Two Kingdoms?
Last time I said this about toleration:
‘Rubbing shoulders with such immoral people is inevitable it we are to live in the world, and it is desirable that we be in their company in order that they may hear of the gospel. This is an attitude of toleration to people who were not Christians . The NT church lived and worked among queers, some of which were converted to Christ (‘such were some of you’) .The Church may have to bear the charge of ‘bigotry’, but such talk is not to be fostered.’
In
Europe, in particular, Christians and in some cases others with views of a
religious kind are held and developed with the tacit belief
that their religion pervades the society in which they live. This in turn is because of the idea of the establishment of
Christianity as a arm of the state has become the default position. It wasn’t
always such. So, in the sixth century or so the Holy Roman Empire
emerged. Before that, Augustine lived in the birth pains of this Empire. Though
in the case of his attitude to the Donatists he employed armed force, the army
of a particular region of the Empire. Soon the top men in the faith were a part
of the elite who ruled the Empire.
In
the West the Holy Roman Empire lasted until the sixteenth century when
that alliance between the Protestant Christian church formed a church – state
alliance in England. And when besides the antics of Henry the VIII he became
the 'Defender of the Faith'. At the time when the Protestant magisterial reformation
occupied cities such as Strasbourg or Geneva, and the church
benefitted for the shielding of the arms and fortifications of the city forces,
not only freeing the church from persecution, under the umbrella
of the link with the state, used as a means of
church discipline.
So,
shamefully, Calvin was able to have Servetus, a heretic as far as
the Reformed were concerned, put to death by the city authorities of
Geneva. In Protestant England the King and his successors became ‘Defenders of
the Faith’. In Reformed Scotland, where the Westminster Confession of Faith
held sway from 1647, it was the law of the land, the part of the project of
‘Covenanted Uniformity’, ‘betwixt the Churches of Christ in the kingdoms of
Scotland, England and Ireland’. This became a reality only in Scotland. The
Scots are (in theory) still governed by Chapter 23 of the Westminster
Confession.
The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the
power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven: yet he hath
authority, and it is his duty, to take order, that unity and peace
be preserved in the church, that the truth of God be kept pure and
entire, that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and
abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordinances
of God.
In
England, Cromwellian England interfered by the death of Charles I in 1648/9,
and when in 1660 again kings as defenders of the faith was governed by the
re-establishment of the monarchy, in the person of Charles II, with the help of
the Act of Uniformity in 1660, which still holds in theory. From the
establishment of the Christian Religion came a different
interpretation of the place of the church and the wider society of
the New Testament, and in others in Europe Rome ruled.
In
terms of confessions, in time the
Westminster Confession was changed to conform with the American constitution,
and in England Dissent spawned its own Confessions it spawned, the
Savoy Declaration of Independency in 1658. In the chapter of the civil
magistrate included this: ‘It is lawful for Christians to accept and execute
the office of a magistrate, when called thereunto, in the management whereof,
as they ought specially to maintain justice and peace, according to the wholesome laws of each commonwealth; so
for that end they may lawfully now under the New Testament wage war upon just
and necessary occasion. The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith had a similar
wording for the civil magistrate.
This
view of the Protestant church and state that made the torture of
foes of the Christian church legal is by an extension of Romans 13
1-7, beginning ‘Let every person be subject to the governing authorities ‘ and
ending in v.5 paying taxes’ And also I Timothy 2.2-3 and I Peter 2.13.
Christians were to be good citizens. The Apostle’s status as a free Roman
citizen made it possible to gain his freedom from prison at
Philippi.(Acts 16.25f) But chiefly, by the policy of the adoption by Christian
churches as modelled on the Old Testament theocracy . And the recognition in the OT of the
sheltering role of the government. But all this was to be superseded by Christ’s assertion
that his kingdom was not of this world, Christ’s and the Apostles’ teaching of
the spirituality of the kingdom of God, and the nature of the kingship of Jesus
Christ.
In
I Corinthians 5 Paul made a difference between who are ‘insiders’,
professing Christians and the crowd we outsiders which we have to mix with. The
question here was , could Christians dine off food that had been dedicated to
an idol. In the course of discussing Christian behaviour in the world the
Apostle Paul stated that Christians are free to buy and eat it. He
clarified earlier advice about the company the Christians should keep. And
not go to law with another Christian.
The
Enightenment, secularism, and Dissent followed, in Protestantism in Europe, and
in the United States of America, when its constitution was
established and the copies of the Westminster Confession (to those who
subscribed to it) made consistent with the American constitution.
In
the light of this sketch, it supported toleration as it was historically until Christianity was
allowed became part as the apparatus of state. This is a course that the
woke don’t follow. In their activities there is no evidence of them taking
account of the government, rather of secretive behaviour. More likely they use
force, or deception, or through their use of political-style lobbying as a prelude to gaining
a change in the law.
God’s
kingdom, (mentioned by Paul) which transcends all other organisations, the
members of which worship Christ her king, need ‘room’ in order to
flourish 'in the present evil age'(Gal.1.4), agencies in education, literature
and society. The growth of such a kingdom, God’s kingdom, creates effects in
society, as you would expect, but not of a worldly, political character.
Politics should not enter the life of Christ’s kingdom, which is not of this
world. As our Saviour said 'render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and
to God the things that are God’s'. (Mark 12.17)
And
Paul said,
For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ….(2 Cor. 10.4,5)
Note
the repeated contrast of work ‘in the flesh’, which means here 'physical exertion ' in contrast to ‘divine power’. Paul refers to
two worlds here, a life of physicality, and a spiritual life. The work of the gospel is
‘not of the flesh but of divine power'.
Believers
are in these two worlds, and we need to make this clear to our children and the
rising generation, with wisdom and patience.
