Text: Psalms 110

I.         By merging the church and state, the state received a “weapon” to promote loyalty int its citizens

            A.        But the church also began using the state as a “weapon” to enforce its teachings

            B.        Psalms 110 is a prophecy about Christ conquering the nations. I’m sure the Catholic church saw this allowing them to control nations

                        1.         But notice that two things are missed

                        2.         Christ was to rule in the midst of his enemies

                                    a.         The blended church and state saw all members of society as a part of the church.

                                    b.         What happened to the enemies?

                        3.         God’s people were to be volunteers. But the state removed any choice.

II.        The justification

            A.        What about the great commission in Matthew 28:19-20?

                        1.         How do you convert in a society that technically claims to be all Christians?

                        2.         They argued that the great commission was for the pre-Constantine era and was fulfilled, so it no longer applied

            B.        Augustine was an early promoter of the blended church and state

                        1.         He argued from Luke 14:21-23 that the church had the right to compel people to become Christians

                        2.         “Now observe how that with reference to those who came in during the former period it was ‘bring them in’ and not ‘compel them,’ by which the incipient condition of the Church is signified, during which she was but growing toward the position of being able to compel. Since it was right by reason of greater strength and power to coerce men to the feast of eternal salvation therefore it was said later ... ‘Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in.” [Augustine, “Letter to Donatus”, Number 173, p.10]

                        3.         It was argued that the state should do the compelling for the church

            C.        The followers of Donatus threatened to walk out of what they saw as a fallen church.

                        1.         They argued from John 6:66-67 that Jesus did not force people to follow him. He even asked his apostles if they would leave.

                        2.         Augustine’s answer: “I hear that you are quoting that which is recorded in the Gospel, that when the seventy followers went back from the Lord they were left to their own choice in this wicked and impious desertion and that He said to the twelve remaining ‘Do you not also want to go?’ But what you fail to say is that at that time the Church was only just beginning to burst forth from the newly planted seed and that the saying had not as yet been fulfilled in her ‘All kings shall fall down before Him, all nations shall serve Him.’ It is in proportion to the more enlarged fulfillment of this prophecy that the Church now wields greater power – so that she may now not only invite but also compel men to embrace that which is good.” [Augustine, “Letter to Donatus”, Number 173, p.10].

            D.        Augustine also took Paul’s allegory in Galatians 4:21-31 and repurposed it

                        1.         He claimed Sarah represented voluntarism and Hagar represented coercion. Therefore, Augustine claimed that in the church there were two types of Christians: some join voluntarily, others are there because of coercion. After all Sara beat Hagar to get her to submit.

            E.        He claimed that Jesus compelled Paul to become a Christian by taking away his sight. “He did not get it back until he became a member of the Holy Church. You think no coercion should be used to deliver a man from his error; and yet see ... that God does this very thing.”

III.       The Results in the Middle Ages

            A.        Hilary of Poitiers wrote in 365, “The Church now terrifieth with threats of exile and dungeon and she who of old gained adherents in spite of dungeons and exile now brings men to faith by compulsion. She who was propagated by hunted priests now hunts priests in her turn ... This must be said in comparison with that Church which was handed down to us and which now we have lost; the fact is in men’s eyes and cries aloud.”

            B.        Pope Pelagius in 553 issued, “unto the coercing of heretics and schismatics the Church possesses the secular arm, to coerce in case men cannot be brought to sanity by reasonable argument.”

            C.        Charlemagne (Emperor Charles the Great, Emperor of what is now known as the Carolingian Empire from 800 to 814) issued an order that “all who stubbornly refuse Christian baptism shall be put to death.”

            D.        Sacconi, a Dominican Inquisitor, (1200-1263 A.D.) complained: “The heretics preach much from the Gospels and the Epistles and say among other things that a man should do no evil, should not lie nor swear. When they preach from the Gospels and the Epistles they corrupt them with their explanations – teaching and expounding the Scriptures being altogether forbidden to lay-folk. They say that their Church is the true Church and that the Roman Church is no Church but a Church of malignants. They reprobate Church wealth and ecclesiastical regalia, the high privilege of bishop and abbot, they seek to abolish all ecclesiastical privilege. They maintain that no one is to be coerced to the faith. They condemn the Church’s sacraments and say that a priest living in mortal sin cannot make the body of the Lord. They hold that transubstantiation takes place not in the hands of the priest but in the heart of him who receives worthily.” [Sacconi quoted by George Gordon Coulton, Inquisition and Liberty, 1938, p. 189].

