What is the Christian’s duty to society? Such a broad question suggests many different answers and conjures up images as diverse as the Good Samaritan, who loved his neighbor despite ethnic and religious differences, and the American Presbyterian John Witherspoon, who was the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence. Typically, Reformed answers to this question are easily distinguished from those of other Christian traditions. For instance, Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., a theologian in the Christian Reformed Church, has argued that the Calvinist perspective on society has generally been regarded as “conversionist” or “trans-formationist” or “world-formative,” as opposed to the Lutheran or Anabaptist traditions that have harbored isolationist impulses. Plantinga’s assessment reiterates the classic statement of H. Richard Niebuhr on the relation of Christ and culture. Unlike Luther who made sharp distinctions between the temporal and spiritual, or body and soul, Calvin, according to Niebuhr, had a more “dynamic” notion of the Christian’s responsibilities in the world. Niebuhr also detected differences between Lutheran and Calvinistic understandings of the state. While Luther sharply distinguished the kingdom of grace from the kingdom of the world, Calvin argued that the state not only restrained evil but also promoted human welfare to such an extent that magistrates helped to establish the kingdom of God. As popular and as well-accepted as this interpretation of the Reformed tradition is, it fails to make sense of those Presbyterians who adopted a more restrained idea of the Christian’s responsibility in political and social affairs. Unlike some Reformed theologians who have posited a basic harmony between church and state in the execution of God’s sovereignty, American Presbyterianism has also nurtured an understanding of society that stresses fundamental differences between the aims and task of the church and the purpose of the state. Sometimes called the doctrine of the Spirituality of the Church and attributed to the southern Presbyterian tradition, this conviction also informed the views of Charles Hodge who adhered to this doctrine at a pivotal point in the history of the United States.
Though he is rarely cited as an exponent of the teaching, in 1861 Hodge articulated a view of the church’s spiritual purpose and means that, though shorter, rivaled anything James Henley Thornwell or Robert Lewis Dabney could have written. Hodge was writing in response to the Spring Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly of the Old School Presbyterian Church that not only split the denomination along regional lines but also declared that the Presbyterian Church had an obligation to “promote and perpetuate” the integrity of the United States and the federal government. Hodge, however, denied that the church had any duty to take sides in the emerging struggle between the North and South. He wrote, “the state has no authority in matters purely spiritual and that the church [has] no authority in matters purely secular or civil.” To be sure, in some cases their spheres of responsibility overlapped. Still, “the two institutions are distinct, and their respective duties are different.” To substantiate this point Hodge went on to quote from the Confession of Faith, chapter thirty-one, which states that synods and councils must handle only ecclesiastical, as opposed to civil, matters. He then added an explanation that showed his understanding of the point germane to the doctrine of the Spirituality of the Church, namely, the extent and nature of church power. “The church can only exercise her power in enforcing the word of God, in approving what it commands, and condemning what it forbids,” Hodge wrote. “A man, in the exercise of his liberty as to things indifferent, may be justly amenable to the laws of the land; and he may incur great guilt in the sight of God, but he cannot be brought under the censure of the church.”
Hodge’s political sympathies were clearly with the Union. In 1865 he would weep at the news of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Still, he recognized that in the political questions surrounding the war between the North and the South — that is, whether the federal government or the states were ultimately sovereign — the church had no warrant from Scripture to take sides or to compel her members to do so. Christians must be obedient to the government and the church had a duty to teach and encourage such obedience. But the Bible did not settle the matter of the states versus the federal government. “The question,” Hodge wrote, “is, whether the allegiance of our citizens is primarily to the State or to the Union? However clear our own convictions of the correctness of this decision may be, or however deeply we may be impressed with its importance, yet it is not a question which this Assembly has a right to decide.” To take sides in this matter, Hodge concluded, was tantamount to singing the “Star Spangled Banner” at the Lord’s Supper.
D. G. Hart and John Muether | “The Spirituality of the Church”
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Darryl Hart
D. G. Hart teaches history at Hillsdale College. He is has written biographies of J. Gresham Machen, John Williamson Nevin, H. L. Mencken, and Benjamin Franklin. He is an elder in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and lives in Michigan with his wife, Ann.
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Dr. Hart (or Dr. Clark),
How does the thesis of the article square with Hodge’s notable support of the National Reform Association, the sole objective of which was to promote an amendment to the U.S. Constitution recognizing the crown rights of Jesus Christ over the nation?
Drew,
Let’s establish the premise. Can you document your claim from Hodge’s work?
Dr. Clark,
I do not have a particular citation from Hodge’s body of work, but here is a brief quote from an article from Log College Press (https://www.logcollegepress.com/blog/2018/1/26/the-national-reform-association):
The list of early Presidents, officers and members [of the National Reform Association] include notable names such as William Strong (U.S. Supreme Court Justice and Presbyterian ruling elder); Archibald Alexander Hodge (Presbyterian minister); Charles Hodge (Presbyterian minister); Joshua Hall McIlvaine (Princeton Seminary professor); James Renwick Wilson Sloane (Reformed Presbyterian minister and Reformed Presbyterian Theological School professor); Thomas Patton Stevenson (Reformed Presbyterian minister); and Sylvester Fithian Scovel (Presbyterian minister and president of Wooster University); among other representatives and members from the Protestant Episcopal Church and other backgrounds, including Methodist and Baptist bodies.
