No logical Christian mind can avoid the suspicion that the first principles of the true doctrine touching the relation of the temporal and spiritual powers must have very generally fallen out of the consciousness of Christendom, as he contemplates the singular fact that, after 1800 years of experiment, the whole question seems as unsettled as ever; and that all parts of Chistendom alike are still divided and agitated by antagonistic theories on the subject. In Papal countries, everywhere, he finds the old contest going on as keenly as ever, between the various theories of Ultra-montanism which makes the State a creature and subject of the Church, and of Cis-Montanism which make the Church the creature and subject of the State. He finds the continental Protestantism aroused to new vigor in the 19th century, in the conflict between the various forms of the old Zuinglian, semi-Erastian theories, which ignore the separate and independent existence of the Church, and the new theories of the school of Hegel, that the Church is but an incidental and temporary aid to the state in developing its moral ideal of a religious Commonwealth or theocracy—that, as Strauss hath it, “The Church is but the crutch of the State,” the theories of the school of Stahl and Klieforth that the Church (not the congregation, but the incorporated officers and orders of the church) constitutes a government above the state; or of Schleiermacher, contending for the co-existence of the Church and state. In Great Britain, independent of various semi-Erastian denominations of Dissenters, he finds the Anglican Church agitated by earnest conflict between the theories of the Lords in council and the lawyers, that the Church is merely a head servant of the Crown, incompetent to dismiss even her infidel servants from the priesthood, except at the bidding of the Crown; the Broad Church theories of Arnold, ignoring the separate existence of the Church, and, with Hegel, contemplating the Church as a temporary means employed by the state in the process of developing its ideal of a Christian state; and the theories of the school of Palmer, claiming the independence of the church, and at the same time, support from the revenues of the state. In Scotland, he finds the descendants of the Covenanters divided between the theories of both state support and submission to state dictation by the Church; of support from the state without submission to state dictation, and of neither Support nor dictation by the state to the Church. And even the yearnings after ecclesiastical union between the evangelical bodies whom the secularism of state support and dictation has driven out of the state Church at various eras, are seriously impeded in giving effect to these Christian truths by grave dissension’s on the theoretic question whether the Church may not sell her birthright for the state’s “mess of pottage!”
But, what is more remarkable still, he finds the American Churches, whose boast it has been for near 100 years that here at last the Church’s independent existence has been recognized by the civil power, apparently eager to assume the secular yoke again as if tired of their liberty, to engage in the service of Caesar, and shout with the mob “We have no king but Caesar!” And, in consequence of this tendency, they are agitated by conflicts similar to those of the churches under the state yoke, between the theories—First, of what may be called the Virginia, or Scoto–American school, denying any connection or coordinate jurisdiction in spirituals or temporals between the State and the Church; the theories of the New England school claiming the Church as one of the agencies fostered by the State for secular purposes and to develop the Christian state; and the theories of what may be called the Galliio school of entire indifference to the whole question of what the relation of Church and state which so agitates all Christendom.
Stuart Robinson, “Relation of the Temporal and Spiritual Powers Historically Considered: The Scoto-American Theory” in Preston D. Graham Jr., A Kingdom Not Of This World: Stuart Robinson’s Struggle To Distinguish The Sacred From the Secular During the Civil War (Mercer University Press, 2002), 200–02 (HT: Nate Paschall)
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