The problem of submission to civil authority: What can the Reformers teach us? (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Decalogue, Resistance, and Political Obedience in Early Protestant Thought
Journal of Religious History, 2022
This article examines three leading representatives of magisterial Protestantism who based their doctrines of political obligation on the fifth commandment of the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments, found in Exodus 20:1–17 and Deuteronomy 5:6–29). These expositions and applications of the fifth commandment exemplify the early magisterial Protestant interpretation of the command to “honor your father and mother.” In each case, the content and context of these texts paint a picture where these theological theories of obligation were handmaids to the practical centralisation of coercive power in the state during the early modern period. This centralisation of power occurred through what Gerhard Oestreich called Sozialdisziplinierung, or social discipline. We will sample one leading thinker from each of the Lutheran (Martin Luther (1483–1546)), English Reformed (William Tyndale (1494–1536)), and continental Reformed (John Calvin (1509–1564)) traditions to demonstrate broad consistency across the magisterial Protestant movement during its early decades. This article will further show that it was not simply theories of resistance that set up the foundations for the modern western conception of political authority. Theological theories of obedience also made a substantial contribution and are not as archaic or irrelevant to the story of modern politics as might be imagined.
ReformedBooksOnline.com, 2021
The Reformation and puritan era’s teaching on the Church-State relationship, derived from the Word of God in accord with the light of Nature, has been all but lost today. The Latin term for it was circa sacra; it means that the magistrate has authority, not in, but ‘around the sacred aspects’ of religion and the Church. While the civil government does not have formal authority over the Church, as Christ is her only Head, yet the magistrate does have civil authority over the material Church in legitimate civil matters that pertain equally in principle to civil society. The opposite view, that the State has no authority whatsoever over the Church, in any way (an Ecclesiocracy), was the view of Romanism, where the Church is judge of her own civil matters. While Church and State are coordinate and independent in their powers, yet materially they are subalternate and mutually subject to each other when they overlap. As all people are to seek first the Kingdom of God with the natural power they have (Mt. 6:33), so likewise the civil government ought to use its natural, God-given, civil power for the good of Christ’s Kingdom, the Church (Isa. 49:23; 60:10,12,16), including in civilly professing, protecting and promoting the True Religion, and civilly establishing it in the land. This also involves, according to WCF (1646) 23.3, that a Christian State is to civilly suppress false religions, heresies and Christian sects. This Extended Introduction to circa sacra outlines in detail and at length the older view of the original Westminster Confession (1646) and reformed orthodoxy, and is a gateway into puritan literature on the subject. The paper also explains the differences between the Reformation view of circa sacra and the later ‘Establishment Principle’ of the 1800’s Free Church of Scotland. Appended to the work is a section from the London presbyterian ministers’ Divine Right of Church Government (1646) on circa sacra: the most readable, systematic and brief setting forth of the older view of circa sacra (with most of its numerous necessary distinctions) from the Scriptures in English that this author is aware of.