“But our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power which enables him even to subject all things to himself.” – Philippians 3:20-21
The church is by nature – or supernature – prior to the nation-state and the person. So argues Rogers, rejecting Aristotle’s vestment of encompassing authority and jurisdiction in the polis, offering an ecclesiocentric alternative to the National Conservatives’ call to place the nation-state at the center of political renewal. Taking marriage as an example of this analogical view of the nation-state, Rogers argues that the nation-state, while legitimate and necessary in the Present Age, can only be understood in light of the ultimate end of human community. Ethnos, polis, and family will pass away; the church is the supernatural telos of human life.
One question about the ecclesiocentric alternative that needs fleshing out relates to the goods Christians should seek in and with the nation-state in the Present Age. More fundamentally, Rogers’s opener and Littlejohn’s response invite further consideration of the church’s essence and authority in the Present Age, a key point distinguishing the ecclesiocentric alternative from the political Protestantism of the National Conservatives, and on which that alternative stands or falls.
I make two points: first, there is an important sphere of jurisdiction for the church in the Present Age, not subordinate but superior to civil authority. The superior jurisdiction of the church and particular congregations becomes clear as we recognize the nature of the church as an outpost or advance guard of the Kingdom of God. Second, the goods we should seek in and through nation-states are the goods citizens of a foreign country, subjects of another sovereign, seek in exile. We are to live as “aliens and exiles” in the Present Age, awaiting the coming of the King (1 Pet. 2:11, RSV).
The Church in the Present Age: A Spiritual Commonwealth
Unlike the family, ethnos, and polis, the church won’t pass away; she will be glorified, presented in her full beauty to Christ her husband, head, and King. Yet, she exists here and now in the Present Age. What is the character of the church given that, as Rogers agrees, “there is a now/not yet distinction that properly locates the Church’s full exclusivity in the Age to Come”?
The church’s origin and end are heavenly, but even now it is a spiritual commonwealth, a polis composed of those awaiting the King and the fulness of his Kingdom, as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer. While mixing the language of citizenship, household, and temple, Paul makes clear we are “citizens” of a community:
So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord;in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (Eph. 2:19-22)
The church is a community of those who, expectant of the coming Kingdom of God, live now as subjects of that kingdom. It is an advance guard for the Kingdom, an outpost in foreign territory of the heavenly realm. As Paul puts it, “we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us” (2 Cor. 5:20).
Universal and Particular
The members of the church are one body (1. Cor. 12:12-13). I see no reason to think Paul only refers to the Age to Come, since he mentions baptism as the point at which members join the body. Our union will only be fully and completely realized in the Age to Come, but it is a real, spiritual union now. Not only Catholics, but many other Christians acknowledge the existence of “one holy catholic and apostolic church,” as described in the Nicene Creed.
The catholic church is organized into particular congregations, but they are parts of the whole body, or better, extensions of it. Jesus makes this clear in the conclusion of a discussion about the church, its authority to resolve disputes, and the effectiveness of its prayers: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20). The local church congregation is the universal church in miniature.
The universality of the church need not, as Littlejohn suggests, imply a singular earthly head. Conciliarism is another option with New Testament (Acts 15) and pre-Roman Cathollic historical precedent, as is a more diffuse congregationalism in which particular churches, Spirit-led, nevertheless identify themselves with the church universal.
The Church’s Spiritual Jurisdiction
Jesus delegated Peter the power to bind and loose and said that whatever the church binds and looses “on earth” will be bound or loosed in heaven (Matt. 16:19, 18:18). Again, this relates to smaller groups of Christians, as the Matthew 18 discussion makes clear. Paul instructs the churches to exercise authority and make judgments, not only in a proclamatory fashion, but to settle disputes and withdraw association from church members persisting in sin (1 Cor. 6:1-7, 5: 9-13). The church is a polis, but not a modern state; she does not wield weapons of steel for physical coercion, but spiritual weapons for defending and advancing a spiritual kingdom (John 18:36; Eph. 6:12). These weapons are more powerful than those earthly kings and nations wield.
The church’s authority and jurisdiction is superior in matters purely spiritual, or pertaining to salvation and the care of souls. The jurisdiction of the state is superior in matters purely temporal. So, the church has no jurisdiction in regard to traffic rules, but full jurisdiction with regard to the practice of the Lord’s Supper and general administration of the ordinances or sacraments. To be sure, there is a great deal of overlap; issues like family law and education relate to both the temporal and the spiritual. We’re integrated spiritual-psycho-physical beings under the concurrent jurisdiction of church and state, and there is perennial need for negotiation and potential for conflict.
