Hierarchy, Heresy & Hubris

In the world of Karl Marx, the only way to explain the vast economic disparities between classes was to use the classic oppressor-oppressed framework. Over time, Marxists realized they could utilize this framework not only within the realm of economics but in any setting that was useful to them. Thus, whether it’s Israel / Palestine, the historical relationship between blacks and whites, or even women’s lack of representation among the world’s wealthiest individuals, the cultural Marxist explanation was always one group somehow seizing power and wielding it to abuse the minority group.

Anyone who has been to college in the past half-century knows this.

However, one specific setting this framework is used but rarely discussed is within the context of the Protestant Revolution.

To many, the imagery of a grassroots movement that gained popularity through winning over the hearts and minds of their fellow common folk is what most Protestants today believe—or at least describe—happened in 16th-century Europe. Thus, many think that after more than a millennium of the “true Gospel” being obscured by the corrupt Catholic establishment burdened with unnecessary tradition and “religion,” the Reformers went town to town, slowly guiding more and more people to the “good side” until they picked up enough momentum to become a real force. Of course, they couldn’t have done it without Gutenberg’s printing press, given the lack of this technology is what allowed the Catholics to prevent the masses from reading the Bible, as once anyone reads the Bible for themselves, they would run to Protestantism as soldiers run to their wives after returning from war.

This is false.

When analyzing the history of Christendom, the error of Protestantism is not unique in essence to the many heresies that the Church has battled throughout her day.

However, there is one key difference that differentiated Protestantism from the rest of its counterparts: its institutional backing.

Unlike Gnosticism, Monophysitism, Nestorianism, or the many others, Protestantism was utilized strategically by European kings and princes and then enforced top down—contrary to the bottom-up grassroots depiction frequently advertised.

The incentive for many monarchs to embrace Protestantism was evident from the beginning of the revolution, with of course the most notable being King Henry VIII and his desire to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, after Pope Clement VII refused the request. Thus, the Reformers’ revolt was perfectly timed, as the solution became to sever ties with Christ’s Church, declare himself the head of England’s Church, and punish those who didn’t comply with the state’s new religion.

This was a unique case, however.

As we discussed in Hearts & Minds, there were occasional feuds between certain European heads of state and the Pope, as the question of who had the last say in certain situations wasn’t always easily answered. Thus, not only did monarchs have the political incentive to achieve independence from Rome, but they also had economic incentive through seizing Church lands and monasteries, avoiding payments to Rome, and redirecting all tithes to the state.

Using the Holy Roman Empire as a case study, the seizure of Church property definitely played a role, as the opportunity to redirect Church income to the state was too big of an opportunity for regional princes to pass up. More specifically, the decentralized nature of the HRE meant that princes had significant autonomy over their principalities but were still under the authority of both the Pope and the Holy Roman emperor. This meant that breaking away from the Church not only granted them more power through circumventing the Pope’s authority but also the emperor’s authority as well. These princes understood that through framing the separation as defending religious liberty, they could usurp more power, with many of them famously repeating the phrase from the Peace of Augsburg: “cuius regio, eius religio” (“whose realm, his religion”).

Other regions like Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and Switzerland followed suit, while other countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy, and most of France remained Catholic through suppressing revolts early or simply remaining Catholic out of loyalty and a desire for continuity and tradition.

It goes without saying that all of this occurred in the West, which begs an obvious question: why didn’t the Eastern Orthodox Church undergo a revolution? After all, the corruption and moral laxity of the clergy was not a uniquely Western problem.

Before diving into the why, an interesting fact is just how little the Eastern Christians and the Western Protestants knew about what the other believed. Many of the Reformers weren’t aware of how unique their beliefs were, thus leading them to believe that, because of their rejection of the infallibility of the Roman pontiff, the two groups likely had more in common than not.

This was of course a miscalculation.

Although Luther, in a debate with Johann von Eck, alluded to the Orthodox empire as an example of Christianity flourishing without submission to the Petrine office, he and the rest of the Reformers would be surprised when Phillipp Melanchthon sent their Confession of Augsburg to the Patriarch of Constantinople Joasaph II.

The attempt to spark some sort of alliance through the “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” model was shot down, as records indicate that “a brief glance at the confession showed that much of its doctrine was frankly heretical,” according to the Patriarch. As a polite gesture, he simply ignored the letter. The following decade, thinking it must have not reached the destination, Melanchthon tried again, this time sending to the new Patriarch Jeremias II. Instead of ignoring it like his predecessor, Jeremias II wrote back, rebutting each of the 21 articles, highlighting the specific errors in each of them. After a few more exchanges over the following years, the patriarch informed them to stop writing to him.

The list of disagreements between the Orthodox Church and Protestantism is a long one, but even within the agreements, there are disagreements. For instance, both of course reject the universal jurisdiction of the Pope, but Orthodox Christians assert that the Roman pontiff’s jurisdiction should not extend beyond Rome, while Protestants balk at the idea of bishops having any sort of binding power over the laity at all.

