He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men.… The first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. --Athanasius, De Incarnatione
Protestantism has come to inherit a certain reputation. The story which is told, and which many children of the Reformation have come to enjoy, begins with the idea that it was modern, Protestant world which disenchanted the world, in Max Weber’s memorable phrase. It could perhaps be argued that the evidence against the Reformation is largely circumstantial—a matter of being in the wrong place at precisely the wrong time—except for the fact that so many modern Protestants want to take credit for the crime (particularly in the more historically-oriented traditions, Lutheranism and Calvinism). We are very happy to play the role of homewrecker in the early modern divorce between nature and grace.
The political terms of this divorce are central to the story: the Reformation cemented a new dualism of civil and spiritual authority, in which the civil—or temporal—realm was disenchanted of the meddling influences of the spiritual (which was identified with the sacerdotalism of the papalists). The medieval idea of two swords within one Christendom was replaced by the modern idea of Luther’s “two kingdoms,” in which the temporal had jurisdiction over this world, and the spiritual over the next. D.G. Hart argues along these lines that Protestantism was the capstone of Western political secularism:
By reducing the authority of the church in the secular or nonreligious sphere, Protestantism solidified the separation of church and state that had long characterized the West and came to dominate the modern era. Gone was the notion that revelation or churchly authorities govern the civil jurisdiction. Instead, with Protestantism… came the possibility for the study of and theorizing about politics to emerge as a separate sphere.
Oliver O’Donovan suggests that this sort of story-telling can be dismissed, in part, as self-congratulatory (and perhaps misguidedly so). A further question might arise as to why this particular telling of the story neglects a certain strand of early Reformation thought, one which did not seek to divorce nature from grace, and yet stands out as strikingly Protestant. For in between the theoretical worlds of monadic nature and monadic grace there lies a hypostasis —it is here that an alternate narrative of Protestant political authority resides. The parallelism between the metaphysical realms of nature and grace, and the political realms of the civil and the ecclesiastical, suggest that our view of the nature of political authority cannot be divorced from our view of the paradigmatic significance of the act of Incarnation. For it is at this hypostatic juncture that the realms of nature and of grace most pointedly intersect, and must therefore inform our view of political authority.
The Revolution Before the Reformation
Is evangelical law an oxymoron?
In other terms, can the gospel be used as an adjective—or otherwise—to qualify something natural, such as civil law? The question is by no means recent; perhaps some of the most formative discussion of the issue took place in the few centuries leading up to the Reformation. The common interpretation of the period suggests that the late medieval ages saw a gradual shift away from an older Platonic hierarchy which the Scholastics had done much to establish. The narrative told by such medieval political scholars as Quentin Skinner and Walter Ullmann is that the thousand year reign of Christendom imposed a deceptively fragile unity on Europe—both theologically and politically. Oliver O’Donovan suggests that this fragile unity was held together by the formula of Pope Gelasius (492-496), “Two there are … by which this world is ruled.” That is, by the spiritual power of clerics and the royal power of kings. A general wholeness of Christendom—however tense or conditional—typified the early medieval tradition. The paradigm was essentially Platonic: a hierarchy descending by means of reason or belief from higher spiritual knowledge (and power) to the material. This hierarchy was mirrored politically in an authority structure which descended from God to the Church and thence to the King and to the People. This hierarchy posits that all Christian kings owed their allegiance to the Church, with the Roman pope at its head. A consequence of this hierarchy is that political science, as such, did not really exist before the 13th century, for any questions of political authority were more a matter of theology, not political science. As the papal apologist Giles of Rome (c. 1243-1316) stated in a finely crafted syllogism:
All temporal things are placed under the dominion and power of the church….The power of the supreme pontiff governs souls. Souls ought rightly to govern bodies…. But temporal things serve our bodies. It follows then that the priestly power which governs souls also rules over bodies and temporal things.
The reintroduction of Aristotle to the Western world in the 13th century had the effect of energizing the latent arguments of the critics of the Christendom which Giles wished to defend. Walter Ullman goes so far as to suggest that the Aristotelian “cosmological revolution” had the deepest influence in the “sphere of governmental science.” A new flood of scholars wanted to reveal the glories of Aristotle to the Platonically-stifled Middle Ages. The forced unity of Plato and his Scholastic children was gradually giving way to the more organic and diverse natural world of Aristotle. “Aristotle himself had shattered the (Platonic) wholeness standpoint by stating that man and citizen corresponded to two different categories of thought: the good citizen need not be a good man, and vice-versa.” Dante Alighieri fashioned his political theology after this Aristotelian influence, arguing that the State was inherently embedded in nature and therefore “an item of the whole cosmos,” and out from under the direct authority of the Church. God still works as the “supreme agens” in the natural world, but makes distinction between His operations in the natural and the supernatural worlds.
