LutheranTheology.com

Part 10

Church and State

Concerning the relation of the Church to the State, Walther teaches that the Church should be independent of the State, that is, it should govern itself in all things. “As important as it is,” — he says1 — “when the government of a land in which the orthodox Church has its dwelling also belongs to the Church, and as blessed as this can be for the Church, nevertheless independence of the Church from the State is not a defect or an irregular condition, but the proper, natural relationship in which the Church should always stand toward the State.”

In proof of his thesis, Walther first appeals to the fact that “according to God’s Word Church and State are entirely different regiments and therefore are not to be mingled with one another”, John 18:36; 2 Cor. 10:4; Matt. 22:21; Luke 12:13–14. The most complete exposition by Walther on the total distinction between Church and State and of the separation of Church and State required thereby, is found in his synodical address on John 18:36–37. There Walther says:

Church and State are, according to God’s Word, as different from one another as heaven is from earth. The State is a kingdom of this world, therefore an earthly kingdom; but the Church is “not from hence,” not an earthly but a heavenly kingdom; it is, as the Lord so often says, the “Kingdom of Heaven” on earth. The State is an external, bodily, visible kingdom; the Church an internal, spiritual, invisible one; for, as Christ says in clear words, “The Kingdom of God does not come with outward show. Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.” The State has as its members all who outwardly allow themselves be received into its union — evil as well as good, godless as well as pious, unbelievers as well as believers, non-Christians as well as Christians; the Church, however, has as members only those who are Christ’s sheep, who hear His voice and believe in Him from the heart. The State has as its purpose only the earthly welfare of men: protection of body, goods, and honor of its citizens, and external peace, tranquility, discipline, and order in this world; the Church, however, has as its purpose men’s peace with God, protection against sin, death, the devil, and hell, everlasting righteousness, everlasting life, and everlasting blessedness. The State has as its guiding principle the light of nature, or of human reason; the Church, the light of the immediate divine revelation contained in Holy Scripture. The State has as its laws those which it makes itself; the Church makes no laws, but only promulgates the eternal laws of God. The State judges only the outward evil deed; the Church also judges the ungodly disposition of the heart. The State permits everything that its earthly purposes require or at least allow;2 the Church permits only what God declares permissible in His Word. The State commands in its own plenary power and therefore demands obedience to its commands for the sake of its office; the Church commands nothing in its own authority and demands obedience only to the commands of Christ. The State has as its means and weapons the bodily sword and external coercive power; the Church only the sword of the Spirit, that is, the Word of God, and the power of persuasion through this Word. The State has as its essential components rulers and subjects, those who command and those who obey; in the Church all are equal to one another and mutually subject to one another through love alone; for Christ speaks in clear words to His disciples: “One is your Master, Christ, and you are all brothers. You know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise lordship, and they that are great exercise authority. It shall not be so among you; but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your servant.”3

Since Church and State are, according to God’s Word, so fundamentally different — “different are their whole manner and nature, different are the requirements of their members, different their final purpose, their rule, their government, their commands and prohibitions, their liberties, their power, their means, the mutual relationship of those belonging to them, in short, their entire character” — therefore neither can the Church be governed according to state principles, nor the State according to ecclesiastical principles; that is, State and Church must remain unmixed, or the Church should be independent from the State.

