The Protestant Reformers and the Civil Magistrate

Fourth in a Series on the Church in Politics

‟By the creation of this united church, we shall establish a religio-political body to which no government will dare say: ‘No.’ ” This was the opinion of a leading advocate of church union in Canada in the early twenties, and by 1925 the church-unionists’ lobby in Ottawa had succeeded in having the House of Commons pass a bill forcing all Methodists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians into the United Church of Canada, whether they wished it or not. Although the bill was eventually modified by the Senate, the church-unionists’ views were not. The use of political pressure has characterized other inclusivist ecclesiastical bodies down through the ages, and the same desire for political power seems to dominate much present-day ecumenical thinking. This point of view flatly contravenes the views of the early Protestant Reformers.

The medieval church had constantly asserted its supremacy over the state, claiming wide political authority. Pope Innocent III (1161–1216) had accepted the feudal submission of a number of monarchs, including the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and the king of England, and had instigated a sanguinary military crusade against the Albigensian heretics of southern France. Under his leadership the papacy had reached the highest point of its prestige and power, but it remained for Boniface VIII (1235–1303) in his bull Unam Sanctam to state most fully the papal claims to absolute universal sovereignty. Although in its early days the Church may have exerted political influence for many good ends, such as freeing slaves and protecting the poor, when it became influential men often entered the clergy merely to participate in its power, as an end in itself. This was one of the reasons for the increasing worldliness and spiritual decline of the Church.

The Protestant Reformation brought a radical change in this whole situation. Not only did the Reformers preach the biblical doctrines of justification and sanctification; their beliefs reached also to such matters as Christian stewardship, the nature of the Church, and the authority of the civil magistrate. They held very strong and rather revolutionary views, based on Scripture, that placed them in conflict with the church of Rome, which sought to dominate the civil state for its own ends. Thus the Reformation brought about not only a religious but also a political re-formation that helped many rulers in the developing national states to assert their rights against papal claims.

As in all their thinking, the Reformers sought to derive their ideas on matters of church and state from the Old and New Testaments. Both testaments asserted without equivocation that the civil authority was ordained by God just as much as was the priesthood (cf. 1 Sam. 8 and 16). And Paul in Romans 13:1 ff. upheld the same view even with regard to the pagan ruler who sat upon the Roman imperial throne in his day. Furthermore, in the Old Testament, kings such as Josiah and Hezekiah had at times to reform Jewish religious life against the wishes of the religious leaders. There seemed to be ample biblical support for stressing the independence of the civil magistrate from ecclesiastical control.

Another contribution to the Reformers’ views of the relation of Church and civil magistrate was Augustine of Hippo’s City of God. In this work Augustine clearly elaborated the idea that the state held a position very different from that of the Church, and also independent of the Church. Indeed, at times one gains the impression from Augustine that the state was the Kingdom of the Earth and the Church the Kingdom of God, so that the Church could not possibly have any part in the work of the state. The medieval church often interpreted his views as giving it the right to direct the civil magistrate; but to many in the sixteenth century, he seemed to speak more in terms of a clear separation of the functions of the two bodies.

Influenced by these and other writings, the Reformers’ view of the relation of the Church to the civil magistrate had its foundation in the strongly held belief that Jesus Christ is Lord of lords and King of kings. He exercises his lordship on behalf of his people, the Church, and he does so principally through two instruments, the Church and the civil government. Both Church and state are equally Christ’s possessions and derive their particular authority and responsibilities from his sovereign determination (Calvin, Institutes 4:1:1 and 20:4; Compend of Luther’s Theology, H. T. Kerr, ed., p. 216). Only the Anabaptists, who held the state to be established solely for the restraint of sinners, denied the authority of the civil magistrate over Christians and sought to separate themselves from his rule. All the other Protestants accepted this religious and political duality in society.

While the Reformers accepted it, however, they made a clear distinction between the functions, aims, and methods of the Church and those of the state. Christ’s rule in and through the Church has a spiritual objective, the conversion of sinners and the sanctification of the saints. This he accomplishes solely by spiritual means: the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments, which are made effective in men’s hearts by no other means than the action of the Holy Spirit. This is the “power of the keys” that Christ bestowed upon the Church through the apostles before his ascension (Compend …, pp. 123 ff.; Institutes, 4:11:1 ff.). The Church’s objective and means are therefore exclusively spiritual.

This is true even of ecclesiastical discipline, a point on which Calvin comes out more clearly than Luther. When dealing, in the Institutes, with the Church as a means of grace, Calvin points to the importance of the Church’s disciplinary authority and insists that it is only spiritual:

For the holy bishops of the early church never exercised their authority by fines, imprisonments or other civil punishments; but as became them, employed nothing but the word of the Lord. For the severest vengeance, the ultimate punishment of the Church, is excommunication, which is never resorted to without absolute necessity. Now, excommunication requires no external force, but is content with the power of the word of God [Institutes, Allen’s translation, 4:11:5]

That this should be so is only natural, since the Church’s binding and loosing power was bestowed upon it by Christ solely for the spiritual edification and growth of his people.