Christians’ default posture should be submission to civil authority (Rom. 13:1-7, 1 Pet. 2:13-17), but Christians should view church jurisdiction in matters primarily spiritual, or with significant overlap, as superior. A simple example: though the civil magistrate in the U.S. sanctions same-sex “marriage,” the church does not (should not). A congregant cannot obtain a marriage license from the civil magistrate and claim to be married in the church’s eyes. Her jurisdiction here is superior to the civil magistrate’s.
As to Littlejohn’s question on war, the civil authority bears the sword and has primary responsibility for determining when war is necessary to defend natural goods. Yet, there are spiritual implications of the justification and conduct of war. There is no reason for the church to oppose a truly just war, but she does have authority to oppose unjust wars and direct her members not to participate. Indeed, if the church were only to support just wars and the civil authority were to take her position seriously, that would be limiting enough, constituting a drastic and salutary reorientation of ecclesial and civil authority. The Allies’ carpet bombing and widespread targeting of civilians in World War II, ignoring lonely voices of dissent in the name of jus in bello, like Anglican bishop George Bell’s, illustrates the total subordination of church to state authority we in the West have come to accept.
Rogers argues that the National Conservatism Statement of Principles would further this subordination, offering a “decidedly subordinated role for religion in general, and the Church in particular.” Littlejohn demurs, claiming that “no group in recent memory has been as explicit about the need for publicly-recognized, state-promoted religion as the national conservatives.” Yet, Littlejohn does relegate the church in the Present Age to a position subordinate to civil jurisdiction:
For Protestants, church government is not a form of coercive jurisdiction, but merely proclamatory. The task of the church qua church is to announce future acts of judgment, rather than enacting present acts of judgment. And since the future acts will be executed by Christ, who alone is infallible, the church’s announced judgments are provisional, binding on conscience only insofar as they faithfully expound and apply the Word. Particular churches may have quasi-political power over their members, but this exists within, not above, the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate.
Littlejohn rightly stresses that the church in the Present Age contains both wheat and tares, and church authority is binding only as consistent with the Word, the will of Christ. But the church’s jurisdiction is not merely proclamatory. The church does not exercise ultimate authority or effect final judgment, but she exercises the authority Christ has delegated to her to make judgments even in the Present Age.
The Nation-State in the Present Age: An Exilic Home
While agreeing with the thrust of Rogers’s argument, I depart slightly from the language conceding a stark distinction between the “political” and “religious” spheres from which we might seek fulfillment and societal renewal. Littlejohn too adopts this language, describing churches’ authority over congregants as “quasi-political,” and defending the Statement against the charge of instrumentalizing Christianity along these lines: “It was a political statement, and therefore, sensibly enough, focused on articulating political principles.” The relevant distinction is not between political and the non-political, but spiritual and the temporal. The church is a spiritual commonwealth, a spiritual polis with authority to govern in spiritual matters – the higher and more enduring matters.
If the church is our first polis, where does that leave temporal poleis? Taking a cue from Peter, we should think of these goods like those the Israelites sought and helped to produce as a people in exile. We are to seek the good of our exilic poleis (Jer. 29:7) and respect the authority of their governors. We may even participate in governance, like the prophet Daniel. But we must remember that the church is, until the end of time, a pilgrim church, a polis of exiles. As Brad East recently wrote at Front Porch Republic, a willingness to “lose” in temporal politics – to the point of losing our lives in martyrdom – is a regular and central element of Christian witness in temporal politics. We are willing to lose in the short-term and even to die rather than betray our loyalty to our first polis and our only King.
Avoiding National Christianism
Religious establishment or state recognition of Christian truth might reflect proper acknowledgment of the lordship of Christ and the spiritual authority of the universal church, channeled and exercised through her particular institutional form in a given country. But it could also reflect and encourage nationalization and fragmentation of the universal church, instrumentalization of Christianity, and failure to respect the church’s claim to jurisdiction higher than the state’s. In short, it might achieve only a National Christianism rather than an appropriately chastened, truly Christian nationalism. That possibility is dangerous because it might appear like the state aiding the church, even as it denies her essence.
There is much to learn from Protestant experience, teaching, and tradition. But, to the extent that the paradigm of nationalized churches in the National Conservatives’ political Protestantism denies or obscures the universality of the church as a spiritual commonwealth, the superiority of the church’s jurisdiction over the state in spiritual matters, and the exilic nature of our sojourn in temporal poleis, Christians should abjure it for a more biblical view of the church and the nation-state. The ecclesiocentric alternative and its implications for politics ecclesial and civil in the Present Age need to be further clarified, but it rightly acknowledges the church as Christians’ first polis.
Ben Peterson is an assistant professor of political science at Abilene Christian University and a member of Civitas, hosted at Theopolis Institute.