Perhaps the most pronounced argument for the divorce between politics and the supernatural was advanced by Marsilius of Padua (c. 1275-1342). Few details of his life are known, and it seems fairly certain that his ideas carried far more weight centuries after his death than during his brief rise to notoriety. Combining both an Aristotelian naturalism and the voluntarism of his contemporary, William of Ockham, Marsilius developed a concept of political authority which explicitly rejected any connection to the supernatural realm of grace, and based it firmly in the vox populi. Marsilius’ political voluntarism argues that will, and not abstract reason, is the essence of law. In other words, law is what you make it. Law must be spoken of in the lower-case; there is no Greater Law up in the sky to which all earthly forms should be conformed. Rather, “law is made, not given, and it is made by the community of citizens.”
The ideas of Marsilius were a clear break from the thought of Aquinas, although both were influenced by Aristotle. Alexander D’entreves points out that where Aquinas “proposed to conciliate” the realms of nature and grace, Marsilius “draws a clear-cut and impassable line of demarcation.” What has nature to do with grace? Or grace with nature?
In an interesting passage of his Defensor Pacis, Marsilius makes a biblical defense of his position. Calling John Chrysostom to his defense, he argues that if Christ wanted His new world to be ruled by priests with coercive powers, He would have structured it after the Mosaic law, with all its earthly blessings and punishments. And, Marsilius goes on, if priests did have coercive power to enforce the law it would hurt those upon whom they exercised it: “since the person who observed [these laws] under coercion would be helped not at all toward eternal salvation.” The priest should help his flock toward eternal salvation and not confuse them by meddling in earthly affairs. D.G. Hart, among others, points to Marsilius at this point as a forerunner of Protestantism.
And in truth, Marsilius was remembered with a great deal of affection by certain 16th century reformers. The value of Marsilius to the English reformers, in particular, is clear. The circumstances of Marsilius’ lord protector in the 14th century were uncannily similar to the English King Henry VIII’s domestic troubles in the 16th. Henry VIII, of course, needed an heir, and a new wife to facilitate this. And, just like Marsilius’ king, he found the pope painfully insensitive to his dynastic needs.
At this time, Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII, recalled Marsilius’ old arguments in Defensor Pacis. If a king needs to enact a divorce (or any civil policy) for the benefit of the country, he should do so without needing to defer to the pope. What right did the realm of grace have to interfere with the realm of nature? Even Marsilius’ more extreme forms of voluntarism were embraced by the English theorists. It was on similar grounds that many of the English theorists objected to John Knox’s more idealistic reforms north of the border.
Because of the rhetoric of certain Protestants, it seems necessarily to now make a gratuitous caveat—Marsilius was not a Protestant. Nor was he called the “morning star” of the Reformation. That title belongs to another. Certainly his radically naturalized theory of political authority held practical advantage for 16th century Protestants who found themselves caught between violently foaming papists and potentially amiable civil authorities. But to suggest that Marsilius was motivated by the same primarily reformational impulses as John Calvin or Martin Luther requires a leap of faith few seem ready to make.
An alternative reading of the period is implied by William Cavanaugh, who argues that emerging nation-state of the 16th century used the period of theological upheaval to its advantage by playing each side against each other: the conflicts “were not simply a matter of conflict between ‘Protestantism’ and ‘Catholicism,’ but were fought largely for the aggrandizement of the emerging State over the decaying remnants of the medieval ecclesial order.” James Jordan also suggests that the reformers often found themselves cornered into seeking the protection of the emerging nation-state, making, in essence, a Faustian bargain in exchange for the freedom to practice their religion.
Now once we have disabused Protestants of the historical claim to be principled rebels against clerical authority (in line with Marsilius and the Aristotelians), what is left? What was the reformational spirit concerning political authority?
It may be clichéd to attempt to capture anything so vague as the “spirit” of something so broad as the Reformation. However, it does not seem as ambitious to suggest that at least certain strands of the Reformation were self-consciously trying to provide a legitimate tertia via in the midst of what was essentially a civil war between the papal apologists and the rising Statist party. Oliver and Joan O’Donovan suggest that Marsilius had served to solidify and intensify this civil war, making “secular political monism the counterface of the dominant hierocratic monism of the papalists.” The issue then is whether, and how, the early Reformation stood outside this raging civil war.
