IV
§ 197.
CHRISTIANITY was responsible for the fuller development of theocracy and for the completion of the union between church and state. Indeed, the very concept of theocracy originated in the Christian notion of religion.[1]
The correct understanding of the problem demands attention to the following points.
1. Love of God and one's neighbour was doubtless represented as constituting the essence of Christianity; but from the first, continually and no less energetically, religion was identified with faith. But faith killed love. For practical purposes, to believe in God signified to believe in the priests represented as mediators between God and the laity. Revealed religion is of necessity a religious and priestly aristocracy; and as such, it is the foundation and the prototype of socio-political aristocracy.
Jesus himself demands blind faith; and indeed, on the solemn occasion of the ascension he is represented as saying that the unbeliever shall be damned (see the textually dubious passage, Mark xvi, 16). This was the basis of Thomas Aquinas' teaching that heretics should be punished with death. On the ground of this text the inquisition becomes comprehensible, and comprehensible too Calvin's death sentence on Servetus. Even Locke proposed that atheists should be put to death.[2]
- ↑ When I speak of Christianity, I am well aware of the vagueness of the term. It is necessary to distinguish between ecclesiastical doctrine and the teaching of Jesus, the teaching which we can discover in the New Testament by a process of analysis that is far from easy. Further, from the church doctrine (which was itself differently formulated and differently interpreted at difierent times) we must distinguish the concrete ministry of the church and the life lived within the church. Jesus' teaching and example were no more than the leaven; with these were amalgamated the doctrines of Paul and the other New Testament authors, and above all there were likewise incorporited materials from the Old Testament with its heterogeneous elements, contemporary philosophical and scientific culture being further called to assistance, Church doctrine and discipline were the product of this amalgamation.
- ↑ The nature of this relationship between love and faith was perceived already by Augustine, for he wrote: "Qui non amat, inaniter credit, etiamsi
chapter; but Kattenbusch admits that Justinian's attitude towards dogma was papistical. Peter abolished the patriarchate (his action in this matter being uncanonical), and such an interference in church organisation was characteristically papistical.