Furthermore, Walther lays down the following theses concerning the relation of Church and State: To be sure, governmental officials, if they are believers, are also in the Church, but not as authorities with their laws and their outward power, but as Christians and brothers, and therefore equal in power and right to all church members, even if they be princes, kings, or emperors. Matt. 23:8; Luke 22:25–26; Gal. 3:28.4 The civil government certainly has the duty toward the Church to protect it in its liberties and rights against all external force, to grant to the Church as a society within the State the same protection that all the other societies of the State enjoy. In this way, in our land, the civil authority fulfills its duty toward the Church. “Here our civil government” — says Walther5 — “is truly, as Isaiah prophesied, a caregiver and nursing mother also of our Church; for here it protects us mightily, in accordance with its office, against all external violence, against the bloodthirstiness of Antichrist and his minions, as well as against the murderous lust of the atheists of this last age of apostasy.” And governmental officials have this obligation in double measure if they themselves are members of the Church, because every Christian is to place his gifts in the service of Christ and His Kingdom.6 For just as the rich man serves the Church with his money, the artist with his art, so also governmental officials, if they are Christians, are to serve the Church with their power and their prestige.7 This is also how it is to be understood when it says in the Smalcald Articles: “Especially should kings and princes, as the foremost members of the Church, help and see to it that all manner of error is removed and consciences are rightly instructed” (Müller, p. 339); in which words, as the word “especially” already indicates, a general Christian duty is in view,8 and to princes are ascribed not so much rights and powers over the Church, as rather duties toward it, and indeed all the greater duties because their station could extend a helping hand to the Church more beneficially than other stations.9 For the protection that the civil government must grant also to the Church is not to be extended, or rather perverted, as if the civil government had the right to govern the Church. Walther says: “The civil government has neither right nor power to usurp the government of the Church and to compel to the true faith, or to what it holds to be such. Christ not only declares Himself to be the One who has authority in His Church, and who alone has it and exercises it through His Word; but He also denies to all others any other lordship whatsoever in His Church, Matt. 23:8.”10

“The dogmaticians of the 17th century here departed from Scripture and the Confessions in favor of the state-church, and call it Gallionism when one denies to the civil government as such the right to judge by virtue of its office concerning true and false doctrine,” whereas “the Holy Spirit, without doubt, caused this history (of Gallio, Acts 18:12–16) to be recorded, among other reasons also, that one may know that in matters of doctrine, the civil government as such has no judgment to render.”

After Walther has set forth Baier’s doctrine concerning the power of the civil government in the Church, he continues:

Hardly could the rule of the world and the Church be more grievously mingled and confused, contrary to the clear testimony of our Church in its chief confession, than our dear Baier does here. What pertains only to the Church of the Old Testament, which according to God’s will was to be united with the State until Christ, in order to form a theocracy—that is here transferred to the Church of the New Testament; and what belonged to a David, Josiah, etc., is without further ado attributed to all princes and chief civil authorities, and thus an obvious princely papacy (Caesaropapism) is established! God forbid!11

In particular, the civil government should not seek to compel to the true faith with external force. This is contrary to God’s will (John 18:36–37); even the Jews in the Old Testament were not to compel anyone to their religion; a war that is waged for the spread of religion cannot please God. “Only for the protection of the persons who confess a religion against its persecutors, can under particular circumstances, even a religious war be pleasing to God.” And just as the use of such external force is contrary to God’s will, so it also brings harm to the Church. In this way the Church either gains hypocrites, because external force cannot change the soul and make it believing, or it repels unbelievers from the outset. “Unbelievers indeed seek to justify their rejection of the Christian religion by pointing to the blood (allegedly) shed by the Church. And they say rightly: a Church that resorts to such measures for its extension or preservation cannot possibly be the true one.”12 But may the civil government never use force against ecclesiastical communities? It may do so in only one case, namely, when heterodox ecclesiastical communities establish or at least practice principles dangerous to the State. Thus, for example, the civil government would have sufficient cause to proceed against the Pope as a false teacher with principles dangerous to the State. But apart from this case, the civil government has neither right nor power to bring its coercive force to bear against false faith and false worship, or what it at least holds to be such.13

Alongside the thesis that governmental officials are not in the Church as such,14 Walther sets another: that the members of the Church are obligated to obedience toward the State not as Church, but as citizens and subjects.15 The latter Walther emphasizes with great force. He says a subject must obey the civil government in whatever it may command, if thereby he is not compelled to act against his conscience. Our government indeed actually has power over us. Whether it came into office lawfully, or whether it is pious, or whether it is of our faith, cannot be decisive here. Whoever is not subject to the government that has power over him sins not so much against a man as against God Himself, whose ordinance the government is. It is not merely a disturbance of the public peace when one resists the civil government, but rather truly a fighting against the divine Majesty Himself. For God’s sake and for conscience’ sake one must be subject; therefore we should honor the governing authority not only outwardly with gestures, but also in the heart. And everyone, especially also every Christian and every preacher, is bound, as a citizen, to be subject to the civil government; it is antichristian when popes and priests do not wish to be subject to the civil jurisdiction.16