Against the Monads
Is evangelical law an oxymoron?
Ironically, both the Marsilians and the papalists come to the same answer. Both suppose a monadic system of authority, one civil and the other clerical. Marsilius argued for an exclusively temporal world which was ruled just as exclusively by secular powers. The papalists argued for the inherent superiority of the world of grace over the world of nature, and therefore concluded that grace should rule temporally over nature.
The proto-Reformational writings of John Wyclif suggests to us that evangelical law—or lordship (dominium)—is the proper alternative to these two monadic systems. The O’Donovans propose that Wyclif introduced a reformational political theology which hearkened back to early medievalism—“a coherent communal ethic that is Augustinian, Christ centered, and idealist.” The source of Wyclif’s political authority is neither voluntaristic, nor strictly Platonic. Giles of Rome had argued that the soul was superior to the body, and therefore should have dominion over it in fullness of power (plenitudo potestatis). In his treatise, On Civil Lordship, Wyclif provides an incarnational alternative:
Again, Christ is the supreme doctor of the human soul (a matter of faith); but he would not treat the soul, his beloved bride, quite rightly, if he left her on earth and liable to moral sickness without leaving behind one law sufficient to ensure her health; therefore he must have left such a law. But with the perfect direction of the soul, the body, too, and all the goods of fortune befalling it are accounted for. So he left a law sufficient for the regulation of both body and soul and of whatever goods of fortune might befall.
This all-sufficient law is Christ’s evangelical law—“the law expounded by Christ in the course of his pilgrimage on earth to meet the need of the church militant for government.” This law, as Wyclif stresses, is not limited to the supernatural aspects of law, but should serve as the foundation for human law, as well. Contrary to Marsilius, he argues that non-evangelical human laws are not more effective in maintaining the peace of church and society. Rather, “any just laws … are Gospel law.” And contrary to the papalists, he argues that the medieval development of canon law is merely a human effort to supplant Gospel law: “For when you take away the theological material from canon law, what you have left is simply civil law.” Wyclif advances against two fronts here, suggesting that both clerical and civil authorities have been liable of offenses against evangelical law. And in both cases he advises that the community of Christ should “discreetly” make efforts to correct the offending party—whether clerical or civil.
Much of Wyclif’s political theology returns to an earlier medieval idea of authority, Augustinian and Gelasian in tenor. Drawing on Old Testament parallels, he reasons that God has two representatives in His community: “the king in temporal matters and the priest in spiritual.” The temporal power, acting under the conditional authority of an age that is passing away, “must restrain the disobedient with severity.” The priest, however, acts with the authority of “the age of grace,” and should therefore rule with power tempered by mercy—thereby acting as a type of Christ, who combines the powers of king and priest in His already-but-not-yet Kingdom.
Wyclif admits that—following Old Testament typology—kingship maintains a sort of eminence over priesthood, as both Melchizedek and Christ appear first as king, then priest. However, this does not lead directly to a form of State priority over Church. For while the Church—contrary to its late medieval claims to temporal power—must guard its other-worldly character, it is also established as the herald of a coming Kingdom. The civil power fills a necessary role until the fullness of the eschaton, but it is only a kingly steward, not the true proprietor of the earth. And, on this account, it must be humble, for “civil lordship is occasioned by sin and of human institution.” It is heir to all the weakness of flesh: “this is Augustine’s understanding of civil laws, that, for the most part, they are shot through with wickedness” Along these same lines, Oliver O’Donovan argues that the secularity of the civil power should reflect the State’s eschatological status:
Applied to political authorities, the term “secular” should tell us that they are not agents of Christ, but are marked for displacement when the rule of Christ is finally disclosed. They are Christ’s conquered enemies; yet they have an indirect testimony to give, bearing the marks of his sovereignty imposed upon them, negating their pretensions and evoking their acknowledgement.
Therefore, the Church must act not only as priest, but also as a prophet of the coming Kingdom. It must denounce the libido dominandi of the human State, judging its wars, its slavery, its tyranny. And yet, in order to maintain its prophetic witness, the Church must not be compromised by wealth or property, and must stand—in a certain sense—outside the system, while still working to change the system through its Christ-appointed means.
