Two Views of Church and State
Whether talking about Church or State lies the principle of authority applied to the practice of power. By accepting the principle of authority as their starting-point, men and women in former ages did not feel its limitations upon creative thought and action. They viewed authority as a liberating check on the caprice of scholarship, rather than having a feeling of being fenced in. And a fence is no obstacle to those who do not desire to go outside, and many barriers that would seem intolerable to a more skeptical age were not felt as barriers by the Classical scholar or Renaissance humanists. One is free who feels himself free.
The essence of the 16th century split of Christendom into a Protestant North and a Catholic South, bringing about both Protestant Reformation and Catholic Reformation lies not primarily on theological positions. Implicit in the breakup is whether we take a nominalist or a realist view of the church. The same could be said about the state.
The central problem of the church then, and of politics in our own time, depend largely upon a nominalist or a realist view of church and state. Is the church known by its constituent members reflecting numerous and often diverse adherents? Or is the Church “One”, in its essence, that makes sense only in that the “body” of the church subscribes to a common creed? The former is a nominal view of the church (it is only a name, used to give form to gathered masses of individuals brought together for a purpose); the latter is one of realism, in which a common creed, a set of precepts and authoritative teachings is derived from scripture alone or Sacred Tradition. It is in observing a gathering in worship – for a purpose – that something is going on more than the ordinary ruck of humanity mass gathered without reference to a goal beyond “fellowship.” It is this outward attentiveness to the rituals of liturgy and preaching the scriptures that binds seekers in a common, real experience of the church.
While adherents come and go and pass away, the church remains. As for the state, there are many kinds of states. Before delving into the nature of the state, I want to clarify its specific meaning in the American context. When I refer to the “state” of the Federal Republic of Germany, the French Republic, or the Russian Federation, I shall refer to them as States (with a capital “S”). In this context, a State is a society having effective dominion over a well-defined territory. In the rest of this essay, I will discuss the state (small “s”) in the annals of the American experience, in which the original thirteen “free and independent states” became bound in union, each a part of one, and only one, larger State, a new State known as the United States of America. The state in the American context is analogous to the various Länder of the German State; to France’s departments and their prefectures; to the oblasts of the Russian Federation.
The State, for a people, is a dynamism, a movement – the will to do something in common. When such States mobilize to defend themselves, they are defending their future, not a dead past. They are always in the making, so as not to be unmade. To do this they keep winning adherents, not losing them – to be vital. The United States, as it expanded, needed to consolidate more and more people into a larger whole. This common identity, shared as it is, becomes the basis of the nation. Nevertheless, the nation, consisting of admitted states and their peoples, remain subsidiary to the project of the State to maintain its integrality and continue to foster movement towards a more perfect union. How this relates to nominalism or realism, and to its import to preserving the union is discussed below.
What is the difference between a nominal vs. a real view of the United States of America as a State? This can largely be viewed as a difference between seeing the body as a whole being more than the sum of its parts, or whether all parts working in harmony are a priori or more important, giving life to the whole. It reflects the conundrum of the chicken and the egg. It is also reflected in whether the states are prior and necessary to the creation of a State. Or whether states owe their existence and continuity because they are part of a larger, comprehensive union. This can largely be distinguished by predicating whether these United States constitute a great nation (nominal); or the United States is a great nation (realism). Upon first impression, this may seem to be quibbles about word meanings, but it was this difference that put the union in danger and led to secession and civil war.
One side saw the nation as nominal, in name only, representing real states. States (small “s”), as real entities consisting of parties and persons, were anterior to the creation of a more perfect union. The various states, in a less perfect union, are therefore capable, and have the right to form ad hoc agreements among themselves, as a portion of the whole, as allies – or accomplices, in league, often in secrecy, which is antithetical to the project of the people of the United States to build a more perfect union.
It is readily apparent that the Confederacy represented the nominal view, while unionists conceived this still relatively new nation as a creation for the sole purpose of forging a more perfect union. What is a more perfect union? What does a more perfect union look like? Does it imply completion – of a project in which “all things are now accomplished”? There is a considerable difference between completeness and perfection. Complete means a nation has all necessary attributes and properties that properly belong to it. Yet, some constituent parts may not function as required, presenting defects that need to be remedied. Removing these defects, through tooling and tuning, adjusting parts to fit parts precisely, results in perfection. But can a perfect union be made “more perfect”?
Reaching and realizing the attainment of some goal, such as mastering a language, playing the keyboard, or composing poems in metrical cadence – is a state of excellence in which ‘edges’ are honed, flaws eradicated, therefore attaining realization in the realm of beauty. What can be more perfect than that?