“But our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power which enables him even to subject all things to himself.” – Philippians 3:20-21
The church is by nature – or supernature – prior to the nation-state and the person. So argues Rogers, rejecting Aristotle’s vestment of encompassing authority and jurisdiction in the polis, offering an ecclesiocentric alternative to the National Conservatives’ call to place the nation-state at the center of political renewal. Taking marriage as an example of this analogical view of the nation-state, Rogers argues that the nation-state, while legitimate and necessary in the Present Age, can only be understood in light of the ultimate end of human community. Ethnos, polis, and family will pass away; the church is the supernatural telos of human life.
One question about the ecclesiocentric alternative that needs fleshing out relates to the goods Christians should seek in and with the nation-state in the Present Age. More fundamentally, Rogers’s opener and Littlejohn’s response invite further consideration of the church’s essence and authority in the Present Age, a key point distinguishing the ecclesiocentric alternative from the political Protestantism of the National Conservatives, and on which that alternative stands or falls.
I make two points: first, there is an important sphere of jurisdiction for the church in the Present Age, not subordinate but superior to civil authority. The superior jurisdiction of the church and particular congregations becomes clear as we recognize the nature of the church as an outpost or advance guard of the Kingdom of God. Second, the goods we should seek in and through nation-states are the goods citizens of a foreign country, subjects of another sovereign, seek in exile. We are to live as “aliens and exiles” in the Present Age, awaiting the coming of the King (1 Pet. 2:11, RSV).
The Church in the Present Age: A Spiritual Commonwealth
Unlike the family, ethnos, and polis, the church won’t pass away; she will be glorified, presented in her full beauty to Christ her husband, head, and King. Yet, she exists here and now in the Present Age. What is the character of the church given that, as Rogers agrees, “there is a now/not yet distinction that properly locates the Church’s full exclusivity in the Age to Come”?
The church’s origin and end are heavenly, but even now it is a spiritual commonwealth, a polis composed of those awaiting the King and the fulness of his Kingdom, as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer. While mixing the language of citizenship, household, and temple, Paul makes clear we are “citizens” of a community:
So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord;in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (Eph. 2:19-22)
The church is a community of those who, expectant of the coming Kingdom of God, live now as subjects of that kingdom. It is an advance guard for the Kingdom, an outpost in foreign territory of the heavenly realm. As Paul puts it, “we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us” (2 Cor. 5:20).
Universal and Particular
The members of the church are one body (1. Cor. 12:12-13). I see no reason to think Paul only refers to the Age to Come, since he mentions baptism as the point at which members join the body. Our union will only be fully and completely realized in the Age to Come, but it is a real, spiritual union now. Not only Catholics, but many other Christians acknowledge the existence of “one holy catholic and apostolic church,” as described in the Nicene Creed.
The catholic church is organized into particular congregations, but they are parts of the whole body, or better, extensions of it. Jesus makes this clear in the conclusion of a discussion about the church, its authority to resolve disputes, and the effectiveness of its prayers: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20). The local church congregation is the universal church in miniature.
The universality of the church need not, as Littlejohn suggests, imply a singular earthly head. Conciliarism is another option with New Testament (Acts 15) and pre-Roman Cathollic historical precedent, as is a more diffuse congregationalism in which particular churches, Spirit-led, nevertheless identify themselves with the church universal.
The Church’s Spiritual Jurisdiction
Jesus delegated Peter the power to bind and loose and said that whatever the church binds and looses “on earth” will be bound or loosed in heaven (Matt. 16:19, 18:18). Again, this relates to smaller groups of Christians, as the Matthew 18 discussion makes clear. Paul instructs the churches to exercise authority and make judgments, not only in a proclamatory fashion, but to settle disputes and withdraw association from church members persisting in sin (1 Cor. 6:1-7, 5: 9-13). The church is a polis, but not a modern state; she does not wield weapons of steel for physical coercion, but spiritual weapons for defending and advancing a spiritual kingdom (John 18:36; Eph. 6:12). These weapons are more powerful than those earthly kings and nations wield.
The church’s authority and jurisdiction is superior in matters purely spiritual, or pertaining to salvation and the care of souls. The jurisdiction of the state is superior in matters purely temporal. So, the church has no jurisdiction in regard to traffic rules, but full jurisdiction with regard to the practice of the Lord’s Supper and general administration of the ordinances or sacraments. To be sure, there is a great deal of overlap; issues like family law and education relate to both the temporal and the spiritual. We’re integrated spiritual-psycho-physical beings under the concurrent jurisdiction of church and state, and there is perennial need for negotiation and potential for conflict.