The essential political theology of Wyclif manifests the early Reformation tertia via and provides against the two reigning monisms of his age. These monisms, as Wyclif’s theology insists, resist the necessary eschatological tension of Christ’s statement concerning the nature of his kingdom in Matthew 18. One must be in this world, yet not look to this world for one’s authority. One must engage the realm of nature, and look for a certain sacralization of nature—one immanent but distinct. Until the fullness of time we must inhabit two worlds which are in fundamental tension. This tension and fullness of natures is just as real and necessary in theopolitics as it is in our Christology.
When David Is King
Can evangelical law work?
It seems easier to talk of this tension between worlds when an unfaithful Saul is on the throne. A prophet would require courage to confront such a king, but would have his course of opposition set clearly before him. And yet, what if God intervenes, casts the tyrant from his throne, and establishes in his place David, His faithful son? What if David consults with Samuel the prophet and asks for wisdom concerning the evangelical law? How does one maintain the tension after the king kisses the Son?
The question is an eschatological one. Is the Gospel a present prescription or a future promise? Again, a common reading of political eschatology places the Reformation squarely on the side of the Gospel as promise. O’Donovan characterizes this reading as “the Protestant thesis,” which counters the late medieval and early modern natural law theories which interpreted the lex evangelica as a supplementing of Scripture with judgments from other (presumably more natural) sources. Protestantism, by means of sola Scriptura and the law-gospel distinction, was supposed to have restored the Gospel to its proper (and more restrained) domain of eternal salvation. The problem with this “thesis,” as O’Donovan argues, is that acts of “law” are imbued with “a certain alienation … for they are cut off from our hope, and can tell us nothing of God’s final word of grace in Christ.”
It should be conceded that several Reformation traditions do seem content to accept this “alienation,” whereby the realm of grace grants independence to the realm of nature. Luther’s two kingdoms theory falls generally into this distinction, as do the more Erastian tendencies of mature Anglicanism. However, again, we find examples which counter these more compliant traditions.
One counter-example is set out in Martin Bucer’s 1550 work, De Regno Christi. Bucer found himself in exile from his native Straussburg due to his opposition to unfavorable terms of peace which Charles V had imposed on the defeated German Protestants in the Smalcaldic War. After taking a position at the University of Cambridge, Bucer began work on his treatise, which he addressed to the young King Edward VI. At that time, Edward—the son of Henry VIII—was viewed by many as the great hope of English Calvinism. In his dedication, Bucer wrote to the king of his hope for the “fuller acceptance and reestablishment of the Kingdom of Christ,” a project he trusted Edward to lead forward. The reformation of Edward’s father had been tenuous, at best—often driven by less-than-Reformed impulses. Bucer, like many of his contemporaries, wanted Edward to provide for a true, full, reformation of the English church, something he believed would begin with a reform of the relation between the church and the Christian state. David Wright comments that Bucer hoped “King Edward would protect the church as it trained the people in the ethics of love and service. Like King David, he should hold the sword, but also provide a reasonable autonomy for the church.”
Bucer argues that establishing a faithful David (or Edward) on the throne does not break down the inherent separation between the heavenly kingdom and the earthly one. This argument, in itself, is nothing novel. However, Bucer also advances this distinction in an interesting way: the church should maintain its distinction, not by giving up its kingdom-nature, but by forming itself as a counter-kingdom to the temporal one:
There is a similarity between the kingdoms of the world and of Christ, in that, as do the kings of the world, so also Christ our heavenly King wants his subjects to be received into and sealed for his Kingdom, to be gathered into his congregation, to come together in his name, and to be ruled by his ministries by means of certain covenants and sacraments of an external nature.
The essential difference between the “external” signs of citizenship is that Christ’s Kingdom binds its citizens to an eternal life, “beyond the power of earthly kings.” Bucer reminds Edward that Christ, too, is a king—in fact, holds kingship over largely the same individuals who owe fealty to Edward. Christ, like Edward, is covenantally bound to provide, not only for his citizens’ spiritual needs, but also for earthly concerns, “since no one should come empty-handed into the sight of the Lord in solemn assemblies.” The Church is a distinct polis with an incarnational telos. The poor are fed. Individuals are trained for their callings, as the “Spirit distributes gifts to each individual, so that everyone contributes something to the common advantage” (ad communem utilitatem). Bucer acknowledges that earthly kings own the same responsibilities. And yet, it is not in the power of earthly kings to offer what the Kingdom of Christ can: “a willingness to share readily.” The Church, through the Spirit, renews the lives of its citizens so that they are “willing and strong as possible for this salutary sharing of their wealth and patience in poverty.” Bucer encourages earthly kings to follow the example of Christ, as much as possible, in establishing this work. And yet, hoc proprium est regni Christi et plane obtinentis—this work belongs properly and in fullness to the Kingdom of Christ.
