HC1315: EARLY CHURCH

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HC1315 EARLY CHURCH

• Church and Civilization

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• Matthew 2819 - Mark 11 19 Go therefore and
  make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in
  the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
  Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey
  everything that I have commanded you. And
  remember, I am with you always, to the end of the
  age.
• Matthew 714 14 For the gate is narrow and the
  road is hard that leads to life, and there are
  few who find it.

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• As soon as a prince declared a church to be a
  community with special privileges, or a
  distinguished member of the civil world, the
  corruption of that church was begun and almost
  irrevocably decided.
• Schleiermacher, On Religion, tr. Oman, 120f.

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• For when the king is a Christian, then the group
  of the mighty ones who are his associates follow
  him at once. . .and when the king and his mighty
  ones have become Christian, or as so-called, then
  more and more follow. . .and then when the whole
  nation has become Christian, then. . .then come
  silk and velvet, and stars and ribbons, and all
  the most exquisite refinements, and the many
  thousands per year. The many thousandsthis is
  blood money! For it was blood money Judas
  received for Christs bloodand these thousands
  and millions were also blood money, which was
  procured for Christs blood and by betraying
  Christianity and transforming it into
  worldliness.
• Kierkegaard, Attack upon Christendom, tr. Lowrie,
  36.

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Tragedy of Church and State

• Church and state blended into single cultural
  mix.

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Tragedy of Church and State

• 2) Christians employ police power of the state
  against heretics.

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Tragedy of Church and State

• 3) The danger of mass belief to the integrity of
  the faith

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Fall of Rome to Alaric 410 A.D.
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Augustine, City of God

• Civitas terrena Civitas diaboli
• Origin in fratricide (Romulus kills Remus)
• Roman pietas based on avarice, ambition, pride
  (Sallust)
• Self-love peace
• Civitas terrena et civitas caelestis(Niccolo
  Polano ca. 1460, Paris )

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The Christian position implied two classes of
duties, spiritual and secular, which might on
occasion come into apparent opposition but which
could not be ultimately reconcilable, and
similarly it implied two institutional
organizations which remained distinct, though
each needed, and in all normal cases received,
the support and aid of the other. George
Sabine, A History of Political Philosophy (3rd
ed.), p. 186
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The barbarian inheritanceboth from the remote
Bronze Age invasions of the second millennium
B.C. and from the more immediate Germanic,
Scandinavian, and steppe invasions of the first
millennium A.D.made European society more
thoroughly warlike than any other civilized
society on the globe, excepting the Japanese. But
it was the Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian
inheritances, however attenuated during the Dark
Age, that provided the fundamental frame for the
elaboration of high medieval and modern European
civilization. This inheritance was shot through
with contrariety. Europeans confronted unresolved
and unresolvable tensions between the primacy of
the territorial state as the natural unit of
human society and the claim of the Church to
govern human souls tensions between faith and
reason, each claiming to be the pre-eminent path
to truth tensions between naturalism and
metaphysical symbolism as the ideal of art. The
barbarian ingredient of European tradition
introduced still other contradictionsviolence
vs. law, vernacular vs. Latin, nation vs.
Christendom. Yet these polar antitheses were
built into the very fundament of European society
and have never been either escaped or permanently
resolved. . .
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Quite possibly western civilization incorporated
into its structure a wider variety of
incompatible elements than did any other
civilization of the world and the prolonged and
restless growth of the West, repeatedly rejecting
its own potentially classical formulations may
have been related to the contrarieties built so
deeply into its structure. William McNeill,
The Rise of the West, p. 539
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• Matthew 2215-22 15 Then the Pharisees went and
  plotted to entrap him in what he said. 16 So
  they sent their disciples to him, along with the
  Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are
  sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance
  with truth, and show deference to no one for you
  do not regard people with partiality. 17 Tell
  us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay
  taxes to the emperor, or not?" 18 But Jesus,
  aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting
  me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the
  coin used for the tax." And they brought him a
  denarius. 20 Then he said to them, "Whose head
  is this, and whose title?" 21 They answered,
  "The emperor's." Then he said to them, "Give
  therefore to the emperor the things that are the
  emperor's, and to God the things that are God's."
  22 When they heard this, they were amazed and
  they left him and went away.

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This saying opened up a new section in the
history of the relationship between politics and
religion. . .It is precisely this separation of
the authority of the state and sacral authority,
the new dualism that this contains, that
represents the origin and the permanent
foundation of the western idea of freedom. From
now on there were two societies related to each
other but not identical with each other, neither
of which had this character of totality. The
state is no longer itself the bearer of a
religious authority that reaches into the
ultimate depths of conscience, but for its moral
basis refers beyond itself to another community.
This community in its turn, the Church,
understands itself as a final moral authority
which however depends on voluntary adherence and
is entitled only to spiritual but not to civil
penalties, precisely because it does not have the
status the state has of being accepted by all as
something given in advance.i i. Joseph
Cardinal Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism Politics,
tr. Robert Nowell (New York Crossroads, 1988),
160f.