Protestants: The Radicals Who Made the Modern World. Alec Ryrie

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СКАЧАТЬ are still outwardly mired in sin. In other words, Christians live simultaneously in two worlds. As redeemed and regenerate believers, they live for God and do not need laws to live by any more than trees need laws to tell them how to grow. But as sinners, subject to human frailty, they both need and deserve the smack of firm discipline.

      This is Luther’s theory of the “two kingdoms”, the foundation of Protestant political theory. There is an earthly kingdom: the kingdom of secular politics, a place of law, justice, and punishment. Its purpose is to restrain human evil so that some semblance of peace and order is possible in this world. That is a limited aim but not an ignoble one. God has ordained this kingdom, and Christians can serve it, whether as princes, lawyers, or executioners. But existing alongside it, and far more important than it, is the kingdom of heaven, whose only king is Christ. Here there is no law, and no coercion, because all true Christians are one another’s willing servants. And this is where Christians’ hearts should be set, not on the lumpen business of human politics. It is an idea that has echoed through the centuries.

      Plainly, however, it does not answer the question posed by Luther’s title. Whenever two kingdoms exist side by side, there are boundary disputes. Where does the line fall? Luther had some partial answers. He argued that princes could regulate practical features of church life such as finance, property, and governance, but could not trespass onto matters of faith or doctrine. He did not spell out how to deal with issues which straddle that line. He did at least tackle some of the obvious hard cases. Could princes punish heresy? No, because errors should be corrected by loving admonition from ministers, not by persecution. Could they ban books? No. He suggested that if they tried, a Christian should reply,

      Gracious sir, I owe you obedience in body and property; command me within the limits of your authority on earth, and I will obey. But if you command me to believe or to get rid of certain books, I will not obey; for then you are a tyrant and overreach yourself.

      Luther even argued that if a prince orders his people to fight in an unjust war, it is their duty to disobey him. Importantly, though, such resistance should always be passive. You should refuse an unjust order and then submit peacefully to punishment for that refusal. It is a bold theory, but not a practical one.⁸

      Luther managed to maintain this position for the rest of his life. He happily accepted various princes’ patronage and support. Yet he could still bite, or at least bark at, the hands that fed him. When princes enriched themselves with Church property, he called them robbers. When a small Thuringian town tried to expel its pastor in 1543, Luther vigorously protested on two-kingdoms grounds: “You have not instituted the office, but God’s Son alone has done so. . . . Keep to your own office and leave God’s rule to him.”⁹ When he learned about the defensive pact that the Protestant princes and cities had agreed to in 1529, he angrily accused them of faithlessness for trusting in human aid rather than in God.

      Yet pacts were made, and larger cities were not so easy to boss around. In practice, princes disliked laying down their powers at the gates of Christ’s kingdom. Luther’s Renaissance-minded colleague Philip Melanchthon took a more pragmatic view. If princes were called to punish sin in this world, surely that included punishing sin in the Church? So, surely, they had a right – indeed, a duty – forcibly to reform a corrupt church in their territory, by, for example, expelling clergy who would not renounce the pope and imposing a new, Lutheran order of service? Indeed, is this not actually a prince’s most important calling and responsibility?

      Luther was forced to concede the point. Plainly, during the current crisis, with the Church confined in its popish dungeon, no one but a prince could set it free. But he insisted that this was a temporary expedient. Once settled churches were established, princes must relinquish their hold. Likewise, he admitted that the princes should suppress Anabaptists and other “fanatics”. However, he denied that this was religious persecution. It was simply the suppression of rebellion or the punishment of blasphemy, which was legitimate, he argued tendentiously, because openly defying God was a denial of natural justice.

      His princely allies could live with the requirement that at some unspecified point in the future they would have to step back from their hands-on role in church life. Only slowly did they begin to argue that that time might never come. The duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg declared that he would always have an obligation to protect and oversee his church, like the kings of ancient Israel. Inexorably, this became Lutheranism’s entrenched orthodoxy. In 1555, German princes were granted legal authority to determine their subjects’ religion.¹⁰

      It was not too bad a deal for the reformers. Their princely allies might be overbearing, but they were sincere enough. Indeed, because they were now claiming that God had called them to reform their churches, they had to be seen to be doing so in good earnest. Still, the preachers needed the princes more than the princes needed the preachers, and both sides knew it.

      A notorious crisis in 1539–40 showed just how badly wrong this could go. Philip, landgrave of Hesse, was one of the most powerful Lutheran princes. He was also a walking scandal. He had made a political marriage at the age of eighteen and had disliked his wife from the first – not that it stopped him from fathering ten children by her. His unabashed adultery was embarrassing, but he was tempted by a more radical solution: bigamy, like the Old Testament patriarchs. In this new religious world, when old rules were up for renegotiation in the name of Christian liberty, why not? The theologians disapproved, but not unreservedly. Luther had once publicly teased his wife with the prospect of polygamy, and Melanchthon had at one point suggested bigamy as a solution to King Henry VIII’s marital crisis. In 1539, a brush with illness and the appearance of a suitable young lady crystallized Philip’s determination. He gave Luther and Melanchthon a blunt ultimatum: if they did not support him, he would seek the pope’s blessing instead.

      They gave in. Of course they did. How could they not? Finding a sliver of theological justification, in December 1539 they reluctantly advised that a fresh marriage could proceed. They insisted that the whole affair be concealed, because “this act was not defensible before the world and the imperial laws”. Keeping such an explosive secret would probably always have been impossible, but in the event Philip scarcely tried. To Luther’s horror, in March 1540 he openly celebrated his new marriage, and the whole rotten scandal burst open. It permanently damaged Philip, although he stayed with his new wife for the rest of his life (they had nine children). It also permanently stained Luther’s reputation. It did not help that instead of repenting, Luther merely grouched that the secret should never have come out. Asked about the matter by a visitor, he reportedly said, “Bigamy has well-known examples in the Scriptures and could have been kept secret. . . . Just be calm! It will blow over. Perhaps she will soon die.”¹¹

      The point is not merely that Luther gave way under intolerable pressure but that his political theology had led him into a trap. He was too ready to believe in a benevolent prince, and he had mixed for that prince a cocktail of God-given authority and Christian liberty that would have proved heady for anyone, let alone an old goat like Philip. Innocence had been lost and would not easily be regained.

Chaos and Order

      Other branches of the sundered Protestant family found other solutions. The “Anabaptists” and other radicals separated Luther’s two kingdoms much more sharply. Agreeing with Luther’s view that the secular state was little more than organized banditry, they concluded that Christians should therefore have nothing to do with it. They should obey its orders but not swear its blasphemous oaths, serve on juries that hang the hungry for stealing bread, or fight in armies that plunder the innocent. Perhaps they should not even pay taxes that funded such things. All they should do is live their lives in peaceful separation and prepare for the persecution that these rejections would inevitably bring down on their heads. The most enduring strand of Anabaptism was marked by pacifist withdrawal from a corrupt world, making Christ’s kingdom visible in the godly communities they formed.

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