True kings are therefore types of Christ, as well as types of Old Testament kings. But in this role, the Christian king must recognize that he has not supplanted the Church, nor assumed the role of priest. For while the Christian king can expect and require the lawful submission of not only Christian laymen, but also the priests, the Christian king must himself submit. For kingdom submits to Kingdom, and vice versa. The tension is clear, and is not something to be ignored. The respectful terms of mutual submission (until the eschaton, when things will be made clear) can easily be undone, should either the state or the church lose its piety. For this reason, when Bucer recommends the kinds of clerical advisors which the king should appoint, he counsels against appointing “priests and theologians of grand titles…who have waded into the lavish stipends of these most holy offices.” Instead, he should appoint “those whom he discovers by their fruits to be endowed and aflame beyond others with the knowledge and the love of the Kingdom of Christ, just as ‘David consulted’ about the renewing of religion.”
The Church therefore serves the role of priest and prophet, while owing service to two kings—one a great King and one a lesser king. The kind of service rendered unto the lesser king might vary, based on the historical circumstances—but the prophetic witness must be maintained regardless. Samuel can render service in succession to both rebellious Saul and faithful David. The prophet can call both kings to judgment (1 Samuel 13:11-13; 2 Samuel 12:1-12). The advantage of the righteous king is that he will respond well to that judgment (2 Samuel 12:13). While the prophetic call requires historically-viable courses of action, the essence of the call remains the same: to stand blameless of compromise, to intercede on behalf of the nation, and to assure the nation of the certainty of God’s judgment on their works.
Conclusion
And if, as they say, it were unsuitable for the Word to reveal Himself through bodily acts, it would be equally so for Him to do so through the works of the universe. His being in creation does not mean that He shares its nature; on the contrary, all created things partake of His power. Similarly, though He used the body as His instrument, He shared nothing of its defect, but rather sanctified it by His indwelling. --Athanasius, De Incarnatione
The Incarnation is at first glance a source of immense, even cosmic, tension. The idea that the divine could be joined in hypostatic union to the human baffles comprehension (especially to the Gentile mind, as Athanasius reminds us). It seems a great humiliation for Grace to enter Nature. And yet, ironically, it is this “humiliation” which is also the justification of Grace. For Grace had created Nature good, and “it was impossible, therefore, that God should leave man to be carried off by corruption, because it would be unfitting and unworthy of Himself.” The justification of Grace is contained in its grace-ing of Nature. Its vindication is found when it breaks the metaphysical boundaries which are supposed to bind Nature, permeating every last corner of a corrupted world which had forgotten the goodness of its original state. And so the Incarnational Kingdom promises to establish a peace between justice and mercy, between Nature and Grace. In this, the Incarnation gives us the third paradigm, which stands against any monadic hierarchology—as Yves Congar termed it—of Grace over Nature, or Nature over Grace. The Incarnation gives us something else: graced nature.
This is the reformational spirit which stands apart from the civil war of the monads and the power struggles of canonist and royalist. The story of the Reformation as demythologizer has grown tired. And yet, the fact that it is still told is itself a cautionary tale, or perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy. Much of modern Protestantism, in attempting to hold off the swarms of natural law idealists, has fallen back to an anti-Incarnational doctrine of political authority. Any public manifestation of our faith is often viewed with suspicion. The notion that the public sphere could be “sanctified…by His indwelling” is rebuked with Marsilian fervor.
And yet, the Incarnation itself appears as a theopolitical renewal, a pledge that “the Lord touched all parts of creation, and freed and undeceived them all from every deceit.” It is itself the paradigm of a new creation, the good omen of a coming Kingdom. Nature may still groan in anticipation of a glory to come, but the firstfruits—the foretastes of glory—are already here. The Incarnation reveals and intensifies this longing (Romans 8:23)—but it also reveals and intensifies the mystery of Christ and His Body (Ephesians 5:23). Christ’s Kingdom is here in His Body while He still sits at the Father’s right hand; the Church is therefore left in a position of eschatological and incarnational tension, but it does so having already been vindicated. It has already received its commission to disciple the nations, and can therefore reveal to Nature the reason for its groaning, and so gift the world with a taste of the royal glory of things to come.