On the other hand, Walther emphasizes just as strongly that Christians as Christians or as members of the Church are subject to no civil government, but solely to Christ as their only Master, who has made known His will to them in Holy Scripture. Therefore, if the government commands something that God has forbidden, or forbids something that God has commanded, then Christians must disobey the civil government, which in this matter has permitted itself a shameful overreach, in order to remain obedient to God and to keep an uninjured conscience.17 In general, a Christian may not allow himself to be ordered about by men in any spiritual matters, not even by the civil government, because in the conscience of a Christian God alone wills to rule through His Word. “Thus each year, we Lutherans also do indeed celebrate the so-called National Thanksgiving Day which our governors and presidents recommend observing; but the moment they would command it by virtue of their office, we would not do this.”18 In the above mentioned synodical address Walther says: “To be sure, the secular rulers also rule over the members of the Church, not insofar as they belong to the Church as Christians, but only insofar as they are, as men, are citizens of the state; hence the State does not rule over the Church itself and over the consciences, faith, and worship of Christians, but only over their mortal body and their earthly goods. ‘Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,’ thus speaks Christ, and thereby draws for all times and lands a strict boundary and dividing line between the kingdoms of God and of Caesar, between Church and State.”19

To be sure, a more than thousand-year history of the Church seems to contradict this doctrine. But what is lawful for the Church must be learned not from history but from God’s clear Word. Even the Lutheran Church itself has from the very beginning, precisely in the land of its origin down to this very day, been united with the State or has been a state church. But this was only the result, in part of initial dire circumstances, and in part of the inattentiveness of the appointed watchmen, and by no means a fruit of the doctrine of Luther and of the Evangelical Lutheran Church called by his name.19 Moreover, history also raises its voice loudly against the coupling of Church with State. For even though faithful Lutheran princes have brought great blessings to the Church — men who administered the episcopal office that came to them, at the risk of the loss of lands and peoples, indeed, putting their own liberty and lives at risk, solely for the benefit of the Church — the curse was still incomparably greater that came upon the Church through the ill-fated mingling of Church and State.

Walther shows, in a portrayal as vivid as it is historically true, how the Church was nearly crushed to death in the arms of the State. He says:

The first consequence of this (namely, of the ill-fated mingling of Church and State) was that the Christian congregations lost almost all of the rights and liberties so dearly purchased for them by Christ, so that scarcely a shadow of them remained. Their right to themselves call, install, and depose their teachers and preachers; their right to examine and judge doctrine; their right to determine ecclesiastical ceremonies and orders and all ecclesiastical adiaphora, to abolish, change, increase, or diminish them; their right to exercise church discipline over all members in doctrine and life — all these rights almost entirely disappeared in the state-church. And if the territorial lord was worldly-minded, then he also hindered, by his like-minded officials, all salutary church discipline; thus he compelled the servants of the Church to give the holy things to the dogs and to cast their pearls before swine, to bless marriages contrary to God’s Word, to accept the godless as baptismal sponsors, to bury with Christian honors those who died despising the Word and of the Sacraments, and the like. But if the territorial lord also outwardly fell away from the true religion, then he also used his supposed territorial-episcopal-princely power to draw his people into apostasy along with him; for he deposed and banished faithful teachers in the churches and schools and in their place forced belly-serving and fanatical false teachers upon the congregations; he abolished the pure books used in the churches and schools and introduced corrupted books in their stead. The longer things proceeded down this path, so much the more, as a consequence, was the right practice lost, along with the right doctrine and knowledge — namely, the knowledge that the territorial lord had no power whatsoever in the Church by divine-ecclesiastical or secular right, but rather, if at all, only by human right that could be revoked at any time. Finally it even came to the point that the principle was established: “Whose is the lordship of the land, his also is the religion of the land”; so that one now began to consider the Church as simply a state institution, its servants as state officials, and all subjects of the state at the same time as members of the state church. — But what ruin in doctrine and life entered the Church on this path, and what agonies of conscience were thereby prepared for upright servants of the Church and godly laymen, cannot be expressed in words at all. Indeed, in some place even the right to escape such tyranny over the conscience by emigration was taken away from the oppressed. What then has finally has become of the state churches? — Fortresses in which the enemies of the Church rule, from whose ramparts the snow-white banner of the pure confession has been torn down, and in its place the multi-colored flags of false doctrine, of religious syncretism, and of the most manifest unbelief now flutter in the air.20

