The Power of the Sword

Today, I'd like to take a first pass with you, my friends, about a topic that I find difficult, in large part because this is a topic wherein I believe that Luther made serious errors. I refer specifically to the relationship between Christians and civil government.

Let me start by saying that the New Testament is deeply divided on this question.

In one corner, we have Jesus of Nazareth, Galilean peasant and carpenter.

It is worth considering for a moment what it meant that he was a carpenter. Some might think that carpentry is a profession, and this puts him one step higher in the class hierarchy of the time than mere merchants and farmers. A comfortable, but unlikely point of view. Farmers owned land. Fishermen owned boats and nets. The tradesmen of the towns were day laborers, people without land or capital. They were at the bottom rung of legitimate society, and were barely hanging on.

Jesus' public preaching was largely devoted to the concept of the kingdom of God, a vision of a radically just society centered on God, which he raised in contrast and opposition to the extractive government of Roman occupation and Jewish collaboration that oppressed him and people like him. And the Roman occupiers, assisted by their Jewish collaborators, killed him because of his message.

In another corner, we have Paul of Tarsus.

Paul was both a Jew and a Roman citizen. After his Damascus road experience, he would repeatedly use his Roman citizenship to appeal to the Roman governors for protection. Needless to say, his attitude towards Roman civil government was very different from Jesus'. Here is a hugely significant passage:

Romans 13:1-4 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.

Think about this for a moment. “For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.” OK, Paul, how then do you reconcile Jesus' conduct with his treatment at Roman hands?!

This is not to say that Paul's position on this question was entirely opposed to Jesus'. Both realized that it would be counterproductive to use violence against the Roman regime. In Jesus' case, this meant a taking his message forcefully but peacefully to the center of Jewish collaboration, and therefore facing the certainty of death. He hoped that his death would change things. In Paul's case, he seems to have been more concerned for the safety of the tiny band of Christians then in Rome, and he did not want them to act in a way that bring them to the attention of the authorities. It is worth noting, of course, that the Romans killed Paul too. His confidence in the benign treatment men of good conduct could expect from authorities proved to be sadly mistaken in the end, a simple fact that people who like to quote this passage never seem to remember.

Finally, in the third corner, we have Martin Luther, a former monk, and a professor of Old Testament at the University of Wittenberg, under the protection of Prince Fredrick III, Elector of Saxony.

Martin, too, faced a deadly threat. His excommunication by the Catholic Church after the Diet of Worms meant that he was an outlaw, and someone that could be legally killed by anyone. So Luther would be drawn to a Pauline view—Fredrick was his protector. So for Luther, the government (which protected him) was good, and the Catholic Church (which threatened him) was bad. These views came into internal collision at the Diet at Augsburg, where his proxies faced the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, emphatically both Catholic and the personification of government. And while Charles would very much have preferred a Holy Roman Empire unitedly Catholic, he had his problems too, the Turkish siege of Vienna had just been lifted, and he feared they would come back and attack a Roman Empire divided by religious controversy. So Luther's protectors took a careful tactical approach. The would not give Charles what he wanted (an empire unitedly Catholic), but they would give him what he needed, a promise both of peace in the present, and their support in the war against the Turks.

Thus, the Augsburg Confession begins:

Most Invincible Emperor, Caesar Augustus, Most Clement Lord: Inasmuch as Your Imperial Majesty has summoned a Diet of the Empire here at Augsburg to deliberate concerning measures against the Turk, that most atrocious, hereditary, and ancient enemy of the Christian name and religion, in what way, namely, effectually to withstand his furor and assaults by strong and lasting military provision; and then also concerning dissensions in the matter of our holy religion and Christian Faith, that in this matter of religion the opinions and judgments of the parties might be heard in each other's presence; and considered and weighed among ourselves in mutual charity, leniency, and kindness, in order that, after the removal and correction of such things as have been treated and understood in a different manner in the writings on either side, these matters may be settled and brought back to one simple truth and Christian concord, that for the future one pure and true religion may be embraced and maintained by us, that as we all are under one Christ and do battle under Him, so we may be able also to live in unity and concord in the one Christian Church.

and later says

Of the Worship of Saints they teach that the memory of saints may be set before us, that we may follow their faith and good works, according to our calling, as the Emperor may follow the example of David in making war to drive away the Turk from his country. For both are kings.

A consequence of all of this has been a detachment by Lutherans from the political sphere, and a general acquiescence in the activities of the civil governments of their day. This was not especially problematic for Lutherans, until Hilter's government came to power. At this point, most Lutherans acquiesced, a moral lapse of historic proportion. Yes, we point with pride to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose (mostly) non-violent opposition to Hitler's regime would ultimately cost him his life, but at a point when the world needed more Bonhoeffers, he is our one example.

So where does this leave us? I think, first of all, we have to acknowledge that Paul got something important wrong—there are regimes which are so unjust that we must oppose them. But both Jesus and Paul were right in using non-violent techniques. History has judged people who used non-violent opposition to unjust regimes in a very positive way: Jesus himself, Bonhoeffer, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King, Jr., to name a few.

As a citizen of the US, I believe that our polity, in which we have a secular government (often, as now, lead by men of faith), which guarantees religious freedom, and which seeks to maintain an orderly society, is, of all the alternatives, the one most likely to be just.

But beyond this, I think that we need to participate actively in governments like ours. We simply cannot assume that they will act in just ways.

Peace