Christians’ default posture should be submission to civil authority (Rom. 13:1-7, 1 Pet. 2:13-17), but Christians should view church jurisdiction in matters primarily spiritual, or with significant overlap, as superior. A simple example: though the civil magistrate in the U.S. sanctions same-sex “marriage,” the church does not (should not). A congregant cannot obtain a marriage license from the civil magistrate and claim to be married in the church’s eyes. Her jurisdiction here is superior to the civil magistrate’s.
As to Littlejohn’s question on war, the civil authority bears the sword and has primary responsibility for determining when war is necessary to defend natural goods. Yet, there are spiritual implications of the justification and conduct of war. There is no reason for the church to oppose a truly just war, but she does have authority to oppose unjust wars and direct her members not to participate. Indeed, if the church were only to support just wars and the civil authority were to take her position seriously, that would be limiting enough, constituting a drastic and salutary reorientation of ecclesial and civil authority. The Allies’ carpet bombing and widespread targeting of civilians in World War II, ignoring lonely voices of dissent in the name of jus in bello, like Anglican bishop George Bell’s, illustrates the total subordination of church to state authority we in the West have come to accept.
Rogers argues that the National Conservatism Statement of Principles would further this subordination, offering a “decidedly subordinated role for religion in general, and the Church in particular.” Littlejohn demurs, claiming that “no group in recent memory has been as explicit about the need for publicly-recognized, state-promoted religion as the national conservatives.” Yet, Littlejohn does relegate the church in the Present Age to a position subordinate to civil jurisdiction:
For Protestants, church government is not a form of coercive jurisdiction, but merely proclamatory. The task of the church qua church is to announce future acts of judgment, rather than enacting present acts of judgment. And since the future acts will be executed by Christ, who alone is infallible, the church’s announced judgments are provisional, binding on conscience only insofar as they faithfully expound and apply the Word. Particular churches may have quasi-political power over their members, but this exists within, not above, the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate.
Littlejohn rightly stresses that the church in the Present Age contains both wheat and tares, and church authority is binding only as consistent with the Word, the will of Christ. But the church’s jurisdiction is not merely proclamatory. The church does not exercise ultimate authority or effect final judgment, but she exercises the authority Christ has delegated to her to make judgments even in the Present Age.
The Nation-State in the Present Age: An Exilic Home
While agreeing with the thrust of Rogers’s argument, I depart slightly from the language conceding a stark distinction between the “political” and “religious” spheres from which we might seek fulfillment and societal renewal. Littlejohn too adopts this language, describing churches’ authority over congregants as “quasi-political,” and defending the Statement against the charge of instrumentalizing Christianity along these lines: “It was a political statement, and therefore, sensibly enough, focused on articulating political principles.” The relevant distinction is not between political and the non-political, but spiritual and the temporal. The church is a spiritual commonwealth, a spiritual polis with authority to govern in spiritual matters – the higher and more enduring matters.
If the church is our first polis, where does that leave temporal poleis? Taking a cue from Peter, we should think of these goods like those the Israelites sought and helped to produce as a people in exile. We are to seek the good of our exilic poleis (Jer. 29:7) and respect the authority of their governors. We may even participate in governance, like the prophet Daniel. But we must remember that the church is, until the end of time, a pilgrim church, a polis of exiles. As Brad East recently wrote at Front Porch Republic, a willingness to “lose” in temporal politics – to the point of losing our lives in martyrdom – is a regular and central element of Christian witness in temporal politics. We are willing to lose in the short-term and even to die rather than betray our loyalty to our first polis and our only King.
Avoiding National Christianism
Religious establishment or state recognition of Christian truth might reflect proper acknowledgment of the lordship of Christ and the spiritual authority of the universal church, channeled and exercised through her particular institutional form in a given country. But it could also reflect and encourage nationalization and fragmentation of the universal church, instrumentalization of Christianity, and failure to respect the church’s claim to jurisdiction higher than the state’s. In short, it might achieve only a National Christianism rather than an appropriately chastened, truly Christian nationalism. That possibility is dangerous because it might appear like the state aiding the church, even as it denies her essence.
There is much to learn from Protestant experience, teaching, and tradition. But, to the extent that the paradigm of nationalized churches in the National Conservatives’ political Protestantism denies or obscures the universality of the church as a spiritual commonwealth, the superiority of the church’s jurisdiction over the state in spiritual matters, and the exilic nature of our sojourn in temporal poleis, Christians should abjure it for a more biblical view of the church and the nation-state. The ecclesiocentric alternative and its implications for politics ecclesial and civil in the Present Age need to be further clarified, but it rightly acknowledges the church as Christians’ first polis.
Ben Peterson is an assistant professor of political science at Abilene Christian University and a member of Civitas, hosted at Theopolis Institute.
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