In the sublunary world of flawed, sinful humanity, nothing can truly be perfect. Looking for that perfect relationship, landing that perfect job, and fully realizing a (more) perfect union might be chasing a will-o’-the-wisp. The best that can be hoped for is to lay a groundwork of standard maxims for a free society, the most famous of which are stated in America’s organic document, the Declaration of Independence, in which it is stated that “all men are created equal … with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The authors of that statement are not professing an un-predicated equality, but an equality defined distinctly in the three respects mentioned above. They almost certainly believed as Christians or Deists that a perfect union, even when limited to the inalienable rights mentioned above, could not be achievable. But, as President Abraham Lincoln pointed out, in his abaude to the Declaration of Independence, the project of future generations would be to complete the work of enshrining that right, in custom and law, made familiar to all and revered by all, so that in declaring those rights, the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. Though never fully attainable, through constant and unrelenting labor, the maxim of a free society would spread like a prairie fire, deepening its influence, and thereby augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people everywhere.
To form a more perfect union could hardly be perfected by rendering it asunder. The nation needs to remove any defects making the union less than perfect. To maintain a more perfect union, the nation must comprehend the whole, in unity, in harmony of all its parts. For unionists, the entire nation, in its people, progeny, and posterity, was “more real”, if you will, than the original thirteen ‘free and independent states’, then existing as an indissolubly bound union that was forged in war making colonials Americans. This central fact was more real than the realism of the disparate states.
As the man who did more to forge sectional affinities into a single national identity, what did George Washington have to say on the matter of living in a nominal nation or a real nation? In his Farewell Address to the nation he served, President Washington entreated his fellow citizens and countrymen, that the entire country – the nation – that now exists as a concrete reality, “has a right (expectation) to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.” He then reminded his countrymen of the benefits of union: “You have in common causes fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberties you possess are the work of wise counsels, prepared to face common dangers, endure patient sufferings, and share in resplendent successes.” Despite his vision of a magnificent future in store for the nation, the appellation of American was as uncommon then, as it is now, for Germans, Poles, or Italians to consider themselves Europeans. At least regional colonials fought against a common enemy – the British crown – while Germans, Poles, and Italians have more often fought against each other, than a common enemy. But once common opposition no longer serves as a force for union, can peace, progressivism, and ever-increasing Gross National Output provide a basis for union? Will mystic chords of memory supply that abundance of love in the hearts of men and women for union over self-interest? Can nominalists and realists live together under the roof of a divided house?
As the nation drifted apart, most of the nation’s thirty-one million people were caught off-guard at the speed the union disintegrated over the winter of 1860-1861:
’As it was in the days of Noah,
so shall it be —
they ate, they drank, they planted, they builded,
and knew not till the flood came and took them.’”
As the nation moved to impending civil war, could the nation survive losing just a limb or two? What if eyesight was lost; then hearing; then teeth; then smell; then speech; then hands, and so forth. Would he still be recognized as a man? President Lincoln saw precisely that a union is no union if parts and senses can be lapped off at will. A death to a part diminishes the whole, for the one who is called to be involved in humankind.
President Lincoln held to the view of the nation’s realism as an indissoluble union. Can a human being survive if he is dismembered, as I described above? We know he cannot. Eyes, ears, teeth, etc., when separated from the body, are no longer alive; they can no longer function, nor are they capable of surviving on their own, unless they are part of a living body. It is a human being that sees, not a pair of eyes.
Although President Lincoln apparently never belonged to a church body or self-identified himself as a “believer,” his speeches and letters are suffused with the content and cadence of scripture. In fact, his realism view of the nation echoes St. Paul’s description of the body in his First Letter to the Corinthians: But God has so composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that part which lacked, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the parts may have the same care for one another. And if one part of the body suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if a part is honored, all the parts rejoice with it.
Upon this difference of a nominalist or realist view of the nation, hundreds of thousands of men had ‘all uncouthly died’, unconsciously so, among the thousands who perished, unaware of the ultimate issues for which they fought, but yet able to comprehend them, when expressed in the concrete form of putting the interest of the whole above the interest of its members.
In making this effort to understand what English historian Paul Johnson calls the central event in American History, I am fascinated by Abraham Lincoln, an apparently ‘unchurched’ man, recognized the working out of divine providence in the great conflict. If this war be a working out of divine providence, blame and sin lies with the entire nation. Both sides are guilty, but mercy is given to those who give mercy. In an earlier speech, President Lincoln invoked a need to overcome bitterness and begin to bind up the nation’s wounds: If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it, that the succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations.
Finally, I have been intrigued by Fulton J. Sheen’s peculiar invocation of the Trinity in the history of the nation: “Everyone knows that George Washington is the Father of his country, but in Lincoln it had its savior. Fitting, I should say, to the one man who lived just long enough to accomplish union of the whole nation and could likely have said: “Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory.” (1 Corinthians 15:57), and have seen “it is finished”. And so, the American project towards a more perfect union continues …
