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The Political Order
329
hand, the state has a legitimate sphere of authority where it is
autonomous in relation to the church, but it is nevertheless subject
to the will and sovereignty of God. The church, on the other hand,
also has a sphere of authority where it is autonomous in relation to
the state although the church, too, is responsible to the will and judg
ment of God. There have of course been sharp disagreements as to
where Caesar’s sphere ends and the church’s sphere begins, but recog
nition of the fact that Caesar’s just claims are limited is an indis
pensable precondition for the acceptance of the democratic concepts of
the rights of man and the democratic goal of government for the
people viewed as individuals-in-community. This recognition has
taken many forms—the duty of disobedience to civil authorities, the
Thomistic concept of Natural Law, the right of revolt, the right to
assassinate a tyrant, and the duty to seek to limit tyrants by consti
tutional and parliamentary reform. Frequently, of course, there has
been a desire to set up a theocratic state in which the church could
control the state; but in the main it has been recognized, in theory at
least, that the state is autonomous in the temporal realm and the
church in the spiritual realm.
Emphasis upon the parallel and autonomous functions of the church
and state is more congenial to Protestantism than it is to Roman
Catholicism because of the latter’s doctrine of the Catholic Church
as the only true church and because of her dogma of Papal In
fallibility. On the whole, Catholicism has not championed the religious
liberty of the individual to follow his own conscience so much as
it has the liberty of the church over against the control of the state.
As the history of intolerance in the relations of church and state
in the early Protestant period clearly shows, Protestantism may also
be theocratic and intolerant. However, when it is true to its principles
of the primacy of conscience as over against institutionalized religious
authority, and when it is true to its understanding of sin as a power
which corrupts the church as well as the state, Protestantism provides
strong support for the principle of the separation of church and state.
Thus, it represents an even stronger safeguard against totalitarianism
than that provided by Catholicism, whose primary protest is against
secular totalitarianism rather than against totalitarianism of every
form.19
19 Cf. M. Searle Bates,
Religious Liberty: An Inquiry,
New York, Interna
tional Missionary Council, 1945, pp. 376-377.