Reformation Political Thought Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The political thinking of the Protestant Reformation originated with the circulation of German priest and theologian Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses in 1517 and concluded in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia treaty. The Reformation touched on every aspect of political and social life in Europe. The central issues, however, both theoretical and practical, centered on the nature of civil authority and whether one owed that authority obedience regardless of its actions.

The Law And The Gospel And The Uses Of The Law

The theory of civil authority in the Reformation had its origins in a theological debate over the meaning of law in Christianity. The debate began in the 1520s, when theologians were influenced and emboldened by Luther’s views that eternal salvation was attained by faith alone, challenging the rituals, sacraments, and indulgences implemented by the Catholic Church and the pope. A group of theologians in Wittenberg, Germany, argued that the Christian freedom of the New Testament meant a complete release from the very concept of law.

Luther and his fellow reformer, Philip Melanchthon, were convinced that these theologians were mistaken. Luther wrote that while a purely Christian society would have no need of civil authority, this was only in the abstract, because men are Christian more in name than in reality. Thus the gospel alone, with its methods of preaching and exhortation, was insufficient for politics. Law was necessary for organizing and keeping order in human community but also ensuring individual salvation. Luther spoke of the double use of the law, meaning an outer use compelling one to be good externally within society; and an inner use, later called the theological or accusatory, which causes one to seek Christ and his grace for one’s failings and weaknesses.

The Two Kingdoms

While there was general agreement among many Reformers that law was necessary, debate over the relationship between Christianity and the state was fierce. In this period, the separation of the authorities of law and gospel, of church and state, was not so much a concern about the liberty of conscience in a pluralistic society, but whether political and ecclesiastical authority could both be exercised in the same way. The distinction between the law and the gospel suggested to Luther that there should be separate sorts of authorities for the preaching of the Word of God and the administration of the state law.

Inspired by the St. Augustine’s City of God, which discusses the ancient transition and debate surrounding of polytheism versus monotheism, Luther spoke of two kingdoms, especially in his treatise Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (1523). The heavenly kingdom is composed of the faithful, who are motivated to act correctly without the threat of coercion, while the earthly kingdom is composed of unsaved men, who need civil authority as a remedy for their fallen sinful natures. In so far as all Christians are at once saved and sinners, they are all obligated to the civil authority and encouraged to participate as soldiers and magistrates. Luther stressed the kingdoms should be kept separate. The civil authorities should not try to compel faith and the ecclesiastical authorities should not govern as temporal lords. The earthly kingdom, because it was concerned with man as man, did not need the gospel, but could rely on reason alone in devising and enforcing positive laws. Thus, Luther and Melanchthon deferred frequently to lawyers—especially of the Roman law—on substantive questions of politics.

The Swiss Reformers, who agreed in principle with the Lutherans’ view of the two kingdoms, argued for a more active involvement of the ecclesiastical authorities in the prosecution of the moral law. In Zurich, Ulrich Zwingli, a Swiss Reformist leader in the sixteenth century, argued there should be a prophet, a title which he was the first to hold, who was to serve as the biblical prophets and apostles, preaching about positive and moral civil affairs. The great reformer in Geneva, John Calvin, believed divine law could be executed by ecclesiastical authorities as church discipline as long as it did not resort to coercive force, but relied instead on the methods of the gospel—exhortation, admonition, and excommunication.

The theologians of the Radical Reformation, a smaller group of leaders of peasants and some radical Anabaptists, believed moral law was not simply a natural law that could be entrusted to the civil authorities to enact as positive law. Rather they believed divine law as revealed in the Bible was the ultimate source of all law. Essentially, the Radical Reformation rejected all Catholic Church authority and opposed Protestant Reformation civil interpretation of divine law. Today, descendants of these smaller separatists group, include Amish, Mennonites, and Hutterites. However, these ideas led to conflict over whether church taxes were biblical and eventually to the hostilities of the Peasants’ War in 1524–1525, in which approximately three hundred thousand peasants in modern-day Austria, Germany, and Switzerland revolted against Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of Spain. The German and Swiss Anabaptists who subscribed to the Schleitheim Confession of Faith (1527) believed that it was possible for Christians to live together as a community of the faithful without the law (i.e., magistracies, taxation, or military service). Such views led Melanchthon and other Lutherans to revise their position, arguing civil authority should in fact supervise ecclesiastical affairs and prosecute heresy as well.

The Right To Resistance

The majority of German and Swiss Reformers in the sixteenth century believed Christians owed strict obedience to the civil authorities as both the source of positive law and the custodians of the civil use of the law. However, when the Lutheran princes were forced into conflict with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to defend their new faith in the 1530s, the strict theory of political obligation began to give way. This led to the articulation of the grounds of resistance to legitimate authority, which over the next hundred years would become the basis of European theories and dissent of popular sovereignty and limited government.

Several arguments were proposed by the lawyers of the Protestant princes in the late 1520s and early 1530s to justify their resistance. They argued, first, on constitutional grounds, that the emperor was accountable by the terms of his election to the inferior magistrates of the empire (i.e., the princes and city officials); second, from a principle of Roman law, that resistance to the emperor could be considered a case of resistance to an unjust judge; finally, on the basis of natural law, that force can be repelled by force. Luther originally only approved of the Roman law argument, but as conditions worsened, he followed Melanchthon in accepting the natural law basis of resistance as well.

Conclusions

Reformation political thought contributed to the growth of the absolutist state, more commonly known as absolute monarchies, which characterized most of Europe between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. By characterizing civil authority as a monopoly on the use of coercive force and the source of positive law, reformation political thought replaced the alleged injustices and powers of the church with centralized powers of the state, namely the ruling monarch of the time. However, the Reformation did lay the foundation for limited government concepts, through its articulation of what would later become the basis for the separation of church and state. Further, through the development of constitutionalist and natural law arguments, the groundwork was laid for the seventeenth century theories of social contract and popular sovereignty, which shape the modern world.

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