Quote Originally Posted by TheCurmudgeon View Post
I am not so sure. As the book mentions, the separation of politics and religion can at least be traced back to Jesus' advice to render onto Caeser that which is Caeser's. This would indicate that at least the religious and the political could be considered separate.
My short rebuttal would be to mention ... the Divine Right of Kings. A longer (though still to short) response is...
Like the forgoing passage about coercion in the Quran that saying attributed to Christ has been as misunderstood and abused as it has bandied about for all number of political purposes (usually shorn of its context and transformation over the centuries). The adventure of that particular idea is complex. The meaning of that phrase had changed over the centuries and meant one thing to the Church Fathers (and Augustine), another thing to the pre-modern Princes in their conflict with the Pope and yet another to the post-Lockean generation (and Americans in particular). Its easy to forget the context of the statement and also how it was understood at the time. It has everything to do with Pilate and the attempt to “frame” Christ as a political authority in opposition (and that’s the key) to Rome. That is how St. Paul understood that phrase and how many of the later saints understood it. Once Rome itself became Christian the temporal and spiritual powers are united in the form of the Pope and the Emperor, one a lord temporal and the other a lord spiritual (so to speak). That is not a division of church and state it is a division of powers toward the same end. Again, it is not until Luther and the Reformation that the meaning attributed to that phrase begins to resemble what you Americans (via Locke) understand it to be.
Christian political theory can be said to begin (in terms of its codification) with St. Paul (during the Roman era) and find its ultimate conceptual maturity or culmination with St. Augustine and begins its long, slow unravelling with St. Aquinas. We can divide it, for convenience sake, into three periods; 1) formative, 2) consolidation (and I use that word deliberately), 3) sundering. However, the pre-Christian era needs an honourable mention so I’ll let Robin Osborne (“The Religious Contexts of Ancient Political Thought” in the Blackwell Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought), do it for me;
“Not only was there no single voice with religious authority, but there was no separate sphere of ‘‘religious’’ matters held to be outside the authority of the state. In the modern western world religious convictions are held to be fundamentally a private matter and in the liberal state religion provides the key example of a private matter in which political interference is regarded as inappropriate. In both Greece and Rome religious life was public life and religious behaviour as proper for political control as any other form of behaviour.”p.119
The formative phase (the periodisations are all mine and for convenience only) lasts from the Roman Empire to its conversion under Constantine (however, Constantine’s belief that the Emperor reigns over the church rather than vice versa is what leads to the next major development in the West, although Eastern Orthodox Christianity virtually accepts that concept especially later, in Russia when it becomes the “third Rome”, but we are getting ahead sidetracked).
I’ll let Carlyle, The History of Medieval Political Theory in the West, Vol. 1 speak for me,
[quote]“The most important passage in the New Testament which is connected with this subject is that in the thirteenth chapter of St Paul's epistle to the Romans. "Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers : for there is no power but of God; and the powers that be are ordained of God. Therefore lie that resisteth the power withstandeth the ordinance of God: and they that withstand shall receive to themselves judgment. For rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. And wouldest thou have no fear of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise from the same : for he is a minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is a minister of God, an avenger for wrath to him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be in subjection, not only because of the wrath, but also for conscience' sake. For this cause ye pay tribute also; for they are the ministers of God's service, attending continually upon this very thing. Render to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour." This passage, which is of the greatest importance throughout the whole course of medieval political thought, being indeed constantly quoted from the second century onwards, is indeed pregnant and significant in the highest degree. It defines in the profoundest way the Christian theory of the nature of political society” p.89-90

The central issue in the formative phase is therefore centred around authority over the body and soul of the body politik. Does the soul take precedence or the body? It is not a question of separation of purpose but rather division of labour. With specific reference to the magic phrase “Render unto....”(&c), it really didn’t figure too prominently in writing of the time except polemically.

In a letter to the Emperor Constantine, Hosius of Cordova uses the phrase in its commonly accepted meaning; that temporal powers have no business interfering with God’s representative but that that does NOT apply the other way around (the Church therefore, supervenes, on the affairs of the Empire);
(from, Francis Young, ‘Christianity’, Cambridge History of Greek & Roman Political Thought) Intrude not yourself into ecclesiastical matters, neither give commands unto us concerning them; but learn from us. God has put into your hands the kingdom; to us he has entrusted the affairs of his church... It is written, 'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's.' p. 658
Bishop Ambrose (of St. Augustine fame) is similarly dismissive in AD386 when, angry at Imperial interference over the question of the Arian heresy, he writes to the political powers in Milan that
'the emperor is within the church, not above the church'. ”p. 658 (my italics, from, Young, “Christianity”, Ibid)
In the consolidation (Early Mediaeval) phase Christian political theory further develops and the theory arises that the church administers to the soul and the state to the body but it is a functional differentiation only. They are both doing the same job, the sheparding of Man (what Foucault in “Security, Territory and Population” called the pastoral mode of government or “the government of souls”). One administers to the transcendent the other to the temporal (the “long arm of the church”) but both as aspects of the same reality and project. If the early church fathers had believed in the separation of church and state the concept of the divine right of kings would never have come into being nor would it have been needed in the first place (the king, as Kantorowicz tells us, had two bodies). Using a British example the relationship between church and state is analogous to that between the Queen and Parliament, or a president and prime minister, there is a hierarchy (in fact, Iran probably represents a homologous case....another thread needed there methinks!). A cavalry squadron and an artillery battalion may be functionally separate but both have the same mission (with God in this schema being the Commander-in-Chief, who has other non-military responsibilities, and the Emperor/Monarch the Chief-of-Staff). To Understand this one needs to understand the imagery, culture, symbolic references and other stuff they thought with (such as the metaphor of the body, hierarchy of spheres, corpus mysticum, which is where we get the phrase “body politic”, etc.). The very role and purpose of a Monarch is derived from and legitimated and regulated by Christian doctrine (a feat modern day doctrine writers can only envy). In Figgis’ words (Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius),
“In the Middle Ages the Church was not a State, it was the State; the State or rather the civil authority (for a separate society was not recognised) was merely the police department of the Church. The latter took over from the Roman Empire its theory of the absolute and universal jurisdiction of the supreme authority, and developed it into the doctrine of the plenitude potestatis of the Pope, who was the supreme dispenser of law, the fountain of honour, including regal honour, and the sole legitimate earthly source of power, the legal if not the actual founder of religious orders” p.8
[...]
the medieval mind conceived of its universal Church-State, with power ultimately fixed in the Spiritual head bounded by no territorial frontier; the Protestant mind places all ecclesiastical authority below the jurisdiction and subject to the control of the “Godly prince,” who is omnipotent in his own dominion. It was not until the exigencies of the situation compelled the Presbyterians to claim rights independent of the State, that the theory of two distinct kingdoms is set forth”p.45
Cont/. below....