How different, on the other hand, are the aims and instruments of the state. The work of the state is carried on in this world, for the civil magistrate has the duty and obligation of maintaining peace and equity among men upon earth. As Luther put it:

But the unchristian portion of people require another government, even the civil sword, since they will not be controlled by the word of God.

God has provided for non-Christians a different government outside the Christian estate and God’s kingdom, and has subjected them to the sword, so that even though they would do so, they cannot practice their wickedness, and that, if they do, they may not do it without fear nor in peace and prosperity [Compend …, pp. 216–18].

Calvin agreed wholeheartedly with these words when he stated that the civil government “provides that there may be a public form of religion among Christians and that humanity may be maintained among men” (Institutes 4:20:3). He did not think, however, that the state should lay down laws according to its own will concerning religion and public worship.

By what means is the civil magistrate to fulfill his duties? To this both Luther and Calvin replied: by the sword. They did not mean that the magistrate’s every action is to be violent, but they did insist that he has the right to employ coercive power against wrongdoers for the protection of both Church and state. In so saying, they accepted implicitly Paul’s statements on civil authority in Romans 13, upon which they both commented more than once. They believed that if peace is preserved, equity and justice guaranteed, and blasphemy and heresy prevented, a nation’s material and spiritual prosperity is ensured.

Someone may well point out that by giving the rulers power to preserve the Church from the attacks of blasphemers and heretics, the Reformers were giving them undue influence in the Church. This was true of Ulrich Zwingli, the Protestant leader in Zürich. Luther and Calvin, however, approached the matter from a different angle. While assuming that there would be only one church to a nation, they also held that the rulers would be Christians and so would humble themselves under the religious teachings of the Church (Institutes 4:11:4). They would therefore seek to make Christian principles effective in their rule over a Christian society. The Church, however, has no authority to dictate to the rulers or to determine their policy but must depend upon their application of Christianity according to their own conscience and understanding.

What if the rulers are papists or non-Christians? The Church cannot then depend upon the magistrates’ Christian commitment. Still it must constantly bear its witness to them, even as it does to Christian rulers. But there it must stop. Neither Luther nor Calvin thought that ecclesiastics should hold political office, nor did they accept the idea that the Church could dethrone monarchs or instigate insurrections against even the most oppressive rulers (Compend …, pp. 219 ff.; Institutes 4:11:9). Thus they set their faces firmly against the claims and pretensions of the medieval papacy.

In all of this, Luther, Calvin and their principal followers practiced what they preached. Luther never held any civil office, and Calvin did not become even a citizen of Geneva until 1559, when the town council invited him to do so—after twenty years of residence and work there. If the occasion arose, they spoke out clearly on moral issues or even made suggestions about other matters, such as the treatment of the poor. But they claimed no authority over the civil magistrates. Rather they concentrated on preaching the Gospel, instructing the people, and providing good examples as Christians. Their power and authority were moral and spiritual, nothing else.

After their days conditions changed somewhat, particularly in Germany, where the Lutheran Church tended to fall under the control of the princes. With the Peace of Augsburg (1555), it was finally determined that each ruler should decide the religious affiliation of his subjects. This gave the civil authorities an undue control over the Church. It applied, however, only to Lutherans and Roman Catholics. Calvinists in Holland, France, England, Scotland, and elsewhere with more or less faithfulness followed the Genevan Reformer’s precepts. The Scottish Reformed church strongly opposed the bestowal of political offices on ecclesiastics, and even in New England, concerning which we hear much talk of “theocracy,” the ministers did not hold magisterial office. Thus the Calvinistic tradition has always emphasized the importance of the separation of the functions and authority of the “two governments.”

In estimating the political influence of the Reformation, therefore, one must agree that the Reformation meant the emancipation of the civil magistrate from the overweening ambition of ecclesiastics. Not that it adopted the Machiavellian view that the civil magistrate should govern his actions purely by raisons d’état that had no moral content. The Reformers insisted that the magistrate, acting in his own sphere, was responsible for his action not to the Church or its leaders but solely and directly to Jesus Christ, the Lord of both Church and state. From this truth, which the Reformers brought out for the first time in a thousand years, have flowed many of our present political liberties.

Unfortunately, many present-day ecclesiastical leaders seem to have forgotten these views of Luther, Calvin, and other sixteenth-century Reformers. They fail to see that God has not mixed the two spheres but keeps them carefully separated. The state must not interfere with or try to control the Church, though some are always trying to circumvent this idea. At the same time, the Church cannot dictate to nor seek to control the state. It must content itself with preaching the Gospel and seeking by its moral influence to have Christian principles applied to contemporary problems. In this alone is its authority and in this alone its power.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.