IV.      The Results in the Reformation

            A.        Early on Luther opposed coercion. “Heretics must be converted with Scripture and not with fire!”

                        1.         He also said, “It is a fundamental right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions. One man’s religion neither helps nor harms another man. It is not in the nature of religion to coerce to religion, which must be adopted freely and not by force.”

            B.        Later on, Luther start losing ground and ask Urbanus Rhegius to solve the problem. Rhegius wrote, “The truth leaves you no choice; you must agree that the magistracy has the authority to coerce his subjects to the Gospel. And if you say, ‘Yes, but with admonition and well-chosen words but by force’ then I answer that to get people to the services with fine words and admonitions is the preacher’s duty, but to keep them there with recourse to force if need be and to frighten them away from error is the proper function of the rulers.”

                        1.         He also said, “It follows that our magistrates should punish heretics and faction-makers and exterminate them, not with less but with greater zeal than did the kings in the Old Testament.”

            C.        Henry Bullinger, successor to Zwingli, complained about those pulling way over the issue of coercion: “They say that one cannot and may not use force to compel anyone to accept the faith seeing that faith is a free gift from God. It is wrong, say they, to compel anyone by force or coercion to embrace the faith, or, to put anyone to death because of erring faith. It is an error, they assert, that in the Church any other sword is used than that of the divine Word. The secular kingdom, they hold, should be separate from the Church, and no civil ruler ought to exercise his authority there. The Lord has commanded, they hold, simply to preach the Gospel and not to compel anyone by force to accept it. The true Church of Christ, according to them, has this characteristic that it suffers and endures persecution but does not inflict it upon any.”

            D.        A man name Bucer wrote, “It is the magistrates’ duty not to tolerate that anyone assails openly or reviles the doctrine of the Gospel ... The notion that this is because such a person is seditious and constitutes a threat to the peaceful regiment is not itself enough; for he also is not to be tolerated in a Christian republic who refuses to be taught the things pertaining to the Kingship of Christ.”

                        1.         In justification, an associate, Adam Krafft, said, “It can happen that he who is coerced today may come willingly tomorrow ... and then is saved, and thanks his magistrate for coercing him.”

                        2.         Adam Krafft also claimed, “This did also the king of Nineveh when he commanded his subjects to fast ... So did also Nebuchadnezzar when he threatened with death all sacrilegious person. This imperial edict of Nebuchadnezzar teaches all Christian magistrates that they certainly have the prerogative to coerce men to the faith.” [Quellen Hesse, p. 102f]

                                    a.         They are using the examples of pagan kings who lived in societies that blended religion and government and attempting to apply this to Christianity. [Quellen Hesse, p. 110].

                                    b.         Worse is the use of a king trying to enforce idolatry. Does he forget that Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego were supported by God for defying Nebuchadnezzar’s orders? (Daniel 3)

            E.        John Calvin also followed this path, annoyed that people were saying that government was of this world while the church was spiritual. Calvin insisted that government was spiritual.

                        1.         One of his followers, Theodor Beza wrote: “After God had launched Christianity by unarmed apostles He afterward raised up kings by whose wisdom He intended to protect His Church ... They do not like it that civil laws are enacted against their wickedness, saying that the apostles have asked no such thing of kings – but these men do not consider that those were different times and that all things agree with their own times. What emperor had at that time believed in Christ, in days in which Psalms 2 was still in effect: ‘Why do the nations rage...’ When we invoke lawfully and divinely instituted protection against stubborn and incorrigible heretics we only do what the Word of God and the authority of the holy prophets assert.”

                        2.         Beza thought that Constantine had not gone far enough in punishing those who protested the blending of church and state. Beza thought they should have been put to death.

            F.        So while the reformation started with a protest against the Roman Catholic’s idea that all must be Roman Catholics, it eventually fell back into the same error.

                        1.         It was a natural consequence when civil power was used to enforce religious belief

V.        It was this unrelenting persecution of religious beliefs that were not a part of the blended church and state in Europe that led to the United States putting in the bill of rights that the state cannot establish a religion.

            A.        Sadly, this historical fact has been lost sight of. Instead of staying out of religion, the current trend is to make the state the enforcer of atheism