil. 3:20). The community exists on earth, but it is governed by the keys of the heavenly kingdom, with spiritual, not physical, sanctions (Mt. 16:19; Rev. 3:7).
As a company of heaven-bound pilgrims, the church does not wield the sword (Jn. 18:11, 36). It need not fight, for God’s kingdom needs no human weapons; it may not fight, for (as the Crusaders learned) the sword cannot bring kingdom salvation. Our weapons are spiritual, and the more potent for that reason (2 Cor. 10:4–5; Eph. 6:12–18; 1 Cor. 4:8). Nor may the church attach itself to worldly conceptions of honor and power.
Jacques Ellul refers to an incident that is sometimes adduced as a prime example of the absurdity of theological speculation: while the Turks surrounded Constantinople, the Byzantines were busy debating the doctrine of the Trinity. But, asks Ellul, ‘What, in the final analysis, is really important for the whole of mankind—that Jesus is indeed the Christ?—or that the Turks defeated the Byzantines in the early 15th century?’ The sword cannot decide ultimate questions.
Sad to say, the church has often sought the advantage of the sword by handing it to the state to wield on its behalf. This was the practice in the long history of the Inquisition, beginning in 1163 when Pope Alexander III urged bishops to seek out heretics and the secular princes to punish them. In Calvin’s Geneva, the church condemned Servetus, but it was the city magistrates who burned him. The Crusades were preached by the church, but it was troops of European princes who did the fighting. Edmund P. Clowney, The Church, ed. Gerald Bray, Contours of Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 189–190.
I have stated what is meant to be a distinction as something of a contradiction, but overstatement often has a point.
Humans, particularly in the political sphere, are prone to claim redemptive significance for their efforts at social and/or political transformation.
The twentieth century has been crammed with those blood-stained attempts. When the God-man Jesus Christ is refused as Savior, the man-god in many different guises is given full sway.
This insistence on a strong doctrine of grace puts all human efforts in proper perspective. They deal with penultimate improvements in the human condition, with relative goods and bads, not with salvation. This means that politics is desacralized and relativized. Salvation is through Christ, not through human political schemes, nor through psychological or religious efforts, for that matter. Following from this, we might appropriately speak of liberation ethics, but never of liberation theology, if that is taken to mean that revolutionary praxis is the same thing as salvation. Such a judgment provides a critical shield against the constant attempts in American Christianity to give redemptive significance to educational, psychological, spiritualist (New Age), and now environmental movements.
One would think that the world has had enough experience of revolutionary change to obviate any claims that political and social “transformation” lead to anything remotely resembling human fulfillment. Ordinary human observation and experience arrive at such a negative verdict. But for religious people to make such claims is even more baffling.
The New Testament gospel of the suffering God who abjured all worldly power and all worldly group identifications simply rules out those schemes that compromise the radicality and universality of the gospel.
The cross of Christ freed the gospel from enmeshment in all human efforts to save the world.
No one was with Christ on the cross to die for our sins. Or viewed differently, everyone was with Christ on the cross, but only as passive inhabitants of his righteous and suffering person.
When we are freed from the need to look for salvation in human schemes, our eyes should be clearer to make the very important distinctions among the relatively good and the relatively bad in the realm of human action. Liberated from the worry about our salvation, we can turn non-obsessively to the human task of building a better world, not by prideful claims of transformation, but by determined yet humble attempts to take small steps for the better. As Luther’s famous paradoxical statement in his tract “On the Freedom of a Christian” (1520) describes:
“A Christian is perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is servant of all, subject to all.”
Robert Benne, “The Lutheran (Paradoxical) View,” in Five Views on the Church and Politics, ed. Amy E. Black and Stanley N. Gundry, Zondervan Counterpoints Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2015), 67–69.
Do not all the peoples loathe iniquity? And yet it is spread by them all.
Does not the fame of truth issue from the mouth of all the nations?
Yet is there a lip or tongue which holds to it? Which nation likes
to be oppressed by
another stronger than itself, or likes its wealth to be wickedly
seized?
And yet which nation has not oppressed another, and where is there a
people which has not seized [another]’s wealth? Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea
Scrolls in English, Revised and extended 4th ed. (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1995), 272.
How Christians should pity the nations! Though guilty and culpable,
they are also miserable and helpless. We should hate their sins and
oppose their acts of injustice, but let us also be like Jesus, who “was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad,
as sheep having no shepherd” (Matt. 9:36). Let us who are saved by grace remember that we were once
just as the lost are now: dead in sin, driven along by
satanic lies and selfish ambition, damned under God’s wrath, and
distant from the Savior and any hope of salvation (Eph. 2:1–3, 12).
Christians need to abandon talk about “redeeming the culture,”
“advancing the kingdom,” and “changing the world.” Such talk carries too
much weight, implying conquest and domination. If there is a
possibility for human flourishing in our world, it does not begin when we
win the culture wars but when
God’s word of love becomes flesh in us, reaching every sphere of social
life.
When faithful presence existed in church history, it manifested itself
in the creation of hospitals and the flourishing of art, the best
scholarship, the most profound and world-changing kind of service and
care—again, not only for the household of faith but for everyone.
Faithful presence isn’t new; it’s just something we need to recover.(James
Davison Hunter, “Review of To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and
Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World by Christopher Benson,”
Christianity Today (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today International,
2010), 36.)
This side of eternity there will be no “revolution” that can change
the human condition. The world will remain full of hope and sin, success and
failure. We will win a few political debates and lose a few.
With time, evangelicals will grow wiser about the political arena just
as parents do—through lived, practical experience. That experience will
deliver a
dose of reality about what politics can and cannot accomplish.
Political action
will not deliver utopia, conquer sin, or change human nature. But it can make a difference between rampant crime and safe
neighborhoods, between hungry families and economic security, between
victory and defeat in war.
And only those who have never been mugged, never been hungry, or never
been at war will think these differences trivial. Paul Marshall, “The
Problem: In Their Zeal for Social Change, Some Evangelical Activists Stand
on Shaky Biblical Ground,” Christianity Today (Carol Stream, IL:
Christianity Today International, 2006), 94.)
Blessed be the God of Israel for all His holy purpose and for His works of truth! Blessed be all those who [serve] Him in righteousness and who know Him by faith! Cursed be Satan for his sinful purpose and may he be execrated for his wicked rule! Cursed be all the spirits of his company for their ungodly purpose and may they be execrated for all their service of uncleanness! Truly they are the company of Darkness, but the company of God is one of [eternal] Light. Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, Revised and extended 4th ed. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 138.
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