Walther therefore calls upon us to recognize it as a great benefit of God that the Lutheran Church here in America is entirely independent of the State and enjoys the freedom given to it by Christ.

Footnotes

  1. Die Rechte Gestalt 2c., p. 5 f.
  2. On this Walther says in a note: Thus Moses in his political laws also had to permit divorce outside of the case of adultery (Deut. 24:1) because of the hardness of the Jews’ hearts according to Matt. 19:7–9; but the prophets punished the use of this liberty among those who wished to be members of the Church according to Mal. 2:14–16. We add here yet another statement by Walther on this point from the Report of the Western District 1885, p. 21: “Note that our Church does not teach that the civil government has no right to permit anything, that is, to declare unpunishable what God has forbidden. It does indeed have this right. Moses also, as a political lawgiver, permitted many things that the prophets condemn. The government does not have under it only Christians who allow themselves to be governed by God’s Word; it is not actually to govern the State, which is not an institution for the salvation of souls but for the protection of body and goods, according to God’s Word, but according to reason. However, a prohibition of God does not lose its binding force through the permission granted by the government. If, for example, the government licenses sinful entertainment, frivolous divorces, the keeping of drinking establishments, a Christian cannot make use of this permission. The government must allow such things because of the ‘hardness of heart’ of its subjects, in order to avoid insurrection, murder, and manslaughter. Thus when once the Pharisees, in order to whitewash their false doctrine of divorce, put the question to Christ: ‘Why then did Moses command to give a writing of divorcement and to put her away?’ Christ answered: Moses permitted you to put away your wives because of the hardness of your heart; but from the beginning it was not so.” Matt. 19:7–8.”
  3. Brosamen, p. 498 f.
  4. Die Rechte Gestalt 2c., p. 8; Brosamen, p. 500. Walther remarks yet in the latter place in a note: “Even in the middle of the fourth century the ancient church teacher Optatus of Milevis wrote: ‘The State is not in the Church, but the Church in the State.’”
  5. Brosamen, p. 507.
  6. Report of the Western District 1885, p. 28.
  7. Pastorale, p. 368. Western Report, p. 27.
  8. Western Report, p. 29.
  9. Die Rechte Gestalt 2c., p. 8.
  10. Brosamen, p. 520.
  11. Report of the Western District 1885, pp. 30–37.
  12. Ibid., pp. 31–37.
  13. Ibid., p. 42 ff.
  14. What is said of the civil government applies to the civil estates in general. Walther explains: the Church indeed consists of people of all sorts of estates, but the domestic and the civil estates themselves do not belong to the Church; rather they are ordered by God alongside it. The estates are not, as such, in the Church and have no special rights in the Church. If one says that the Church consists of people of all estates, this must be understood to mean that no estate, however worldly it may appear, deprives the Christian of his spiritual and priestly character and of his share in ecclesiastical rights. (Rechte Gestalt, p. 11.)
  15. Die rechte Gestalt 2c., pp. 7, 10. Brosamen, p. 500.
  16. Report of the Western District 1885, pp. 15, 16.
  17. Ibid., p. 21.
  18. Ibid., p. 32.
  19. Brosamen, pp. 500–503.
  20. Ibid., pp. 503, 504.