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Protecting the State from the Church

Protecting the State from the Church

Last updated on: July 21, 2026 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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Protecting the State from the Church 2026-07-18T17:55:36-04:00 Gene Veith

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Part II of our series on the Lutheran doctrine of the Two Kingdom: This may prove to be the most controversial post in the series with its contention that the state needs to be protected from the church. But that was the very battle that Luther was waging, the exact opposite of what many Christians today are seeking to do, namely, establishing the authority of the church over that of secular rulers. Rather, Luther taught that God, providentially and through vocation, works through earthly rulers. And when the church attempts to rule the world, as with both the Pope and the Enthusiasts, it fixates on the law and neglects the gospel, concerned more with exercising power rather than proclaiming God’s grace through Christ. . . .

The doctrine of the Two Kingdoms protects the church from the state. That is what Christians appreciate the most. But the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms also protects the state from the church. And this was the most immediate priority for Martin Luther as he was developing this teaching.

The medieval papacy claimed temporal authority. The main basis for this claim was the so-called Donation of Constantine, according to which the Emperor Constantine, when he moved his imperial court to Constantinople, gave to the pope and his successors the city of Rome and the Western half of the Roman Empire. That document was proven to be a forgery by Renaissance scholars, who showed that it mentioned happenings that did not take place in the time of Constantine, plagiarized a story about a pope slaying a dragon not written until the 5th century, and was written in medieval Latin rather than Roman Latin.[1]

But the pope’s claim to temporal authority was also given a theological basis. Roman Catholic theologians contended that the Office of the Keys is given not to the disciples, not to pastors, not to the church, but to Peter alone, whose power to bind and loose sins “on earth” gives him and his successors the power to bind and loose everything on earth. Furthermore, they argued that since Christ is the Lord of heaven and earth and the pope is the “Vicar of Christ,” the pope must be the lord of the earth. To take one example of how this played out in practice, in 1570 the pope issued a bull removing the Protestant ruler of England, Queen Elizabeth I, from her throne and releasing her subjects from the duty to obey her or her laws. The next pope took it even further, offering a dispensation to anyone who murdered the Queen.

Luther was outraged by the pope’s presuming to rule the world. Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 clearly state that earthly rulers–including those like the Emperor who are not Christians–are “agents” of God, by means of which God punishes evildoers and protects those who do well.[2]

Luther also contended against a Protestant version of this same claim. The Enthusiasts were an early version of Pentecostalists who believed in the direct illumination of the Holy Spirit apart from God’s Word. They were also an early version of the Millennialists who believed, in the words of the Augsburg Confession condemning them, “that before the resurrection of the dead the godly shall take possession of the kingdom of the world, the ungodly being everywhere suppressed.”[3]

Some of these Enthusiasts were not content to wait until the End Times, fomenting the Peasant Revolt, a broad social uprising in which mobs of peasants killed hundreds of landowners and their families, burning a thousand castles, manor houses, and monasteries. Luther, shocked at the anarchy, called upon the ruling Princes to instill order by means of force, which they did, putting to death at least 100,000 of the rebels, a tragic ending for uneducated Christians misled by their religious leaders that their violence would usher in the kingdom of God on earth.

Why did Luther want to protect the state from being ruled by the church? A major reason was that exercising political power distorts the message of the church. Governing society must be done by applying power and forcing people to comply with the law. When a church takes on this function, it becomes fixated on the Law and neglects the Gospel, the proclamation of forgiveness through Jesus Christ, which is the church’s reason for existing. Indeed, the Church of Rome and the Protestant Enthusiasts were both churches of the Law, not the Gospel.

Today, the notion that the church should rule the state has come back, in much the same terms that Luther was contending against. The so-called “Integralists,” well-represented among conservative Catholics, are calling for a renewal of the church’s temporal authority, with the pope as the supreme earthly ruler. Many Pentecostals today are caught up in the so-called “New Apostolic Reformation,” a movement in which Christians seize control of all dimensions of society–the “Seven Mountains” of Government, Media, Business, Education, Arts and Entertainment, Family, and Religion–and so rule the world, under the leadership of charismatic “apostles,” until Christ returns. Among the Reformed, many Calvinists today are embracing a theocratic approach to government called “Dominionism” or “Reconstructionism,” in which Christians rule and the Bible is the law of the land.

Notice that Catholics with their integralism, Pentecostals with their New Apostolic Reformation, and Calvinists with their Dominionism all operate under the assumption that Christianity is a religion of Law. Though the Gospel may be present in their teaching, it tends to play a relatively minor role. All of these proposed “Confessional States” reject the principles and practices of what they dismiss as “liberal democracy”–that is, the rights, freedoms, and self-government of the American constitutional order–and so they reject religious liberty.

Non-Christians would not be allowed to vote, hold public office, or build houses of worship, such as synagogues, mosques, or temples. As for other Christian religions, the rules vary: Integralists would allow only Catholics to participate in the government. The New Apostolic Reformation would require non-Pentecostal Christians to accept the authority of the “Apostles.” Calvinist Dominionists say that they would, however, accept Christians of other theologies.

But make no mistake: none of these “Confessional States” would be hospitable to Confessional Lutheranism. These three strains–Catholic, Pentecostal, and Reformed–are exactly the theological traditions we are always criticizing. I doubt such criticism would be allowed if any of these churches acquire political power and abolish religious liberty.

Next up: Protecting the Church from the State

Notes

[1] See “The Donation of Constantine,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation_of_Constantine#Further_reading

[2] For the Lutheran rejection of the pope’s claim to temporal authority and the defense of earthly rulers in light of God’s kingdoms, see Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Articles VII and VIII, ¶23, and XVI.

[3] From “Article XVII. Christ’s Return for Judgment” in The Augsburg Confession, in Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2006). Source: https://bookofconcord.cph.org/en/augsburg-confession/chief_articles/article_xvii/

Illustration: Kings Kissing the Pope’s Foot by Lucas Cranach, from the print series The Passion of Christ and Antichrist via Google BooksTransferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3876766. [In the series, this print is the antithesis of Cranach’s print of Jesus washing His disciple’s feet.]

Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms

Dominionism

enthusiasts

Integralism

New Apostolic Reformation

temporal authority of the Pope

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July 20, 2026

Misconceptions about the Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms

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