This relates more to his private life than his theological writings, but it is often referred to in RPCNA history lectures, as it was significant in the development of RPCNA relationships with other ecclesiastical bodies, particular within the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition.
Drew,
that is interesting but as it stands, you’re asking us to compare it inference from a membership to an explicit statement of theology.
In that case, I’m going to follow what he explicitly argued.
I can’t explain why he would join the NRA and argue what he did but I do know what he argued.
Dr. Clark,
While we seem to disagree here on whether or not actions speak louder than words, I appreciate the interaction all the same.
May you have a blessed Sabbath tomorrow.
If you have heard of it, Dr. Alan Strange (from Mid America Seminary) recently wrote a dissertation on Hodge and the “spirituality of the church”, and he also wrote a book summary in a sense of his dissertation. I’ve read the book at least and found it very enlightening to Hodges view of the spirituality of the church. It seems clear from what Strange shows that Hodges position of the spirituality of the church is not the same as that of his contemporaries.
More from Charles Hodge:
“The demands of those who require that religion, and especially Christianity, should be ignored in our national, state, and municipal laws, are not only unreasonable, but they are in the highest degree unjust and tyrannical.
…if Christianity is not to control the laws of the country, then as monogamy is a purely Christian institution, we can have no laws against polygamy, arbitrary divorce, or ‘free love.’” (Systematic Theology [1873], 3:346)
Kyle,
That was a widely held view until last week. It’s not exactly the stuff of the national covenant.
Christianity was the dominant religion until probably the 1990s. Hodge is making a lot of assumptions there and, I would argue that he isn’t accounting for natural revelation sufficiently.
I am nobody, but I have made natural law arguments against polygamy, polyamory, gay marriage, etc.
Our Lord did say, “it was not so from the beginning.”
Further, I have never said that no one can appeal to holy scripture for their policy, prescriptions or legislation they favor.
I think, however, in a post-Christian world, we are better served by making arguments from creation/nature.
Hodge died about 1873. The world has changed a lot since then. I think there are those who get that and there are those who do not. Something we can go back to some form of Christendom.
Now we are into eschatology. I don’t think they will be a future earthly, glory age. I’m not looking for some future mass conversion.
This is why I keep pointing people to pre-Christendom. From the way, some people talk, one would think that the church could hardly survive without being in power or without the laws being framed by special revelation. Yet, that is precisely what happened even though the magistrate was determined to wipe us out.
It seems there is a huge difference between Hodge saying the Gardiner Spring Resolutions were a gross violation of the Westminster Confession of Faith — a point on which I would agree with Hodge even though I am a descendant of abolitionists who fought on the side of the Union, and believe that slavery as practiced in the American South was based on manstealing and therefore a legitimate grounds for a just war — and saying that Hodge believed the church shouldn’t take sides on controversial political issues.
Here’s an example I like to cite that used to be hypothetical, but no longer is.
Abortion is murder. No Reformed minister can support abortion. I would say different things if we lived in some European countries where abortion can no longer be effectively challenged via the political process, or in a dictatorship where the people have no say, but in our current American political structure, for an ordained Reformed minister to advocate a pro-choice position should be grounds for church discipline just as it would be grounds for church discipline if an ordained Reformed minister would start to advocate for legalization of pedophilia or bestiality or infanticide or killing handicapped children or some other gross sin. Murder is murder and if we believe what God’s Word says about murder, we cannot tolerate ordained officers of the church advocating a “pro-choice” position on murder.
But the “HOW” of making abortion illegal is a question of practical politics.
Should we pass a human life amendment to make abortion illegal nationwide? That might be a good idea, but it took nearly a century after the Constitution was adopted, and it took a shooting war, to abolish slavery. We simply do not have the political consensus today necessary to amend the Constitution to ban abortion.
Should we view abortion as an issue of federalism, as we have done since the early 1800s with the death penalty? That’s the position I have advocated for close to four decades, long before Donald Trump started advocating it, because I believe in our current political situation, overturning Roe v Wade and returning the decision to the states is the only viable way forward. We’re going to have to spend many decades “winning hearts and minds” (to use an overused phrase) before we stand a viable possibility of criminalizing abortion in states like Massachusetts. But we can — and SHOULD — do what we can on a state-by-state level either to ban abortion outright or add “fetal viability” or “pain-capable” limits on the age when a baby can be killed in the womb.
That’s the difference between practical politics and religious conviction. We cannot compromise on saying abortion is murder. But the methods by which we stop the murdering of babies can and will differ in our federal system from state to state, much as the states differed greatly on getting rid of slavery, and there were legitimate political debates in the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s on how best to end slavery.
As I like to say here in the Ozarks, Missouri isn’t Massachusetts, and St. Robert isn’t St. Louis. What works in a very liberal state, or a very liberal city in a conservative state, is not going to fly in our county in the rural Ozarks. And the reverse is also true.