The main reason why a “reformation” never happened in the East has to do with the structure of both the Orthodox Church as well as the Eastern lands that formerly made up the Eastern Roman empire.

Firstly, the conciliar nature of authority within the Orthodox Church meant that there was no centralized power to rebel against, whereas the Western countries that embraced Protestantism did so to claim their independence from the Pope and Rome. While the Patriarch of Constantinople is typically identified as the most important Orthodox figure, he cannot claim the same power and authority that the Pope does, thus providing him with less leverage in interactions with state heads. So while the Pope and Western monarchs oftentimes butted heads, the power imbalance between Eastern emperors and the Patriarch of Constantinople prevented many conflicts from even occurring in the first place.

Additionally, the geographic and political composition of the East and West were drastically different. The West included a variety of different states and empires like Spain, England, France, and the Holy Roman Empire that each operated independently, thus leading to some states becoming Protestant and others remaining Catholic. On the other hand, the East had mostly remained unified for many centuries through the Eastern Roman empire, meaning that the emperor would have been able to easily stamp out any sort of threat to doctrinal unity before it caught fire. After being overtaken by the Ottoman Empire, the Orthodox Christians no longer had a Christian head of state, but still maintained their religious identity within the empire as long as they paid the additional taxes required. Thus, the potential spread of differing doctrines and sects provided a direct threat to the little autonomy they were grasping on to.

The closest the Eastern Church approached something akin to the Protestant Revolution was when the Ecumenical Patriarch Cyril Lucaris published a book that affirmed many of the notable Protestant ideas like sola fide, sola scriptura, double predestination, and other Calvinist leaning doctrines. He had studied in Italy where he encountered these ideas for the first time and did his best to bring them eastward, publishing his Confession of Faith in 1629. Despite his influential seat, the ideas never gained traction and the Synod of Jerusalem a few decades after reaffirmed all of the traditional Orthodox beliefs.

Thus, the Protestant Revolution remained uniquely western.

When analyzing why the revolution occurred in the West and not the East, one of the clearest conclusions that can be derived is the much closer relationship between Church and state in both European regions.

Given America’s Enlightenment and republican ideals, we have been groomed to immediately shudder at the idea of any sort of positive relationship between the two.

But the question immediately becomes why is it actually a bad idea to have the two work together?

One can undoubtedly propose many convincing arguments as to why Church and state must be separate institutionally, as many theologians have proposed this idea not to prevent any sort of religious identification of the government, but rather to prevent the Church from the inevitable corruption that naturally proceeds from politics. However, when it comes to the separation of Church and state ideologically, it simply makes no sense to do so, specifically for Christians.

For secularists on the other hand, nothing has been more important for their power grab than selling the “no Church and state” line, or more specifically, “no forcing your religion onto everyone else” line.

To best illustrate what has happened over the past seventy or so years, imagine a conservative Christian, libertarian, and secularist wandering through the woods. All of a sudden, the Christian stumbles upon a massive sword, identifies it as political authority, and plans to wield it by establishing Christian law. The libertarian, however, argues that the sword should only be used in rare cases like protecting civil liberties and the populace’s essential freedoms. The secularist chimes in and asserts that the sword should not be used by either of them, as it is inappropriate to wield the sword at all and impose their views on everyone else. The Christian and libertarian think to themselves, and after deliberating, they agree and walk away, leaving the sword to the secularist to ironically impose liberalism on everyone else.

The lesson of the fable is the impossibility of moral neutrality when it comes to governing. Secularists utilize the modern West’s aversion to religious intolerance by pretending pushing for Christian morality in the law is analogous to imposing medieval Inquisition punishments for non-Christians. Of course, as Christians, we are not coercing non-Christians to convert, but rather we should aim to ratify laws using Christian morality. After all, laws are derived from morality, morality is derived from worldviews, and worldviews are derived from religion. While the secularist argues that his worldview is somehow superior because it doesn’t stem from religion, one could easily make the opposite argument, concluding that it is dangerous to cede power to those with no real, grounded foundation for their beliefs, leaving them susceptible to whichever way the wind shall blow next.

Now, in an ideal world where laws are derived using the morality of Christ, this will be a bit uncomfortable for secularists, as they will have to bear the reality of the Christian worldview being foisted upon them against their wishes. The unfortunate reality is that this discomfort must be felt by someone, as it has been experienced by Christians given the abandonment of Christian societal norms in recent times. The difference is however that the fruits of Christianity are objectively better than the fruits of secularism.

Thus, the embrace of Christian nationalism by the fringes of the right wing has rung the emergency bells within the establishment elites, as they’ve been doing their best to artificially attach the typical dirty labels of “extremism,” “racism,” “bigotry,” “white supremacy,” and the rest to hold off the momentum as long as possible.

But as the Book of Daniel says, the writing is on the wall.

The return to Christian morality ruling the nation of nations is inevitable and the only question is when it will happen.

The answer is whenever God permits it to happen.

Why?

Because Christ is King.

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Thanks for reading and until next time.